Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(62)

There Sun Eagle allowed Daylily to collapse beneath a tree, shuddering and drawing her knees up to her chest, clutching at the sides of her head. He stood back at first and watched her, fighting the various urges that pushed him this way and that. Then he shook these off and was himself for a moment at least. He knelt and put an arm around Daylily’s shoulder.

“You have nothing to fear,” he said quietly as she buried her face in his neck. “You have taken the Bronze. Nothing can hurt you.”

But she shook her head and moaned again.

“Was it that thing inside you?” Sun Eagle asked.

She nodded. In a voice like a child’s she said, “She will always hunt me. She will always plague me. I will never be free. And then she will devour me.”

Sun Eagle sat holding her, silent and uncertain what to say. Something fluttered into the branches of the tree above them, and he looked up to see a songbird there, brown with a speckled breast and bright eye. The bird sang, and the song fell over the two below. Sun Eagle shivered at that sound, and his stomach turned.

Form the bond. Do what you must.

He stood, leaving Daylily where she was, and his voice was no longer comforting. “Stay here,” he said. “I must go to the Land and establish the tithe for the beast’s death. Don’t go anywhere.” He bent and pulled the bronze stone from beneath her tangle of hair, arranging it so that any who might happen by this way would see it at once. Daylily made no move but to press against the tree, shuddering. He scowled at her. “I’ll return shortly,” he said.

Then he was gone and she was alone in the Wood. Or not quite alone.

“You know what I told you,” sang the bird in the tree above.

Daylily, startled, looked up and glared at the bird. “You again? Why don’t you leave me in peace?”

“If I leave you,” replied the bird, hopping from branch to branch, “you’ll have no peace. Do you remember what I told you?”

“No,” she said, which was a lie. But the bird knew it was a lie, so it didn’t much matter.

He ruffled his wings, then cocked his head to one side. “You’ll have to let it go,” he sang. “If you don’t, it will eat you, just as you fear.”

“If I do, it will eat me; if I don’t, it will eat me. The end is the same either way,” said Daylily. Her voice was dull now with a quiet acceptance. “But I have done my duty. I have taken it away into the Wood, and I have found one who can bind it better than I could. It will eat me, but it will eat no one else!”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” said the bird. “The longer you cling to it, Daylily, the stronger it will—”

She snarled, interrupting the song of the brown bird, drowning out the words so that she could not hear them. Then she groaned, bowed her head, and sank into a deep, troubled sleep.

———

In the broad, barren landscape that was both dream and memory, the being which assumed Daylily’s form walked, searching and sniffing and watching warily. The being knew it would find the she-wolf if it looked hard enough. There wasn’t much else to find in this place. Not anymore. Not in this new, strange, wonderful, awful mind.

What a find it was! What a catch! A mind like this, properly tempered, could do so many things, and the face of Daylily smiled a smile that was not Daylily’s.

“So you’re wearing her now, are you?”

The figure of Daylily turned in a flurry of torn wedding clothes, and the smile that was not hers grew at the sight of the red she-wolf. The rusted manacles tore more deeply than ever into the wolf’s flesh so that the ruddy red of her coat disappeared under the scarlet red of blood. But the wolf’s eyes flashed ice-blue. “I don’t think that aspect becomes you at all. You look a fright!”

The face that was Daylily’s frowned. Oh, you think so? How sad. Perhaps we should . . . oh, wait! We almost forgot! The smile that wasn’t hers returned, quick as a knife. Nothing you say can matter anymore. You’re practically dead.

“Not dead yet!” said the wolf.

Better than dead, said the figure of Daylily. She knelt and touched the chains. The wolf tried to lunge at her, and she flinched, then relaxed. The manacles were far too strong.

But she saw that the bronze stone she had tied about the wolf’s neck had slipped off. She picked it up.

How did this happen?

The wolf panted in agony, but there was a grin in her voice. “Don’t you wish you knew?”

The figure of Daylily sat and looked upon the wolf. Then, with a strength beyond any she knew outside of dreams, she took hold of the chain securing the wolf’s right forepaw and twisted it, twisted the wolf’s leg, farther and farther, up unto the breaking point and then—Snap!

The wolf screamed in Daylily’s voice. The whole of that barren world, the gray plain and the dark sky, rocked in agony. And when she stopped and the wolf lay gasping in agony, the figure that was Daylily tied the bronze stone on its cord about the wolf’s neck to dangle beneath the huge iron collar.

You’re much stronger than we thought.

The wolf could not answer through the pain.

We know how to break you. We know all your secrets. You see, we are Daylily now. And she is us. And we are strong together.

The wolf’s voice was a puppy’s whimper. But already her leg was beginning to heal, though it was warped and painful still, for the bone was unset. Her lips curled back from her teeth, revealing pale white gums. “You’ll never be strong enough,” she gasped.