Felix looked at the armed man below, at the door, and back at Lionheart. He did not know what it meant, but he thought he heard the birdsong again. His muscles tensed, and he grabbed the gallery rail. Sir Palinurus placed a warning hand upon his arm, but Felix ignored him.
The baron drew near the front now and paused to receive a blessing from one of the holy men, to drink from a certain cup, and to offer the wreath of paper flowers on his own head in exchange for the crown to come. Then he strode up the steps of the dais, where the queen-to-be stood to one side. And the holy man in golden robes, flanked by others of his order, approached with the crown of Southlands glittering in his hands.
It was so near. The baron’s eyes shone with the desire of it, and one could almost believe he would reach out and snatch it from the holy man’s hands. But instead he flung back his gorgeous robes, prepared to kneel and make his vows to people and country.
Before he knelt, however, the page boy sprang out from behind the baron’s wife, grabbed the baron by the top of his head, and pulled back sharply, holding a knife at his throat.
The assembly erupted. All music and sound of trumpets vanished in the cries of the people and clash of weapons being drawn. “Stay back! Stay back!” Lionheart shouted as he dragged the baron away from the clerics, moving swiftly across the dais. His voice could scarcely be heard in the din. The baron, his arms flailing, tried and failed to get a hold on his captor. With the blade at his neck, he could scarcely breathe, and his huge eyes rolled.
The queen, her mouth a little O of surprise, sprang forward just as the baron’s guardsmen mounted the dais steps. She flung herself at them, perhaps for protection, and dropped in an elaborate faint so that many fell over her in their efforts to reach her husband.
And Felix, watching from above, saw that Lionheart was making for the little door and the spiral stair.
Can you hear me? sang the songbird in his head.
The armed man by the door brandished his weapon and started toward Lionheart from behind.
“He’s not a murderer,” Felix whispered.
The next moment, Felix leapt over the gallery railing and came down on the guardsman’s back, flattening him. He landed harder than he’d expected and rolled to one side, struggling to reclaim his breath. He saw another guardsman coming and, moving on reflex rather than thought, stuck out a leg and tripped him. He righted himself then, just in time to see Lionheart reach the doorway, dragging his prisoner behind.
Lionheart looked at him. Felix saw a flash of desperate thanks in his eyes. Then the door slammed behind him and the baron. Guardsmen hurled themselves at it, their weapons thunking into the heavy wood.
It was bolted from the inside.
16
THERE, IN THE WOOD BETWEEN, a shadowed circle.
Deeper shadows drew near to the rims of the circle, silent as ripples of darkness on the face of a moon-empty lake. Eyes downcast, they stood, arms upraised, reaching out toward one another but never touching. Fingertips stretched, but always the emptiness between.
They were united.
They were alone.
The Bronze gleamed about each of their necks, breaking the shadows into points of light.
One figure, taller than the rest, nine feet at the least and crowned in great, curling horns, opened her eyes. They flashed gold in the light of the Bronze.
She spoke: “Our Advocates are dead.”
Her voice sibilated in the hollows of trees, through the close-gathered branches, into the minds of her brethren.
She said: “Whom do we advocate?”
These we have chosen.
“Let the chosen step forward.”
Six shadows entered the circle, drawn together by the intensifying light from the Bronze around their necks. So Daylily, pale and ragged, saw for the first time those whose hearts beat in rhythm with her own. She saw a woman with a face partially covered in feathers, weeping through a fixed smile. She saw a man, thin, winged, and fierce, whose hair floated behind him like clouds in an autumn sky. She glimpsed one whose body was twisted like gnarled tree roots, so strange, so unlike anything she had ever before encountered that her mind refused to accept it and blinded itself to the sight so that, for all she knew, nothing but a young tree stood in that one’s place.
She could bear no more, so she stared down at the Bronze upon her own breast and thought nothing but allowed herself to be thought through.
These we have chosen.
These he has chosen.
These I have chosen.
Daylily’s breath was like ice in her throat, and she continued to stare at the Bronze as though following a lighthouse through a storm.
Then something broke. Some bond, some pact of which she had been unaware vanished with such suddenness that she staggered and her hands reached up to grasp the Bronze, which glowed between her fingers.
The horned one said, “There is a mortal among the offered. Who advocates a mortal?”
“I do,” said Sun Eagle from the edge of the circle, behind Daylily’s shoulder where she could not see him.