Shadow Hand

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  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 t
he 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:

  “Here and There! Here and There! Tremble before the King of Here and There!”

  Faerie beasts, displaced and dispossessed from all corners of the Between, flashed their teeth and their claws and their weapons. But they were afraid to draw any nearer to the Mound. Then one stepped out from amid their number, and the thing within Daylily recognized him as a figment from her dreams, and Daylily herself, what was left of her, desperately fighting for use of her own eyes, recognized him, and her heart leapt, then sank at the sight.

  Foxbrush, on trembling feet, strode out from that shadowy throng and stood just within the light of the Bronze. It cast upon his face weird highlights that could not warm his pallor. He awkwardly held a lance of crude make in both hands, as though he wasn’t quite certain whether the pointed end should be up or down. So rather than make a decision, he raised it above his head, and with that motion silenced his fey army.

  “Warriors of Cren Cru!” he shouted, though his voice cracked and he was obliged to clear his throat. “Give back what you have stolen and leave this land forever.”

  “No!” shouted one voice from among the Faerie beasts. Nidawi stepped forward then, a rabid child frothing at the mouth. “No, kill him! Kill them all!”

  Foxbrush bowed his head and whispered nervously, “I’ve got to at least make the offer. It’s traditional.”

  “Burn tradition! Kill my enemy!” Nidawi shrieked. And the other Faerie beasts shrieked in a building, roaring echo. Then, before Foxbrush could recover himself enough to speak a word, his army broke from his command and flowed down into the valley of Cren Cru. They threw themselves at the wall of bronze light and the warriors ringing there.

  The warriors waited by their stones. And as the Faerie beasts set upon them, the warriors slew them. Agonized screams of death replaced the screams of battle and bloodlust as the Faerie beasts fell before that unbreachable wall.

  Foxbrush, however, remained at the top of the incline, lying facedown where he had been knocked in the rush, both arms stretched out before him, still grasping the lance. He pulled his head up, spitting out dirt and turf, and saw the bloodshed below. They were dying in droves, and the warriors remained unharmed beside their stones.

  “This won’t do.”

  The voice was Eanrin’s, speaking near Foxbrush’s ear. Foxbrush felt two strong, long-fingered hands grab him by the shoulders and pull him to his feet. He stood gasping for the remnants of air that had been knocked from his lungs. Eanrin studied the carnage below, and his lip lifted in a snarl. “This won’t do,” he repeated. Then, “I’ve got an idea. Follow me, little king!”

  With that, he gave Foxbrush a push to start him moving before darting on ahead so quickly that Foxbrush, staggering, very nearly lost him. But for the first time, something glimmered beneath Foxbrush’s feet, and he thought he saw, however briefly, the Path of which everyone had spoken. However it was, he stumbled down the incline, following the trail of the crimson-clad poet, who darted between the Faerie beasts into the space between two great bronze stones. The light from the stones had dimmed in the onslaught, and now their individual glows did not reach so far as to touch one another, leaving small gaps of darkness. Into this darkness, Eanrin plunged, and Foxbrush, gripping his lance, his shoulders hunched and his head low, prepared to follow.

  But then one of the warriors turned from his fight and, seeing the flash of Eanrin’s cloak, sprang after him. This was a savage warrior with a long black braid whipping behind him, his skin shiny with sweat, his clothing splashed with browning blood.

  And Foxbrush hesitated for one moment as the words flashed through his brain:

  First let pass the man in red,

  Then let pass the brown . . .

  How he hated poetry!

  Something struck him from behind. Whether foe or friend, it did not matter, for the blow caught him hard between the shoulders, once more knocking all the breath from his body. He staggered under the impact and fell headlong through the dark shadow, landing within the inner circle.

  Someone grabbed him by the back of his head, yanking his chin back. He felt the sharpness of a stone cut him behind the ear. A half second more and his throat might well have been slit.

  But Eanrin leapt at Sun Eagle and knocked him to the ground, and the stone dagger flew wide. Foxbrush, gasping and clutching the wound at his neck, twisted around to see the cat-man and the dark-skinned warrior grappling upon the ground. Sun Eagle got the upper hand, kneeling on Eanrin’s chest, grasping his throat in a choke hold. But Eanrin, who was stronger than he looked, brought his knee up sharply into Sun Eagle’s back, dislodging his hold.

  Foxbrush, using his lance for support, got to his feet and prepared to join the fray, uncertain if his help would be welcome. But something caught the tail of his eye, and he turned.

  Daylily, still wearing the bloodstained gown of Eldest Sight-of-Day, stood at the door of Cren Cru’s Mound, surrounded by empty-eyed children, one of them caught in her arms.

  But it wasn’t Daylily who looked out of her eyes. Her mouth opened, and words poured forth:

  King of Here and There! We have heard rumor of you ere now, the promise spoken on the shores of the Final Water. So the time of our meeting is come. And yet, we do not fear you as we believed we would.

  “Please,” Foxbrush said, his knuckles whitening as he clutched his lance tighter. “Let her go. Return the children you stole.”

  That does not suit our purpose.

  “I’ll . . . I’ll kill you,” Foxbrush said, taking a trembling step forward.

  Kill us? You’ll have to catch us first!

  “No, wait!” Foxbrush shouted, dropping his weapon as he put out both hands. But it was too late.

  The creature that was Daylily hurled itself and the child it h
eld into the mouth of the Mound.

  Foxbrush, without stopping to think, ran. The distance to the door stretched on for a small forever, like an impassable dreamscape. Then the doorway seemed suddenly to reach out, to grab him, and he plunged into the darkness within.

  13

  HE STOOD IN THE GREAT HALL of the Eldest.

  Considering he’d been expecting sudden and searing death, this wasn’t all that bad. Surprising, to be sure. But not bad, exactly.

  Great pillars rose up from the floor to support the high roof, and elegant railings framed the galleries above. Enormous windows, open to the darkness outside, lined the walls from floor to gallery, from gallery to ceiling. Through these poured a light colder than moonlight, and it shone upon long, filmy curtains embroidered with starflowers and panthers, which fluttered without the aid of a breeze, like so many writhing, elongated phantoms.

  Odd, Foxbrush thought, frowning where he stood. He wondered if this strange, cold light was playing tricks on his eyes. This looks like the old Great Hall. From before the Dragon.

  He began to tremble, and the fear he’d expected from the moment he stepped through that black doorway finally caught up with him. For the old hall had been decimated by dragon fire, torn down by dragon claws. Yet it was that hall he saw before him, not the new, unfinished one of his day.

  Have I stepped back in time again? Foxbrush wondered. Or rather, forward in time? Or . . . or . . .

  And then he saw a sight that told him he was nowhere in time, nowhere in reality, or at least, no reality that he knew.

  High above the galleries, in the empty space between the supporting pillars and the arched roof, ghostly figures floated. Like dust motes drifting in directionless patterns, so these figures floated, arms and legs out like the points of a star, heads bowed over chests, hair floating like that of drowned men underwater. Weightless they wafted, never touching one another, as though each was a world apart. Hundreds of them filled the space above Foxbrush’s head.