Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(89)

Nevertheless, Nidawi hurled herself at the door again and again, scrabbling and tearing and pulling at the locks, her voice shifting from a crone’s to a woman’s to a child’s and back, each more chilling than the last. And over all this cacophony, Lioness roared.

Eanrin and Imraldera stood in the passage, clutching each other and staring at the door. Then Eanrin, still grasping Imraldera’s upper arms, turned her to him and said in a low voice:

“Well, we’ve heard her side of the story. Best to get his now, so we can decide what to do.”

“It does not matter,” Imraldera said. “He is our guest.”

“According to our other guest,”—with a nod to the door—“he’s a murderer.”

“It’s not true.”

“He’s a savage enough chap, you must admit.”

“He’s a warrior. But he would not murder.”

Eanrin studied the face of the young woman before him. She would not meet his gaze. He drew back, letting her go, and crossed his arms, still watching her intently.

“All right, out with it, my girl. Who is this fellow we’ve got bleeding on our furniture even as we speak? This man who calls you Starflower.”

Nidawi screamed fit to shatter glass, and Imraldera jumped and shifted on her feet nervously. She pressed her lips together as though wanting to refuse to speak. Then reluctantly, she said, “His . . . his name is Sun Eagle. He was my . . .” She cast about for something on which to fix her gaze, anything but the cat-man’s face. “He was my intended husband.”

“What? You were married?”

“No!” Imraldera shook her head. “No, you idiot, we were betrothed.”

“You never told me!”

“You never asked.”

Eanrin threw up his hands. “Right! Because I should have out and said one day, ‘By the by, Imraldera, have you ever promised to marry some fool chap?’ Why would I ask such a thing?”

“I don’t know why you would.” She glared at him. “And I don’t know why I would tell you.” Then she drew a long breath, and her face relaxed into a gentler, tired expression. “It was a different life, Eanrin. And it was so long ago, before my voice, before my knighthood. . . .”

Her voice trailed off, vanishing behind Nidawi’s screams of, “REND! TEAR! BLOOD! FIRE! KILL!” each word punctuated by the thump of her shoulder hitting the door.

Eanrin’s head tipped to one side, his eyes golden slits on his face. “So that savage in there . . . he means nothing to you?”

“You are not giving him to Nidawi.”

“Who said I was?”

Imraldera marched back to the sick chamber, where Sun Eagle lay. The cat-man followed, but she turned in the doorway and raised a warning hand. “Stay out,” she said. With that and nothing more, she shut the door in his face. Not one given naturally to following orders, Eanrin put a hand to the latch. But he thought better of it and stepped back, staring at the door as though it would open by magic. Then, with a curse, he stalked down the hall.

Imraldera waited until she heard his footsteps retreating. She turned and found Sun Eagle watching her.

“What’s to be my fate, Starflower?” he asked. “Am I to be given over to monsters?”

She shook her head and moved quietly to the bedside. He reached out to her, but she pretended not to see and sat instead on a nearby stool. For a little while, she studied her own hands folded in her lap. Then she said, “She claims you murdered her people.”

Sun Eagle shook his head. “I never saw her. Not until some few months past, by mortal count, when she and her lion set upon me in the Wood.”

Imraldera looked up and found that Sun Eagle was no longer watching her but had turned his gaze to the ceiling. It was an unusual enough ceiling, for in the shifting of moments it could seem to be made of molded plaster painted in a mural of leaves and sky; then, without altering, it was leaves and sky in truth, gently blowing in a breeze. Such was the way of the Haven, built in the Between but linking the Far World and the Near, existing both in and out of Time.

Sun Eagle’s eyes were bright with tears.

“Do you remember that day?” he said softly.

She did not need to ask which day he meant. Across her mind flashed vividly the memory of a fog-shrouded morning when a young man armed with a stone knife descended the deep gorge and, secured to his own world by only a cord, passed into the Gray Wood.

The cord had broken. And she had known he would never return.

“I was frightened at first,” he said. “When I realized what had happened, I thought my heart would burst with terror. But then I heard Bear—my red dog, you recall—baying in the shadows behind me.”

Imraldera nodded. She remembered the warriors trying to hold back the shaggy hound, which had broken from their grasp and pursued his master even unto certain death.

“He found me and stayed by my side as we wandered forever in this interminable Wood . . . even as we discovered the secrets of fey folk and Faerie beasts, and the dreadful truths of immortality. Always beside me, my comfort and friend.”

“Where is he now?” Imraldera asked, afraid of the answer she knew must come.

Sun Eagle’s mouth twisted bitterly as he continued to stare up above. “Ask Nidawi the Everblooming. Ask her cursed lion.” He drew a shuddering breath, closing his eyes but unable to force back the tear that fell over his dark and hardened face. “They came upon me by surprise. I had never seen her before, never met her or that white devil companion of hers. But they fell upon me when I was vulnerable, and if not for Bear, I should have perished by their bloodthirsty claws.”