“Tell her she is always with me,” Sun Eagle said.
Then he brought his fist down, striking Eanrin in the jaw and knocking him over. Eanrin let go of the stone, and when he did so, it burst.
With a cry, Sun Eagle vanished, carried away like smoke in the wind.
Foxbrush was thrown from his feet several times as he struggled toward the stone, his mind a cacophony of sounds and sights he could not understand. But the Bronze gleamed in its melting. And there came to his mind suddenly the woodcut image in Eanrin’s Illustrated Rhymes, the one he had seen long ago as a child.
King Shadow Hand, bearded and fierce, holding the Fiery Fair as she melted.
He could not see Daylily, had caught no sight of her after the wolf tore into the shadow of Cren Cru. The ceiling and floor had broken, and she had vanished, lost in the storm of pain and the whirling fall of the stolen children.
And now here he was, somehow back in this world. The phantom children were nowhere to be seen, not Lark, not any of them. All he saw was the stone.
He reached it at last and stood over it, watching helpless as it collapsed on itself. What had Eanrin said? Hold it?
“This alone will be your fight,” he whispered.
He put out both hands, one bleeding from bite wounds, the index finger partially torn away. They shuddered with redoubled agony as they neared the stone, which radiated a dreadful heat.
Then, with a cry, Foxbrush grabbed it.
Pain coursed through every nerve of his body, up his arms, his shoulders, into his brain, down into his very core. He screamed and wanted to let go, but some drive beyond self-preservation made him tighten his hold instead, even as the Bronze dripped over his fingers, melting his skin and bones along with itself.
Suddenly Daylily stood beyond him. Daylily, wolf or maid, he could not say. It did not matter; it was she in truth.
She stared at the Bronze, at his hands. Then she looked at Foxbrush, her eyes, always unnaturally large, enormous in her face.
“Foxbrush!” she cried. “Let it go!”
He screamed still, unable to stop for the pain. But he shook his head.
“Please!” she cried. “You have to let it go!”
She grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look into her face.
The wind and the pain and the howls of the dying warriors.
The burning, burning, searing heat.
All of this vanished in the depths of her gaze.
“It’ll destroy you, Foxbrush,” said Daylily. “Don’t love me. Let me go.”
Foxbrush shut his mouth against his own cries, closing his eyes. Tears of utmost pain streamed down his face, and he thought his head would explode.
Then he looked up again. He poured all his soul into Daylily’s eyes, all his heart into his words.
“I’d give my life for you.”
Another shriek, and another warrior vanished into the rushing wind. Daylily stood, her bloodstained dress caught up in a cloud, her red hair streaming, her being much faded. She stared down at the young man clutching the Bronze and his own destruction.
And she saw there the painful truth of his words, and it smote her to the core. He would die for her. This man she’d despised. He would die for her, and he would deem it a worthy death.
“Foxbrush.” She whispered his name.
He tried to respond, but the pain was too much and he screamed again, his body convulsing. But his hands never let go.
Daylily reached out. She put her hands around his.
She could not feel the burn that he felt, but she could feel the strength of his grasp.
“Hold on, then,” she said. “Hold on to me.”
The stone continued to melt. Bronze sizzled and bubbled and pooled away at their feet. One by one, the Twelve Bronze disappeared, and the warriors followed their master into oblivion.
But when the last stone joined its brethren and became nothing but a sodden mass and then not even that, soaking into the ground . . . when the wind streaked up into the night sky and vanished, leaving behind a breathless hush and many Faerie beasts lying low, their hands over their heads . . .
When Lumé crested the horizon and gazed into the place of darkness where for so long he had not dared to shine, his great golden eye fell upon two figures kneeling together in the dust. The one strong, clad in rags, held the other, who fell against her in shuddering weakness, his head upon her shoulder, his face buried in her neck as he wept. Her hair cascaded over him in a comforting shield against everything he must soon face.
And she held his ruined, melted hands in hers.
15
LARK HAD NEVER WALKED on clouds before.
She decided these probably weren’t real clouds. Real clouds held the rain, and that meant they had to be wet, or at least a little soggy. These, however, were more like what storytellers and poets want clouds to be: indescribably soft and springy yet solid enough that a little girl might walk upon them.