Shadow Hand by Anne Elisabeth Stengl
Sun Eagle, watching all as he advanced from below, yelled a feral battle cry from the days of his youth long ages ago. Even as the girl and the Faerie beast rolled in brutal embrace toward him, he leapt as swiftly as his own long-dead fighting dog had once leapt into the fray at his command. And his Bronze fang sank home, deadly and accurate.
Tocho screamed. Then he went limp in a heap of silky fur, Daylily’s arm pinned beneath him.
Sun Eagle stood, withdrew the Bronze stone, and quietly retied it, stained and dripping, about his neck. Only then did he kneel and push the heavy bulk of the dead Faerie beast off the girl. Daylily lay wide-eyed, struggling to gasp a breath. Sun Eagle felt her for wounds and broken bones but found nothing.
“Get up, Crescent Woman,” he said, his voice heavy with disappointment and therefore angry. “Get up. Why do you tremble so?”
Daylily could not move. Her head and neck quivered as she tried to speak, to swallow. Shaking his head, Sun Eagle took her in his arms and hauled her upright. But her limbs would not support her, and she fell again, landing on the dead hulk of her so-recent prey.
Sun Eagle narrowed his eyes.
This land is good. This land is fair. This land is rich.
Gather the tithe! Gather the tithe!
He rubbed his face with one hand, the same hand warmed by the killing stroke. Then he bent and picked up Daylily, cradling her in his strong arms. She clung to him, and he thought she wept.
“I have no time for this,” he growled, but his voice was gentler now. Against the instinct pounding in his head, he carried her back down the incline and on across the country, making for the gorge.
Tocho lay at the base of his totem stone, never to move again.
19
LIONHEART STOOD, heart pounding, upon the winding stair, the Baron of Middlecrescent powerless in his grasp with a knife pressed to his throat. He stared at the bolt on the door, heard the pound of weapons and hands without.
But the bolt held, for the moment.
“You fool!” gasped the baron, his voice strangely gurgling against the cold blade. “I’ll stretch your neck for—”
Lionheart did not let him finish. With a strength that belied the trembling in his limbs and the sickness in his gut, he hauled the baron around to face the winding stair, shifting the blade to point into the side of his neck. “Move,” he said, his voice husky with fear. Recognizing the threat of death when he heard it, the baron started climbing.
The shouts of guardsmen and the uproar of all those gathered in the hall below faded as they wound their way up. The North Tower had once been used as a prison for high-ranking captives. More than one traitorous noble had spent his last weeks in comfort there. Its lofty height offered a fine view for a man awaiting his execution. He might even be able to watch the scaffold being built.
That was a few generations ago now. But while the chains had long since been cleared away, the iron rings remained in testimony to this former practice.
Lionheart propelled the baron up to the very summit of the tower, where a landing made a sort of hallway and three doorways led to three chambers. What had the baroness told him? The one on the right? Did she actually know her right from her left?
There was no time to investigate. A crash below told Lionheart that they had breached the lower door.
He pushed the baron before him to the right-hand door, which proved to be unlocked as the baroness had promised. He slammed the door shut and gasped, “Silent Lady bless us!” in desperate relief.
For although this chamber was a prison and all the locks were meant to be on the outside, just as the baroness had promised, the lock on the right-hand chamber had been reversed.
Lionheart turned the key, withdrew it, and dropped the first of three bolts in place with a finger-crushing thud, only just removing his hand in time. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he saw a shadow fall across the door. He dropped to his knees as a knife embedded itself in the wood where his head had been, driven by the powerful fist of the baron.
Lionheart twisted and kicked; his foot connected with the baron’s knee and sent him sprawling. He should have known the baron would not go unarmed to his coronation, despite the ancient protocol!
The baron, his eyes bugging from his face with pain, rolled up to a crouch and lunged at Lionheart, both hands reaching for his throat. Lionheart, being younger and spryer, dodged and brought an elbow down hard into the small of the baron’s back, knocking him flat. “How many other blades, Middlecrescent?” he growled, grabbing the baron’s right arm and twisting it behind him. The baron rasped out a curse and struggled, but Lionheart tightened his grip and twisted harder. “How many other blades on your person?”
“None!” barked the baron. A lie, and Lionheart knew it. He could see the baron’s free hand scrambling for his boot.
Lionheart, his knee pressed into the baron’s back, kicked with his other foot, knocking that searching hand away. Pressing more of his weight painfully down, he grabbed the baron’s arm and twisted it to join its mate. The baron groaned, agonized, and Lionheart felt a dart of guilt. But he daren’t back down now.
The door of the chamber thunked with the cleaving weapons of guardsmen beyond. “My lord! My lord!” muffled voices cried. As the baroness had promised, however, this prison door was so thick that those beyond could scarcely be heard.
The baron, his face pressed into the stone floor, grinned suddenly. “You will pay, Lionheart!” he spat. “They’ll have you out of here like a rat from its hole, and I won’t stop the dogs from worrying you as a rat deserves!”
Lionheart did not answer but dragged the baron to his feet and across the chamber. The chains had been removed, but the baroness, as promised, had seen to it that a stout rope was provided, tucked away secretly under the sumptuous bed.
Indeed, the whole room was the last word in lavish comfort, Lionheart noted as he bound the baron’s hands and secured him to an iron ring in the wall. Those awaiting death in this chamber would certainly do so in a state of ease. Lionheart’s own chambers as crown prince had hardly been more luxurious.
Somehow, it seemed cruel.
The baron stared up at Lionheart. He did not glare and he did not frown. His face was an icy mask, save for the blood and spittle flecking his mouth. This gave him a rabid appearance even in his kingly garb.
The men-at-arms pounded and shouted at the door.
“They’ll be through within moments,” said the baron. He winced and spat out a tooth, then grinned bloodily. “This is a prison, not a bastion.”
Lionheart stood back, hoping his trembling fingers had secured the knot well enough, at least for now. His breath wasn’t coming quite naturally, but he did not think he’d disgrace himself. Not yet anyway. Another thud on the door signaled the breaking of some poor guardsman’s shoulder. In the narrow landing without, there was no room for a battering ram of any size such as they must have used on the door below.
Lionheart returned to the door and pulled free the baron’s embedded knife. He retrieved his own blade and the key, which he’d dropped in the scuffle, and secured them in his belt. Then, shaking his head at his near forgetfulness, he returned to the baron and pulled off his boots, his cloak, and his outer tunic, discovering quite a number of delicate little instruments in the process. He could only hope he’d found them all.
“You’d better kill me,” the baron said as Lionheart tore the fibula of the rampant panther—the Eldest’s insignia—from his shoulder. “It’s your only option. If you don’t want to see me on your father’s throne, my death is your one hope. So why not add murder to your other crimes. It’ll take the hangman longer to read out your wrongs to the crowd at your execution; buy you a few more breaths.”
The door boomed again. But it held. Its hinges were iron and its frame was stone two feet thick. The door itself was many layers of dense mango wood, seasoned with salt and kiln-dried, made fast with iron fixtures. It did not so much as shudder when struck.
It should have been impossible for those enormous eyes to widen. But they did.
“You forgot,” said Lionheart grimly. “You forgot that the Eldest long ago had this chamber transformed into a bolt hole. A supplied man can fend off all assailants from here.”
The baron’s face drained of color. But then he smiled and spat more blood and foam. “For how long, Lionheart? Until the Council of Barons decides to reinstate you? To crown you Eldest?”
Lionheart shook his head. “I’m not so patient as that, baron,” he said wryly. “We have only to wait for Foxbrush’s return.”
“Foxbrush?” The baron laughed mirthlessly. “You’ll risk your neck for the sake of that dullard?”
“He is my father’s chosen heir.”
The baron laughed again, his voice nearly drowning out the shouts of the assailants behind the door. “A poison-addled choice, and well you know it. And a choice that means nothing now. He’s dead.”
Once more they struck the door without. Lionheart held the baron’s gaze for longer than he would ever have believed possible. In the end, however, he broke first and buried his tired face in his hands.
I vowed to follow you, his heart whispered desperately. Is this right? Is this what you would have of me?
But he heard no answer beyond the shouts of those who would kill him the moment they broke through.
20
THIS WILL STING.”
Foxbrush did not understand the child’s words and was therefore unprepared when she slapped a greasy poultice to the cut on his heel. He yelped loud enough to draw the attention of all the children gathered in the room.
The child, another redheaded girl, younger than Lark, glared at him. Then she called over her shoulder to her sister, “He won’t sit still!”
“Grab his ankle,” Lark replied from her place over the cooking fire.
Once again Foxbrush did not understand. So when the little girl grabbed hold of his foot in both her hands and pulled, he resisted for a moment. Then, grimacing, he allowed her to straighten his leg and reapply the poultice. Surely a child that small couldn’t mean him any real harm, no matter how dirty her face.
He sat in a stone room in the main square of the Eldest’s House, his back to the wall. He could not remember the last time he’d sat on the floor. Certainly never a dirt floor like this! But there was little to no furniture in the house, merely skin rugs and a few rickety chairs that looked at least as uncomfortable as the floor, if not more so. Therefore he sat where he was, surrounded by children.
The girl tending him was called Cattail—Kitten by her father. She took her meticulous time over her duties with all the gravity to be found in a child of seven or eight. Meanwhile, a baby boy stood behind her, sucking his fingers and grinning wetly every time Foxbrush glanced his way.
Children were not Foxbrush’s area of expertise. He hadn’t much liked children even when he was counted among their number. And these children were stranger than any he’d known back then, like small adults with round, solemn faces and eyes that had already seen their share of death.
They were, truth be told, a bit frightening.
Redman sat by the central fire, helping his oldest daughter finish preparing a meal. He ground spices beneath a stone while Lark spread slices of onions and gingerroot and tiny smoked fishes over a cooking stone. They sizzled, and the air was soon full of a strange but pleasant mixture of aromas.
Foxbrush’s stomach growled. A mournful wave washed over him at the sound, bringing the too-near memories of his wedding day, uncelebrated, and his wedding feast, untasted. How long had it been now since he’d eaten? Hundreds of years? Or, as he seemed to have fallen back in time, perhaps he’d never eaten at all?
His brain halted. Until he had some food in his belly and possibly a night’s sleep, he wouldn’t try to pursue that mental path any further.
A drum beat somewhere out in the night. Deep, rumbling booms carried up from below the hill. And suddenly the room erupted with even more children than Foxbrush had realized lurked in the shadows. Two more little girls, skinny and scrambling and ginger haired, shouting, “Ma! Mama!” ran from the room, and Cattail let go of Foxbrush’s heel and nearly knocked her little brother over in her eagerness to follow her sisters. Even Lark left her onions on the fire, grabbed up young Wolfsbane, and bore him out of the room, shouting as loudly as any of her sisters.
“My wife returns,” said Redman, using a stone knife to stir the onions and fish before they burned. “She is Eldest here and she is wise. Years ago when the rivers vanished, all the South Land was thrown into turmoil. But Eldest Sight-of-Day united five of the thirteen tribes, and others since have come under her mark. Suffering invasion as we do, still we have prospered by the Eldest’s leading. The Silent Lady herself trained Sight-of-Day for this role. You know of the Silent Lady in your time?”
Foxbrush nodded, awed to his core. The Silent Lady was the most famous heroine in all Southlander history or legend. “I . . . I thought the Silent Lady died when she fought the Wolf Lord,” he said. Then he added thoughtfully, “Or . . . or hasn’t she met him yet?”
“Oh, she met him,” Redman said, his mustache twitching with a possible smile. But he offered no other explanation.
Soon after, heralded by her eager swarm of young ones, the Eldest herself entered the room, and Foxbrush pulled himself awkwardly to his feet and bowed.
Eldest Sight-of-Day was not a woman of great stature or presence. She was scarcely taller than her oldest daughter, who was tucked affectionately under her arm. Unlike her husband and her children, she was dark as a Southlander, darker even than the women of Foxbrush’s day, with a rich sheen to her hair despite the silver threading the black. She wore long skin robes, and decorative bangles covered her bare arms up to her elbows. No crown marked her status, but a stone necklace, a crude starflower chipped into its surface and decorated with white, uncut gems, lay heavily across her collarbone. Her face was lovely, if lined.
“My children tell me we have a guest,” she said, speaking in her own language so that Foxbrush did not understand. Her eyes swiftly found Foxbrush where he bowed and squinted in his corner. “A guest from foreign parts.”
“Foreign indeed,” Redman said, stepping forward and saluting his wife with a kiss. “But his story can wait until you have rested.” He peered earnestly at her face in the firelight. “You are tired. Was the journey so hard?”
“No, no,” she protested. “The road to Greenwell is easy, with few tributes to pay along the way. But . . .” Here she sighed and shook her head. “Let me sit for a moment.”
She took a place away from the fire, and one of her daughters fanned her with a wide fig leaf. The Eldest’s face was scored with more than fatigue, and she stared without knowing what she saw at the juices of cooking onions running off the heated stone into the sizzling coals.
The children gathered around her, gazing at her with no less adoration than they might have bestowed upon a goddess. Foxbrush listened with care to their talk. He found that he could, upon occasion, pick out a word or two, even an entire phrase. Perhaps their ancient language was not so dissimilar to his own.
Forgotten in his corner, he felt awkward in this setting of family warmth, coupled so strangely as it was to the knowledge of blood and death and dirt etched on every face present, both young and old. Even small Wolfsbane was not untouched by it, and his dark eyes, so odd beneath a mop of curly red hair, were sweet but not as innocent as one might expect in a child of his age.
“I fear I bring evil tidings from Greenwell,” Eldest Sight-of-Day said at last. To Foxbrush’s amazement, she spoke now in Redman’s language, which Foxbrush could understand. At first he was surprised by this. But then he saw that the yo
“I thought as much,” Redman said, motioning to Lark, who brought him carved wooden bowls. He served up their meal as he and his wife spoke. “So the Greenteeth of Greenwell is no longer accepting the agreed-upon tribute.”
“Mama Greenteeth is dead.”
A sudden stillness took the room. Even the fire seemed to shrink into itself. The children, who did not understand, read the gravity in their parents’ faces. The two little girls whose names Foxbrush did not know clung to each other and hid in the shadow of their mother, while Lark took hold of both Wolfsbane and Cattail, drawing them close in silent protection.
Redman cleared his throat and continued serving. “Lark, child,” he said, his voice a deep growl. “Come, help me as you should.”
Lark obeyed, handing out the steaming, aromatic concoction, which the children and the Eldest accepted. Foxbrush, whom Lark seemed to have forgotten, watched hungrily and dared not speak up.
The Eldest selected a small chunk of fish from her bowl and held it between two fingers. “Blow,” she said to her son, and Wolfsbane obeyed, his posy mouth spitting with the effort. The Eldest blew on it herself, then fed him like a baby bird.
Redman banked the coals and settled back along the wall near his wife. He did not look at her. “Dead, you say?”
“Dead.” Eldest Sight-of-Day continued to feed her son from her bowl. “When I arrived late this morning, I found the village in uproar.”
“Another Faerie?” Redman asked. “Worse than the Greenteeth?”
But the Eldest shook her head. “So I thought and feared. But they tell me otherwise. They say a maid came out of the jungle, a maid wearing a bronze stone about her neck. She dived into the well after a child who was lost. No one saw what happened, but she disappeared and more than an hour passed before suddenly the well frothed and churned and spat her up again, with the living child in her arms. Later they found Mama Greenteeth’s body, withered and shrunken like dried waterweeds.”