Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(45)

“Your cousin?” Redman, shaking his head with some perplexity, allowed the scroll to roll up with a snap. “And you can read this?”

“Of course.” Foxbrush wondered if he dared swipe the scroll from Redman’s hands. It was a tempting if perhaps futile thought. After all, Redman was many times his height and girth, and he wasn’t sticky with medicinal sap.

“You can read North Country writing?” Redman persisted.

“I . . . I’m not certain what you’re asking,” Foxbrush said, his voice a little petulant. Sap and fear had this effect on him. “When you say North Country, do you mean Parumvir?”

Redman chewed thoughtfully on the end of his mustache. “Parumvir,” he said, tasting the strange name. “Parumvir . . . Smallman.” Then he chuckled, and his good eye twinkled. “Very well, my friend. I have been away for some while, and I’m game for a change. So tell me, do you read the writing of Parumvir?”

Foxbrush nodded slowly but couldn’t help adding, “It’s not Parumvir writing. It’s Southlander.”

“Southlander?” Redman tapped the scroll absently against his own drawn-up knee. “Not a message for me from King Florien, then, eh?”

Foxbrush shook his head.

“And are you from . . . from Parumvir?”

“No. I’m—” He hesitated, and his sticky body suddenly went clammy with sweat. Did he dare, in this strange wherever-he-was, tell anyone his true identity? After all, one didn’t like to blurt out in a houseful of savages, “I’m the crown prince! Unhand me at once!” So he licked his lips, tasting sugary sap with a bitter aftertaste of some herb he did not recognize.

“Don’t eat it,” said the girl, stepping forward and shaking a finger under his nose. Foxbrush recoiled from her as though she were armed, once more seeing Daylily all over that otherwise unknown little face.

“Don’t bully him, Lark,” Redman said, and she drew back beside her father. “Now,” said he, “who did you say you are?”

“Um. Foxbrush,” said that unfortunate prince. “I’m Foxbrush. May I have my scroll?”

Redman held it out, but though Foxbrush took the end of it, he did not release his hold. “And you’re not from around here, are you, Foxbrush? Despite your name and your face, you aren’t a man of the Hidden Land.”

“Hidden Land?” Foxbrush whispered. Then a thought that had been nudging at the corner of his brain since Redman first spoke suddenly prodded its way into prominence. His eyes widened and his voice rose. “Lumé have mercy! Did you say the Eldest’s House?”

“Yes,” Redman replied. “Eldest Sight-of-Day is not home to make you welcome. We look for her return this evening, and then she’ll decide what’s to be done with you.”

“She?” Foxbrush’s head spun, and he had not the awareness of mind to catch the sharp expression Redman shot his way. “The Eldest is a woman? Where am I?”

“The natives call it the Land,” Redman replied, his smile a little cold this time. “It is known in more distant realms as the South Land, however, being the southernmost peninsula of the western continent.” He watched the play of shadows and lights trickling through the wall cracks move across Foxbrush’s face. “But you know that already, don’t you?”

Foxbrush felt Redman’s stare and the equally compelling stare of his daughter. His mouth went dry with rising panic. “This is Southlands?”

“The South Land, yes.”

At this, Foxbrush let go of the end of the scroll he’d been trying and failing to pull from Redman’s grasp. He fell back upon the pile of skins, too dizzy to remain upright. Fur stuck to his skin and he groaned.

Redman, unimpressed, stood—or stood as much as he could in that low chamber. “I think,” he said, “you need your rest. My daughter’s salve will cure those stings soon enough, but you’d best not move too much in the meanwhile. Perhaps this evening you will be well enough to be brought before the Eldest. She will decide then what is to be done with you.”

With a last look at it and a shrug, Redman tossed the scroll to land beside Foxbrush on his makeshift bed. He shook his head, puffed behind his mustache, then drew his daughter after him out of the room, saying to her in the language of the girl’s mother, which did not come naturally to him:

“It’s all right, child. The man is a little mad from the wasps, I think. You’ve cleaned him up well, though; your mother will be proud. Let him sleep now and we will see about him later.”

“I like him, Da,” the girl said. “He’s funny. Even if he doesn’t talk right.”

“He’s certainly something,” Redman agreed, allowing the reed curtain to swing over the doorway as they exited. He looked back over his shoulder, eyeing that curtain as though he could see through it to the occupant of the chamber beyond. It had been many long years since he’d heard his native tongue, the language of the North Country, spoken by anyone beyond his small family. However thick this stranger’s accent, the language itself was unmistakable. But how?

He must leave it for now; some mysteries could bear a wait before solving.

Foxbrush, however, lay panting in the near darkness. Birds in the thatching above him screamed noisily, and their voices were echoes of his own crazed mind. He reached out and, trembling, snatched up Leo’s scroll.