“Let it go. Release the wolf into my care and keeping, and I will show you how the worst in you, all that you most fear, may be transformed. Let the worst be made the strongest, the truest, the best!”
He put his hands on her shoulders. And suddenly she was the wolf herself, crouched in her chains, slavering at the mouth.
“Please!” she said, and her voice was the wolf’s, and the wolf’s voice was hers. “Set me free!”
The Prince smiled. Then he reached out and broke the chains.
The red wolf jumped forward and shook, and the shackles fell away, ringing as they struck the hardened ground. Her great claws tore at the soil, and she felt strength returning to her, beyond any strength she had ever known.
Then she leapt into a run across that barren landscape, chasing the dark shade that attacked Foxbrush. Running beside her, shoulder to shoulder, was a great golden Hound, and she matched her stride to his, pace for pace, and her heart thrilled in rhythm to his; as unlike the driving rhythm of Cren Cru’s shared purpose as a brilliant spring dawn is unlike the vacuum of deep space.
That which she had feared most in herself—that which she had struggled most to hide—the strongest, deepest part of her soul—flew now with every stride. Her eyes fixed intently upon the shadowy nothing that struck and bit and clawed at Foxbrush as he struggled with it on the ground, helpless before its wrath. He could not see it; neither could Daylily.
But she could smell it. The stench of greedy, desperate searching for something that could never exist. The slayer of worlds, the stinking Parasite.
“You are the Protector!” the Hound declared, and she knew he had called her by her true name, the name she had never known existed. “Now strike!”
She was not the Betrayer.
She was not the Manipulator.
She was not the Destroyer.
“You are the Protector!” bayed the Hound. “Mighty Protector! Courageous Protector! Beloved Daylily, strike!”
The she-wolf sprang at the shadow. Foxbrush looked up in time to see the red fury falling, the flash of white teeth, the burn of intense blue eyes, and he thought he saw his own death. But her jaws clamped down upon the shadow itself, upon the being of Cren Cru that hid inside this Mound and stole the minds of those it wished to possess. But it was nothing. It was no more than a bloodied, suicidal dream.
She took that dream between her teeth, and she tore it into pieces.
———
Reeeeaaaaarraaa!
The high, piercing screech shot across the empty wasteland, tore through the sky, cutting it so that raging red light shone through. To Foxbrush, it seemed as though the rest of the floor beneath him shattered and pillars crumbled and the ceiling overhead broke to reveal fire. A wind rose up, howling in agony, and it whirled through the children gathered above, tossing them like so many leaves in a storm. The walls gave way, collapsing in silence, for they were unreal, and nothing could be heard anyway over the continuous ravaging shriek of Cren Cru.
Foxbrush stared at the destruction, at the children falling down and down, for there was nowhere for them to land now. And he realized that he too was falling, and all the world was made up of that single, ongoing scream.
14
THE STONE KNIFE LAY just beyond reach.
Eanrin saw Sun Eagle’s hand reaching for it across the blackened grass, and he brought both fists down hard between the warrior’s shoulder blades, knocking him flat, then reached out and snatched for the knife himself. It was like a dead thing, and Eanrin shuddered and hurled it far into the darkness beyond the bronze light, where the frantic voices of the Faerie beasts rose like a wall all around.
Sun Eagle spat dirt from his mouth and sprang to his feet, standing opposite Eanrin. The two circled each other before the mouth of the Mound, alone within the surrounding Bronze other than the remaining children, who stood silent and unmoving before the doorway to their doom.
Eanrin glanced at them, cursed, then turned a flashing smile at Sun Eagle. “Did we interrupt some charming little ritual? How inconvenient for you. But you know, child sacrifice isn’t the thing these days, not since Meadhbh played out her hand all those ages ago.” He spoke lightly, but fury laced each word.
Sun Eagle’s face remained as stone. When he spoke, he said only, “You’ve lost her.”
“Yes, she ran where I’d prefer not to follow,” Eanrin agreed, placing his feet carefully as he eyed his enemy. He saw that Sun Eagle was slowly approaching one of the bronze stones, but he could not guess why. He prepared to spring before Sun Eagle could reach it. “Our little mortal king has gone in after her, and he’s the hero of this tale, or so the future me implies, so we’ll just—”
“She never loved you.”