In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  Mallow whirled, and his sword skated along Clovermead’s side, shaving the fur from her and rasping the skin. Clovermead didn’t feel any pain. She bit at Mallow’s sword-arm, but he shook loose from her teeth and threw her with terrifying strength to the floor. Clovermead sat stunned for a second, then leaped at him again. He ducked to one side and boxed her ears with the hilt of his sword. As she fell, Clovermead bashed his legs and sent him rolling along the floor. Tirelessly he bounded to his feet, his sword once more at the ready. Clovermead howled and leaped at him again.

  They fought among ever-thickening shadows. Clovermead had trouble telling Mallow’s sword from a bone, and she could no longer make out the features of his face. He was a shadow, he was a skeleton, and the glow of his bones hardly lightened the murk around them. Out of the corner of her eye Clovermead could see her own bones beneath her paws. Her fur and flesh were turning into shadows too, but she hardly cared anymore. She only fought, heedless of the flesh wounds Mallow scored on her. He had wounded her a dozen times, as she had wounded him, but neither of them screamed, neither of them bled. They fought with the grim determination of the dead.

  A high, thin pipe sounded in the darkness. It sang of crumbling bones and sepulchers, of gnawing worms and of terrible cold. Then the piping shifted and a growl mixed in with it. In that growl, chains creaked in a city of stone. Then, louder and louder, came the sound of crying prisoners and throbbing drums. Clouds rumbled; lightning crackled. The pipe played sharpened blades, the whimper of fear, the slaver of anticipation. Clovermead felt what little heat was left in her drain away.

  What is that? she roared in fear, in repulsion, with strange longing.

  “The music that woke me from my sleep,” said Mallow. “A hundred slaves died to bring me from the grave. That is the sound of their death. That is the sound of Garum.” He stumbled back from Clovermead and kept his sword up in a wary defensive posture. “So many died for my revenge. Should their deaths be in vain?”

  I don’t care about them, Clovermead growled. Her head swam and the darkness swirled about her. She tried to keep her eyes focused on Mallow and his sword. All she could see was a man-shaped blur of bones. Mallow, what’s happening to me? she asked in fear.

  “Why ask me?” she heard Mallow say. “Am I your friend to tell you so?”

  No, said Clovermead. Yes. Please, Mallow.

  “You’re dying,” said Mallow softly. “How can one third of your heart provide for all your body? It’s failing, and you will die.”

  I didn’t give you all my heart, said Clovermead. I’m still alive. You’re lying!

  “You will die one way or the other,” said Mallow sadly. “You can only choose the manner. Will you die alone or will you come with me? I would rather you came with me, Clovermead,” he added wistfully. “I thought the only thing I wanted was to revenge myself against your mother, but now I find that I have come to desire your companionship as well. We could be such friends. We can dance in the halls of the dead together for eternity. I would like your company very much.”

  I want to live, said Clovermead, but the words barely made it through her lips. Save me, Lady, she whispered, and she looked up desperately around her at the Throne Room’s walls as the light dimmed, where the last driblets of moonlight shone on gorgeous frescoes painted a hundred years before to illustrate the Cindertallows’ rule over Chandlefort. On the north wall a Lady Cindertallow and her Yellowjackets struck down bandits who had just killed a farmer and looted his hut. On the east wall the peasant’s wife and children stood in a courtroom and begged the same Lady Cindertallow for justice. On the south wall the Lady Cindertallow listened to two of her advisers, one a stern judge who pointed to the words written in a code of law, and the other a nun of Lady Moon who begged for mercy. On the west wall the Lady Cindertallow sent a sneering bandit to the gallows and a repentant bandit in chains to work with other prisoners building a road. In every picture, moonlight shone down on the Lady Cindertallow to hallow her and ennoble her. Her features reflected the goodness of the moonlight.

  “She cannot hear you,” said Mallow. “She could not hear me, either. For such as us, there is no salvation.” He paused a moment. “Why do you care so much about dying? What are you losing? Life is heartache. Our friends abandon us and our lovers spurn us. Life is beasts tormenting one another. We are happier in the grave.”

  It isn’t so, said Clovermead. You’re lying. But she could barely mouth the words. Cold and despair battered her, Sorrel and Saraband were smiling at each other down all the future’s long years, and there was so little light left.

  Mallow sheathed his sword. Slowly he walked toward Clovermead. “You see with eyes blinded by the light. Let me show you the world through my eyes, and you will not love it any longer.” He held out his sliced half hand to Clovermead.

  Clovermead drew back from him, but ice ground through her, the darkness was thicker than ever, and she was terribly afraid. She turned back to human. She was very small in the darkness, and the only light she saw was Mallow’s bony hand. Shadowy flesh thickened on his face and she saw a kindly smile. His hand stretched out, open and welcoming, and she could not withstand the chill in solitude any longer. She reached out to grip his hand in hers.

  The piper blew shriller than ever and Ursus’ growl filled the world. There was a whistle of knives in the air, the crunch of metal into flesh, and the wail of dying men. Then there was an eerie howl amidst silence and a carnival cry of desire fulfilled, and a black veil covered the world. It extinguished the candle-flame and left the wax to melt from an unseen cause. The world was a subtle mixture of different hues of gray, one hue bleeding into the next, darker and darker, until the edges of objects blurred into black flame. The world was on fire, and the fire gave no light. The table, the chairs, the candle changed size and shape, and in seconds Clovermead had begun to forget their true appearance. No matter how they changed, they were hideously out of proportion.

  Clovermead looked up at the frescoes, and she gasped in horror. On the north wall the Lady Cindertallow and her Yellowjackets, brutal thugs on horseback, struck down a peasant and looted his hut. On the east wall Yellowjackets dragged the peasant’s wife and children into a courtroom while the Lady Cindertallow avariciously eyed the family’s little purse of gold. On the south wall the Lady Cindertallow complacently looked on as a judge rewrote the words written in a code of law and a nun pointed to an empty sky while she slyly purloined the last coins from the wife’s purse. On the west wall the Lady Cindertallow sent the wife to the gallows and her children in chains to work with other prisoners to build the foundations of the Castle of Chandlefort. In every picture gray flames haloed the Lady Cindertallow with an unhallowed, terrible light.

  “You see?” Mallow laughed in disappointment and despair. “There’s nothing to love in her when you see her aright. She deserves nothing but hatred.”

  “It’s not so,” said Clovermead desperately. “It’s not how she looks in the light.”

  “Light deceives you,” said Mallow. “It offers false hopes. Only the dead see the world truly, in darkness.” The room swayed toward Clovermead, its myriad inconstant grays clear in her sight, and she could not answer the dead man. “Come with me,” said Mallow. His hand tightened on hers. “See the world of the living as it truly is. Disillusion yourself. You will see how preferable are the halls of the dead.” He pulled her to the door and the corridors leading toward Lady Cindertallow’s rooms. Somewhere the cold pipe played on and on.

  They walked on through a ghastly parody of the Castle. All was ill-fashioned, all was befouled, all was grayness besieged by darkness and flame. Gray corridors churned before Clovermead like quicksand; repulsive always, but in all else mutable. The sturdy walls looked as if they had been thrown together by ancient savages and left for centuries to rot. The finely crafted tables seemed besmeared with filth. After a while Clovermead noticed that the tables and chairs still left shadows, but no torch or candle cast them. Every shadow fell aw
ay from Clovermead herself and shifted direction as she walked. The gray light came from no outside source, but from herself. This world of shapeless, shifting shadows was all that she could see by her own light.

  “How can you look at this?” asked Clovermead in a whisper. “How can you bear it? I’d shut my eyes.”

  “The halls of the dead await me,” said Mallow. “They were built in darkness, and they look no different in darkness or in light. I can endure this vileness for a while.”

  “What do they look like?” asked Clovermead. She looked around her in horror. “Are they better than this?”

  “They have walls plain as a pine coffin,” said Mallow. “There are no windows and no furniture, nor trinkets made by men. There are no mirrors to see ourselves. The piper plays for us through eternity. That is all.”

  “Will we forget how our hearts ached?” asked Clovermead.

  “Not if we go there alone,” said Mallow. “We must go together to console each other.” His hand clutched tighter to Clovermead’s. “I would like to forget with you.”

  And I with you, Clovermead almost said, but then they had come to Lady Cindertallow’s apartments, and Clovermead suddenly balked. “I don’t want to see her like this,” she whispered. “Let go of me.”

  “Ah, no, Clovermead,” said Mallow. His hatred blazed in him once more. “You will see your mother with my eyes, and you will know why I have wanted my revenge. You will understand why she deserves death.” Now Clovermead struggled to escape his grip, but Mallow’s hand was a vise on hers. Her hand turned into a paw, she flailed against him, but she could not escape. Mallow laughed at her futile efforts, then raised his boot and kicked at her mother’s door. Once, twice, thrice, he kicked, and the door splintered into a thousand shards. Dragging Clovermead behind him, Mallow marched into Lady Cindertallow’s apartments.

  Lady Cindertallow turned from the window as the door came crashing down, and Clovermead wept as she saw her mother. Her mother was skeletally thin, with yellow skin and bulging eyes. She leaned upon a cane almost as thick as her poisoned arm. Her bandaged arm still bled, and her hair had dried to the color of straw. But the changes in her mother were not as terrible as what was familiar. Her face was lined with the long use of power, with selfishness and cruelty. Her hand was a talon clutched tight ahold of whatever she desired. She was a portrait of will and rule, of fear and brutality. The dark world had not changed her so very much. Clovermead had seen much the same in her by ordinary light.

  “No!” cried Clovermead, and she tore herself loose from Mallow. Now his hand was slack on hers and he willingly let her go. The pipe abruptly fell quiet, and the portrait of tyranny that her mother had become flickered away. All that was left was a dying woman—proud, too much like the nightmare Mallow saw, but better in the light. Clovermead ran to her side and embraced her, though she could scarcely feel her. She clung to her for warmth as the ice closed in on her heart.

  “You’re alive, Clovermead,” said Lady Cindertallow as she clutched her daughter tight to her. “I was so afraid the bear-priests had killed you on the Heath. Praise Our Lady, you’re alive.”

  “Not for long, Melisande,” said Mallow. His half hand extended toward Clovermead. “Join me,” he said. “Now you know what your mother is like. Now you know what the world is like. My halls are a better place.” He paused a moment. “Step outside into the corridor,” he said gently. “You don’t need to look. I’ll join you when I’m done with my revenge. We’ll go and we’ll never look back.”

  “I’m so afraid, Mother,” said Clovermead. Lady Cindertallow’s arms were folded around her, but she couldn’t feel them. Clovermead’s teeth were chattering, but she couldn’t hear them. She looked up and all she saw with her failing eyes was the gray outline of her mother’s head. “I’m sorry. I tried so hard to save you, but it didn’t work.”

  Lady Cindertallow felt her daughter’s cheeks and exclaimed in terror. “How did you get so cold?”

  “I had to save Saraband from the bear-priest, and I gave Mallow one third of my heart. I had to get the flask of water to cure you, and I had to give him another third. But then he would have killed Saraband, I had to give her the flask of water, and I’m dying anyway.” Clovermead tried to laugh, but her throat rattled. “Forgive me, Mother. I wanted the water for you, but I couldn’t let her die.”

  “I forgive you,” Lady Cindertallow whispered. She squeezed Clovermead even tighter in her arms, and Clovermead’s heart felt warmer for a moment.

  “Let her go, Melisande,” said Mallow. “She’ll have company if she comes with me. Otherwise she’ll die alone.” Lady Cindertallow moaned and Mallow laughed. “Don’t worry, Melisande. You’ll die before she does. You shan’t see her dead.” His hand was still extended. “Come away with me, Clovermead.”

  Clovermead whimpered. There was so very little of her left, and she was terribly frightened of dying alone. Darkness and cold surrounded her, and Mallow’s hand was friendly. She knew that. She ached and she wanted an end to her suffering.

  Her mother’s arms were hot and tight around her. Her heart could not freeze while Lady Cindertallow embraced her. The dust could not dry up her blood entirely. Her skin prickled where her mother’s flesh encircled hers.

  She looked up and she could see light again. It wasn’t the moon—she couldn’t see that far. It was moonlight reflected off her mother’s face—and not just moonlight. In the last flare of light she saw love, she saw old happiness, and somewhere she saw a glimmer of Ambrosius as he looked with blazing love at Melisande. The old fires still glowed in her mother, they magnified the distant moonlight, and lit by the embers of love she still was beautiful. Clovermead drank in the sight of her mother, clung to her heat and to the distant moon in her, and the ice receded. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She wasn’t alone.

  “Keep on holding me, Mother,” she said. “Don’t you let go of me, and I won’t stop fighting.” She laughed, a painful wheeze through her frozen ribs. “Fighting’s what I’m good at, you know. I wish I were soft and gentle like Saraband, but I’m not. I just fight. I’ll fight for you. Don’t let go.”

  “I won’t,” said Lady Cindertallow. She clung ever tighter to her daughter as Clovermead turned back into a bear. Clovermead fell to the ground and her mother clung to her neck, light as a thistledown. Clovermead faced Mallow with her mother on her back. Her bear’s vision was worse than her human vision, and she could not see him at all in the darkness. She called on the berserker in her, she called on the bear, she called on the Cindertallow. She called on all the fury she had in her, all the unreasoning will to live and never stop fighting, and refused to let her legs buckle. It was a greater struggle than her bout with Sorrel, than her battle with any bear-priest, than her duels with Mallow. Death called on her to surrender, lulled at her sweetly with her pipe, but she would not give in.

  I won’t stop fighting, said Clovermead. I won’t leave my mother. I’ve seen the light in her and it’s true. You go with your piper into the darkness. I won’t go with you.

  Are you sure?

  I’m sure.

  As you wish, Clovermead, said Mallow. Clovermead heard his sword unsheath in the darkness. He walked slowly into sight. For a moment the shadow had whipped away from him and he was a skeleton with a sword. Then his flesh came back to him. Clovermead summoned up the strength to fight him again, but it was gone. All she could do was stand up. She waited for Mallow with her mother on her back.

  She saw a red heart glowing in him.

  Lady Cindertallow looked at the dead man with resent-ment and anger—but then her rage was overwhelmed by wonder as Mallow came close. “You are so young! You have sidestepped old age, Mallow.”

  Mallow looked at her with hungry eyes, still full of despairing love. “And you”—he looked at the crow’s-feet radiating from her eyes, the ravaging lines of illness in her face, her strawlike hair—”you are still lovely. Ah, Melisande, you are the most beautiful woman I ever knew.” He stood only an arm
’s length away, he reached out his hand over Clovermead’s head, and his fingers brushed through Lady Cindertallow’s hair. “How could you set me aside? I loved you so. I still love you so.”

  “I loved Ambrosius,” said Lady Cindertallow. “I love him still.” She was majestic in her courage. “You had no right to demand that I put my love aside.” The remorseless words flew like daggers into Mallow, into Clovermead, the heart in Mallow flared in agony, and Clovermead nearly screamed with pain.

  It was Clovermead’s heart. She could feel it beating in Mallow, beating in her, felt her heart throb in two separate places, and she was looking out of Mallow’s eyes as well as her own. She was a dead man who held a sword in bony fingers, and she was a bear who stood trembling on weary legs beneath her mother. She felt Mallow’s hate and loneliness and pain surge through her, so strongly that she could barely keep from slipping away into the final darkness to escape it. She swayed and nearly fell.

  Mallow trembled too. He lifted his sword toward Lady Cindertallow’s neck. Clovermead tried to rear up, to bat his sword away, but her strength was gone. She fell onto her knees, and her mother slipped from her back. Now she stood by Clovermead with her arms still around her daughter’s neck as Mallow’s sword touched her jugular. She stood erect, proud and unwavering. Her hands were tight in Clovermead’s golden fur. Her mother had suffered so much already, and Clovermead knew that she would plant herself in her endurance of her own suffering, stand like iron, and never bend herself to Mallow’s pain.

  The white bear turned to Clovermead. I hurt so, Clovermead, Our Lady roared. Her tears soaked the earth, but the tree was dry still. Help me.

  I’m no better than he is, thought Clovermead. I’ve been as stubborn and hateful as he is, and I could have let Saraband die if Our Lady hadn’t been gracious enough to let me see the light in time. She didn’t reject me, and I shouldn’t reject Mallow. He deserves better from me.

  She roared with all her strength, the white bear roared with sorrow, and a great wind shuddered through the forest and howled along the leaf-strewn floor. Clovermead put all that was left of her heart into her howl. She howled pity for Mallow, she howled sorrow. She could not rid herself of hate and resentment, could not make herself as gentle as she wanted to be, but she imitated the white bear’s roar as best she could and echoed it with everything she had in her. She tried to sound like Saraband and Sorrel, too. They’re gentler than I am, she thought. They’re better at loving. She howled Waxmelt’s anxious care for all the servants of Chandlefort, roared Mallow’s friendship for Ambrosius turned to ashes, growled widowed Meadowlark who had immured herself in unforgiving hatred and savaged her own daughter’s soul. Above all, she roared all she knew of Mallow’s agony to her mother and Mallow both. She gave her voice to the white bear. It was the only weapon she had left to use in her service.