Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) (14 page)

The stranger turned to Foxbrush, holding up the scroll. “You had this writing on you. I can almost make it out, but it has been such a long time, and I have never been good with my letters. Tell me, is it yours?”

Foxbrush nodded. It was too dark in the room for him to clearly see the verses of the ballad, but he recognized the scroll well enough.

“Is it a message?” Redman persisted. “From the North Country, perhaps?”

“No,” Foxbrush said, shaking his head. “No, it’s mine. My cousin gave it to me.”

“Your cousin?” Redman, shaking his head with some perplexity, allowed the scroll to roll up with a snap. “And you can read this?”

“Of course.” Foxbrush wondered if he dared swipe the scroll from Redman’s hands. It was a tempting if perhaps futile thought. After all, Redman was many times his height and girth, and he wasn’t sticky with medicinal sap.

“You can read North Country writing?” Redman persisted.

“I . . . I’m not certain what you’re asking,” Foxbrush said, his voice a little petulant. Sap and fear had this effect on him. “When you say North Country, do you mean Parumvir?”

Redman chewed thoughtfully on the end of his mustache. “Parumvir,” he said, tasting the strange name. “Parumvir . . .
Smallman
.” Then he chuckled, and his good eye twinkled. “Very well, my friend. I have been away for some while, and I’m game for a change. So tell me, do you read the writing of
Parumvir
?”

Foxbrush nodded slowly but couldn’t help adding, “It’s not Parumvir writing. It’s Southlander.”

“Southlander?”
Redman tapped the scroll absently against his own drawn-up knee. “Not a message for me from King Florien, then, eh?”

Foxbrush shook his head.

“And are you from . . . from Parumvir?”

“No. I’m—” He hesitated, and his sticky body suddenly went clammy with sweat. Did he dare, in this strange wherever-he-was, tell anyone his true identity? After all, one didn’t like to blurt out in a houseful of savages, “I’m the crown prince! Unhand me at once!” So he licked his lips, tasting sugary sap with a bitter aftertaste of some herb he did not recognize.

“Don’t eat it,” said the girl, stepping forward and shaking a finger under his nose. Foxbrush recoiled from her as though she were armed, once more seeing Daylily all over that otherwise unknown little face.

“Don’t bully him, Lark,” Redman said, and she drew back beside her father. “Now,” said he, “who did you say you are?”

“Um. Foxbrush,” said that unfortunate prince. “I’m Foxbrush. May I have my scroll?”

Redman held it out, but though Foxbrush took the end of it, he did not release his hold. “And you’re not from around here, are you, Foxbrush? Despite your name and your face, you aren’t a man of the Hidden Land.”

“Hidden Land?” Foxbrush whispered. Then a thought that had been nudging at the corner of his brain since Redman first spoke suddenly prodded its way into prominence. His eyes widened and his voice rose. “Lumé have mercy! Did you say the
Eldest’s
House?”

“Yes,” Redman replied. “Eldest Sight-of-Day is not home to make you welcome. We look for her return this evening, and then she’ll decide what’s to be done with you.”

“She?”
Foxbrush’s head spun, and he had not the awareness of mind to catch the sharp expression Redman shot his way. “The Eldest is a woman? Where am I?”

“The natives call it the
Land
,” Redman replied, his smile a little cold this time. “It is known in more distant realms as the South Land, however, being the southernmost peninsula of the western continent.” He watched the play of shadows and lights trickling through the wall cracks move across Foxbrush’s face. “But you know that already, don’t you?”

Foxbrush felt Redman’s stare and the equally compelling stare of his daughter. His mouth went dry with rising panic. “This is Southlands?”

“The South Land, yes.”

At this, Foxbrush let go of the end of the scroll he’d been trying and failing to pull from Redman’s grasp. He fell back upon the pile of skins, too dizzy to remain upright. Fur stuck to his skin and he groaned.

Redman, unimpressed, stood—or stood as much as he could in that low chamber. “I think,” he said, “you need your rest. My daughter’s salve will cure those stings soon enough, but you’d best not move too much in the meanwhile. Perhaps this evening you will be well enough to be brought before the Eldest. She will decide then what is to be done with you.”

With a last look at it and a shrug, Redman tossed the scroll to land
beside Foxbrush on his makeshift bed. He shook his head, puffed behind his mustache, then drew his daughter after him out of the room, saying to her in the language of the girl’s mother, which did not come naturally to him:

“It’s all right, child. The man is a little mad from the wasps, I think. You’ve cleaned him up well, though; your mother will be proud. Let him sleep now and we will see about him later.”

“I like him, Da,” the girl said. “He’s funny. Even if he doesn’t talk right.”

“He’s certainly something,” Redman agreed, allowing the reed curtain to swing over the doorway as they exited. He looked back over his shoulder, eyeing that curtain as though he could see through it to the occupant of the chamber beyond. It had been many long years since he’d heard his native tongue, the language of the North Country, spoken by anyone beyond his small family. However thick this stranger’s accent, the language itself was unmistakable. But how?

He must leave it for now; some mysteries could bear a wait before solving.

Foxbrush, however, lay panting in the near darkness. Birds in the thatching above him screamed noisily, and their voices were echoes of his own crazed mind. He reached out and, trembling, snatched up Leo’s scroll.

“I’ve got to get out of here!”

Then he turned to the wall, grimacing but determined. After all, it was only made of mud.

P
RINCE
F
ELIX
OF
P
ARUMVIR
WAS
BORED
.

The advantage to this was that a bored face could easily be mistaken for an expression of solemn dignity. So he told himself he must look extraordinarily solemn and dignified now as he stood with the Parumvir ambassador to Southlands on one side and the Duke of Gaheris on the other, crammed into a high gallery in the newly rebuilt Great Hall of the Eldest’s House.

Felix had been pleased enough when his father sent him as emissary from Parumvir to the coronation of the new Eldest. He’d never been to Southlands before. Indeed, he’d never been farther south on the Continent than Beauclair. And Parumvir, in recent history, had become rather . . . well, he hated to say, but it had somehow become a little small.

A lad cannot travel deep into the Wood Between and the worlds beyond without finding his former world tight about the seams upon his return.
An adventure down south was just what he needed, both he and his father, King Fidel, had agreed.

So here he was now, stuffed into a suit of peacock hues and a stiff collar dripping with jewels, far too hot for this southern clime, slowly melting away into a puddle of former princeliness. All for the sake of crowning some fellow who, rumor had it, was nothing short of a usurper.

“What happened to Lionheart?” Felix had asked Sir Palinurus, the ambassador at whose sumptuous house in the Eldest’s City the prince was being hosted. “Was he not Eldest Hawkeye’s heir? I heard some rumor about him.”

Felix had heard more than rumor; he had actually met Lionheart in strange worlds beyond the borders of the mortal realm. But he’d never quite managed to talk to him or discover more than a few hints of his story. So he listened with interest as Sir Palinurus explained Prince Lionheart’s disinheritance and his cousin Foxbrush’s subsequent rise to power.

“All right. But then this Foxbrush fellow, he ran away?” Felix persisted. Rumor traveled swiftly across the Continent, yet Felix wasn’t much of a gossip hound and found himself woefully lacking in details.

“Oh indeed, my prince!” Sir Palinurus agreed with almost as much vigor as a fishmonger’s wife sharing a juicy tidbit. “On his very wedding day, he and the lady in question both vanished! It is rumored the former Prince Lionheart was seen upon the grounds that day, and some say that he abducted and murdered them both out of vengeance.”

Felix, standing in the gallery now, mulled over this piece of information. He didn’t think he believed it. Lionheart was a scamp and scoundrel who’d caused more than a little trouble in Parumvir, and Felix hadn’t a great deal of love in his heart for the former prince, but . . .

But he had seen Lionheart lying dead upon a dark stone, stabbed through the heart by a unicorn’s horn. And he had seen him return to life and stand in the presence of the Prince of Farthestshore.

These weren’t memories Felix dared to share with any of those around him. No one would believe him, not even after all the recent doings with dragons and myths come to life. But he knew what he had seen.

Lionheart was no murderer. So perhaps Prince Foxbrush was not murdered?

It didn’t matter, Felix decided with a shrug as he attempted to loosen his collar. All around him the Eldest’s Hall was crowded with a glory of noblemen and women, holy clerics in robes of an old style, barons and dukes and kings of distant nations, all come to see the new Eldest of Southlands crowned. And really, was it any of Felix’s business whom these dragon-eaten foreigners chose to make their king? He had only to stand here, representing his nation with dignity (or boredom), as was right and proper.

Some cleric began to chant, and others joined in. A solemn procession of men and women in holy garments marched stolidly up the hall, bearing incense and starflowers according to some old custom with which Felix was unfamiliar. The various barons of Southlands marched in the wake of the holy orders, each carrying the shields of their baronies, and they were also crowned in starflowers.

Somehow, the sight of all those artificial blossoms made Felix think of Dame Imraldera. He couldn’t say why, exactly. Most things made him think of Dame Imraldera these days. She had saved his life, after all. And she was so very . . . wonderful.

His young heart sank to his stomach in a manner miserable yet not altogether unpleasant, and he lost himself momentarily in a melancholy dream. One day he would find her again. One day he would . . .

Hang on! Lord Lumé above, what was
that
?

Felix tried not to crane his neck too obviously as he watched the newest spectacle coming down the aisle. It was, he gathered, the soon-to-be queen, a plump, pleasant-faced woman squeezed into sumptuous garments that all but smothered her short figure. She was surrounded by ladies of the court, including the ambassador’s wife, all of whom carried great bundles of paper starflowers in their hands.

And holding up her train in the back was the tallest, gawkiest, most shuffle-footed page boy Felix had ever seen in his life.

“Lionheart!” he whispered.

Felix knew him at once. Dressed in servants’ livery several times too small for him, his head bowed and only partially hidden beneath a floppy, flower-rimmed hat, he clung to the train of the queen-to-be and did everything
in his power to make himself unnoticeable. Surrounded as he was by all the grandeur of the courtly ladies, he very nearly succeeded.

But from where Felix stood, it was as though a beam of brilliant sunlight fell solely upon the head of the disinherited prince, making him impossible to miss.

Felix glanced from side to side, but no one around him seemed to have spotted the suspected murderer in their midst. Should he speak up? Should he shout some warning?

But the horns were blaring now, and the chant of the holy orders had risen to a tempestuous crescendo. The man who would be king—the Baron of Middlecrescent, whom Felix had not yet met—appeared at the end of the hall. All eyes fixed on him, all eyes, that is, except for Felix’s. He stared at Lionheart shuffling into hiding behind the baron’s wife. Hymlumé and all the starry host, did the woman actually turn and
wink
at her supposed page boy? Did she not know who he was? Or . . . or maybe . . .

Below the noise, skimming beneath the sounds of two hundred singing voices and great shattering horns, came a sound like silver and water flowing over smooth stone. A voice of birdsong that struck Felix’s ear and caused him to turn his head. For a moment—a moment so brief, he must have imagined it—he saw the Prince of Farthestshore standing before him. Only he was standing in midair, which was impossible. That smile on his face, his hand pointing down toward the floor below the gallery—it was all a vision brought on by the heat and fancy clothes and odd foreign foods.

The moment passed. The vision was gone.

Felix, gulping, took a step forward and looked down over the gallery railing. He saw a man-at-arms directly below, dressed in red and armed with a tapered southerner’s sword. Beyond the guard was a door, cracked open so that Felix could just see a curving stairway spiraling up.

The Baron of Middlecrescent was midway down the aisle now, moving in a stately stride, his head high, his cold, fish-like eyes staring before him as though daring anyone in that company to question his right to kingdom and crown. His wife smiled and clasped her hands at the sight of him, and behind her the disgraced prince crouched and watched and waited.

Felix looked at the armed man below, at the door, and back at Lionheart. He did not know what it meant, but he thought he heard the birdsong again. His muscles tensed, and he grabbed the gallery rail. Sir Palinurus placed a warning hand upon his arm, but Felix ignored him.

The baron drew near the front now and paused to receive a blessing from one of the holy men, to drink from a certain cup, and to offer the wreath of paper flowers on his own head in exchange for the crown to come. Then he strode up the steps of the dais, where the queen-to-be stood to one side. And the holy man in golden robes, flanked by others of his order, approached with the crown of Southlands glittering in his hands.

It was so near. The baron’s eyes shone with the desire of it, and one could almost believe he would reach out and snatch it from the holy man’s hands. But instead he flung back his gorgeous robes, prepared to kneel and make his vows to people and country.

Before he knelt, however, the page boy sprang out from behind the baron’s wife, grabbed the baron by the top of his head, and pulled back sharply, holding a knife at his throat.

The assembly erupted. All music and sound of trumpets vanished in the cries of the people and clash of weapons being drawn. “Stay back! Stay back!” Lionheart shouted as he dragged the baron away from the clerics, moving swiftly across the dais. His voice could scarcely be heard in the din. The baron, his arms flailing, tried and failed to get a hold on his captor. With the blade at his neck, he could scarcely breathe, and his huge eyes rolled.

The queen, her mouth a little O of surprise, sprang forward just as the baron’s guardsmen mounted the dais steps. She flung herself at them, perhaps for protection, and dropped in an elaborate faint so that many fell over her in their efforts to reach her husband.

And Felix, watching from above, saw that Lionheart was making for the little door and the spiral stair.

Can you hear
me?
sang the songbird in his head.

The armed man by the door brandished his weapon and started toward Lionheart from behind.

“He’s not a murderer,” Felix whispered.

The next moment, Felix leapt over the gallery railing and came down
on the guardsman’s back, flattening him. He landed harder than he’d expected and rolled to one side, struggling to reclaim his breath. He saw another guardsman coming and, moving on reflex rather than thought, stuck out a leg and tripped him. He righted himself then, just in time to see Lionheart reach the doorway, dragging his prisoner behind.

Lionheart looked at him. Felix saw a flash of desperate thanks in his eyes. Then the door slammed behind him and the baron. Guardsmen hurled themselves at it, their weapons thunking into the heavy wood.

It was bolted from the inside.