Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) (41 page)

“Daylily,” he said, “I won’t marry you.”

She closed her eyes, though only for a moment. Then she looked at him and said, “I know.”

“That is,” he hastened on, “I won’t marry you unless . . . unless it is what
you
want. Not what your father wants, or the barons or Southlands or politics or . . . or any of those fine excuses they’ve fed you all these years. I won’t marry you for those reasons, because I love you too well.”

He put out his hand, and in that light she saw it as whole, just as the shadow it cast. “Come back with me. Help me save Southlands in whatever capacity you see fit. As my queen or as my friend. Either way I . . . I don’t think I can do it without you.”

She caught his hand in both of hers. She said only, “Foxbrush!”

Sometimes there is no need to say more. Especially when sylphs are catching you up and hurtling you across time and space and worlds. Sometimes the clasp of hands—the one strong, the other weak—is more than enough. For through the clasping of hands, the pulse of blood may be felt; and the equal pulse of love and the understanding of love without words.

M
EANWHILE
, L
IONHEART
FACED
his imminent hanging.

Twelve hours or so of living under the looming threat of death made the certainty of death no more palatable now. His heart beat a frantic pace in his throat as guardsmen hauled him roughly down the stone stairs of North Tower. He could hear shouts going up throughout the House as word of the baron’s rescue traveled.

“Lionheart! Lionheart, I’m sorry!” Felix gasped from behind. Lionheart tried to look around, to catch the young prince’s eye. But he was struck in the jaw and told to face forward, and he did not have the strength to disobey.

So, in the wake of the baron’s wrath, they marched at double-time down the stairs and through the Great Hall. The baron did not pause and waved away all those who flocked to him full of questions and concerns. He led them all out to the courtyard alight with torches that cast an eerie glow in that predawn gloom. A glow that made the scaffold standing in the middle of the yard—right where the old Starflower fountain had
been before the Dragon destroyed it—look like some sort of otherworldly creature. Perhaps a dragon itself.

“Iubdan’s beard!” Felix exclaimed when he saw it, yanking against the strong arms of the guards who held him. “Are you all out of your minds?”

Sir Palinurus and other lords of Parumvir staggered down from their chambers and, nearly as frantic as the prince himself at the sight of Felix so near the scaffold, fell upon the baron like so many vultures, pecking him with protests. But guards with fierce and frightened faces pushed them back, using the butt end of their lances roughly enough to show willingness for more violence if necessary.

The baron stood ringed in torchlight, surrounded by his guards, and his face was unreadable. It was not difficult to believe that he could and would order the death of his strongest ally’s crown prince.

Instead, however, he turned to Baron Blackrock, who stood near him. “Have the Baroness of Middlecrescent brought to me,” he said softly. Baron Blackrock, trembling, hastened to obey, only to be caught by Middlecrescent’s restraining hand. “In chains,” Middlecrescent added, more softly still.

“Yes, my liege,” Blackrock gasped, though Middlecrescent was not yet his sovereign by law. He hastened away, summoning his men to follow.

The baron turned to Lionheart and Felix, surveying them with his cold eyes. Then he said, “Where is the girl? My wife’s lady who aided in this little venture?”

“Here, my lord!” cried Dovetree, hastening forward and curtsying deeply before the baron. She smiled most winningly and was very pretty in that place of execution. “At your service.”

“My service?” echoed the baron, eyeing her. His thin lids closed partially over the dark bulbs of his eyes but could not hide the light reflected there. “I do not keep traitors in my service.”

“What?” Dovetree gasped but had no time to say more before guards, at a motion from the baron, fell upon her and bound her, screaming, alongside Lionheart and Felix. “But, my lord! I saw to your rescue! If not for me, you’d still be—”

“Traitors will be granted no voice,” said the baron, adjusting the cloak he wore over his naked torso, fastening the buckles at the shoulder. “Gag her.”

Felix felt sick as he watched rough-handed men stuff rags into the girl’s mouth and tie a gag in place, muting Dovetree’s continued screams. Her eyes kept rolling toward the scaffold, and suddenly her knees buckled and she lay all but fainted upon the courtyard stones. Felix wished he could comfort her and had to remind himself that she had tricked them, had certainly brought about Lionheart’s death and, quite possibly, his own (given the look in the baron’s eye).

Lionheart stood with his head down, staring at the stones beneath his feet. Looking at him, Felix thought how strange it was to be here in this faraway foreign court beside the jester-prince, waiting to be hanged. It was perhaps stranger than their meeting in the Village of Dragons.

“Leonard,” Felix whispered, and Lionheart glanced at him through the thick tangle of hair falling over his forehead. “Leonard, forgive me. I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t, Prince Felix,” said Lionheart. But he couldn’t find more words to say, so he stared again at his feet.

Where was the Path? He had been promised a Path! But he saw only shadows and torchlight and the ominous scaffold, so near. Was this it, then? Was this the one and only quest that he, Childe Lionheart of Farthestshore, would face?
Make peace with your father and . . . die
.

But if so, what then? Had he a right to complain? He, who had plunged into the darkness of the Final Water and stared down the flaming throat of the Dragon . . . he who had been renewed, restored, forgiven.

“Very well,” he whispered to the one he hoped was listening, though he saw no sign of his presence. “Very well, my Lord. If this is what you would have of me, let me die with honor.”

Let me die for the sake of the
cousin I have hated. And in my death, let me
show love.

And that was the moment—with the pound of his blood in his temples and the rush of terror he could not suppress roiling in his gut—the moment he knew the impossible had happened. He loved Foxbrush. He loved his cousin, and he would die for him. Foolish Foxbrush. Weak Foxbrush. Chosen heir of the Eldest, baffled fool.

But none of that mattered, not now. Lionheart would die for him, and it would be a good death.

So Childe Lionheart stood straighter, throwing his head back and unbowing his shoulders. The guards restraining him shifted their grips and watched him uneasily, but he took no notice of them. He looked at Felix, and his eye was bright and his voice did not tremble when he said, “All will be well. Wait. Just wait . . .”

At that moment, the voice of the baroness was heard ringing across the courtyard. “I do not see why you should handle me so roughly! I can walk quite well on my own—
Darling
!
”

The baroness wafted across the courtyard in a flutter of butterfly frills. She flew to her husband, her face full of smiles, exclaiming, “Darling, how glad I am to see you well and whole! Have you quite changed your mind, then?”

Her guards caught her; otherwise she might have thrown her arms around the baron’s neck. He looked as though he had swallowed snake spit, his eyes bugging out from his face. But he spoke as quietly as ever, more quietly perhaps.

“How dare you speak to me thusly, woman?”

“But, darling,” said the baroness, as yet unaware of her peril, looking perplexed at the shackles on her wrists and the hands clamped like more shackles on her arms, “what do you mean?”

“You betrayed me,” said he. The gray of dawn streaking the sky fell upon the baron’s face and made him look so very old. Beneath the shielding cloak, he was a withered, wrinkled, gray man. And his voice was so low that only the baroness and those two who held her heard what he said (and those two turned their faces away and hoped to forget, as they valued their lives!).

“You betrayed me. The one person in all this world whom I have trusted completely.”

At those words, the baroness lost all trace of the silliness that so regularly painted her face more thickly than cosmetics. With deep sincerity she gazed up at her husband and tried to put out a hand to him, forgetting that she was restrained.

“My love,” she said, “I could never betray you. You betray yourself, but I will only ever bring you back.”

But the baron could not bear her words or her face. He turned away, and those standing nearest caught a glimpse of agony such as they had never seen in the eyes of any lord of Middlecrescent. When he spoke again, however, his voice was firm enough to say:

“Hang the traitors.”

Dovetree tried to scream, nearly choking on the rags in her mouth. The baroness turned and saw her lady-in-waiting being carried up the scaffold steps. “Oh!” she cried, struggling against her guards. “Let poor Dovetree go! She’s done nothing to merit this!”

“She betrayed you, my dear,” said the baron with deep bitterness. “Let traitors hang with traitors.”

Sir Palinurus shouted, and all the men of Parumvir raised an angry, threatening cry. The guards holding Prince Felix dared not move, for they saw the promise of war on those northern faces, a war they knew Southlands could not hope to win. But the dread of their master was great, and they stood frozen, unwilling to free the prince without the baron’s word, unwilling to drag him up that rickety stair and, with every step, drag their nation closer to destruction.

Felix watched Lionheart being pulled away, behind the collapsing Dovetree and before the confused baroness, who kept saying, “My dear girl, it will be all right! Lumé, child, don’t carry on so! You’ll be all out of breath!”

The baroness had strength in her. Just when one might most expect her to give way to hysterics, she seemed calm and motherly, smiling even at Lionheart as they were arranged beneath the nooses. Perhaps this was but the form of her hysterics.

Lionheart closed his eyes. As his hands were bound before him and he breathed the stench of the guardsman’s breath upon his face and heard the creaking of the scaffold floorboards, he pictured in his mind, as he had promised himself he would, a face. A sweet face with enormous silver eyes, otherworldly, strange, and lovely, crowned in roses.

“Beyond the Final Water falling,” he whispered as the noose was placed around his neck.

And Felix, standing below, watching all, wished desperately that he could look away. But he couldn’t. He stood staring, and he found himself
saying, though he couldn’t hear his own voice in the din of the crowd, “Aethelbald, please . . .”

A wolfish snarl exploded over the heads of all those gathered.

An immediate hush fell upon the courtyard as everyone gasped and whirled in place, seeking the source of that horrible sound.

Another snarl, and now Felix saw the crowd parting, men and women falling back upon one another, dropping torches that sputtered out on the stones. This did not matter, for daylight grew keener by the moment. Indeed, it seemed as though the sun burst over the edge of the world quite suddenly, striking the eyes of all those present so that they believed they saw an enormous red wolf in their midst.

Then Daylily’s voice rang out against the stone.

“Unhand my mother at once, you dogs!”

No one moved to stop the wild, red-haired maid who sprang across the courtyard, past the guards, and up the scaffold stairs. She took a knife from the hand of the guard standing beside her mother, and in a single stroke (though the fibers were thick and tough with age), she cut through the rope. It fell like a dead snake upon the floor.

Then she turned and did the same to Lionheart’s and Dovetree’s nooses. And no one moved or spoke, for they all believed they must be dreaming. This wild creature in savage garments made of skins standing protectively before the three prisoners, her face so beautiful and so fierce, could not possibly be Lady Daylily! They must all be dreaming.

Even the baron, standing with his mouth agape, could not find the will to speak a command. His daughter turned on him with the ferocity of a she-wolf, and for the first time in his life, the baron was truly afraid.

Another voice, much gentler than hers, spoke then. Though it was mild, it drew every eye away from the wild apparition of Daylily on the scaffold.

“I have returned.”

Shadow Hand of Here and There. They all knew him at a glance. His untamed black beard, his strange, ancient clothes; the sight, the smell, the sound of old, old days that emanated from his face and every movement of his body as he made his way to the center of the courtyard, walking in a path of new sunlight. His frame was perhaps narrower than they might
have expected, but his bearing was upright and his stride commanding, as befit any hero of old.

And while his hands hung at his sides in crippled ruin, the shadow cast by the sun showed strong hands clenched into fists.

He walked up onto the scaffold as a king might ascend the dais of his throne, and he took his place beside Daylily, with Lionheart at his back. He looked out upon those gathered, upon bound Prince Felix, the gathered barons. Last of all, he fixed his gaze upon the Baron of Middlecrescent.

Middlecrescent began to tremble.

“Do you know who I am?” the figure of legends asked.

The baron nodded.

“Speak it, then.”

But Middlecrescent could not find his tongue. So the bearded man raised one of his ruined hands and declared to all assembed there, “I am Foxbrush, chosen heir of my uncle Hawkeye, and rightful ruler of Southlands. Is there any who would contest me?”

Many eyes turned to Middlecrescent, many jaws clenched, many breaths caught. All waited for what they knew must come.

But the baron bowed his head. And he said nothing.

Suddenly Baron Blackrock, who had long resented and hated Middlecrescent for reasons best left unearthed, stepped forward and cried, “Middlecrescent tried to seize the throne before the Council had even declared you dead!”

With that cry, the other barons joined in, and soon the courtyard was a storm of noise. Felix, standing with the Southlander guards, felt the tension go through them; yet another fear of impending war, this time of a more insidious nature: civil war.

But a second wolfish snarl cut through the chaos and brought all the barons to silence, looking over their shoulders for an enemy they could not see. Daylily stepped back again and nodded to Foxbrush.

Foxbrush said, “Bring Middlecrescent before me.”

The guards holding Felix—who were no fools and could sense which way the wind was blowing—left him standing as they joined their brothers surrounding the unresisting baron. They did not need to force him, for
he went before their prodding as quietly as a panther, his eyes smoldering but hooded. He looked up at Foxbrush and then went down on one knee before him.

The act was as contemptuous as though he’d spat in the prince’s face. Even backed by Daylily, Foxbrush flinched at the sight and for a moment forgot who he was. Then Daylily touched his arm, and he pulled himself together.