Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) (36 page)

But somehow, this was no comfort.

Lionheart stood and stretched again, pacing the narrow space between the heavy door and the window. He would have to sleep eventually. He glanced at the baron. He could feel his prisoner’s gaze, though shadows hid his face. Even bound hand and foot, the baron was too dangerous to leave unwatched. And he showed no signs of sleep himself.

I’ll die of pure exhaustion,
Lionheart thought as he looked out the window at the sky.
Stabbed by a unicorn, assaulted by dragons, threatened by kings
and emperors alike. But I’ll die for lack of
sleep at the end.

It seemed comically appropriate. But he couldn’t manage a laugh.

By now the clouds had rolled on, and the stars were making the final turns of their nightly dance. In another hour, the inky blackness would give way to blue, and another hour after that the sun would rise.

What sort of world would it shine down upon? What sort of future?

The sound of armored bodies collapsing beyond the door brought Lionheart whirling about. He didn’t know what had caused those sounds and wondered if the desperate barons below had thought of a new instrument with which to assault his barricade. He strode quickly back to his post and placed his ear to the door but heard nothing more than the pound of his heart in his throat.

Then at long last, he heard a voice. It was too low to understand, but Lionheart guessed it was male. He made no response and, after a tense half minute, the voice repeated, louder:

“Leonard? Leonard the Lightning Tongue?”

Lionheart recoiled from the door as though bitten. As far as he knew, no one in all the Eldest’s court knew of his jester name and the identity he’d assumed during his five-year exile while Southlands was dragon occupied.

“Leonard, are you there?” The voice sounded as though it was trying desperately not to be overheard. “Please answer!”

“Who is that?” Lionheart demanded.

“It’s Felix. Prince Felix of Parumvir. We met in Oriana two years ago, if you remember. You performed for my family.” A pause, then, “And I saw you again in the Village of Dragons.”

Lionheart stared at the door, and if he were a dragon himself, his gaze would have burned it to cinders in a moment. But had he not seen the royal insignia of Parumvir? And now that he thought of it, he had glimpsed Felix in the Great Hall during the mad abduction. In the frantic terror of enacting the baroness’s plot, he’d seen without recognizing the lad who had brought down a guard and quite possibly saved Lionheart’s neck. Felix . . . Una’s brother . . .

“That’s not my name,” Lionheart said. He could feel the baron’s gaze upon his shoulders, but he refused to look around.

“I know,” said the voice beyond. “I know all about what happened. Una told me later, you know, after the Dragon was killed. She’s . . . she’s married now, had you heard? To Prince Aethelbald?”

Lionheart nodded, which was foolish, but he couldn’t quite find words to respond. A silence followed during which he knew the baron was putting together pieces of a story Lionheart did not wish him to know. He demanded, “What are you doing up here, Prince Felix? It’s not safe.”

“The baroness sent me with supplies for you.”

A hissing curse from behind told Lionheart that the baron had overheard. Now whatever suspicions had been brewing in his mind were confirmed. Lionheart’s neck wouldn’t be the only one forfeit at the end of this foolish adventure.

“I’ve drugged the guards,” Felix persisted. “Or, well,
I
didn’t personally. But they’re drugged, and you can open the door and take these supplies. I can’t guarantee they’ll help much, but better than nothing, right?”

Better than nothing. They might be just enough to give Lionheart time for that fool sylph to catch his fool cousin, to send Prince Foxbrush, Hawkeye’s legitimate heir, reeling back into the court of the Eldest, fey addled but alive.

“How do I know you are who you say you are?” Lionheart demanded. “How do I know this isn’t a trap?”

Another pause, during which Lionheart felt his rising hopes slowly crumbling away.

Then Felix said: “I know the name of the Queen of Arpiar, Ruler of the Unveiled People, Mistress of the lands between the Karayan Plains and the Sevoug Mountains beyond Goldstone Wood. She is Varvare, daughter of Vahe and Anahid, servant of the Prince of Farthestshore.”

“Rosie,” Lionheart whispered.

And with the name came a sudden wash of peace over his soul. Whatever happened now, she was safe. She sat upon her throne, come into her rightful inheritance. He could not hurt her anymore.

“Rosie . . .”

He heaved the heavy bolt out of its brackets and undid the iron locks and bracings. With a groan of relief, the door inched open, and Lionheart saw Felix’s pale face in the lantern light beyond, wearing a spiked Southlander helmet.

“Take it, quick!” Felix said, pushing the sack through the doorway into Lionheart’s arms. “I don’t know how long the drugs will—”

“Not long enough for you, wolf-bit pup!”

A gauntleted hand fell upon Felix’s shoulder and hauled him back. Lionheart cursed and put his shoulder to the door, trying to slam it closed, to drop the bolt again. But strong men on the other side pushed against him, and their combined strength was more than his. The guardsmen broke through, and Lionheart hadn’t time to so much as go for his knife. Two of them fell upon him, pinning his arms and bringing him to his knees. The third struck him three times across his face. Still he struggled against them and might have freed himself.

But more guards poured through the door then, guards who had been waiting in the darkened stairway. Outmatched by far, Lionheart fell on his face, his arms twisted behind him.

“Did you think we were fools to fall for such a trick?” said the guardsman who had struck Lionheart, flexing his fist. He turned to Prince Felix, who stood in the grasp of more strong men who had stripped the helmet and breastplate from him.

“But you drank the wine!” Felix protested, furiously.

“That wine wasn’t drugged,” said the leader of the three. “We were told to play along and let you get the door opened for us. Worked like a charm.”

“Who told you?” Felix turned as a movement in the stairway caught his eye, and he saw Lady Dovetree appear at the top of the stairs, very pretty with her arms crossed over her chest. “You?” he cried.

“Don’t be angry, Prince Felix,” said she. “They’ll probably not hang you, and now I can be certain they won’t hang me either. I love the dear baroness, of course, but not enough to
die
for her!” And she laughed at this, a cruel sort of laugh that belied any declarations of love.

The Baron of Middlecrescent rose then, cut free from his bindings. He rubbed his wrists thoughtfully, and a guardsman offered him a cloak to cover his naked torso. He drew it about himself with kingly dignity and strode to the doorway without a glance to his right at Lionheart upon the floor, or to his left at Prince Felix. Nor did he look at his wife’s traitorous servant but fixed his gaze straight ahead, moving as though none of them mattered or existed.

But at the top of the stairway, he said over his shoulder, “Bring them.”

T
WELFTH
N
IGHT
.
Twelfth Tithe.

Is this fear? Is this desperation? Is
this . . . is this hope?

So many strange sensations, all of
them an agony. Oh, to be free of these bodies!
Oh, to be made whole once more, to be established,
to be strong! To rule and be ruled.

The beating
of these many hearts, large and small, all beat as
one, joined in purpose.

Our purpose.

My purpose.

She bled
out upon her kingdom. She took her own life, and
she bled, and she died.

New blood must flow for
life to renew. So eat them, devour them, take them
deep inside and drink of their lives.

Twelfth Night. Twelfth
Tithe.

Then, come Thirteenth Dawn . . . renew!

They traveled the fey Paths of the land as naturally as Foxbrush might have strolled the halls of his mother’s house, and they carried him un-protesting along with them. It was like being swept out with the tide, though his feet trod on uncertain soil beneath. All around him the surviving Faerie beasts of the land were silent with the focused intensity of the hunt. Their desire to drive Cren Cru from this land that had been their home was stronger than their desire for life. Even though, if they succeeded, they themselves would have to leave the land forever.

Foxbrush wondered how many of them, like Nidawi, had lost their former nations to the ravages of Cren Cru and his warriors?

Eanrin, once more a cat, paced sedately at Foxbrush’s side, his eyes half closed and his tail up, but his ears a little back with tension. He indicated by the very lie of his whiskers that he didn’t deem Foxbrush worth bothering with and refused to initiate any talk. Foxbrush, however, was unschooled in the language of cats.

“You know, you don’t have to come along with us,” he said to the cat. “I mean, this isn’t your fight, and . . . well, the poem is a bit vague on the details, so I can’t promise anything. I—”

“So are you saying you’d prefer I did
not
come along and therefore remained ignorant of the events as they unfold tonight?” said the cat icily. “Would make for a poor bit of poetry later, if you ask me.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Foxbrush admitted. “You’re right. I suppose you should be there. It’s for the best.”

“The
best
? Hardly,” said Eanrin, his ears lowering still farther with ire. Had it been possible, he would have ignored the young man beside him entirely. The lad was a weakling, and a mortal weakling at that, and Eanrin wasn’t feeling too keen on mortals at the moment. But he could not deny the clarity of the Lumil Eliasul’s Path opening at Foxbrush’s feet. It was an enigma to be sure. One he would sleuth out if he possibly could.

He muttered in a low growl that Foxbrush could not understand,
“Besides, I have unfinished business of my own to attend to this night.” The face of Sun Eagle was all too present in his mind; Sun Eagle, stained in the white lion’s blood.

Sun Eagle, looking into Imraldera’s eyes and calling her
“Starflower.”

The cat began to growl.

“You know,” said Foxbrush, unaware how close he came in that moment to having his ankle scratched, “it would have made everything much easier if you’d just written it out in plain speaking.”

“What?” said Eanrin, twitching an ear Foxbrush’s way.

“Your message,” Foxbrush continued. “It’s daft to send something that important in poetry. I don’t even
read
poetry, not by preference. If, in the future, you’d just write it out plainly, everything that happens tonight, I mean, I’d be much obliged. That is, the future me will be obliged. Or the past me.” He frowned. “Actually, I’m not sure which of me it would matter to. Either way, do you think you could work it out?”

Both Eanrin’s ears flattened to his skull. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

Foxbrush glanced down at the cat. Bard Eanrin of Rudiobus was proving far more foul tempered than generations of childhood rhymes would suggest. But then, whoever said those rhymes were reliable sources of information?

Foxbrush squeezed Leo’s scroll tightly in one fist and tried to focus on the strange, otherworldly shapes surrounding him. Like the cat-man, none of the beasts on this death march were bound to a single shape but constantly shifted into other shapes as well: some human, some reminiscent of human, some not human at all.

But they all trusted him. They all expected him to fulfill the promise given to Nidawi beside the Final Water.

They were all fools.

At Foxbrush’s feet, though he could not see it, a Path opened up, leading straight ahead. He pursued it unknowing, whispering as he went:
“There
you will win your Fiery One, or see her then
devoured.”

Ahead, a light glowed brighter and brighter on the horizon. Not the glow of the rising sun.

This was a bronze light.

Had she governed her own body, she would have collapsed in weakness and despair. Her shoulder throbbed, her wound torn open with exertion, its soothing dressing long since vanished. But that which dwelled inside Daylily did not understand her pain, so it drove her, and she moved as she was driven. Through the darkness, through the Wood, through the Faerie Paths stretching across the land. She knew where she went with a knowing that was not her own.

The center of the land. The heart where the tumor festered.

Twelfth Night. Twelfth Tithe.

The wolf inside her, weakened to the point of death but struggling still, growled.
You say I made you cruel. But at least
I never made you false!

“You made me betray Rose Red,” Daylily whispered as she stumbled on, her head heavy with the presence of both Cren Cru and the wolf.

I never made you anything. I
am
you. I
am the true you! The one you hide from the
world; the one you can’t bear to admit exists.
But I am true.

As true as knives to the heart. As true as poison in the blood. As true as love or hatred living buried in a wounded heart.

How long had she known it, this secret truth? Since that summer, long ago, when she had traveled to the mountains to spend her holidays in countrified isolation with Lionheart and Foxbrush. That summer when she had first heard the cry of a wolf, lonely and forlorn in the forests of night. How her heart had responded to that sound!

And in that response, the truth that was the she-wolf inside Daylily had sprung to vicious life. A life that must always be suppressed, always be secreted away to those dark corners of her mind that no one could find. Bound down with chains, deprived of freedom . . . yet it dominated her existence still more in captivity.

“I don’t want any part of you,” Daylily said. “Not anymore.”

Then
let me go!

A trill of notes. “Then let it go.”

Daylily closed her eyes, recognizing the voice of the songbird. She
should have known he would follow her even here, on this dark Path to her master’s door.

“Let it go, Daylily,” the bird sang in gentle, compelling melody.

But the thunder of Cren Cru’s driving pulse called to her, and she surrendered to it and allowed it to pull her deeper still. Deeper into places of her mind where the wolf could not come.

She came at last to the center where the Mound latched hold and sucked at the lifeblood of the Land. Around the thorn-raised Mound stood the warriors, her brethren. They had all arrived before her, but this did not matter. She felt her heart beating in time with theirs, and she was one of them, and she was one with them. They stood in a great circle, Advocate and Initiate, surrounding the Mound. Their bronze stones glowed brighter and brighter, filling their faces with light even in this dark place. And between each warrior stood the firstborn children brought for the final sacrifice.

Daylily saw Sun Eagle and she took her place on his right. Briefly he looked at her, and she thought perhaps she saw him and not his master looking out of his eyes. What did that expression say?

Forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive—

Then his mouth moved, even as hers did, and they spoke in their unified voice:

Twelfth Night. Twelfth Tithe.

Daylily looked down then at the children standing between her and her Advocate. They were all so young, not yet in adolescence, their bodies unformed, their faces round, and their eyes, which should have been full of life, were full only of the Bronze. They stood unbound, for they needed no bindings, caught as they were in Cren Cru’s spell.

The child beside Daylily had red hair. Daylily gasped and craned her neck to look more closely. She thought she looked upon her own face, empty and horrible, filled with Cren Cru. The child stood like one dead, her lips gently parted, her head a little to one side. She was empty other than that which filled her.

Better to be devoured by wolves than to become one such as that!

Daylily reached up and took hold of the Bronze about her neck. What she intended to do, she could not say. Perhaps drive that sharp end into
her own heart. Perhaps drive it into the child. She took hold and pulled it from her neck.

All her brethren did the same. They cried out together, they and Daylily, saying to the night:

“From blood springs life! From life springs blood!”

Then each of the warriors plunged his or her medallion into the turf. And the stones suddenly grew twice—three times—ten times what they had been, great boulders of shining bronze, and the light they reflected off one another made the surrounding area bright as day.

Save for the yawning mouth of Cren Cru’s Mound. No light could penetrate there.

One by one, the warriors stepped forward, leading children behind them. Daylily fell into step behind Sun Eagle, leading the redheaded girl and others as well. She smelled the reeking death in the hole, smelled the breath of her master. The wolf inside her bellowed its revulsion at the stench, but Daylily herself could not resist it.

She watched her Advocate lift the children who followed him. He took them, one at a time, and threw them into that gaping void. And when he had finished and his unresisting captives were sent to their doom and immediately forgotten, he backed away, returned to his stone, and stood with his eyes fixed upon the Mound. And always his mouth moved in chant:

“From blood springs life! From life springs blood!”

Now Daylily herself approached the doorway, and the children paced quietly behind her. Her mouth spoke in chorus with her brethren even as she reached out and chose the nearest child.

Twelfth Night
! Twelfth Tithe!
her master urged her with frantic eagerness.

But the wolf inside her said,
Look at her! Look
at what you do!

And Daylily paused. She looked into the face of the child who wore her own features, but younger, unspoiled, and true. For an instant, the bronze light cleared from the girl’s eyes, and they were dark eyes that gazed up at Daylily with momentary recognition.

“Red Lady—” Lark gasped.

Daylily, with a strength beyond mortality, threw the girl into the darkness and reached for the next child.

The wolf in her mind screamed.

Only it wasn’t the wolf. It was a sound outside, beyond the Bronze, a scream rising in violence and intensity. The screams of many, many animal voices, and in those screams were words of bloodshed and vengeance.

Daylily, the child in her arms clutched tight to her breast, turned in place and looked out to the dark landscape beyond Cren Cru’s lit circle. She and the other warriors paused in their chant and saw the gathering of dark shadows, rising up, ready to overwhelm all the bronze light. And these shadows shrieked their fury. Their fury, and the name of their champion: