Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)
Anne Elisabeth Stengl
Prologue
THEY SAY ALL THE OLD STORIES—all the true stories—are about blood. This simply is not so.
All the true stories are about love. And blood. The two so often go hand in hand, they’re difficult to separate, but it is important not to divide the one from the other, or the story becomes unbalanced and is no longer true. That is why this is a story about blood and love, and the many things that lie between.
For Foxbrush, this story began on the worst day of his life to date.
Foxbrush’s father had insisted that his mother allow their son to travel with him to the court of Foxbrush’s uncle, the king, to be properly presented. Foxbrush, a shy, unprepossessing child, considered this visit (and the coinciding obligation to Talk to People) a terror of nightmarish proportions and trembled in the seat of his father’s carriage all the way to the Eldest’s House.
Upon arrival, he was separated from his father and shuffled into step behind an elegant footman, who led him down strange halls and passages. His young mind, bewildered by the grandeur around him that far outmatched anything he’d known in his mother’s remote mountain home, retreated further into itself. Many of the halls they passed through were not closed in by walls but open to the elements, tall pillars supporting the roof overhead after the fashion of Southlander architecture. The sounds and smells of the Eldest’s House assailed Foxbrush from every side. Rather than see too much, he watched the footman’s feet treading across the white marble floor.
Those feet stopped. Foxbrush stopped.
“Here you are, young sir,” said the footman, opening a door.
A blast of children’s laughter assaulted Foxbrush’s ears. His eyes grew owlishly large. “Please,” he said, “I’d rather not.”
But the footman placed a hand on Foxbrush’s shoulder and pushed him inside. The door shut. Foxbrush was trapped.
The room was spacious, with a great many tall, open windows all around through which breezes blew, wafting colorful curtains like circus flags. And wafting more colorfully still was an army of children, all in gorgeous clothes, laughing so that their teeth flashed.
Foxbrush, who had little experience with anyone his own age, backed up against the door and held on to his hat as a final defense against the oncoming hordes.
No one paid him any heed; they were busy about their games. After several minutes of terrified observation, Foxbrush thought he began to discern some sort of pattern in the antics before him. One boy stood in the center of the room with, of all things, a curtain pulled down from one of the windows wrapped around his shoulders. Through his terror, Foxbrush recognized his cousin Leo, whom he had known since infancy. Leo held the fallen curtain rod in both hands and shouted:
“Warriors, to me! To me! Twelve warriors!”
Four children, boys and girls, separated from the group and flocked around him, a number that seemed to satisfy the curtain wearer. They were all younger than Leo. Little ones, Foxbrush thought from the superior vantage of eight years. They looked up to their leader with awe-filled eyes, ready to do his bidding.
“Shadow Hand!” Leo called across the room. “Are you ready to fight?”
On the other side of the room, another cluster of children crouched in noisy council. One of them stood, and she was the most unusual person Foxbrush could ever remember seeing. Her hair was bright red. And curly! She might as well have been some otherworldly being here among the dark-skinned Southlanders.
She was armed with an unclothed rag doll, which she brandished menacingly. “I am King Shadow Hand of Here and There! And I will slay you, fiend of darkness! Slay you and save my fickle fleeting Fair from your evil mound!”
The curtain-clad Leo frowned. “Hold on,” he said, and all his miniature warriors caught their breath. “What’s a fickle fleeting Fair?”
“You know,” said the red-haired girl. “The maiden King Shadow Hand saves. The one he holds on to.”
“I don’t remember that,” said her foe.
“It’s true,” the girl-king replied.
“I remember him losing his hands. I remember him bargaining with the Faerie queen. I remember him fighting the twelve warriors. I don’t remember a maiden.”
The red-haired girl dropped her rag doll weapon and crossed the room to a pile of books left strewn and open upon the ground. It was enough to make Foxbrush recoil in horror: The spines would be all bent and broken, the pages torn by these uncivilized ruffians! But the girl shoved several aside with her foot until she pulled from the wreckage a once fine illustrated copy of Eanrin’s Rhymes for Children and opened it to a dog-eared page.
“See?” she said, turning to Leo and pointing to a certain woodcut, which may or may not have been intended for young eyes. It depicted a king with a fierce black beard and a noble face clinging to a rather buxom young woman who was—as far as Foxbrush could discern—melting.
Foxbrush shuddered, but the girl strode across the room to her opponent.
“See? There’s the fickle fleeting Fiery Fair that Shadow Hand is trying to rescue.”
“I don’t remember that bit,” Leo said, frowning with the determination of one who never could remember anything he did not wish to.
The girl, undaunted, read for all the listeners in the room.