Shadow Hand

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  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.

  16

  THERE, IN THE WOOD BETWEEN, a shadowed circle.

  Deeper shadows drew near to the rims of the circle, silent as ripples of darkness on the face of a moon-empty lake. Eyes downcast, they stood, arms upraised, reaching out toward one another but never touching. Fingertips stretched, but always the emptiness between.

  They were united.

  They were alone.

  The Bronze gleamed about each of their necks, breaking the shadows into points of light.

  One figure, taller than the rest, nine feet at the least and crowned in great, curling horns, opened her eyes. They flashed gold in the light of the Bronze.

  She spoke: “Our Advocates are dead.”

  Her voice sibilated in the hollows of trees, through the close-gathered branches, into the minds of her brethren.

  She said: “Whom do we advocate?”

  These we have chosen.

  “Let the chosen step forward.”

  Six shadows entered the circle, drawn together by the intensifying light from the Bronze around their necks. So Daylily, pale and ragged, saw for the first time those whose hearts beat in rhythm with her own. She saw a woman with a face partially covered in feathers, weeping through a fixed smile. She saw a man, thin, winged, and fierce, whose hair floated behind him like clouds in an autumn sky. She glimpsed one whose body was twisted like gnarled tree roots, so strange, so unlike anything she had ever before encountered that her mind refused to accept it and blinded itself to the sight so that, for all she knew, nothing but a young tree stood in that one’s place.

  She could bear no more, so she stared down at the Bronze upon her own breast and thought nothing but allowed herself to be thought through.

  These we have chosen.

  These he has chosen.

  These I have chosen.

  Daylily’s breath was like ice in her throat, and she continued to stare at the Bronze as though following a lighthouse through a storm.

  Then something broke. Some bond, some pact of which she had been unaware vanished with such suddenness that she staggered and her hands reached up to grasp the Bronze, which glowed between her fingers.

  The horned one said, “There is a mortal among the offered. Who advocates a mortal?”

  “I do,” said Sun Eagle from the edge of the circle, behind Daylily’s shoulder where she could not see him.

  “A mortal advocating a mortal?” said the horned one. “Is this right? Is this fair?”

  “She is of my kin,” said Sun Eagle. “I smell the Crescent Land on her skin. I feel the pulse of Crescent Land in her blood. She is my sister.”

  “Give her in tithe, then,” said another voice, deeper than that of the horned one. Daylily dared not raise her head, but she turned an ear its way. If bears spoke in the tongues of men, she would have sworn it was a bear. “Let her pass through the door.”

  “She was chosen,” said Sun Eagle. Compared to others speaking, his voice was all warmth and s
unlight. Though she did not turn, Daylily’s heart reached out to the sound, clinging desperately as the strangeness of the dark circle washed over her, tugging like the tide with unknown fears. “The Bronze chose her,” said Sun Eagle. “She is one of us. And she has shown us a new host.”

  “A new host, you say?” The horned one shifted, and her massive hooves shook the earth so that all the six standing within the circle stumbled and put out their hands to catch their balance. “Where?”

  “My own land,” said Sun Eagle. “She showed me the way back to my own world. We walked a Path made by sylphs, and we passed through the gate. It is good, green, thriving country!”

  “Mortal country,” said the horned one. “Are you a fool, Sun Eagle?”

  “Do you think so, Kasa?” Sun Eagle’s voice remained as calm and warm as ever, but there were knives behind his words. “Then tell our master! For he chose this girl for his own, and he, through her, obligated the people of my country to him. They owe in tithe for the life of one of their own.”

  “If this is so . . .” said a new voice, a thin whisper that tickled the ear. Daylily, her head still bowed, permitted her eyes to glance up at the speaking shadow opposite her on the edge of the circle. When this person spoke, green fire shimmered in his mouth. “If this is so, then our foot is in the door. We may take root.”

  We may come home.

  “We have never carried the Bronze into a mortal land,” said the horned one. “How will it bear us?”

  “Better than it bore the coming of wolves and dragons,” said Sun Eagle. “For we will deliver the Land from evil. They will gladly pay the tithe.”

  And we will be home.

  “And we will be home,” Daylily whispered. She heard the other six with her in the circle whisper the same. A coldness grew from inside her and spilled out over her tongue, washing down the front of her, wrapping about her feet, her waist, her neck—a coldness she could not understand, could not fear, could not resist. So she stood quietly, and she spoke in one voice with the others.

  “We will be home.”

  “I will be home.”

  “He will be home.”

  Home. Home.

  The horned one stepped then from the edge of the circle. She was a great giantess, thinly proportioned but strong as a sturdy tree. Her legs were those of an elk, and elk’s horns grew from her brow. Where she walked, the ground rumbled. She was naked save for the fur that covered her hide, and for the long hair that fell from her head down her back. The Bronze looked very small upon her chest, and it gleamed there like a melting star.

  “Very well,” she said, and her golden animal eyes fixed upon Daylily. “Very well, we will carry the Bronze into the mortal realms. And we will make them—”

  Mine.

  The twelve spoke the word as one, and they did not know what they said.

  Mine!

  In the deepness of night, hours before hope of dawn, the village of Greenwell slept fitfully. Men lay with hands upon weapons, and women clutched their little ones close. Guard dogs lay upon the threshold of every door, dozing between alertness and sleep.

  One dog, a shaggy brown lurcher, growled in his dreams.

  The boy sat up on his pallet and gazed across the dimness of his family hut. He saw the outline of his massive protector lying in a bundle at the door. And yet the boy did not take the usual comfort at the sight.

  “Bullbear,” he whispered.

  The dog, instantly awake, heaved itself to its feet and hastened to the child’s side, careful even with its lumbering bulk not to step upon the other children lying on near pallets. The boy put his arms around the dog’s neck, feeling the beat of that great, loyal heart. “Bullbear, sit,” he said, and the dog sat.

  The boy waited. He did not know for what. But he waited with his hand on Bullbear’s back. Outside, the night was full of sounds, birds and monkeys and insects, a cacophony of noise that the boy and the dog scarcely noticed. Instead, they both listened to the silence of the well; the well in which Mama Greenteeth no longer sang her wicked songs.

  Bullbear growled. And as he growled, the boy heard the first call.

  Send out your firstborn! Send out your firstborn!

  The boy stood. His dog growled more savagely than before, then crouched in a whine when the child motioned him to silence. Moving like one in a dream, the boy crossed his father’s hut and stood in the doorway.

  “Fall-of-Rain,” said the boy’s father behind him. The boy did not turn but stood silhouetted against the night sky, listening. “Fall-of-Rain, back to bed,” said his father.

  Bullbear’s growl was continuous now. He pressed up against the boy’s side, his haunches nearly as high as the young one’s shoulder. He rumbled in his throat, then let out a vicious, snarling bark.

  The boy smacked the dog’s face. That massive head drew back, and the dog yelped at this sudden cruelty from its master.

  “Fall-of-Rain!” said his father sharply as he rose from his bed. Then he too heard what the boy had heard.

  Send out your firstborn! Send out your firstborn!

  “Cursed flame!” the man gasped. His wife was up now, reaching for her little ones, who hastened to her circling arms. She put out a hand to her oldest son, calling his name.

  The boy stood with his back to them, his head tilted a little to one side. His heart beat a wild resistance in his breast, and yet his body moved of its own accord. He stepped out of his father’s house into the dirt of the village street.

  Through the darkness, twelve bright lights approached. Tall figures of shadow loomed like storm clouds, low to the ground and moving swiftly, thundering as they went: Send out your firstborn!

  Other children appeared in the doorways of all the village houses, some older, some very small, all those old enough to walk but not yet adults. They, like the boy, stepped out into the street and gathered together. Mothers followed and fathers as well, catching at their children, struggling to lift them off their feet, to carry them back. But it was like catching at smoke. Their hands could not grasp what no longer belonged to them.

  The tithe is due.

  The Bronze Warriors standing beyond the village fringes raised their arms in summoning. And the firstborn children, moving like phantoms, flowed down from the safety of their homes and hearths, their eyes full of the Bronze light. Mothers screamed. Fathers grabbed weapons and charged down the hill.

  But one figure outstretched the others. Bullbear, faithful and true, his mouth red with snarling, caught up to his young master and leapt between him and the otherworldly beings. His nose caught the scents of distant worlds and a scent deeper and more dire. His whole body trembled with the terror of what he smelled, but far outweighing terror was devotion.

  He flung himself at the nearest of the warriors.

  And she, her red hair streaming behind, stepped forward with her shining stone upraised, and plunged it into the neck of the leaping dog.

  Bullbear fell broken at her feet. She put out her arms to the boy, who stood so near, unable to see for the light of the Bronze in his eyes. Daylily opened her mouth, and words came forth:

  Come to me, firstborn. We will make the worlds new.

  The child was in her arms then. She lifted him as though he weighed no more than a feather, and she carried him away from the village, following the footsteps of her brethren. She felt the presence of the other eleven around her, as near to her as her own skin. She was one with them, and they with her. She clutched the boy close to her heart as gently and as firmly as a mother might, and she carried him away into darkness—him, and other children as well, caught up in her wake and that of the Twelve.

  What are you doing?

  Daylily gasped and dropped the boy, who lay still and dull upon the ground. Daylily bent double, her hands clutching her head as the wolf, ravening and furious, tore at her mind.

  What are you doing? Are you a puppet on a string? Will you never let me free?

  “Get out!” she screamed. “I don’
t want you!”

  It doesn’t matter what you want! I am your deepest, truest self! And I won’t let you bow to this new idol as you bowed to the idol of your father!

  “You are no longer part of me! I bound you!”

  We bound you.

  I’ll always be part of you, the she-wolf roared as she hauled against her chains, rattling Daylily’s body to the core. You’ll never subdue me, not for long!

  “I’ll kill you, then,” Daylily replied. “It will be as though you’ve never been.”

  You can’t! You’ll only kill yourself!

  “It does not matter,” said Daylily. And her mouth moved and spoke of its own: It does not matter. It is mine.

  She knelt then and picked up the child, and once more carried him in the path trod by the other warriors. She followed the gleaming of their bronze stones into the night, into the shadows, moving swiftly across terrible reaches and landscapes that her heart knew. For this was her homeland.

  This is my home.

  They came at last to a great space bare of trees other than an enclosure of four walls of saplings. These were clad not in their own greenery but in the shining white of starflower blooms, pale little faces turned to the sky, reflecting the stars above. As Daylily drew nearer, she saw that the saplings, though thin, were far taller than she had expected, lifting the starflowers high into the night. Water flowed amid the trees, gentle and life-giving. This was a place of magic far deeper than spells or enchantments.

  This was the heart of the land; the center that can neither be found on a mortal map nor seen by mortal eyes. It was the core from which the heart beat the lifeblood of a nation, of a people.

  The warriors, holding the children tight, ringed round the starflower-laden trees, and they stood silent and solemn, Daylily in their midst with her Advocate, Sun Eagle, on her right. All faced inward to those trees, to those blossoms, to the water shining in the light of stars.

  A wind arose and touched the treetops with cold fingers. Wherever it moved, starflowers fell in rain of gleaming white, like snow.

  “How solemn it is,” Daylily whispered, to herself rather than to the boy she held. “Surely we wait for the voice of a god or a prophet. Something good is near.”