Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) (19 page)

T
HIS
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 younger children did not know what she said, and he wondered if she meant to spare them hearing the news she brought. Only Lark, alert and bright-eyed, seemed to follow the conversation.

“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.”

“And this maid,” Redman persisted. “Not Faerie?”

“They claim not. They insist she was mortal. A fiery mortal, they say, with hair as red as yours.”

At this, Foxbrush felt his empty stomach heave and drop. Redman turned to him sharply, as though he’d heard. “A fiery maid?” he said. “Could it be your lost one?”

All eyes in the room turned to Foxbrush, and he writhed under their stare. The Eldest regarded him with interest now, a knot forming on her brow. “Do you know something of this, stranger?”

“I . . . I’m not sure,” Foxbrush admitted, finding it difficult to speak with the dryness of his mouth. Lark, suddenly reminded of his existence, hopped to her feet and filled a bowl for him, which he accepted from her even as he spoke. “I am come seeking my betrothed, Lady Daylily of Middlecrescent, who is not of your . . . of your . . .”

“What our good Foxbrush wishes to say,” Redman interrupted, smiling at his wife, “is that neither he nor the maid he seeks are of our time.”

The Eldest accepted this with far more ease than Foxbrush might have expected. “Sylphs?” she asked.

“Aye. Sylphs,” said her husband. “Though he is a man of our own Land, he wandered into the Wilderlands in search of his missing lady and, as far
as I can gather, was caught in a sylph storm. They dragged him far from his own Time. I would be willing to bet my beard his lady was caught by sylphs as well, for it would appear she is the fiery maid of whom the people of Greenwell speak.”

“But sylphs care nothing for mortal time,” the Eldest said. “I’m not surprised if, caught in their dance, this man was dragged away from his time. But I find it hard to believe that he and his lady would both end up in or near the same small slice of their history. The sylphs may have left her anywhere in the Wood, at any time, both past and future.”

Redman acknowledged this with a nod. “You’re right, my love. But perhaps our Foxbrush here is guided by another hand. A hand that could direct even the wild dance of the sylphs.”

In silence, the Eldest and her husband shared an understanding glance, the significance of which entirely escaped poor Foxbrush. Then the Eldest turned to him, and there was sympathy in her eyes. “I pity you, poor man. A sylph dance is a dreadful thing, or so the Silent Lady tells us. But answer me this, if the Fiery One of Greenwell is indeed your lady, do you know if she makes a practice of slaying Faerie beasts?”

“Um. Not . . . not so far as I’m aware,” Foxbrush said hesitantly. After all, if he was honest with himself, there was a great deal about Daylily he did not know, and a great deal more he did not understand. Oddly enough (perhaps it was the presence of young Lark and her sharp resemblance), he found himself remembering the first time he’d met Daylily—Daylily the warrior-king Shadow Hand, fighting monsters and leading armies, even if only in imagination.

He frowned suddenly and put his hand to the pocket of his torn trousers, where he had secreted Leo’s scroll before making his escape. The scroll was gone. He must have lost it during his flight through the jungle.

A dullness settled in his heart at this. One more loss. One more failure. But at this point, what difference did it make?

“Not so far as I am aware,” he repeated softly, looking down at the bowl of onions and fish. “But . . .” He recalled Leo, hooded and shadowy in the Baron of Middlecrescent’s chamber. What was it he had said? “I wouldn’t put anything past Lady Daylily.”

“Was this red lady at Greenwell when you arrived?” Redman asked his wife.

“I’m afraid not,” said the Eldest, accepting a piece of flatbread from Lark and using it to spoon her meal. “They said a strange young man also came from the jungle and took her away again. Another mortal, they insisted, but wild and bloodstained. And he too wore a bronze stone.”

Redman studied his wife. She would not meet his gaze. “What are you not telling me?”

She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed slowly. Then she said, “The night following Mama Greenteeth’s death, all the firstborn children of the village vanished.”

The silence that followed was like darkness. It fell upon the room with sudden, obscuring terror, made more dreadful by the lack of understanding it brought.

“All of them?” Redman repeated at last, his voice scarcely making a dent in the weight of that silence.

The Eldest nodded.

“Light of Lumé,” Redman breathed. It was a prayer for protection. But somehow Foxbrush felt that the shadows drew closer to that small cooking fire and the red-lit faces gathered round it.

The Eldest said, “The strangers, the red lady and her companion, demanded tithe for Mama Greenteeth’s death. They said the bargain was struck in Greenteeth’s blood.”

“And did the men and women of Greenwell put up no fight?”

“There was no one to fight. Voices called in the night, and they tell me there were lights like shining candles. The children stepped from their parents’ homes and vanished without a trace. That was three days ago now.”

Redman put both hands to his scarred face, hiding for a moment from all that was dreadful and crushing upon his soul. Only slowly did he lower them again, looking around at his children. His gaze lingered longest on Lark. Then he turned to his wife with a snarl in his voice.

“We must find them. We must find these two warriors and recover the lost children.”

The Eldest shook her head. She held her breath for fear of a sob escaping. But she set aside her bowl and put out a hand to her husband. “There is
more to this than we yet know, my love,” she said, her voice thick in her throat. “More to these Bronze Warriors. We must learn before we can fight.”