Shadow Hand

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  He wanted to open his eyes, but the stickiness sealed his lashes together, and it took some effort to free them. By the time he succeeded, panic had made good headway into his outlook. After all, one does not like to wake up in unknown circumstances coated like a babe who got into the syrup jar.

  He succeeded, however, after a certain amount of rubbing and straining (if you’ve never strained a resisting eyelid, you don’t know what straining is) to free his lashes and crack his eyes open for a look at his surroundings. In that moment, he believed he could be surprised by nothing.

  Thus he was all the more surprised to find Daylily’s curious face hovering over his.

  He did not scream. He might have, had his mouth not been sealed shut with the stickiness, but since it was, he could manage only a pathetic harrumph in the back of his throat. He did sit up rather abruptly and, discovering he wore no clothes, snatched at the skin pelt that had been spread over his nether regions and clutched it like a lifeline.

  The face that was Daylily’s backed up a little, still curious, her head tilted to one side, and Foxbrush realized this could not be his betrothed after all. For one thing, this was the face of Daylily as he’d first met her. That fateful day when, obliged to take part in a recreation of King Shadow Hand’s triumph, he’d been dubbed the Damsel in Distress.

  These memories were many years old now. But here sat Daylily’s childhood image, complete with the tangle of wild red hair, though this girl’s was held back with leather strings rather than ribbons. And she wore a sack-like garment of rough weave that Daylily would never have permitted near her person. Her doppelganger, however, did not seem to mind.

  She inspected Foxbrush solemnly, and he noticed, despite his terror, that her eyes, unlike Daylily’s, were dark brown.

  “You’re awake,” she said, though at first he did not understand her. But when his horror receded enough for him to make an attempt at rational thought, he realized that he did know her words. Her accent was simply so strong that it might almost have been another language.

  Foxbrush worked his jaw back and forth until he could crack his mouth open and speak through the stickiness. “Where am I?” he demanded hoarsely.

  She frowned and stood up, backing away a little. “Da!” she called over her shoulder, never taking her eyes off Foxbrush. “The wasp man is awake!”

  “Don’t bother him!” rumbled a voice from without.

  Foxbrush, however, could not understand any of his words and heard only the growl. He began to tremble anew and cried out, “I’m not hurting her, I swear! I’m merely lying here all . . . sticky. And I would like my clothes, if you please!”

  “Stop talking,” the girl said, making a disapproving face at him. “You chatter like a bird.”

  “Are you bothering the man, Meadowlark?” the voice rumbled again. There were footsteps, a curtain of woven reeds was pushed rustling aside, and Foxbrush had his first real glimpse of the man who had met him by the black fig tree.

  He was a terrible sight.

  Like the girl, he was crowned with a mass of red hair, which had crept down over time to give him a full, curly beard as well. But between forehead and mouth there was nothing to disguise the disfigurement of his face. One of his eyes looked as though it had been nearly torn out long ago, and the scarring and puckering of his skin had closed over it so that he was partially blind. The other eye too was surrounded by scars, and a large chunk was gone from his nose. The skin was tight and white in places, as though it had healed without the aid of stitches.

  And when he grinned hugely, as he did at the sight of Foxbrush sitting upright on his pallet, clutching the skin pelt and dripping oozy medicine, he was by far the ugliest man Foxbrush had ever seen.

  “Ah! You are awake indeed,” the stranger said, ducking his head to step into the chamber, which was quite small and lit by only one window and the light that made its way through many chinks in the walls. Stooping so as not to knock his head on the ceiling, he put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and looked Foxbrush over. “And much improved already, by the look of you.”

  He addressed Foxbrush in the same language as the child’s, though with an accent nearer to Foxbrush’s own. Still, it was an accent far more clipped than Foxbrush was used to hearing, though Foxbrush recognized most of the words.

  “Please, sir,” Foxbrush said, his head light and throbbing at the temples. “Who are you? Where am I?”

  “I am Redman, and you are in the Eldest’s House,” the stranger replied and crouched, bringing his head nearly level with the girl’s. “You had a nasty encounter with the Twisted Man and were all over wasp welts when I found you. My oldest girl here, Meadowlark”—he hugged the child to him—“has tended you with silver-branch sap, which is a great cure for wasp stings, if a little hard to wash off.”

  The girl did not shift her solemn dark eyes from Foxbrush’s face. Her gaze made him more nervous. He tried to blink and found his lashes heavy. “Sap?” he managed to croak.

  “Sap.” Redman nodded. “And a few herbs and bits and pieces Meadowlark mixed with it. Nothing too foul, I promise you.”

  As the man spoke, Foxbrush’s gaze began slowly to rove about, taking in his strange surroundings. He saw the walls made of stones, sticks, and mud. He saw the thatched roof and heard the birds roosting and the mice scurrying above. He saw the dirt floor covered with fresh rushes, the doorway hung with reeds, the pile of skins on which he lay, the pelt across his lap.

  “Where are my clothes?” he asked, his voice a whimper.

  “We had to cut them off you,” said Redman. “Hymlumé’s scepter! So many buckles and buttons! I never saw the like, certainly not around here. You see what’s left of them there.” He indicated a pile of fabric neatly folded in a corner of the tiny room. Foxbrush, turning sad eyes that way, saw that most of the buttons had, in fact, been removed, leaving gaping holes in his shirt and trousers.

  The remains of his shoes, he realized, were adorning Meadowlark’s small feet. He could see the toes of her right foot peeking out through a hole in the seam.

  Foxbrush looked down at his nakedness and the ooze that covered his torso and arms. “What am I to wear?” he asked, a little desperate.

  “Why, those of course, if you want them. They’re still quite good enough for wearing, if not so fine as they were,” Redman said. “Or we’ll provide you with something more comfortable if you like. But look here . . .”

  He reached out to the pile and took something from its depths. It was the scroll, a little battered but still in one piece. Redman unrolled it, scanning up and down the page. Surely such a wild beast of a man would not understand the content therein! But Redman’s eyes—or at least the good one that Foxbrush could see—were intent, and his mouth moved a little as he struggled with the words.

  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 e
nd 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.

  15

  PRINCE FELIX OF PARUMVIR 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 ol
d 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.