Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(25)

But no. Not even a sylph has the courage to climb above the trees in the Between. High in the upper branches, however, the lone sylph was able to bear its mortal burden more easily away from the throng. Lionheart felt his head pillowed on a bosom made of breezes, soft and gentle as a mother where his cheek lay. But the rest of the sylph’s being billowed tumultuously, crashing through the foliage with all the care of a typhoon.

The gates to the Near World from the Wood are not known to all the fey folk. But the sylph had a fair notion where the mortal clasped in its arms might have entered, and it bore him back that way. In this place, a grove of silver-branch trees, the sylph had waited with its brethren, patient as only those who know nothing of Time may be, waiting for mortals to accidentally step over the boundaries separating their world from the Realm Between Worlds.

So the sylph set Lionheart down beneath these ageless trees. Lionheart, numb with roaring and flight, staggered three steps, then fell headlong. The sylph, ever eager to please, reached out and gently righted him on his feet. Once more, Lionheart tried his luck with a pace or two, but his legs failed, and he collapsed again.

All around him stretched the Wilderlands, and he could see no break in the trees’ long shadows. He did not know how close the gate to the Near World stood, for his eyes were untrained. He saw only more Wood.

The sylph bowed over him, touching his forehead.

“Savior,” it said. “Now I have saved you!”

“Wh-what?” Lionheart pushed himself up onto his elbows, spitting dirt and leaves, and gazed once more into that face that was not quite a face. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you remember?” said the sylph. “I am the poor creature you rescued from the Duke of Shippening.”

For the moment, at least, this comment could make no headway in Lionheart’s rattled mind. He lay as though paralyzed, unspeaking. The sylph put out a hand and gently played with his hair. “My kindred think too much of mortality and the strange ways of your kind,” it said. “The Lumil Eliasul favors you so, you and your dirt-bound bodies. They envy you! I once envied you too. And I suffered for my envy when Death-in-Life bound me with iron chains and gave me to the duke.”


A shudder like the sadness of a desolate summer breeze glancing across a dry field passed through the sylph. But its hands continued to gently caress Lionheart’s face. “But you!” it said. “You were sent by the Lumil Eliasul himself. You were sent to rescue me!”

Vague memories moved like shadows across Lionheart’s stunned consciousness. He saw once more an albino jester, a creature never meant to be trapped in mortal form, unhealthy, unhappy, almost unreal, performing for the amusement of a tyrant. He remembered himself stepping forward and loosing an iron ring from the creature’s neck. The burst of wind and roaring had been almost too violent to bear! But the sylph had been freed to its true form.

And it had told Lionheart then, “I will grant you a wish if I may.”

Now it said, its face ever shifting but filled with smiles, “I have saved you, my savior! Aad-o Ilmun! How glad I am to have been the instrument of the Song Giver!”

“I . . . I remember you.” Lionheart blinked vigorously, as though to drive the apparition away. “I remember you. And the docks of Capaneus City.”

“Yes, the docks,” said the sylph, its voice full of joy. Then the joy vanished, replaced with a solemn moan, like the creak of a moored ship on a still night. “There I told you where to learn the secret to the Dragon’s final end. A dreadful purpose.” Another instant and the shudder had passed. Once more the sylph smiled. “But I never granted you a wish! May I do so now to repay in full the debt I owe?”

Lionheart shook his head, then wished he hadn’t, for his ears still throbbed with the painful noise of the sylphs in throng. “I . . . I think you have repaid me,” he managed.

“No!” cried the sylph. “For you liberated me from slavery, while I merely pulled you from the dance of my kindred. It is not enough, and I do not wish to live in your debt forever. Have you no task for me now?”

“Foxbrush.” Lionheart’s eyes flew suddenly wide, and he rose swiftly, swayed, and propped himself against a silver-branch tree. The Wood surrounding him was full of silent but no-less potent mockery. “Foxbrush,” Lionheart said and gnashed his teeth. “He’s in there. Somewhere.”

“The other mortal dancing?” inquired the sylph, whirling about like an eager puppy. “He is with my kindred still. And he will die.” Its voice was uncaring but not cruel. It brushed Lionheart’s face with its long fingertips again. “Your kind cannot dance so long as mine.”

“I must save him!” Lionheart cried. “Can you lead me to him?”

“I can,” said the sylph. “But I won’t.”

“What? Why not?”

The airy being made no reply, but it pointed. Lionheart looked where it indicated, down at his own feet.

And there Lionheart saw the Path for which he had searched. The Path of Farthestshore leading, not back into the Wood the way he had come, but into the grove of silver-branch trees, their branches twining delicately together in what might almost have been an accidental arch.

Lionheart, stepping as gingerly as a cat over a puddle, approached the two trees, following the Path. He stood between their trunks and looked out. He saw the gorge. The rock cliff face, and the trail leading up to the tableland above.