Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(54)

“I will,” Foxbrush replied. He accepted Redman’s proffered shoulder once more, and they continued on their hobbling way back through the jungle.





18


TIME AND AGAIN. Time and again.

And yet, what is Time? Measured out in the beatings of these hearts.

Disappointment heaped upon disappointment. And yet, what is disappointment without desire?

Desire . . . ah yes. Desire surges in these veins, pounds in these heads. Blood and love, and the fire that flows between.

This land is good. This land is fair. This land is rich. This land is . . .

Mine!



“Mine,” Daylily whispered. A thrill akin to both sorrow and delight washed over her, leaving a strange prickling in her head, behind her vision. She followed Sun Eagle, her eyes round and wide and intent as a young dog’s fixed upon its master. Her Advocate. That’s what he called himself and what she knew him to be in a deep, instinctual place of her mind. She would follow him.

She would kill for him.

This is what it means to be free, she thought as the Wood Between shuddered and drew back to make room for their passing. To be free is to be ruthless, and ruthless will I be. All to the good of the land! The land I have too long watched succumb to poison and invasion. I will fight for my . . .

. . . for the master.

And it was good, even in her head, for the wolf could not resist her now, could not hurt her or hers.

They came to the gate of silver-branch trees, and Daylily now saw it for what it was. How could she have missed it before? Of course there were gates leading to all worlds, all times! Of course they would look nothing like mortal gates, for they were not made by mortal hands! It was all so simple and so clear now. After the Bronze was taken. After the first blood was spilt. After the first tithe was paid.

Sun Eagle said nothing as he led the quiet girl out of the Between and back into the vibrant, hot air of the Near World. Indeed, he could not speak at first, so keen was the quickening of his pulse, the thickening in his throat. How many far and fantastical countries had he seen since that morning long ago when he, a mere boy on the threshold of manhood, had passed into the Gray Wood to make his rite of passage and bring honor to his father’s name? He had passed into the Gray Wood, and the cord that secured him to his own world and time had broken. So he had become lost, never to return to his father’s waiting arms, never to return to his lovely chosen bride.

He felt again for the blue bead painted with the white starflower that he wore in the hollow of his throat, above the dangling Bronze. Her name mark. Her final gift. She must have believed that he died long ago.

She must have died herself.

But he had no time to think of this. Not now, with the whole of his native country opening before him, and the drive to protect, to save, to . . . to possess. To possess for the good of all!

So Sun Eagle led, his head full of too many thoughts to put into words, and Daylily followed. She was tired, and she knew it with a distant vagueness, but she would not dream of resting. Who could rest now? There was so much to do!

They came out of the Wood Between, and she saw that they had come to a different gorge than that she had climbed down in her flight from her wedding. This one was narrower and deeper, but as with the other, a path led up to the table country above. Sun Eagle climbed and Daylily hurried after. And when they reached the summit, they found the land clearer here, not thick with jungle but well tilled and wide with rolling green hills.

“Crescent Land!” Sun Eagle exclaimed, his eyes shining.

“Middlecrescent,” Daylily whispered. She felt a jolt in the pit of her stomach. Then they reached for each other, hand clutching hand, as linked now by the spirit of their homeland as they were by that which lived inside them.

Then a cloud passed over Sun Eagle’s face, and his grip on Daylily’s hand tightened. “Do you smell that?”

“What?” asked Daylily.

“Faerie beast.” Sun Eagle snarled the words. “A fey power living in our country. An intruder.”

And Daylily said in a voice as soft and gentle as that she once used to order tea or a certain gown laid out for dinner, “We must kill it.”

Sun Eagle nodded. “We must.”

They moved swiftly across this landscape, unhindered by the growth of jungle. And the air was hot, but the wind was fresh, and they both laughed as they ran, though Daylily’s limbs trembled with the thrill of fear and delight that was becoming so mixed up in her being that she could scarcely tell the one from the other.

Tocho sensed their approach.



Tocho sat on Skymount Watch, a rocky outcropping that rose above the fields and greens of this pleasant country. He was still relatively new to the Near World, but he liked it well. In the Far World there were too many others of his kind, brutal and greedy, and many much larger than he. Here, he could be master if he liked, for there was little enough the mortals could do.

Amarok the Wolf had had the right idea, all those ages ago, when he came to the Near World and made himself a god over these little people.

But, Tocho thought, I am not a fool like Amarok. He lost his godhood because he was too fond of the pretty women of this land. A woman with a pretty face will always bring a fellow low in the end. I don’t fall for a pretty face, however, for was there ever a face as pretty as mine?

So he sat contented upon his rocky seat, and his whiskers twitched with sensitive interest at every breeze that passed. Silky black fur clothed his lithe body, even his cheeks and around his eyes, though otherwise he was much like a man, if far bigger. His toes and fingers were extraordinarily long and tipped with lovely, lethal claws. His ears were large and tufted, and his mouth split into a cleft cat’s grin. When the sun shone upon him, as it did now, faint jaguar blotches showed in an elegant but subdued pattern across his torso and haunches.