Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(31)

“There is a village near here,” Sun Eagle said. “Greenwell, it was called in my time. It belonged to Eldest Panther Master. But he must be dead long ago.”

Daylily saw the warrior reach up and finger a small bead worn on a cord at his throat, painted blue and white with some figure she could not discern. She did not have a moment to wonder about this, however, for they emerged from the fringes of the jungle and looked out upon the village, just as Sun Eagle had expected.

Daylily knew now where the smell of smoke had come from, for she saw dozens of little fires burning in stone circles, one outside the door of nearly every hut. A squalid, stinking, feeble sort of village, she thought, but well peopled. There were villagers moving about daily tasks, children running on many errands, and old mothers grinding meal by their firesides. She saw men making repairs and herders driving flocks of geese and goats and pigs.

Following a path down from the village came a line of strong-armed women, clad in rough cloths and skins, trailing little ones in their wake.

“There,” said Sun Eagle, pointing to a rock-lined pool of roiling water, a deep, ever-moving well. “The well of Greenwell.” And then he grimaced. “I thought I smelled her. The rivers are gone. Anything may creep from the Wood Between into the Land now. Even her.”

Daylily’s stomach heaved. She could pick out no distinct smell beyond the woodsmoke. Otherwise, all was a noisome blend of unwashed bodies, goat dung, and stinking mud wattle drying in summer heat. “Who?” she asked, her voice a little faint.

“Mama Greenteeth,” Sun Eagle replied. “Look.”

The women approaching the well stopped within a few yards of it, setting down their waterskins and bowing, facedown. Then, one at a time, they drew near the water, which churned with bubbling freshness. Daylily watched as one woman took a flat wafer from her pouch and crumbled it into the water. The crumbs sank and disappeared. Only then did the woman fill her skin and return the way she had come, two small children in tow, back up the path to the village.

Daylily frowned. “Superstition,” she said with the cold superiority of one who is beyond such nonsense.

But Sun Eagle replied, “Not superstition. Ritual. They must pay the tithe.”

“Tithe? What tithe? To whom?”

“Watch.”

One by one, each of the women performed the same odd trick. Some of the cakes were bigger than others, and it seemed to Daylily that those who offered them only took water in proportion to her gift.

Then Sun Eagle said, “Ah! Look there.”

He pointed, and Daylily searched out what he indicated. A tall girl, not yet a woman, came down the path leading a toddling child by the hand. She could not be the child’s mother; a sister, perhaps. But she toted a skin for water over one shoulder and tugged the little one, who was fractious and resisting.

Suddenly the little one plunged a hand into the pouch at the girl’s side and pulled out a wafer cake such as Daylily had seen given to the well. Even as the sister cried out, the child stuffed half the cake into his mouth. The rest fell in crumbles about their feet.

The girl scolded, wringing her hands at the toddler, who smiled naughtily around his stolen mouthful. Then, with a heavy sigh, the girl looked back up the way they had come, and down again to the well. Daylily could see her calculating the distance, her mouth twisting with the effort of her decision.

Then she swept up the little one and, staggering under the child’s bulk, hastened the short distance remaining to the well. Looking over her shoulder and plunking the child back on the ground, she hastily bent and filled her skin without first making an offering.

Nothing happened. But then, Daylily wondered, what did she expect to happen?

“Tithe breaker,” Sun Eagle whispered. “Watch.”

The weight of the skin was too much for the girl, and she was obliged to hold it in both arms. She barked a command to the child and set out up the path, the little one trotting behind. But they had gone no more than three paces when the surface of the well began to writhe and roil.

A face rose up from the water.

It was a face without distinct feature, fluid as water, old and foul, with hair long and green, and teeth longer and greener. Others coming down the path shrieked and dropped their skins, fleeing. And the tall girl, her dark face gone gray with fear, whirled about just in time to see that horrible face rise up, up, up, then swoop down, mouth open, and swallow the toddling little one whole.

The next moment, face and child disappeared back into the well.

The girl screamed. The women screamed. And Daylily found that she too was screaming. “Do something! Do something!” she cried, her horror so absolute that she forgot herself.

Do something. Do something.

Sun Eagle stood and clutched her arm, turning her to him. His eyes were alight, and she thought his grimace might be a smile.

“Prove yourself, Crescent Woman,” he said. “Forge the bond. Rescue the child.”





11


THE HEART IS A PECULIAR THING. It sees and interprets important details long before the brain has started to think there might be something worth noticing. The brain resents this skill, however, and will often spitefully do all it can to repress what the heart might be whispering.

So it was that the moment Lionheart climbed up from the gorge and stood looking across the Eldest’s grounds, his heart spoke quietly inside him: Your father is dead.