The lost firstborn.
Foxbrush craned his neck back to stare up at them, those wraithlike children. The cold light washed their dark skin pale and their dark hair silvery, and they seemed to glow faintly with a pulsing luminosity. Were they dead? Were they beyond dead? Some of them looked thinned, as though their very existence was being drained away, leaving behind a flickering residue of reality. Some of them possessed scarcely any remaining form but drifted in and out of visibility like curls of white smoke.
But some were still solid. And among these Foxbrush spotted a shock of red hair, vibrant hued even in that eerie light.
“Lark!” he cried. His voice echoed through the cavernous hall. Everything was bigger, he now realized, than the hall of his memory. He and the floating figures above him were no more than mice compared with the vastness of this place. He ran across tiles that were each half a field in length, and the pillars were like tall mountains around him. Above his head, the drifting form of Lark vanished in the swirling bodies of the children, only to reappear farther away. Foxbrush chased her, uncertain what he hoped to do but unwilling, even so, to let the girl out of his sight.
It’s useless to run, you know.
Foxbrush staggered to a halt and whirled around to face the voice that had spoken behind him. There was no one there. Only darkness at the end of the hall where everything vanished beyond all hope of light. His heart thudding in his breast, he searched the deeper shadows behind the pillars and beneath the windows.
Are you looking for us? You are more foolish than we thought.
“Where are you?” Foxbrush cried.
Not here. This is your memory. You’ll not find us.
“Are . . . are you in my mind?”
No. You came to us. You are inside us. But we must use other minds to take shape, for we have no shape of our own. This is your memory within us.
Foxbrush cursed. He turned again to search for Lark up among the children above. He’d lost her. Frantic, he ran, his eyes upturned.
He nearly collided into Daylily.
She stood before him, no longer wearing the Eldest’s garment but adorned in the wafting rags of her wedding gown, as ghostly pale as the children above, her red hair, bereft of its life and curl, falling in straight sheets on either side of her face, over her shoulders.
“He is drinking,” Daylily said.
Foxbrush yelped and nearly fell over backward. She looked like something from a dream or a nightmare, beautiful and awful at once.
“He is drinking,” she repeated, her breath so cold it steamed in the air. Her eyes stared straight ahead, not at Foxbrush, not at anything, wide open and unseeing. She lifted her hand and pointed to the children up above. “He is sucking the life of Southlands through the lives of Southlands’ firstborn. He is drinking their memories. He is drinking them.”
Foxbrush looked again at the children. Many of them were so far gone! What would happen when they faded away entirely?
“We must stop him, Daylily,” he said, turning urgently to her. He wanted to reach out and touch her but somehow didn’t dare. “You must help me.”
She cannot help you. She is ours. She is—
“Mine,” Daylily whispered.
Mine!
Daylily took a step toward Foxbrush, still without seeing him. Her upraised arm reached out, stretching toward his face. He knew he could not let her touch him, and he stumbled back. Then he turned and ran.
You have so many fears. So many wonderful, fascinating, mortal fears! And we know what to do with those.
The enormous tiles beneath Foxbrush’s feet shifted, then rippled like water. His feet sank into them as though he had tried to run over the surface of a bog, and he was dragged down to his knees. He struggled to pull himself free, but it was useless.
“Useless.”
There are some voices that sound far worse in memory than they ever were in reality. So it was with this voice. The very sound of it was dread and rejection, all things most shameful falling upon Foxbrush’s ears. He turned, his eyes widening with terror, to what he knew he must see.
Lionheart stood above him. But he was taller here in this place of Foxbrush’s memory than he ever would be in the real world; Foxbrush always thought of Lionheart as much bigger than he was.
“Useless,” said the figure of Lionheart, and he laughed at Foxbrush’s plight. “That’s what you always were. From the time we were children, what have you ever been but a useless tag-on? And you think you can be Eldest?”
You? Eldest?
The words poured from Lionheart’s mouth and rushed together around the pillars, across the windows, through the galleries, among the drifting bodies of the children. The floor beneath Foxbrush churned at the sound, sucking him farther down. He gasped and put his hands out to try to pull himself up. But his hands caught too and sank to his elbows. He glared furiously at Lionheart, who was laughing now.
“A king, Foxbrush? You weren’t even a good damsel in distress. Didn’t you cry when she pulled the button off your shirt? I think you did. I remember!”
We see it in your mind!
“And that mother of yours . . . do you know why she never wanted to see you? Why she hid herself away in her rooms, a half-crazy recluse? Do you know why?”
We see it in your mind!
“Because you look like your father. Oh, not everyone can see it! But she can. Every time she looks at you. He was a weak man too, and he knew it. So he set out to prove his strength, and he subdued her, and he beat her, and she could only pray that he would leave again on one of his long trips to the lowlands. And you . . . you, Foxbrush . . . crying at the window as you watched his carriage roll away. ‘Where is Papa going?’ you’d ask, and what did she say to you, Foxbrush? What did she say?”
Tears streamed down Foxbrush’s face, and each one that fell seemed to drag his head after it. He sagged, his arms and legs caught in the floor, almost willing now for it to swallow him up.
“You know what she said.” The figure of Lionheart crouched before Foxbrush, caught his chin in one hand and forced him to look up, to meet those hateful, laughing eyes. “Tell me, Foxy! Tell me what it was!”
“She said . . .” Foxbrush choked on his own tears. They sat as bile in his throat. “She said, ‘He’s gone to the Dragon’s own house, and may he never return!’ ”
“Well done.” The figure of Lionheart grinned. He let go of Foxbrush’s chin and patted his head like a good dog. Then he sat back on his heels, and his grin grew lopsided, turning into a leer. “Then one time he left, and he never did return. One day, in another vain proof of strength, he ran afoul of a duelist’s blade, never to rise again. Another failure.
“But your mother looks at you, and she still sees him in your eyes. You are so like him, Foxbrush! Useless. Worthless. Will you be Eldest?”
You?
“Will that somehow prove your strength? Will you take a girl like her”—with a sweep of his arm to where Daylily stood staring down on the two of them, unseeing—“for your bride? You, of all people?”
You?
Foxbrush raised his haggard face. It was a titanic effort, for he felt his weakness pressing him down into the sucking floor. But he raised his face and looked across the gloomy hall to Daylily. Beautiful Daylily, powerful Daylily. Strong, unbending, unmoving Daylily.
She met his gaze. For a flash as bright as the Bronze—brighter even—she saw him and knew him. She could not see the figure crouched before him, for her memories of Lionheart were not the same as Foxbrush’s. She could not see the Great Hall of the Eldest, for all around her was nothing but barren wasteland under a starless sky. And in that sky, the forms of the stolen children floated and gave of their memories, gave of their essence, feeding into the greedy will of Cren Cru as it sought to latch hold of that which it could never have. Cren Cru was all that was left now in this place of her mind. Cren Cru was . . .
But then she saw Foxbrush sinking into the dry, dusty ground, brought low with s
hame. She saw him and drew a surprised breath, for she knew it was him, truly him. Not a mere memory, but Foxbrush himself, clad in those ugly, stinking garments, his face half hidden behind a ragged beard.
She opened her mouth to speak his name. But to her horror, she realized he was looking at her.
Just as she saw him in his true form here, so he saw her. Not the self she always presented, not the beautiful girl, the ruthless conspirator, the cold, unreachable beauty. He saw her.
He saw the wolf.
“Daylily!” Foxbrush cried, all thoughts of the near-Lionheart forgotten as he stared at the red she-wolf bound with bloodied chains to the great stakes. How he knew that foam-mouthed beast for the girl he loved, he could not say, for reasonable thought had long since fled. He knew in the depths of his frantically beating heart, and he surged toward that knowledge, pulling against the will that sought to swallow him.
“Foxbrush,” said the wolf.
And at the sound of his name falling from that mouth, Foxbrush felt his strength reviving. He fought the hold Cren Cru had upon him, heaving himself up and onto his feet. The floor remained unstable, but the tiles had shrunk now, and he stood up to a full man’s height. On unsteady but determined feet, he started toward her, toward the wolf. “Daylily,” he said again, his hands reaching out to her chains, eager to free her.
The figure of Lionheart lunged at him from behind, wrapping powerful arms about him and hurling him from his feet. Foxbrush fell upon the tiles, which shattered like shards of glass into blackness. He put up both hands to protect his face, but now the figure of Lionheart was gone and, in its place, a shadowy form swooped down upon him and struck him again, on the face, on the chest. He tried to hit it, but something bit his hand with razor teeth and worried it like a dog pulling flesh from a bone. Foxbrush screamed and pummeled at nothing, for there was nothing to strike: no body, no form, only teeth and biting pain.
Daylily watched, and the wolf surged against her chains, ravening. “Let me loose! Let me loose!” she roared. “Let me kill it!”
“No!” Daylily cried, lost in her mind, uncertain of her own body and form now. Was she herself? Was she the wolf?
Was she Cren Cru?
“Let it go.”
From somewhere up above, the song of the wood thrush fell down upon Daylily. The next moment, she felt the bird himself alight upon her shoulder, though she wasn’t even certain she had a body anymore. She turned to the bird, and he looked at her with his bright eye. How could he follow her, even here, even into the heart of the Mound and her own blighted mind?
“Let it go. The time is now.”
“If I let it go, it will kill us all,” Daylily whispered.
“No, Daylily,” sang the bird. And suddenly he wasn’t a bird anymore. She found herself standing beside the form of a man, but not exactly a man. More like what man was intended to be at the beginning of Time and the Near World, before the ravages of mortality took hold and corrupted what should have been most fair. This Man was the realized ideal, the realized potential, and more besides—so much more! This form he wore could only just contain the glory of his majesty and the Song that burst from the inner depths of his being.
She knew him at once. She had seen him before, in the House of the Eldest. She had seen him enter the gate and then, two hours later, walk away again, and she’d never spoken to him. But she had known, even in that distant glimpse she’d had, that this person, this Man, was someone she must either love or hate. There could be no other response to him.
He looked at her now with his ageless eyes: deep, bottomless wells of kindness and strength. The Prince of Farthestshore, Lord of all the Faerie, son of the King Across the Final Water.
“No, Daylily,” he said to her. “It will kill you only if you cling to it. But if it dies, others will die as well. For they need you, Daylily. They need you as you truly are. Not this thing you pretend to be, this mimic of the real woman.
“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 inconv
enient 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.”
The smile fell from Eanrin’s face.
“She would never love one such as you. Her heart is always with her people. Her heart is always with me.” Sun Eagle’s face was hidden from the bronze light, darkened by shadows cast from the Mound itself. But his eyes glowed with a spirit that had nothing to do with Cren Cru, a spirit that remained vital and resisting, deep in the center of his being. “Even as I wandered the Wood alone—even as I prepare to enter the darkness of my master—even in that darkness, her heart will always be mine.”
“Dragons eat you,” Eanrin whispered.
It was then that the Mound collapsed.
It fell away like a melting candle but left nothing behind as it went, disappearing into a swallowing emptiness, silently at first. Then the scream caught up—reaching out from the depths of Cren Cru’s pain into this world—and shot through those gathered, through the bloodied brawl beyond the bronze light, knocking warriors and beasts off their feet, leaving them curled up in sympathetic agony, clutching their ears.
Eanrin, his mouth twisted with pain, forced his eyes open. He saw the warriors, eleven of them now, none wounded from their fight so much as brought low by this shrieking that filled the worlds within their minds. They crawled in shuddering anguish toward their stones.