But she knew that wasn’t true.
Daylily was many shameful things that she hid from herself and the world as best she could. But she was no coward. With a growl in her throat echoing the growl in her mind, she picked up her skirts and hastened from the shelter of the trees across the stones. Her wedding slippers, long since destroyed, offered no protection either from sharpness or from the heat of the sunburnt stones. Each step was agony, but this only made her quicken her speed. The warrior fell in behind her, and she heard him muttering even as they climbed the trail, their hands clutching the rope for support, “This was not here in my time.”
Not in her time either.
But no! She would not think of that! She would not think at all until she reached the tableland above. She heard Sun Eagle taking deeper breaths as they went. As they drew near to the end of the trail, she heard him say with sudden, painful eagerness, “It must be. It must be!”
Then she stood at the top, exhausted, sweat drenched, her feet bleeding. But she noticed none of this.
“Gone,” she whispered. “Everything is gone.”
The warrior, come up beside her, turned slowly in place.
All was wild, untamed, vine-draped jungle. A thickness and greenness and dreadfulness that Daylily had never before seen or imagined, full of the buzzing of insects, the not-too-distant screams of monkeys, and the caws of ground-dwelling fowl. Mango trees, untended, bore bounteous burdens of fly-eaten fruit. The air teemed with life and death and moisture.
Through the thick tangle of vines a narrow trail was cut, leading to the gorge, beaten down by many generations of feet. This alone gave sign of human life in this young, feral land.
And Daylily felt . . .
. . . the surge of ravening desire. The taste of blood on the air.
This is good country.
“My world,” said the warrior. Suddenly his face broke as something between a laugh and a sob escaped from his heart. “This is the Land !”
“This is Southlands,” said Daylily.
She knew this landscape, or a ghostly image of it. But the jungle she knew had been cut back, tamed, fit into a mold of elegance and refinement. There might be the chatter of monkeys, but they were pet monkeys who lived fat lives in the queen’s garden or perched on the shoulders of their caretakers. There may be ground fowl, but they were stately, spoiled birds, trailing their long plumes of tails behind them across sprawling green lawns.
There should be a path, yes, but not a narrow dirt trail. Where was the paved carriage road from the Eldest’s City across the grounds to Evenwell? And Evenwell, across the gorge, where was it? Lost in that thick, wild growth? Where was the gatehouse where the bridge keeper lived?
Where was Swan Bridge?
Sun Eagle turned when the moan escaped Daylily’s lips. He caught her as she sagged, all but fainting. Supporting her, he lowered her to the ground and held her while she relearned to breathe.
“You are out of your time,” he told her, his voice oddly gentle from behind those bloodstains. “Sylphs care nothing for Time themselves and do not understand how mortals may value it.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder, staring at nothing. Stroking her hair, Sun Eagle looked around again, and his black eyes swam. “This is not my time either,” he said. “The Gray Wood had not grown up unchecked in the gorges back in my day but was held in place by rivers. The rivers are gone now. The mighty rivers . . .”
His stern face could not be softened by tears but rather was made to seem sterner still, even as he wept. Then it was done. All mourning or celebration passed from him, and he stood, helping Daylily to her feet once more. She clung to him unconsciously, her eyes darting this way and that, frightened as a doe who smells but does not see the panther near.
“There is no bridge for you,” said the warrior, “as there is no river for me. But the Land . . . the Land is ours!”
The Land is mine.
“Come, Crescent Woman.” Sun Eagle turned to Daylily with a look in his eye that may have been a smile. “Let us see what we may find.”
It’s mine.
He led her by the hand away from the gorge. He did not take the beaten trail but instead plunged into the jungle itself, always finding just room enough to pass even where Daylily thought the vines grew as thick as a wall. The air breathed with wildness and youth and heat, baffling Daylily’s senses. Birds she did not recognize flitted after insects and sang their territorial warnings. Snakes twined through the vines, hidden and hood-eyed, watching the strangers pass. Once a monkey swung down to chatter vicious teeth at them, but it fled at one glance from Sun Eagle.