In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  “I never understood why they called it a scarlet citadel,” said Waxmelt. “It always looked rosy to me.”

  “You’ve been there?” That was another secret he had kept from her.

  “I stole the jewel from Lady Cindertallow’s Inner Keep,” said Waxmelt. “I wouldn’t dream of going near Chandlefort, if Snuff weren’t after us. Even he’d be chary of venturing near a Yellowjacket Guardsman, and Lady Cindertallow keeps a thousand of them in Chandlefort.” Waxmelt looked thoughtfully northward. “Why did Sorrel stay so long at Ladyrest? He asked me where I came from in Linstock. I wondered at the time why he was so inquisitive. Ah, Clo, perhaps he was a Chandlefort spy.”

  He was frightened of the bear, Clovermead almost said. He was my friend and he was resting on his journey. Then she wondered if that was the truth after all. Maybe the Tansyard had deceived her, too—smiled at her and teased her and kept his eye on Waxmelt the entire time. Right now she could believe that the whole world was made up of liars.

  They climbed into the Chaffen Hills, a land of sheer rock faces and rubble slopes, crumpled hills, and deep and hidden dells that pockmarked the high forests. Tiny streams curled lazily through the precipitous valleys and cut narrow slots through the crumbling rocks. Crescent Road ran boldly through this broken land. The Empire’s engineers had cut into mountainsides to create a meandering, switchbacked, and almost gentle passage from Linstock to Timothy Vale that was passable by man and horse alike. But the road builders had departed long since, and rain and cold had loosened the Road’s stones and left room in the crevices for grass to sprout.

  At first Clovermead skipped up and down the hills, but the Chaffens’ steep slopes quickly tired her. At noon Waxmelt took a sack of food from Nubble’s back and put Clovermead in its place. Clovermead rode on the pony for an hour, nibbling a lunch of blueberry muffins and hard goat cheese, while Waxmelt carried the sack. In the afternoon he put the sack back onto Nubble, and Clovermead set herself to steady walking.

  The sun lowered to the west, and Clovermead saw a black bear watching them from the entrance of a cave up a mountain slope.

  “What’s your name, Master Furball?” Clovermead whispered. She listened intently. “Honeythief? A good name. Are you about to hibernate? Good sleep to you!”

  Thank you, said Honeythief.

  Clovermead looked sharply at the bear. His mouth hadn’t moved. Of course it hasn’t, she told herself, this is just a daydream.

  She hissed with pain. The bear tooth under her shirt was blazing hot.

  You shouldn’t have that, small woman, Honeythief said. You should throw it away. Or give it back.

  Not to Snuff! said Clovermead, without moving her lips. He doesn’t deserve it back. It’s mine now. Go away, Honeythief!

  For a harsh second more the tooth was a burning knife cutting into her chest. Then the pain began to fade.

  As you wish, said Honeythief. But you have been warned. The bear nodded to Clovermead, got to his feet, and padded back into his cave.

  Clovermead felt cold, even under her layers of wool clothes. Her chest hurt. She reached under her shirt and felt blood. The tooth had cut her skin. An ugly pucker of a scar had already formed.

  At dusk they found a hut in a low hollow, surrounded on all sides by hills that protected it from the wind. A few dozen yards behind it a clean stream bubbled down from the hilltops.

  The hut was made of long, thin slabs of slate gray granite streaked with milk white whorls. Translucent goatskins had been stretched to cover the hut’s small windows, but wind and rain had reduced the skins to flapping tatters. A small pile of logs lay by the doorway. Clovermead saw a thin scattering of earth and small twigs on the floor inside the hut.

  “One of the old Queens set up these Pilgrim Lodges every ten miles or so along the Road,” said Waxmelt. “We should have a place to sleep every night.”

  “It’s cold and it smells of squirrels and dirt and it’s marvelous,” Clovermead announced. “It’s just the sort of place I’d expect to sleep in while I was fleeing through the wilderness. Look, Father, there’s a broom by the hearth. I’ll sweep up and light a fire. Can you bring in firewood?”

  “After I feed Nubble,” said Waxmelt. “Do you want to cook?”

  Clovermead shuddered. “No, Father, and don’t be cruel and resurrect memories of my culinary shame. I know full well that my strawberry goulash made poor Goody sick for a week. You may cook. I will bring water from the stream.”

  “She was only sick for a day,” said Waxmelt. Clovermead rolled her eyes and swaggered over to the broom.

  Waxmelt gathered a fistful of frost-rimmed wild mint, sliced it in with their beef jerky and hard cheese, and stirred up a remarkably tasty stew. Clovermead ate huddled up in front of the fire, swaddled in her blankets. Waxmelt sat by her side, swaddled just as thickly, nearer to the chill breeze blowing in through the window. Nubble, brought inside the hut to keep warm, slept a few feet away. When Clovermead finished her dinner, she smiled contentedly, closed her eyes, and immediately fell asleep. Waxmelt took Clovermead’s bowl from her hands and for a few minutes quietly watched his daughter’s peaceful face. He fed the fire with more logs when it threatened to go out, and looked through the window at the moon rising over the treetops’ feathery profiles. Then he, too, slept.

  They woke before dawn. Clovermead splashed stream water on her face, Waxmelt cooked them a hot breakfast to get the night chill out of their bones, and Nubble refreshed himself with a nibble of grass. They left the hut before the sun had time to burn the mist out of the hollow.

  They spent four more days climbing through the forest, rising through hills where short, squat trees interwove their gnarled branches to form a dense canopy that cast the forest bottom into a deep and somber shade. Roots swelled under the Road itself. Then the trees grew shorter and sparser still, and thick brambles took their place on either side of the Road, forcing them to walk single file. The huts where they spent their nights were badly decayed.

  Clovermead’s dreams were half-remembered jumbles of full moons and dark fur. Sometimes she woke smiling with the memory of silver light. Sometimes she woke with her fingers dug tightly into the blankets, her mouth stretched into a snarl, and her bear tooth throbbing with heat.

  The next day the sun never came out. The morning mist thickened into marrow-freezing fog and spattering sleet. Waxmelt and Clovermead reached the summit of the Chaffens, where Crescent Road ran flat over a high, treeless moor studded with spongy patches of bog and leafless blueberry bushes. Sheets of muddy water inundated the Road. The whistling wind cut cruelly through Clovermead. She rode half the day on Nubble, with her arms thrown around his warm neck.

  “It’s not the cold,” she said irritably. “You know I’m used to cold, Daddy. It’s this mucky, marshy, truly awful spongiferous climate. It’s never this clammy in Timothy Vale.”

  “Hush,” said Waxmelt. “Save your strength.”

  Night came and they found no hut. Waxmelt hacked them a shelter under a blueberry bush on a rare patch of solid ground. The bracken was dry enough to sleep on but too wet to set alight. In pea-soup darkness they ate a supper of cold cheese, and Clovermead fell asleep in Waxmelt’s arms as the pelting sleet turned to a gentle fall of snow.

  The Road was a sheet of ice the next day. Snow and more snow fell on the Wickwards as they skidded southward through the bog. An arrowhead of honking snow geese flew south, half seen through the whirling snow. Mid-morning they passed what had once been a hut—a gaping ruin of cracked stones where snow had piled three inches thick on the floor. At sunset they camped in the lee of a boulder. Waxmelt piled leaves over Clovermead and himself and held his daughter in his arms again.

  The next two days were a little warmer. Cold drizzle fell on the bog and melted the ice and snow. Occasionally the sun, pale and milk white, shone through the clouds. The Road began to descend from the high moors, and the land around them grew drier. Small oaks and elm trees reappeared. The air ahead of them smelle
d strangely lush.

  “It smells like all the spices of the Jaifal Archipelago steamed into milk,” said Clovermead dreamily. “I didn’t realize that different places have different scents. Now I know Timothy Vale smells dry and sharp. I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t come south.”

  The day after dawned clear and sunny and almost warm. The bright yellow leaves still clung to the trees on these southern slopes, ignorant of winter’s imminent onslaught. A stream ran alongside the Road, exultantly babbling as it fled the northlands. Here the Road was in better repair. Its stones, though abraded, fit together tightly. No weeds grew in the cracks.

  Clovermead caught glimpses of Linstock through the screen of yellow leaves. The little she could see was staggeringly immense. South and east of them stretched a limitless expanse of dry fields of short grass, manicured yellow-and-brown orchards, puffs of smoke from far chimneys, and a slice of rippling silver Clovermead was sure must be the Whetstone River. Far, far to the east the Harrow Moors, which hid the Tansy Steppes, were no more than a patch of gray.

  “How much does it snow here, Father?” Clovermead asked.

  “Down in Chandlefort we hardly ever got more than three or four inches at a time. Once when I was a child, twenty inches fell. That doesn’t seem like much in the Vale, but we stared at the drifts of snow as if they had fallen from the moon. The castle looked as if it were made of silk and icicles.”

  “I’d have spent the whole day sledding among the pinnacles and parapets.” Clovermead looked sharply at her father. “You were a child at Chandlefort?”

  “Did I say that?” Waxmelt shook his head. “I’m getting careless. Though I suppose there’s no reason now why you shouldn’t know. I was born in Chandlefort, Clo.”

  “What were your parents’ names?” asked Clovermead.

  “Mother’s name was Primrose. Father was Hivefinder. We were servants, so we lived in Lackey Lane. We had a garden in back where Mother grew tomatoes, radishes, spinach, and a pear tree. . . .” Waxmelt’s face went blank. “No more questions, Clo.”

  Clovermead said nothing more the entire day.

  It took four more days to leave the Chaffen Hills. Each night they spent snug and warm in well-repaired stone huts stocked with huge piles of dry wood. The Road wound down progressively wider and gentler valleys and met a baby of a stream that grew rambunctious and joined forces with other rivulets to form a rowdy river. Waxmelt told Clovermead that the river was called the Tallowspume.

  They passed a burned farm nestled in a flat hollow, where the Tallowspume interrupted its skittering descent to laze for half a mile. A house, a water mill, and a barn had been charred to a skeleton of timbers. In the barn a rooster and three chickens nested within a broken yoke. The grass grew lank and wild, and a thousand saplings sprouted up in the fringes of the abandoned fields. A half-wild herd of cattle grazed at the far end of the meadow. The patriarchal bull gazed at Clovermead and Waxmelt with angry suspicion.

  “Twelve years ago I bought milk for you here,” said Waxmelt. He looked around with sadness and wonder. “This was the last farm in Linstock on the Road. It was a bustling place. The owners did well by the pilgrim traffic. Dear Lady, I hope they were able to flee.”

  “Are all the farms in Linstock burned?” Clovermead asked.

  “Linstock is much bigger than Timothy Vale, Clo. It has thousands of farms. No one could burn them all. You’ll see.”

  Yet they passed nothing but charred ruins as they descended. The hills had been swept clean of human life. Clovermead saw old hoofprints, slashing dents, and splashed mud on the blackened timbers. Boars grunted in the forest. Once the Tallowspume broadened into a lake, and Clovermead saw a herd of mustangs grazing in the yellow grass on the far shore. But for the stone huts, the hills were desolate.

  “We should reach the Tansy Pike tomorrow,” said Waxmelt that evening. They ate stew by a blazing fire in a cozy hut. “I think we should head east, to Ryebrew and the Steppes. I want to avoid as much of Linstock as possible. All this destruction terrifies me.”

  “No Chandlefort?” Clovermead pouted. “No rose parapets and silk icicles?”

  “No Chandlefort,” Waxmelt said firmly. “Safety before sightseeing. Cheer up, Clo. There are supposed to be walls ten miles long around Ryebrew, from when it was the Queen’s main garrison in the north. They say that the soldiers guarded the walls in three shifts of eight hours each, and that there were five thousand men in each shift.”

  “I’d still rather see Chandlefort,” said Clovermead. She looked moodily into the fire and tossed a twig into its heart, to ignite, blaze, and die in ashes. “It seems I won’t, ever. You stole a jewel and now it isn’t safe for me to go near the place. It isn’t fair.”

  “Not in the slightest,” said Waxmelt almost cheerfully. “You aren’t missing so much. It’s nothing compared with Timothy Vale.” Clovermead scoffed. “Truly, Clo. Don’t you know how beautiful the mountains are?”

  “Maybe to you. I’ve seen them all my life. I want to see fine buildings. I want to see cities. I want . . . everything.” She arched her fingers into claws that ached to rip at the earth and the moon and the stars. Then her arms fell to her sides. “But I won’t get it. I’m a thief’s daughter, and that means I’ll be on the run all my life.” Clovermead released an exorbitantly loud sigh. “I wish you’d never stolen that jewel. Lady’s Veil, what possessed you to do that?”

  Waxmelt bowed his head. His face was a chiaroscuro of glowing orange and long shadows in the firelight. “At first I didn’t want the jewel itself,” he said. “I decided to steal it when Snuff offered me gold for it. More gold than I could have earned in a lifetime.”

  “But you took the jewel instead?”

  “I decided I wanted the jewel after all,” said Waxmelt. He smiled. “Ah, now, that was the best decision I ever made. I’ll never regret that, no matter what happens.”

  “Tell me what happened,” said Clovermead.

  “I can’t,” said Waxmelt. “I’ve told you, Clo. It’s not possible.”

  “You don’t have to tell me everything. Tell me as much as you can. Please, Father. Tell me some of the truth.”

  Waxmelt saw tears in his daughter’s eyes. He winced. “I’m sorry I’ve hurt you, Clo,” he said. He hesitated a second, ten seconds, half a minute. Clovermead saw him come to the decision. “I’ll tell you as much as I can.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Tale of the Thieving Servant

  “I first saw Lucifer Snuff standing in the doorway of the Periwig, the tavern on the uphill end of Lackey Lane where we indoor servants drank. He wore the livery of the Mayor of Low Branding and a wine steward’s ruffled silk shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons. Mr. Pellitory, who owned the Periwig, told his man to let Snuff in. We didn’t see servants from Low Branding every day in the Periwig, and we didn’t feel so friendly to Wharfrats, as we called them, but they came often enough that we had a tradition of courtesy toward them. They were polite to us, too, when we were sent on Chandlefort business to Low Branding and wanted a friendly place to drink in for an evening.

  “Inside of a minute Snuff made us sore pressed not to forget our courtesy and tell him outright that we loathed him. Just the way he sauntered into the Periwig, as proud as a Guardsman in his yellow jacket, was enough to start a fight. So was that sneer on his face when he looked us over. The blood brown tooth around his neck was the worst of all. We’d heard how bear-priests scoffed at Our Lady, how they whispered sedition and rebellion into the Mayor’s ear, even rumors that they did away with people at their altars and plunged those teeth they wore into their victims’ hearts. That browned fang made us believe that everything we’d heard was true and that the best thing to do with a grizzle-worshiper was to kill him, fast. Anyway, that’s what I was thinking, and I’m pretty sure we all felt the same.

  “‘I don’t much care if you want to crucify me,’ Snuff said loudly, as if he’d read my mind. I suppose he didn’t need to. He could have read our face
s easily enough. ‘My name is Lucifer Snuff, gentlemen. I work for His Eminence, the Mayor of Low Branding, and I follow Lord Ursus. If any part of that is a problem, try your worst. I don’t mind dying.’ He gave us a ferocious, half-crazy grin to make us know that he spoke Our Lady’s own truth. He patted the short sword at his side. ‘Be advised that I’d take a few of you with me. Gentlemen, I didn’t come here to fight. I want a drink and a game of cards. Does any man here mind?’

  “We did, but nobody said a word. I was scared of Snuff, of course. I’d have been insane not to be scared of a berserker bear-priest. I think I admired him too, though. It took guts to stand up to a whole room.

  “Mr. Pellitory showed Snuff to a booth near the Periwig’s back door and brought him a flagon of Ryebrew ale. Snuff slung himself down, pulled out a pack of cards, and upended a pouch of money on the table. Dozens of silver shillings rolled around the table and glinted in the torchlight. Mixed in among them were heavy, lustrous gold sovereigns. ‘Who’ll play with me?’ Snuff asked. He laughed contemptuously as he watched us turn and stare.

  “I’d never seen so much silver coin in my life, Clo. I counted five gold sovereigns on that table—I’d seen sovereigns before only when I served sherry to wastrel Milords and Miladies gambling in Chandlefort’s back parlors. With those sovereigns a man could buy his son an apprenticeship with a lawyer or pay a poor knight to marry his daughter. He could sail to the Jaifal Archipelago and let his children go hang. With that much gold a man could stop being a servant. Snuff had no cause to sneer at us. He’d dropped dreams on that table, not money.

  “Most men in the Periwig turned away from that blinding sight. It hurt to look at those coins and know you could never have them yourself. Only six of us could bear to join Snuff at his booth. I couldn’t stay away. Dear Lady, that gold pulled me right out of my chair.