In the Shadow of the Bear
Page 1
In the Shadow of the Bear: The Complete Series
Clovermead, Chandlefort, Sorrel, and Ursus
by
David Randall
Table of Contents
Books
Map
Book One: Clovermead Dedication
Title page
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Book Two: Chandlefort Dedication
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Book Three: Sorrel Dedication
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Book Four: Ursus Dedication
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Copyright © 2012 by David Randall
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without permission. For information, address Writers House LLC at 21 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10010.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art by Chynna Miller
eISBN 9780786753109
Distributed by Argo Navis Author Services
Books
Clovermead
Chandlefort
Sorrel
Ursus
Map
Book One: Clovermead
To my parents,
Francis and Laura,
who supported me, encouraged me, and inspired me
as I worked to make myself a writer
CLOVERMEAD
IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEAR
by David Randall
I have been writing for fifteen years, and I owe a great many debts to the friends, family members, and teachers who gave me the heart to persevere in my attempts to get my stories published. I thank them all—and particularly my aunt Lois McConnell Randall, who has been both loving and professional in her improvement of my work. I am also especially grateful to Melvin Bukiet, Jennifer Lyons, and John Hodgman, whose recommendations of my writing provided me the opportunity to work with my agent, Simon Lipskar.
Many people read, commented on, and improved Clovermead, including my editors, Emma Dryden and Sarah Nielsen; my agent, Simon Lipskar; my parents, Francis and Laura Randall; my sister Ariane Randall; my uncle and aunt John and Lois Randall; and above all, my wife, Laura Congleton. Laura encouraged me to read Clovermead to her out loud, listened carefully, and fine-tuned the story line by line. This book would not be in print, or worth being in print, without her.
Chapter One
The Tansyard Pilgrim
Clovermead Wickward leapt onto the bed, lunged with the sword, and battered a pillow. She laid about her with two-handed swings that sent the dust motes spinning and scratched the oak bed frame’s dark polish. She crouched in front of the open window, growled a challenge out to the thick green slopes of Kestrel Hill as the cool and lazy autumn breeze caressed her cheeks, and smiled with unholy glee.
Clovermead’s flailing limbs radiated an almost palpable energy as she sprang from pillow to bolster and back again. She was five feet tall—she had grown three inches in the last year, and her father said the way she ate, she was like to grow another three inches in the year to come. Her long golden hair, fine and soft as silk, billowed down to her shoulder blades in unruly tangles. Between her freckles her skin was white as crystal salt. Her eyes were bright blue. Over her wiry frame she wore an outsize woolen sweater and trousers—boys’ wear in Timothy Vale, but Clovermead vehemently preferred comfort to feminine style. Her trousers were plain brown, but a bold Valeman pattern of interwoven yellow and blue crescents blazed forth on her new wool sweater. Goody Weft had made that sweater for Clovermead and given it to her on her twelfth birthday.
“Bold Lady Clovermead skewers the spider—-priest of Great Jaifal,” Clovermead announced to the room. The room was small and sparsely decorated, but, Clovermead noted with some pride, clean and comfortable. She had oiled the dresser and made the bed just last night. Clovermead leapt to the floor and rolled in a huddle under the bed. “The priest’s servant-spiders skitter after her. She hides beneath the eight-legged altar—hah! There’s a secret entrance to the rear.” Clovermead slid out the other side of the bed. A large pile of dust followed after her. “Sweet Lady, I knew I forgot to do something—silly Clo, you’ll have to sweep away this mess. Look! A secret passageway! It leads up—to daylight? No, that’s a gem glittering in torchlight! Clovermead, it’s the Spider Ruby itself! You’ve found it!” She snatched a candle from the dresser and held it aloft in triumph. “Time to escape. Where’s that trapdoor I saw? I remember! It was behind the skeletons.” She spun around to face the door.
It was open. A young man was watching her from the doorway of the room. A bemused smile flickered on his lips, and Clovermead’s cheeks flared strawberry red. It was the owner of the sword.
The man was unmistakably a pilgrim—pilgrims often sported exotic fashions, but Clovermead had never seen anyone so bizarre. His jerkin and leggings were patchworks of horse skin, beaver fur, and leather ribbons. On his head he wore a fox-fur hat edged by the fox’s face, paws, and tail. He had tied his long auburn hair into a th
ick braid like a horse’s tail, and both his cheeks were tattooed from ear to nose with crisscross blue lines. Beneath his strange accouterments the pilgrim’s eyes were dark brown. Baby fat still lined his square, sun-darkened face and his short, compact body.
Clovermead put the pilgrim’s sword back on the bed and patted flat his rumpled coverlet. “I thought you had gone outdoors,” she said.
“Evidently,” said the pilgrim.
Clovermead flushed again. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. I know I was wrong to look through the keyhole, I shouldn’t have unlocked your door, and I oughtn’t to have picked up your sword—it’s very sharp, isn’t it? And heavy! I never realized how hard it is to lift one up—I’m sorry, I’m wandering. Father says I do that too much of the time, and Goody Weft says I do it all the time, but Goody Weft—”
“Clearly speaks the truth,” said the pilgrim. His oddly guttural accent was half music and half braying. “You are a thief, yes? A snoop? How did you get into my room? Ladyrest Inn has a most excellent reputation.”
“I’d never steal!” said Clovermead. “We Wickwards don’t rob our guests—I wouldn’t even steal a Spider Ruby, not really. Father’s always told me never to touch anything that belongs to a guest, or to go into their rooms. . . .” Clovermead turned scarlet. “That came out all wrong. I did go into your room, but I’m not a thief. Don’t blame my father, sir, he’s always taught me never to lie and never to steal—”
“The innkeeper’s daughter has penetrated my refuge, which I was assured was inviolable,” the pilgrim said loudly. Clovermead worriedly eyed the stairway behind him to see if her father was within earshot. “She has made merry with my possessions. Her father’s honor as host, so carefully built up and hoarded, so fragile, will be destroyed by his darling’s daring pleasantry. When I report the truth to him, what will he say? What will he do? He will cry! Great innkeeperly globules of water will scour his face from eye to mouth. He will be distraught to learn to what depths his daughter has descended. Is it so, little magpie?”
“Not exactly, sir,” said Clovermead gravely. “Father will be unhappy, but he’s not the sort to cry. Goody Weft might switch me—she always says Father spoils me rotten and that she has to give me discipline for two. I suppose it won’t help Ladyrest if people hear I unlocked a door, but I don’t think it’ll hurt us so badly. Where else in Timothy Vale are the pilgrims going to sleep? Anyway, sir, I wasn’t stealing. I was investigating your effects. I was certain when you arrived this morning that you had a fascinating past. You have that air, you know.”
“You cannot trust airs,” said the pilgrim, his eyes twinkling. “It means only that my clothes are worn, and that I am no seamster. Little magpie, should I punish you? You do not seem penitent.”
“I don’t think Father would want you to do anything to me without his permission,” said Clovermead more calmly than she felt inside. She could dive through the pilgrim’s legs, scramble down the stairs, and gallop outdoors to the wide pastures and secret hideaways of the Vale—but she’d have to come home sometime, and then Goody Weft really would switch her. “You should come downstairs with me and tell him what I’ve done wrong. Oh dear, it’s only a week since they caught me taking apple pie from the pantry, and I promised I wouldn’t make trouble for a month. I’ll give you a penny if you don’t tell Father. It’s all I have in the world. Except the robin’s egg I’m trying to hatch, and my books, and my pony, Cripple Malmsey, but I don’t think you’d want any of those, would you?”
“Sweet Lady, girl!” the pilgrim laughed. “Do you always chatter so much?”
“No,” said Clovermead with dignified cogency.
“I do not think I believe that claim,” said the pilgrim. He walked over to his bed, checked his sword for nicks, and slid it into his scabbard. “You do not know how to fight with swords?”
“No,” Clovermead said again—but then she couldn’t bear to stay silent any longer. “I’ve always wanted to learn! I’ve heard ever so many stories from pilgrims, about knights who kill dragons and about battles and strange temples and heroes with magic swords. And the nicest old man with red eyebrows stayed here one winter and taught me to read. He gave me the Garum Heptameron when he left. Have you read it? It’s all about the adventures of the queens and knights of Queensmart and the Thirty Towns, and there are seven times seven stories in it, which is forty-nine. The next summer a silly lady with a face like a prune let me have The Song of the Siege of the Silver Knight. Sir, I couldn’t stay away when I saw your sword—there aren’t any like it in Timothy Vale. All we have is daggers and axes and bows for hunting deer. Sweetroot Miller and I played sword fighting with pieces of wood, but I scraped her arm and the blubberer threw down her stick and ran home. Now none of the girls will play with me. Not sword fighting, anyway. The little ones play with rag dolls, the big ones are mad about dancing with the boys, and now Sweetroot wants to dance too, and she’s the only girl near Ladyrest my age. Dancing’s all right, but oh, I did want to know what it feels like to hold a real blade! Is it a magic sword like the one the Silver Knight had?”
“Alas, no,” said the pilgrim. “Sorcer-swords do not exist outside of books, I think. There are enough odd things in the world, O daughter of an innkeeper, but not enchanted chopping knives.” The pilgrim looked slyly down at Clovermead. “You would like to learn to sword-fight?”
Clovermead’s eyes shone. “More than anything!”
“Really so? Well, magpie, I have tired myself greatly crossing the Chaffen Hills, and more than anything I would like to rest and recuperate myself for a few days in your father’s fine inn. Shall I make a bargain with your father? I will teach you a little fighting, and I will eat and sleep here at his expense while I give you lessons. You will plead my case to him, I will not tell where I found you this afternoon, and in the future locked doors will stay locked, yes? And you will be bruised hard enough while learning to blade-whack, which should be sufficient punishment for you. Is this fair?”
“It is,” Clovermead said, and solemnly shook his hand. His fingers were supple and strong as oiled leather. “I’m Clovermead Wickward. What’s your name, pilgrim? I think I heard you say it when you came in this morning, but I was rereading the Heptameron and I didn’t pay any attention to you till I saw what you looked like. Pardon me, that sounds rude. It is rude, but it wasn’t meant rudely, if you see what I mean.”
“In my land we have a saying,” said the pilgrim. “A man should not care if a bee buzzes in his ear or if a child babbles at his feet.”
“I don’t think I care for that saying,” said Clovermead. “The tone is very superior, very lofty. It sounds very silly coming from a young man who can’t be that much older than I am. Did people say that a lot to you when you were younger? It must have been very annoying to hear it from grown-ups on a regular basis.”
The pilgrim grinned and the blue crosses on his cheeks crinkled. “It was infuriating. Miss Clovermead, I am Sorrel of the Cyan Cross Horde. I am from the Tansy Steppes, and therefore a Tansyard. I have lived through seventeen winters. Does that answer all your questions?”
“Of course not,” said Clovermead. “I have dozens more! But I’ll save them until I’ve gotten Father’s permission to sword-fight with you.” She dashed out of the room and downstairs. Sorrel blinked and chuckled as she disappeared from sight. Then he took a leisurely minute to check that all his possessions were where he had left them, locked the door, and headed downstairs.
The great dining hall took up more than half the space of Ladyrest’s ground floor. Its floor and walls had been carved from sturdy lengths of oak. To the right of the kitchen door sat a huge stone hearth surrounded by four rocking chairs. A dozen long tables, each accompanied by a pair of low benches, occupied the rest of the room. Afternoon light glowed through four huge, square windowpanes that could have come from nowhere nearer than Glaziers’ Street in Queensmart and imparted a dark-honey hue to the dining room’s polished timbers. Every part of the hall was immaculate
ly clean. A score of iron sconces around the room held torches, ready to be lit when night came.
As his daughter fervidly summarized Sorrel’s proposal, Waxmelt Wickward cleared the dirty dishes that a patrician pilgrim had left on the table at the end of his late lunch. Goody Weft cheerfully sang a shearing song in the kitchen as she washed the dozen pots and pans she had used for the meal. Clouds of steam billowed out from the kitchen.
Waxmelt Wickward was a little man—inches shorter than Sorrel and not much taller than Clovermead. His thin gray hair had receded halfway up the temples of his round face, and he sported a mustache and a small, pointed beard, both neatly trimmed. His face was smooth except for the lines of delighted laughter that had deepened in him as he watched his daughter grow. Faint worry glimmered almost perpetually in his soft eyes. He was stout around the middle, though not quite fat.
He quietly piled the dishes in the crook of one arm, whisked them to the kitchen, and came back into the room drying his hands on his apron. “My daughter says you’re the best swordsman north of Queensmart,” he said dubiously to Sorrel.
Sorrel shrugged. “Men with swords have chased after me and I have not died. I was a boy not so long ago and I remember how to be gently trained. These are my qualifications, Mr. Wickward. I can add to that only my desire to eat more of your most delicious oatmeal and fried lamb chops, and my rapturous craving to sleep many nights on your soft mattress and pillows. My little money cannot satisfy my desires, so I must hope that you will take my services as payment. I will be most happy if you say yes. I assure you, this Ladyrest is a lovelier inn than any I have seen in all the lands of Linstock.”
“Goody Weft cooked the oatmeal,” said Waxmelt modestly, looking pleased in spite of himself. He coughed and tried to look stern. “I’ve heard that all Tansyards are horse thieves.”
“It is the noblest sport,” Sorrel acknowledged, humbly dipping his head. “But Clovermead is not a horse, and we do not steal from our hosts. You have heard that, too?”