“The Bronze!” he said. And then he threw back his head and sounded the panther’s rasping roar, spitting it through his fangs as a challenge. It echoed out from Skymount, rolling down to the land below his rocky fortress. The villagers living near stopped their work, their gazes rising in fear and curiosity to the stone outcropping high above, which could be seen for miles in that part of the country. Was the tribute not paid? Was the offering unsatisfactory?
Must they fight once more for their flocks, fight an immortal power far greater than their stone weapons?
But Tocho stood trembling where he was, invisible to all searching eyes. He had a panther’s knack for becoming no more than a shadow. The roar rolled down and round him for some time even as he stood in silence once more, staring into the valleys and on out as far as the distant gorge.
“The Bronze,” he whispered again. Then he turned, leapt from the stone, and ran at a loping gait down the side of Skymount.
He must drive them out. Now! Before their power grew too strong. He could smell them—smell it—and he knew the bond had been made already and the first tithe delivered. Who had died? Who among his Faerie brethren had succumbed already to one of the Twelve, the spilled blood effectively sealing the country for the Bronze? He could not guess. He kept himself apart from the other Faeries as much as possible, preferring the solitary kingdom he’d made for himself in these parts. But one had died; he knew this for certain, dreadful truth.
There was still time to drive them back out. One dead surely could not form a bond so strong that Tocho could not break it! He would kill as many of them as dared draw near and let the rest flee back to their cursed Mound and say, “Not that country! Let us find a land more gentle!”
Yes. Yes, that’s how it would be. Tocho panted as he ran, his great arms sweeping aside branches, his great legs tearing up the ground, his claws shrieking as they raked into stone. He was mighty and he was dreadful. To be sure, he had become a little fat and lazy in this fat and lazy country, and the mortal air was thin in his lungs. But he was Tocho still, a name to be feared! Had not his own queen driven him from her demesne at the terror of his bloodthirsty name? Had not warriors and hunters alike fallen prey to his teeth and jaws, to his strike in the dark, and his stealth and cunning? Did not even the Knights of Farthestshore, so brave and so glittering in their self-righteous glory, fear to cross his path?
So he puffed himself up even as his breathing grew short, telling himself truth and lies with the same fluid ease with which he had once stalked Faerie woods of the Far World.
Sun Eagle, still holding Daylily’s hand, came to a halt. They were two miles from the gorge now, standing in a fallow field. Daylily smelled the nearness of a village, though she saw no signs of life.
Sun Eagle could smell the approach of Tocho.
“He is coming,” he said, squeezing Daylily’s fingers eagerly.
“Who?” Daylily asked, a little breathless and excited, though she knew not why.
“Our new enemy. Are you ready to kill?”
She thought of the dark well, the blackness brightened only by Mama Greenteeth’s eyes. She tasted the blood in the water. And she felt a mortal child in her arms.
No . . . whimpered the wolf in her mind.
“I am ready,” said Daylily. Then she said, “I have no weapon.”
“You have the Bronze,” said Sun Eagle. He took his own melted medallion from around his neck as he spoke, and Daylily saw that it was shaped like the head of a spear. How had she not seen it before? Or had the shape changed since last she’d bothered to look?
She let go of Sun Eagle’s hand and pulled her own medallion until the cord snapped behind her neck. It was bigger and brighter than ever, brighter even than the sun above. She felt the pulse of blood in her wrist flow into her hand with surging energy. The stone was like a great golden tooth, the tooth of a predator far deadlier than any she knew.
It was her own tooth. She was the predator now.
“There he is,” said Sun Eagle, pointing.
Daylily shaded her eyes with her free hand, and she saw the black shadow at a distance, moving swiftly across the clear country. It disappeared into a valley, then reappeared, now near enough that she could make out its form and even, she imagined, its face.
Tocho stopped in his tracks. He saw them: two small, solitary figures standing in the middle of a field of grass and weeds, the one brown and strong, the other white and frail but crowned with hair like fire.
He saw the stones in their hands.
His courage, which he had convinced himself was live and strong and bloodthirsty, proved itself the fleeting ghost it was and fled his body in a rush so painful that he roared again, his voice slashing at the wind. The sound rolled over Daylily like nothing she had ever heard, and it terrified her.
She smiled. Without a command from Sun Eagle, her feet started moving, the thin remnants of her wedding slippers falling away at last so that she ran barefoot.
She chased Tocho.
He saw her coming and he fled. Back the way he had come mere moments before, he ran with the great galloping pace of a panther, silent but pulsing with dread. He knew she followed, and he knew that she could not hope, in her own strength, to outpace him.