Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(75)

“You were thinking of me!” she said again. “I heard you. You thought of me and something I said to you, and I heard it, so I came at once. I knew you wouldn’t be able to get me out of your mind! Are you ready to marry me now?”





25


SUN EAGLE AND DAYLILY passed through the Wood in silence and once more came to the gate. They entered the Near World and stood in the gorge, looking up to the tableland above. Daylily, dulled by now to the comings and goings, still looked unconsciously for the bridge she knew should be there. For this was the gorge near the Eldest’s House, or rather, near where it would one day be.

“Come,” said Sun Eagle, and they began the long climb. Worn and trembling, more disturbed than rested by her sleep in the Between, Daylily lagged behind Sun Eagle. He reached the top and waited there for her to catch up. A certain gnarled fig tree seemed to watch him, and he eyed it back and made certain it could see the Bronze upon his chest. It did nothing, and though Sun Eagle suspected a Faerie dwelled therein, he chose to ignore it for the moment.

In time, they would deal with them all.

Daylily reached the top of the gorge trail and sat, breathing hard and looking into the jungle. It was unusually quiet. In the deeper reaches, birds and monkeys called, but here not even the buzzing of an insect disturbed the air.

“They know who we are,” Sun Eagle said, answering Daylily’s unspoken question. “They know the master has come to this realm, and they are afraid. As they should be.”

When Daylily was rested enough, he made her get to her feet. This time, when they progressed into the jungle, they took the man-made trail. “Our brethren are spreading throughout the Land,” Sun Eagle told her. “Every tribe and every village will see us and thank us and fear us for what we do. It is good work.”

“Good work,” Daylily echoed. “But what about . . .”

There flashed through her mind an image. She saw herself holding a child, carrying him toward a yawning black door. Who was that child? Where was he now?

Ask if you dare, snarled the wolf.

So the wolf was alive. Just as she’d feared.

Yes, I’m alive. You’ll never be rid of me. Ask this Advocate of yours what happened to that child. Ask what happens to all the children!

“I’ll do nothing by your order,” Daylily whispered fiercely. “I am not your slave.”

You are a slave, but not to me, the wolf growled, then subsided for the time being. Silence fell upon Daylily’s mind, interrupted only by the shushing of the wind overhead.

For a moment, oddly enough, Daylily thought she heard a voice in that wind. Foxbrush! Foxbrush! it called as it wafted overhead. Where are you, Foxbrush?

Daylily frowned, an unpleasant taste rising in her throat. Why should she think of that name now? Of all people, Foxbrush was the very last she wanted to remember. Her spurned groom, her unwanted lover. She shuddered and quickened her pace behind Sun Eagle. He glanced back and read things in her face she did not intend to reveal. He could not read all, for he knew so little of her. But he read enough.

“You must let go of your past,” he said, “if you hope to survive in this new life.”

Her eyes flashed, and she was again, however briefly, the cold Lady Daylily of Middlecrescent, who could freeze a man’s blood with a glance. “Who are you,” she said, “to tell me what I must or must not let go? What right have you to judge?”

His face remained impassive before her tight-lipped wrath. “I am your Advocate,” he said. “I have every right. And if you wish to be an Advocate yourself one day and take on an Initiate, you will do as I say.”

Daylily drew herself up, her tiredness forgotten in her ire. “Do as you say? Do as you do?”


“Both.”

“Let go of my past? Is that what you have done?”

“This is what all of us must do in order to devote ourselves fully to the master.”

Her gaze ran up and down his savage form—his skins, his bloodstains, his weapons, his scars. Then she said, “If that is so, why do you still wear those two beads about your neck?”

Sun Eagle’s face did not move. Slowly one hand rose to the necklace on which hung the clay beads, the blue and the red, name marks given him long ago to carry into the Wood as he made his rite of passage. He touched them now as though he didn’t quite know what they were.

The Land is all. All we need.

“All we need,” mouthed Sun Eagle, but he still caressed the blue stone. Then he smiled grimly. “We have work to do. No more talk.”

He passed on into the jungle, and Daylily had no choice but to follow. Thunder rolled overhead, threatening rain, but the air was already so thick with moisture, plastering Daylily’s body with sweat, that she felt rain could scarcely make a difference.

Suddenly Sun Eagle stopped. He lifted a hand and Daylily also froze, tilting her head to listen, lifting her nose to sniff. But she sensed nothing. Nothing but jungle and greenness all around.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“A Faerie beast,” said he. Then his lips drew back in an animal snarl. “One I know. One I know too well!”

The next moment, he was running, disappearing into the green, and Daylily was hard-pressed not to lose him.



Foxbrush sneezed again.

He couldn’t help himself. It’s not something a fellow likes to do when a stunningly beautiful woman is leaning toward him with an expression on her face like Nidawi’s wore. But sneezes are not prey to the wants or wishes of those inflicted with them. He sneezed so violently that he nearly knocked his forehead against Nidawi’s exquisite little chin. She leapt back lightly, frowning at first, then shaking the frown into a rain of laughter.