Redman frowned at him, his ugly face far uglier in the firelight. “You’re going to set out now, in the dark, on a road you’ve never traveled?” He made a scoffing noise and did not bother to go on, so ludicrous did this idea strike him.
“Please,” said the Eldest, more kindly, “stay a little. You’ll not find your red lady, even if she is the one you seek. My men, expert trackers all, searched the whole of that area for any sign of her or her companion. They found nothing save this on the lip of the well.” She put a hand into a pouch at her side and withdrew a slip of dirtied silk, once white. This she handed to Foxbrush, who took it with a shudder. A scrap of Daylily’s wedding gown.
“I must find her,” he said, clenching the sorry remnant into his fist.
“As must we,” said Eldest Sight-of-Day. “We must find them all and the children they stole. Stay with us, stranger. You may be able to help. Not tonight. Not in the dark. The dark is full of too many hungers.”
Foxbrush felt his legs giving way at those words and hastily sat before he disgraced himself further. He curled his knees to his chest and studied the fire even as Redman and the Eldest conferred together in low tones. Their words trailed with the smoke up through the hole in the roof, for Foxbrush could no longer listen or even try to comprehend.
He saw Daylily in the flames. Daylily, his resentful bride.
Daylily, the monster slayer.
For the first time since all these dreadful events began, his heart beat with terror for someone other than himself.
Lark, sitting beside her mother, watched Foxbrush. Then she crossed to him, picked up his bowl, and placed it in his hands. She took a seat beside him. “Eat,” she said and grinned, which was an odd but welcome sight in that room of solemn fears.
Foxbrush, who never ate without silver, grimaced down at his bowl. Worms—that’s what the cold onions resembled, coiled round the chunks of fish and spices. Grimacing but feeling the pressure of Lark’s gaze, he selected a sliver of onion and popped it into his mouth.
The explosion of heat on his tongue was enough to make him choke. Sweat broke out on his nose, and his eyes watered.
Lark giggled. “Hot,” she warned rather late. Then she scrambled to her feet, all elbows and knees, and scampered to a dark corner of the room. She returned with a bowl of goat’s milk, which Foxbrush drank gratefully despite the taste of grass and mud and lingering goat. It cooled the burn, and he could then taste the variety of flavors so rich upon his tongue. Cinnamon and sugar, peppers and ginger, along with spices he did not recognize combined in ways he had never before imagined. Yes, there was also a taste of dirt—one to which he must become adjusted in this era of dirt—but if anything, it enhanced the whole. He had never, in all the royal banquets and feasts at which he had dined, tasted anything like this.
“Good?” Lark asked.
He managed a smile, braced himself, and took another bite. “Good,” he said, gulping down more milk.
Far beyond the village borders, a wind stirred the tops of the jungle trees. In that wind a voice called eagerly, Foxbrush! Foxbrush! Where are you? I’m coming for you, Foxbrush!
21
BY THE TIME THEY REACHED THE WOOD, Daylily was breathing properly. But with breathing came words, and she moaned and whimpered and made a fool of herself. Sun Eagle told her to be silent, and his command was sharp enough to shut her mouth at least until they’d descended the gorge and regained the shadows of the Between.
There Sun Eagle allowed Daylily to collapse beneath a tree, shuddering and drawing her knees up to her chest, clutching at the sides of her head. He stood back at first and watched her, fighting the various urges that pushed him this way and that. Then he shook these off and was himself for a moment at least. He knelt and put an arm around Daylily’s shoulder.
“You have nothing to fear,” he said quietly as she buried her face in his neck. “You have taken the Bronze. Nothing can hurt you.”
But she shook her head and moaned again.
“Was it that thing inside you?” Sun Eagle asked.
She nodded. In a voice like a child’s she said, “She will always hunt me. She will always plague me. I will never be free. And then she will devour me.”
Sun Eagle sat holding her, silent and uncertain what to say. Something fluttered into the branches of the tree above them, and he looked up to see a songbird there, brown with a speckled breast and bright eye. The bird sang, and the song fell over the two below. Sun Eagle shivered at that sound, and his stomach turned.
Form the bond. Do what you must.
He stood, leaving Daylily where she was, and his voice was no longer comforting. “Stay here,” he said. “I must go to the Land and establish the tithe for the beast’s death. Don’t go anywhere.” He bent and pulled the bronze stone from beneath her tangle of hair, arranging it so that any who might happen by this way would see it at once. Daylily made no move but to press against the tree, shuddering. He scowled at her. “I’ll return shortly,” he said.