Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(77)

“There now, you’ve offended her,” Nidawi said, shaking a finger under Foxbrush’s nose. “She’s not mine like a slave. I never kept slaves, not even when I had a world of subjects!”

A change came across her unbelievably delicate features. They sagged suddenly with heaviness, bags appearing under the eyes, lines deepening into framing crevices around the mouth, which, in turn, thinned to a narrow line. The black hair tumbling over Foxbrush’s shoulder and arm faded to gray, then to white. Nidawi the Everblooming let go her hold on Foxbrush and stepped away, bent and tottering so that she had to put out a hand and support herself against the tree.

It was unnatural and so sudden that Foxbrush took a moment to catch his breath. Then he licked rain from his lips and said, “I say, I’m sorry.” He put a hand on Nidawi’s bowed shoulder. “Was it something I said? Is it . . .” He grimaced. “Is it about the betrothal?”

But she shook her head. When she spoke, her voice was as heavy as her face but paper-thin and frail. “No, it’s just painful to remember.” She drew a shuddering breath that Foxbrush feared might shatter her body. When she turned to him, the lights had gone from the rain in her lashes, and instead her eyes brimmed with shining tears. “A mother should never outlive her children.”

Then she was sobbing an old woman’s sobs, dry and broken. Foxbrush put his arms around her and held her close to his chest, and her tears mingled with the rain. But unlike the rain, which was warm on that summer’s evening, Nidawi’s tears were cold, and they chilled him. Still he held her and smoothed her thin hair, from which dead leaves fell and littered the ground at their feet.

The moment ended with Foxbrush’s sudden yelp of pain. For Nidawi’s hands, which had been wrapped around him, dug into his skin with a surprising sharpness. Foxbrush looked down to see the white head sinking into a black mop of tangles, and Nidawi was a child again. A child turning away from him with a vicious snarl, her fingers curled into claws.

“Cren Cru!” she shrieked.

Lioness sprang to her feet, her ears pinned back, her growl outmatching even the thunder that rolled across the darkened sky. Foxbrush turned to look where they looked.

His heart stopped beating.

It must be a dream or an illusion brought on by the magic intoxication of Nidawi’s presence. It must be, for how else could he see, even through dark and rain, that form in white rags, her hair falling free in red-gold tatters below her shoulders, her icy eyes fixed upon him in unbelief. His bride: his beautiful, broken, terrible bride.

“Daylily!” he cried, taking three strides. But he had not taken a fourth when, with a roar that shook the orchard, Lioness sprang over his head and charged in streaking, snarling fury right at that vision that was no vision, but which breathed and moved and looked right at him.

“No!” Foxbrush shouted, though he did not know he shouted. Like one in a dream, he could not run, could not make his limbs move, straining against the pull of resisting time. Seconds, half seconds, were hours too long, for the white lion bounded with the speed of lightning.

Daylily shook herself free of her shock at seeing Foxbrush in this of all places and focused her gaze fiercely on that which approached. It was not a wolf. It was a Faerie beast, an invader, and her enemy.

Our enemy!

She snatched the Bronze from around her neck and crouched, prepared for battle.

Save our land!

The Lioness leapt, and Daylily, though her arm was none too strong, would have driven her sharp stone up and into her flesh as she descended, had the great cat not turned in the air at the last and landed to one side. Lioness lashed out, claws flashing, but caught Daylily’s gown and not Daylily herself. The lion’s second swing struck Daylily in the side, sending her crashing to the ground and her Bronze stone spinning through the air.

Daylily bared her teeth and reached for the stone, but Lioness pressed her to the dirt with an enormous, crushing paw. Claws tore into Daylily’s shoulder and she screamed. Her voice pierced the rain and the thunder and Foxbrush’s heart, and he screamed as well and threw himself at the lion.

But just as he did so, a savage yell rang out, and a wild man in skins, his hair pulled back in a long braid, fell from the branches of the fig tree above and landed square upon Lioness’s broad back. With strength greater than his size indicated, he unbalanced her, pulling her off Daylily so that both of them rolled across the ground. Foxbrush narrowly avoided losing his face to Lioness’s flailing claws, and found himself standing clear, staring down at Daylily’s flattened form.

Nidawi caught Foxbrush’s arm and pointed at Daylily, screaming, “Kill it! Kill it, my king!”

Then, without another word, she turned to Lioness and the wild man, who were grappling together. Sun Eagle was on the lion’s back, his arm around her shaggy neck, holding on with desperate force even as he struggled to grasp his own Bronze stone. Lioness reared up on her hind legs, twisting her long body and catching Sun Eagle by the leg. He yelled a brutal, angry yell but held on a few moments more before Lioness pulled him free and flung him from her.

Nidawi, still a child but with the face of a demon, flung herself at him, her claw-like hands tearing the skin of his chest into ribbons of blood. He struck with the Bronze, and where it touched the skin of her arm, it burned. The smell of burnt flesh filled the orchard, and steam sizzled in the rain.

Nidawi fell back, clutching her arm. “Kill it!” she cried out to Lioness.