In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  “Master,” Snuff whispered. “Mistress—forgive me.” He bent back his head so that his throat was exposed to Clovermead’s claws. “Kill me if you want to.” But behind his fear Clovermead saw betrayed hurt and hatred.

  “When I am hungry, I will,” the low voice said through Clovermead. “You are still useful. Tell my priests to prepare for battle. Ready the bears to attack.”

  “But our plans,” Snuff protested. “They’re almost in place.”

  “There are new plans,” said the voice in Clovermead. “I will make the prophecy mine.” Clovermead roared with laughter and her claws withdrew into her fingers. “Lead me out,” she told Snuff in her girl’s voice. “His Eminence commands it.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” said Snuff, ducking his head obsequiously. Clovermead gloried in his humiliation and his ungovernable, helpless hatred. She descended from the cage proud as a queen.

  The day was brilliantly clear, the sky sapphire and cloudless from horizon to horizon. The air was bitter cold and froze Clovermead’s lungs stiff and painful as she wheezed out puffs of white breath. There was no wind. Chandlefort’s Rose Walls were bleached, bright shadows in the pale sun. The Salt Heath was bleak and empty. The tents and wagons of the Army of Low Branding were impudent intruders from the land of the warm and the quick on a barren land, whose temporary occupation of the dead soil would pass soon enough.

  Featherfall and a pony waited outside the cage. “If you please, Mistress,” Snuff muttered. He offered his arm to Clovermead. She spurned it and leapt onto the pony by herself. The pony whinnied fearfully as Clovermead clapped her knees around its flanks. Clovermead laughed and stroked the pony’s neck with her claws. The beast tried to bolt, but Clovermead clamped down on its pitiful, small mind and extinguished its will. The pony’s legs moved at her command.

  Snuff and Clovermead rode slowly through the assembled army. The soldiers had polished their armor, shields, and weapons till their burnished glare outshone the rubies of Chandlefort. Each regiment formed an exact rectangle. Cavalry and infantry alike stood immobile as statues, inhumanly self-controlled in their granitic stillness. Some soldiers turned blue from cold, but no teeth chattered and no one shivered.

  Around the army the bears stood in an equally impassive circle. They occasionally yawned and licked their lips. Bear-priests, fewer than before Clovermead’s assault, had been interleaved among the bears. In their furs, priest and beast were scarcely distinguishable from each other.

  At the front of the besiegers the Mayor rode in splendor on his small gray mare. He wore steel plate armor embossed with the image of a great pike, all teeth and scales and fins. Punnily, the pike wielded a pike, whose tip was as razor sharp as the fish’s teeth. At his waist the Mayor had a reed-thin rapier whose hilt was solid sapphire. His stoatish features undid his attempt at absolute splendor, but he was still an imposing sight.

  By the Mayor’s side were a dozen bear-priests and a dozen patricians, whose dull furs and brilliant costumes formed an unlikely contrast. They held themselves even more stiffly than the army at large, if that were possible. The mayor nervously switched his mare back and forth between the two honor guards.

  “Hello, Lucifer,” said the Mayor. “Good morning, Miss Wickward. We are pleased to see you.”

  “Thank you, Your Eminence,” said Clovermead. She and Snuff halted a little away from the Mayor. She sent mute instructions across the Heath to the bear-priests, told of new plans, new friends, new enemies. The spirit of the Bear was in the captive girl and spoke through her. The soldiers of Low Branding were no longer allies. Soon they would be prey. The bear-priests listened, and Clovermead saw them submit themselves to her as they turned and slightly bowed their heads to her, each in turn. Then the priests sent instructions to the bears. Instructions multiplied in the blood-net. Clovermead added no more words, but she silently roared. The bear-priests quivered with devotion. The bears offered her their hunger. She luxuriated in her servants’ terrified obedience.

  “Let it start,” the Mayor said with passionate intensity. “We want this war over. We want our freedom.” He waved an imperious hand.

  Five heralds dressed in silver and riding ash white horses trotted slowly from the besieging army toward Chandlefort. Each waved a pearly truce flag. The trumpets blared out louder than ever, and the heralds came within bowshot of the walls. They halted their steeds, raised golden horns to their lips, and let sound an enormous, synchronized shout that could be heard for miles—”OYEZ!” The word rolled off the Chandlefort walls and up towers and through distant windows. It rattled into the bowels of the castle.

  “OYEZ!” the heralds repeated. “Attend the words of His Eminence, Cabochon Corundum, the Mayor of Low Branding, beloved of Lord Ursus!”

  For a minute there was silence. Then ten heralds of Chandlefort dressed in cloth of gold climbed atop the nearest parapet. They put golden horns of their own to their lips. “Lady Cindertallow deigns to listen,” was their laconic reply, as fiercely clamorous as the hail of the heralds of Low Branding.

  “Deigns, does she?” the Mayor muttered. “Thinks she can still be proud? We will punish her for that. Go on,” he shouted to his heralds. “You know what you’re supposed to say. Give that piece of arrogance our message.”

  “His Eminence declares siege on Chandlefort,” blared the Mayor’s heralds. Their words were an assault on the eardrums. “His Eminence declares that the Demesne of Chandlefort has waged unlawful, unjust, and aggressive war on the City of Low Branding and sought to deny it its rightful freedom. His Eminence demands that Chandlefort cease its unjust violence. His Eminence, Cabochon Corundum, the Mayor of Low Branding, beloved of Lord Ursus, calls on Lady Cindertallow to make an immediate treaty of peace.”

  “She won’t,” Snuff said to Clovermead with vicious satisfaction. “Even if Waxy’s told her everything, she doesn’t know for certain that we have you. She doesn’t know whether I’ve lived to tell the Mayor who you are. She’ll refuse and then we’ll tell the truth. She’ll capitulate willy-nilly and look the fool for her first refusal. We’ll show her pride for the shell it is. All pretense, like everything of the sky-crone’s.”

  “What do you mean, tell them who I am?” asked Clovermead. Her voice shook. “I’m just Clovermead Wickward. I’m no one.”

  Snuff looked at her with loathing. “You’re yourself again, Mistress. How terrible. Why did the Master choose you? Why?”

  “Because I am powerful,” Clovermead said in her bear’s growl, and Snuff recoiled, cringing.

  The Chandlefort heralds were quiet for a long minute. Then they called out, “Lady Melisande Cindertallow, Chatelaine of Chandlefort, Marchioness of the Salt Heath, Suzeraine Perpetual of Low Branding, Mistress of High Branding, Protectress of Timothy Vale, Abbess Honorary of Snowchapel, Voivodine of the Harrow Moors, Foundress Hereditary of Ryebrew and Barleymill, Vicereine in the Realm of Linstock, says this to the Mayor of Low Branding, her rebellious subject: He will put down his arms and surrender himself to our terrible justice. If not, we will fight him unceasingly, trusting to Our Lady’s love and to our walls, until his siege is broken. Sure of our rights, we will further war until Low Branding has been subdued to its lawful obedience.”

  “You bluff well,” said the Mayor, grinning savagely. “It won’t work. We have outplayed you. Say on, heralds.”

  The heralds thundered. “His Eminence, Cabochon Corundum, the Mayor of Low Branding, beloved of Lord Ursus, scoffs at Lady Cindertallow’s hollow boasts. He sends an ultimatum to Lady Cindertallow: He will destroy what Lady Cindertallow most values if she does not recognize that Low Branding is sovereign and free.”

  There was some discussion on the parapet. Very quickly the heralds called out, “Lady Cindertallow demands that the Mayor of Low Branding explain himself.”

  “Hah!” the Mayor crowed. “She knows, Lucifer! She knows we have her. After all these years, Snuff. She won’t be so high and mighty now!”

  “Plunge in the dagger, Your Eminen
ce,” Snuff urged. He laughed loud, in ghastly ecstasy. His serrated teeth flashed in the bone white sun. “Tell the stupid cow about her lost calf.”

  The Mayor kicked his horse and galloped forward to join the heralds. Snuff grabbed Clovermead’s reins and pulled her with him, after the Mayor. He showed no respect to Clovermead in his time of triumph. A myriad of men looked with awestruck suspicion upon Clovermead, and suddenly she knew what her father had stolen all those years ago. She knew the lie that he could not bear to reveal to his beloved daughter.

  The Mayor grabbed a golden horn from the nearest herald. “We have the baby stolen by Waxmelt Wickward, sometime servant at Chandlefort,” he bellowed. “We have Lady Cindertallow’s daughter and sole heir.” He swung around and pointed a jubilant finger at Clovermead. “Give us our freedom and we will return her to you. Continue this war and she dies.”

  Clovermead heard laughter all around her, inside and out. Snuff yelped, Lord Ursus roared, the Mayor guffawed, and she looked back at the deception that had been her life in Timothy Vale. She saw Waxmelt Wickward, kidnapper, teach the child of his hated mistress to call him Father and to love him, and that was worse than laughter. Great teeth ravaged her heart, but they were not Lord Ursus’. They were her own treacherous father’s, whom she had risked her life to save, who was not her father after all, who had made her true mother a stranger to her. Waxmelt Wickward had orphaned her and called her Daughter.

  Lord Ursus was a better father than Waxmelt could ever be. Inside she roared her sorrow and her rage. Lord Ursus comforted her with hunger and thirst and the promise of satiation and revenge.

  “We will parley,” cried the heralds of Chandlefort.

  The castle’s thick black iron gates were flung wide and dragged back by scores of servants. The gates rumbled along grooves worn into the granite flagstones and lit red sparks as they dug into the stone. They snapped into position perpendicular to the walls as the servants fell wearily back into the Chandlefort courtyard. Where the gates had been, a hole one hundred feet wide and twenty feet high gaped in the walls.

  Thunderous hoofbeats echoed from the gates, and twenty-four Guardsmen riding in two rows burst out of the dark entrance onto the Heath. The sun glinted off their canary yellow jackets and white capes, off glittering sabers and spurs and bright helmets. They were giants six and a half feet high and taller. Each waved a banner of Chandlefort: Two dozen golden burning bees and scarlet flaming swords flapped in the breeze, each ten feet high. The Guardsmen rode till they were one hundred yards from the wall, swiftly formed an outward-facing semicircle, and suddenly reined in their horses. Each Guardsman then drew a man-high saber from his scabbard and lifted it point out. They stood high in their saddles and proudly held their flags and sabers in midair.

  When the Yellowjackets had positioned themselves, three more figures on horseback followed them out the gates. They cantered slowly to a flat white slab on the Heath, twenty paces beyond the nearest Guardsman. There they waited while the Mayor, Snuff, and Clovermead rode to meet them. At the Mayor’s nodded command Snuff kept close behind Clovermead, his knife drawn and ready to stab her in the back. Behind the Mayor his honor guard of patricians and bear-priests advanced to hold themselves parallel and opposite the Yellowjackets. Yellowjackets and honor guards remained fifty yards apart.

  Lady Cindertallow was foremost among the three who came from Chandlefort. She was tall and slender, with fine, curling blond hair the exact color and texture as Clovermead’s falling from a golden helmet. Her long, proud face was lined with small wrinkles, but her fierce beauty still defied the onslaughts of time. Her loveliness was graven deep in her imperious slate eyes, her full, arrogant red lips, and her long, swanlike neck. She was cougarishly lithe and sat astride her spirited black mare with easy assurance. She wore golden chain mail, as did her steed, and over her mail hung a solid gold pendant carved in the shape of a burning bee wielding a diamond sword. Next to the pendant she wore a small silver crescent as a brooch.

  Lady Cindertallow was Clovermead as Clovermead had always dreamed she would look when she was grown—Clovermead the warrior, Clovermead the queen, Clovermead the beauty for whom men would die. Her features so clearly proclaimed her Clovermead’s mother that Clovermead wondered how she had ever thought the small stranger, so drab and so different from her, could be her father.

  Lady Cindertallow looked once at Clovermead, her face a taut cipher.

  Behind Lady Cindertallow came Sorrel. He had exchanged his Tansyard rags and tatters for the livery of Chandlefort, and he had daubed gold paint alongside his cyan tattoos. He looked shyly at Clovermead and ducked his head when she returned his gaze. He blushed, bit his lip, and frowned.

  The third figure was Waxmelt. He came dressed in brown woolens but tied in leather bonds. He stared hollowly at Clovermead. Clovermead flinched when she saw his familiar, beloved, strange, despicable face, and Waxmelt turned gray as he saw her flinch. He sagged, a puppet shorn of his strings.

  “Good day, Milady,” said the Mayor cheerily. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you since your coronation—sixteen years ago, was it not? You’ve borne the years lightly, Lady.”

  “You still look like a greased weasel, Cabochon,” said Lady Cindertallow. “You’ve gone gray and fat.”

  “Dear me,” said the Mayor. “Such language after so long a parting. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised—you never did have manners.”

  “You killed my husband,” said Lady Cindertallow. “You stole my daughter. I’d burn you alive if I could.”

  The Mayor laughed. “You wouldn’t let my city go free and that meant war. All’s fair in war, Milady. Here.” He held up the brooch in his hand and tossed it to Lady Cindertallow. “The Brooch of the Cindertallow Dauphine—you recognize it? You last saw it twelve years ago, pinned to the swaddling clothes of your daughter, Cerelune Cindertallow.”

  Lady Cindertallow deftly caught the brooch and inspected it closely. She rubbed her fingers along the white gold. “It appears genuine,” she said. “Traitor, is this the brooch you stole?” she asked without turning her head.

  “It is,” said Waxmelt. He spoke in a horrible monotone, a man wishing for death.

  The farce is nearly done, Clovermead said to the bear-priests. Begin your preparations now. Be ready for the assault in five minutes.

  The bear-priests in the Mayor’s honor guard bowed slightly to her. Farther away Clovermead felt men and bears begin to move.

  The Mayor nodded to Clovermead. “Here is your daughter, Cerelune Cindertallow. I think she takes after her mother more than her dear, departed father.”

  “Lady strike you down for insulting the memory of the murdered dead,” said Lady Cindertallow. A spasm broke her features’ proud fixity. She struggled to regain her composure—and succeeded. She allowed herself to look again at Clovermead, studying her features long and carefully. “She looks as my daughter could have looked,” she said in a hard, high voice. “Still, she could be an imposter. You’ve had twelve years to find one, Cabochon. For all I know, Cerelune died of fear twelve years ago. That . . . ghastly thing you summoned up when you stole her frightened half the Guardsmen in the Nursery to death. Their hearts stopped. Most of the others went mad. Why should I think my daughter survived?”

  “Why didn’t you look for me?” The question burst out of Clovermead, and for a moment Lord Ursus was far away from her. “What sort of mother are you? You left me for dead.”

  Lady Cindertallow’s eyes skittered away from Clovermead, as from a scalding glare. “Are those your first words to me, Cerelune?” She smiled painfully. “I suppose I deserve them. If you are indeed my daughter. How long have you known?”

  “Just five minutes. If you are my mother.” I believed Daddy, Clovermead told herself. I won’t simply believe anyone ever again. I want proof.

  “Ah. I have had some months to accustom myself to the idea that you might still live. Since the prophecy came from Our Lady.” Lady Cindertallow let her eyes return to Clo
vermead. “I hid the raid on the Nursery from the world. I judged that it would gravely damage Chandlefort’s prestige to admit we had been so vulnerable to attack. And I did not even know who had taken you! I thought it was the Mayor, but I could not prove it. As I could not prove he killed your father. As I could not prove he killed my parents.” Lady Cindertallow stared at the Mayor. He smiled. “Ah, no. I dared not make the accusation of that monster: Chandlefort was not yet at war with Low Branding. If the Mayor had announced your capture, I would have acknowledged it. If he did not—well, I waited for him to send his terms for your return.

  “I waited a week, Cerelune. I waited a month. I heard nothing. In my heart I knew then that the Mayor had been clumsy and killed you. I knew that my little girl was buried under some anonymous tree. Only then did I let it be known my daughter had died. Of fever. If I had proclaimed the truth to the world, a horde of imposters dragging infants they called Cerelune would have descended on Chandlefort. That was a recipe for civil war—and by then we had already begun to fight Low Branding. I chose to lie to my people. In secret I sent a few trustworthy men to look for you, in case I was mistaken. Dear Lady, I hoped I was mistaken. But they found no trace of you.”

  “Mr. Wickward absconded unexpectedly,” said the Mayor with a shrug of his shoulders. “You can ask him for the truth of it. He can tell you that this is your daughter.”

  “Speak, traitor,” said Lady Cindertallow. “Is this her?”

  “She’s your daughter, Milady,” said Waxmelt raggedly. “I stole her from the Nursery and took her to Timothy Vale. I called her Clovermead, made up a story about a dead wife, and told the Valefolk that she was my daughter. I became innkeeper there, at Ladyrest. If any of your spies came through, they would have thought I was a Valeman and no one would have told them otherwise. None of the Valefolk say much to outsiders. Even so, I kept her out of sight as much as I could the first few years. By the time she started talking with the pilgrims, no one remembered that Lady Cindertallow had ever had a child. Every day she grew to look more like you. I was afraid she’d inherit your pride, Milady, but Our Lady preserved her from that.”