Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(16)

Foxbrush did not own much in the way of hero-ing garments. No stout pair of boots, no long and dramatic cloak. His oiled riding boots would only slow him down, and it was much too hot this time of year to consider a cloak, even the fine fur-trimmed thing he’d been intending to pin to his shoulders for the ceremony that day.

But he found things he thought might work—a pair of loose trousers, a shirt made after the draping Southlander style (thus negating the need for a cravat), some older house shoes that he wouldn’t mind getting a little scuffed if necessary. And, to finish off the outfit, a fine belt with a buckle engraved with a seated panther, the emblem of the crown prince. He would not venture into the unknown without some sign of his title.

He stood in front of the mirror, taking in his appearance by the dim moonlight glimmering through the window. His reflection was far more informal than he was used to seeing. The draping shirt made him look more stoop shouldered than ever without the padding his man usually sewed into the shoulders of his jackets. But who ever heard of a hero setting out on a quest in shoulder pads?

In his eyes a light shone, a light of determination that could not be repressed, even when his stomach gurgled. “I’ll find her myself,” he whispered to his image. “I’ll climb down to the Wilderlands and find her myself, and I’ll tell her that I don’t want to marry her. She can do as she likes after that, and I won’t care!” He strode from his room as only a hero strides.

He scurried back a moment later to his study and the desk, and grabbed the scroll. After all, if it were from the Poet Eanrin, it might not do to leave it behind. Shoving the scroll deep into a trouser pocket, he hastened, rather less heroically, from the room once more.



The Eldest sat at his bedroom window and thought he saw his wife in the moonlit gardens below.

He had been hustled out of the way to this place in the commotion of the day. It was better for him to keep his mind untroubled by unsettling events. He wasn’t himself, of course. Everyone knew that. Since his son went away, he’d succumbed to the Dragon’s lingering poisons, and now he was little more than a shell of the man he had once been.

So he sat at the open window, alone in his kingly chambers, still clad in the wedding garments no one had thought to take off him. And he thought he saw the queen down below. How she must be enjoying the new rosebuds emerging on the remnant bushes, and the young mangoes beginning to put forth fruit! Those years of bondage had been hard on her, strong woman though she was. The Eldest, as he watched her from above, was glad that she no longer lived in dragon poison.

“Starflower?” he whispered, though he believed he shouted the name. “Starflower, my dear, hadn’t you better come in now?”

She did not seem to hear him but continued moving on through the gardens, like a low cloud skimming the surface of the pond. It was growing rather dark. The moon was high for the moment; soon it would sink, however, and anyone out in the night would be left blind. Why did the queen not come in?

The Eldest frowned and decided it would be best for him to summon a servant to send a message to his wife. It would be a shame for her to get lost in the gardens.

“Boy?” the Eldest said, turning a little toward the door, though his eyes remained upon the figure below. “Boy, come to me, please.”

“Yes, Father” came the response. His servant was most obliging, the Eldest thought, careful of his master’s needs and ever ready at his beck and call. He saw movement from the tail of his eye as the lad drew closer and knelt at his side.

“What can I do for you?”

“It’s the queen,” said the Eldest. “She’s down in the gardens, but night is deepening. Can’t imagine why she hasn’t come in. Send someone to tell her, will you?”

The servant said nothing. Distantly, the Eldest thought he felt two hands take his.

“Father, she’s dead,” said his son, Lionheart. Except Lionheart was gone, run away, vanished. “Mother died in the Occupation. Don’t you remember?”


“There. I can’t see her anymore,” said the Eldest, and he struggled a little to free his hands from that earnest grip. His eyes, clouded from too many years of breathing sorrows and nightmares, filled suddenly with tears.

He bowed his head.

“You remember now?” asked Lionheart.

“Yes,” whispered the Eldest. “Yes, I do. She’s dead. She’s not in the garden. She’s gone. Like Lionheart.”

“No,” said his son. “I’m here, Father. I went away for a time, but I’m here now. Can’t you see me?”

The Eldest could see nothing, for he refused to look. His son knelt at his feet, still clad in the groundskeeper’s hood and the bloodstained nightshirt with the hole in the breast where a unicorn’s horn had pierced it. Tears filled Lionheart’s eyes for, though he knew his father was frail from the years under the Dragon’s thrall, he had not expected to find him so far gone. When Lionheart entered into exile when the Dragon first came all those years ago, the Eldest had been a strong man yet in his prime. Now he sat in his chair by the window, huddled with unexpected age, his face withered and gray.

Lionheart rubbed his father’s thin, papery fingers, feeling how loose the signet ring with the sign of the rampant panther had become. He struggled to speak, both because his throat clogged with sorrow and because, well, what could he say?