Shadow Hand

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  “Pardon?” Foxbrush, still leaning against his tree, looked up.

  “Stories, a friend of mine once told me, cling to a certain pattern,” Redman continued. “Like the seasons, cycling round and round. And they always find ways to fit back into that cycle, and nothing we do can stop them.”

  Foxbrush made no answer. He squinted and frowned and stood like a lump.

  Redman heaved a great sigh, perhaps of sorrow, perhaps of mere tiredness, perhaps of neither at all. Then he grinned at the forest floor, shaking his head. “I too was meant to be a king,” he said. “Once upon a time, long ago and far away. I was like your Leo. I too was born to be crowned. I too was pledged to wed the daughter of my most powerful supporter.” He sighed again, but his grin remained in place. “I too had a cousin who took both my throne and my bride.”

  Foxbrush stared at the dark shadow from whence came Redman’s voice.

  “I suppose this means I was in your cousin’s shoes,” Redman said, “and I should resent you for his sake. Perhaps I do. A little. That is, of course, if any of the wild tale you’ve just spun me is true!”

  “It is true,” Foxbrush whispered.

  “I think it must be. Because only true stories cycle with such precision. Only a true story would have led you to me so that I find myself once again coming to the aid of one who would take the throne his cousin will never sit upon. For some, unlikely though they may be, are born to be king. And some, however likely, are not. Such is the truth of stories.” He shrugged. “It all comes back to blood and love in the end.”

  Foxbrush tried to swallow. There was sap in his mouth, and it tasted sickly upon his tongue. This conversation had quite gotten away from him, and he wasn’t certain what to do about it. He wasn’t certain of anything anymore. Perhaps he never had been certain of anything.

  “I’ve got to find Daylily,” he said quietly. “That’s all that matters. I’ve got to find her.”

  Redman shook himself suddenly, like a dog after a bath, and smiled at Foxbrush, who was just as blessed that he could not see it. On Redman’s scarred face, smiles were gruesome.

  “Well, Prince Foxbrush, I don’t know how to find your lady or how to get you back to your time. But never fear! No doubt the rest of the story will present itself. And in the meanwhile, I do know where a warm meal waits and a bed upon which you may rest your head. Will you stop awhile in the Eldest’s House?”

  “I will,” Foxbrush replied. He accepted Redman’s proffered shoulder once more, and they continued on their hobbling way back through the jungle.

  18

  TIME AND AGAIN. Time and again.

  And yet, what is Time? Measured out in the beatings of these hearts.

  Disappointment heaped upon disappointment. And yet, what is disappointment without desire?

  Desire . . . ah yes. Desire surges in these veins, pounds in these heads. Blood and love, and the fire that flows between.

  This land is good. This land is fair. This land is rich. This land is . . .

  Mine!

  “Mine,” Daylily whispered. A thrill akin to both sorrow and delight washed over her, leaving a strange prickling in her head, behind her vision. She followed Sun Eagle, her eyes round and wide and intent as a young dog’s fixed upon its master. Her Advocate. That’s what he called himself and what she knew him to be in a deep, instinctual place of her mind. She would follow him.

  She would kill for him.

  This is what it means to be free, she thought as the Wood Between shuddered and drew back to make room for their passing. To be free is to be ruthless, and ruthless will I be. All to the good of the land! The land I have too long watched succumb to poison and invasion. I will fight for my . . .

  . . . for the master.

  And it was good, even in her head, for the wolf could not resist her now, could not hurt her or hers.

  They came to the gate of silver-branch trees, and Daylily now saw it for what it was. How could she have missed it before? Of course there were gates leading to all worlds, all times! Of course they would look nothing like mortal gates, for they were not made by mortal hands! It was all so simple and so clear now. After the Bronze was taken. After the first blood was spilt. After the first tithe was paid.

  Sun Eagle said nothing as he led the quiet girl out of the Between and back into the vibrant, hot air of the Near World. Indeed, he could not speak at first, so keen was the quickening of his pulse, the thickening in his throat. How many far and fantastical countries had he seen since that morning long ago when he, a mere boy on the threshold of manhood, had passed into the Gray Wood to make his rite of passage and bring honor to his father’s name? He had passed into the Gray Wood, and the cord that secured him to his own world and time had broken. So he had become lost, never to return to his father’s waiting arms, never to return to his lovely chosen bride.

  He felt again for the blue bead painted with the white starflower that he wore in the hollow of his throat, above the dangling Bronze. Her name mark. Her final gift. She must have believed that he died long ago.

  She must have died herself.

  But he had no time to think of this. Not now, with the whole of his native country opening before him, and the drive to protect, to save, to . . . to possess. To possess for the good of all!

  So Sun Eagle led, his head full of too many thoughts to put into words, and Daylily followed. She was tired, and she knew it with a distant vagueness, but she would not dream of resting. Who could rest now? There was so much to do!

  They came out of the Wood Between, and she saw that they had come to a different gorge than that she had climbed down in her flight from her wedding. This one was narrower and deeper, but as with the other, a path led up to the table country above. Sun Eagle climbed and Daylily hurried after. And when they reached the summit, they found the land clearer here, not thick with jungle but well tilled and wide with rolling green hills.

  “Crescent Land!” Sun Eagle exclaimed, his eyes shining.

  “Middlecrescent,” Daylily whispered. She felt a jolt in the pit of her stomach. Then they reached for each other, hand clutching hand, as linked now by the spirit of their homeland as they were by that which lived inside them.

  Then a cloud passed over Sun Eagle’s face, and his grip on Daylily’s hand tightened. “Do you smell that?”

  “What?” asked Daylily.

  “Faerie beast.” Sun Eagle snarled the words. “A fey power living in our country. An intruder.”

  And Daylily said in a voice as soft and gentle as that she once used to order tea or a certain gown laid out for dinner, “We must kill it.”

  Sun Eagle nodded. “We must.”

  They moved swiftly across this landscape, unhindered by the growth of jungle. And the air was hot, but the wind was fresh, and they both laughed as they ran, though Daylily’s limbs trembled with the thrill of fear and delight that was becoming so mixed up in her being that she could scarcely tell the one from the other.

  Tocho sensed their approach.

  Tocho sat on Skymount Watch, a rocky outcropping that rose above the fields and greens of this pleasant country. He was still relatively new to the Near World, but he liked it well. In the Far World there were too many others of his kind, brutal and greedy, and many much larger than he. Here, he could be master if he liked, for there was little enough the mortals could do.

  Amarok the Wolf had had the right idea, all those ages ago, when he came to the Near World and made himself a god over these little people.

  But, Tocho thought, I am not a fool like Amarok. He lost his godhood because he was too fond of the pretty women of this land. A woman with a pretty face will always bring a fellow low in the end. I don’t fall for a pretty face, however, for was there ever a face as pretty as mine?

  So he sat contented upon his rocky seat, and his whiskers twitched with sensitive interest at every breeze that passed. Silky black fur clothed his lithe body, even his cheeks and around his eyes, though otherwise he was much like a
man, if far bigger. His toes and fingers were extraordinarily long and tipped with lovely, lethal claws. His ears were large and tufted, and his mouth split into a cleft cat’s grin. When the sun shone upon him, as it did now, faint jaguar blotches showed in an elegant but subdued pattern across his torso and haunches.

  He was Tocho the Panther, Big Cat of Skymount. And the rock on which he sat was carved in his own likeness. Ugly, perhaps, to mortal eyes. But what did mortals know?

  When the mortals came up from their village, climbing to this place of his totem stone to pay him tribute, they brought him fresh meats, still alive and bleating, and they bowed down and sang songs: songs to the length of his tail, to the whiteness of his whiskers, to the saucer moons of his copper eyes, and to the gleam of his smile.

  What a happy life was his. A fat, happy, sun-bathing life. Let Lumé shine down upon him with disapproval; what did Tocho care, so long as the rays were warm! Thus he sat atop Skymount Watch, and the tip of his tail twitched as he idly sharpened the claws of his right hand upon a stone, making sparks.

  His whiskers sensed them first. Then his nose picked up their smell. Last of all, his ears twitched to the beat of their hearts.

  Tocho dropped his filing stone and stood upright, staring out across the land that was his own little demesne.

  “The Bronze!” he said. And then he threw back his head and sounded the panther’s rasping roar, spitting it through his fangs as a challenge. It echoed out from Skymount, rolling down to the land below his rocky fortress. The villagers living near stopped their work, their gazes rising in fear and curiosity to the stone outcropping high above, which could be seen for miles in that part of the country. Was the tribute not paid? Was the offering unsatisfactory?

  Must they fight once more for their flocks, fight an immortal power far greater than their stone weapons?

  But Tocho stood trembling where he was, invisible to all searching eyes. He had a panther’s knack for becoming no more than a shadow. The roar rolled down and round him for some time even as he stood in silence once more, staring into the valleys and on out as far as the distant gorge.

  “The Bronze,” he whispered again. Then he turned, leapt from the stone, and ran at a loping gait down the side of Skymount.

  He must drive them out. Now! Before their power grew too strong. He could smell them—smell it—and he knew the bond had been made already and the first tithe delivered. Who had died? Who among his Faerie brethren had succumbed already to one of the Twelve, the spilled blood effectively sealing the country for the Bronze? He could not guess. He kept himself apart from the other Faeries as much as possible, preferring the solitary kingdom he’d made for himself in these parts. But one had died; he knew this for certain, dreadful truth.

  There was still time to drive them back out. One dead surely could not form a bond so strong that Tocho could not break it! He would kill as many of them as dared draw near and let the rest flee back to their cursed Mound and say, “Not that country! Let us find a land more gentle!”

  Yes. Yes, that’s how it would be. Tocho panted as he ran, his great arms sweeping aside branches, his great legs tearing up the ground, his claws shrieking as they raked into stone. He was mighty and he was dreadful. To be sure, he had become a little fat and lazy in this fat and lazy country, and the mortal air was thin in his lungs. But he was Tocho still, a name to be feared! Had not his own queen driven him from her demesne at the terror of his bloodthirsty name? Had not warriors and hunters alike fallen prey to his teeth and jaws, to his strike in the dark, and his stealth and cunning? Did not even the Knights of Farthestshore, so brave and so glittering in their self-righteous glory, fear to cross his path?

  So he puffed himself up even as his breathing grew short, telling himself truth and lies with the same fluid ease with which he had once stalked Faerie woods of the Far World.

  Sun Eagle, still holding Daylily’s hand, came to a halt. They were two miles from the gorge now, standing in a fallow field. Daylily smelled the nearness of a village, though she saw no signs of life.

  Sun Eagle could smell the approach of Tocho.

  “He is coming,” he said, squeezing Daylily’s fingers eagerly.

  “Who?” Daylily asked, a little breathless and excited, though she knew not why.

  “Our new enemy. Are you ready to kill?”

  She thought of the dark well, the blackness brightened only by Mama Greenteeth’s eyes. She tasted the blood in the water. And she felt a mortal child in her arms.

  No . . . whimpered the wolf in her mind.

  “I am ready,” said Daylily. Then she said, “I have no weapon.”

  “You have the Bronze,” said Sun Eagle. He took his own melted medallion from around his neck as he spoke, and Daylily saw that it was shaped like the head of a spear. How had she not seen it before? Or had the shape changed since last she’d bothered to look?

  She let go of Sun Eagle’s hand and pulled her own medallion until the cord snapped behind her neck. It was bigger and brighter than ever, brighter even than the sun above. She felt the pulse of blood in her wrist flow into her hand with surging energy. The stone was like a great golden tooth, the tooth of a predator far deadlier than any she knew.

  It was her own tooth. She was the predator now.

  “There he is,” said Sun Eagle, pointing.

  Daylily shaded her eyes with her free hand, and she saw the black shadow at a distance, moving swiftly across the clear country. It disappeared into a valley, then reappeared, now near enough that she could make out its form and even, she imagined, its face.

  Tocho stopped in his tracks. He saw them: two small, solitary figures standing in the middle of a field of grass and weeds, the one brown and strong, the other white and frail but crowned with hair like fire.

  He saw the stones in their hands.

  His courage, which he had convinced himself was live and strong and bloodthirsty, proved itself the fleeting ghost it was and fled his body in a rush so painful that he roared again, his voice slashing at the wind. The sound rolled over Daylily like nothing she had ever heard, and it terrified her.

  She smiled. Without a command from Sun Eagle, her feet started moving, the thin remnants of her wedding slippers falling away at last so that she ran barefoot.

  She chased Tocho.

  He saw her coming and he fled. Back the way he had come mere moments before, he ran with the great galloping pace of a panther, silent but pulsing with dread. He knew she followed, and he knew that she could not hope, in her own strength, to outpace him.

  But he also knew that she did not move of her own strength. Not anymore.

  Though her heart beat with mad terror, Daylily ran, her teeth set in a snarl and her hair flying behind her. Sun Eagle came after, but he could not catch her, for the thrill of the hunt was not so new in him. He shouted warnings that he knew she would not hear, then stopped wasting his breath. They pursued the panther all the way back across the fields of his little demesne, and the villagers, after one glimpse of their oppressor thus pursued by the red girl and her dark companion, hid in their homes and caves, shielding their faces from the sight.

  Tocho’s eyes fixed only upon the peak of Skymount Watch, his totem, his haven. If he could only reach it, he lied to himself, he would be safe. They’d not touch him there!

  Already he could feel the bite of the Bronze in his flesh. No! He was Tocho the Panther! He could not die!

  Up the incline he raced, on all fours now as he scrabbled up the rocks, sending many larger stones hurtling down at his hunters. Daylily was struck in the cheek by one small stone and narrowly put up her hand to protect herself from another, which bounced off the Bronze and shattered into tiny pieces behind her. She was so close, she could feel the pound of his heart, and she wanted him gone from her country like she had wanted nothing before in her life.

  She wanted him dead. By her hand, not Sun Eagle’s.

  Tocho leapt. He caught the top of the carved likeness, and he pulled himself
up, up to that stone watch from which he had ruled and feasted for years he did not count. Whirling to face his enemies at last, he crouched, his hands clutching the stone, his feet braced, all his claws out and gleaming. He snarled, his face splitting with teeth and a great pink tongue.

  Daylily saw him and screamed inside, but she could not have said whether it was a scream of fear or of hunger now, so strong was the drive to kill. Her feet slipped on the stones shifting beneath her, but she caught herself, tearing her hands, and crawled the last few paces to the base of the stone.

  Tocho looked down at her and snarled again.

  But it wasn’t Tocho.

  I will fight you! roared the red wolf. For it was she whom Daylily saw upon the stone, the heavy bindings about her neck and limbs dangling, for the moment, uselessly.

  Daylily went white in a wash of freezing cold. “How did you get free?” she whispered in a breath.

  I will fight you! roared the wolf, saliva dripping from her jaws. You will never be rid of me!

  “No!” Daylily screamed.

  Tocho, standing above, forgot his own fear as he stared down at her, this vicious warrior woman screaming and collapsing to her knees below him. She feared him after all! His big cat’s leer turned to a smile, and his tail lashed a moment as he caught his balance.

  Then he leapt.

  He landed atop Daylily, wrapping his mighty limbs about her, and she felt the heat of his breath upon her face, her neck, in her hair. But it was the wolf, not Tocho, who fought her in her addled mind, and she shrieked and dropped the Bronze as they grappled together down the stony hill. She caught the cat by the throat, and for a moment, when they reached a flat place and paused in their tumble, she was on top, her hands at the beast’s throat, her knee pressed into his heart.

  The wolf in her mind, whom she believed she held in her grasp, gagged: You are not a killer!

  “You are!” Daylily screamed. “You’ll kill us all!”

  Tocho, not understanding what was being shouted in his face by this wild creature, tried to smack her off with a swipe of his claws. But she was empowered by a force far stronger than any he had ever known, and somehow he could not land a hit, though his claws tore through her hair and tangled there. He managed to overbalance them, however, and once more they fell down the incline.