In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  Some slaves stared at them with dead eyes. Clovermead made the sign of the crescent to them, put her fingers to her lips, then scrambled under the wagon with Sorrel and Mullein. After a while, the cart began to creak back toward the mine. Clovermead and Sorrel, bent double, walked on their hands and feet in the darkness under the cart, over the rough stones.

  Quicksilver dust jounced through the boards above them, settled into Clovermead’s hair, and burned against her scalp. More dust trickled down and worked its way under her shirt. Each granule slid greasily against her skin as it blazed its way down. Clovermead had to resist the urge first to itch, then to cry out. She leaned over to keep the dust away from her eyes, her nose, and her mouth. A few particles blew into them despite her best efforts: Tears ran from her eyes and she had to choke back a scream. How can people endure this even one day? Clovermead wondered.

  They left the starlight behind and entered the mine, and silvery light flooded in on them from all sides. Farther in they could hear the distant crunch of pickaxes and shovels. Bear-priests yelled at the slaves, and the cart turned to the right. They left the main tunnel behind them and went a distance down a narrower side-spoke. The cart creaked to a halt, the bear-priests yelled again, and the slaves shuffled off. Clovermead waited for one of the slaves to say something, but they stayed silent. After a minute, the tunnel around them was quiet. Clovermead and Sorrel crept out from under the wagon. Mullein still clung to Sorrel’s back, her face white, her chest barely moving.

  A whole line of empty wagons filled the narrow tunnel. The tunnel walls and the quicksilver dust lining the carts reflected light at each other, and made a glow bright enough for Clovermead to see without squinting. They crept to the front of the tunnel, where the main passageway began. There they saw a constant stream of bear-priests and slaves in the shining light: There was no way to get past them unnoticed.

  “Let me see what is at the back of this tunnel,” said Sorrel. He crept backward, explored for a minute, then came back to Clovermead. “I have found another exit,” he said. “Come, let us see where it leads.”

  They walked behind the last of the wagons, and then the tunnel narrowed abruptly. Two people could walk abreast, but no cart could get by. The ceiling became much lower too, barely higher than Clovermead. The edges were even rougher, with great outcroppings slicing into the corridor as it curved deeper into the hills. The tunnel twisted and intersected other, even narrower tunnels. Everywhere the same silvery light shone; everywhere the same dust itched and abraded Clovermead’s flesh.

  “Where are we going?” asked Clovermead.

  Mullein raised her head at last. “Turn right,” she whispered. “You are very close.” Her eyes were blazing silver. The Shaman-Mother’s voice was thick on her tongue. They swerved into another tunnel. “Right again. Then left.” They followed her instructions and further whispers as they darted deeper into the labyrinth. Clovermead lost all sense of where she was going. Silver dust settled onto her and Sorrel. Their figures glowed in the dark and she began to itch worse than ever. She brushed away the dust from her arms, but more settled within seconds. Her eyes were burning.

  They came around a last corner. “Here is the Cyan Cross Horde,” said Mullein.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Escape from the Mines

  A great iron grill twenty feet broad and six feet high rose before them. A double-bolted steel plate kept together the two halves of the grill. Behind the grill a cave stretched for fifty feet. In those thousand square feet was what remained of the Cyan Cross Horde. There were fifty of them—women and girls only. There were no old men, no warriors, no boys. The youngest was Mullein’s age; the oldest were stooped, toothless women of seventy and more. A fair number were in their twenties and thirties—those strong enough to survive labor in the mines. All were wiry, with muscles born of long, hard labor. All wore ancient, tattered clothes. All glowed with the sheen of quicksilver.

  In the center of the cave a cross had been erected. A woman had been strapped to the cross, and nails had been driven into her wrists and through her ankles to keep her pinned to the wood. She breathed with great, ragged gasps, her chest trying to support her weight and take in air at once.

  “Mother!” Sorrel cried. He slung Mullein to the ground, rushed to the gates, and pulled at them vainly with all his might. Roan looked down from the cross, and smiled when she saw her son. The other women of Cyan Cross also gazed at him, with the barest spark of curiosity in their exhausted faces.

  An old woman knelt by Roan and reached up her hand to touch her feet. She was barely strong enough to keep from collapsing utterly, she chanted beneath her breath, and a shadow of red pain coursed to her from Roan. With each flow of pain, wounds opened and closed upon the old woman’s wrists and ankles. Her cheeks were tattooed with the Cyan Cross’ crisscross pattern, but the lines were glowing, throbbing silver. Clovermead recognized the old woman’s face: She had seen it shadowed on Mullein’s. The Shaman-Mother bled and suffered so that Roan could survive her crucifixion.

  “Let me,” said Clovermead, and she padded toward the gate. She was growing into a bear and her head nearly scraped the top of the tunnel. She was angry, she was crying, and her arms were thick with bear-strength, strong with rage. The women of the Cyan Cross retreated from the gate as she wrapped her claws around the iron grill. She could see old blood running along the bars—long ago Ursus had interwoven a net of blood around the iron, to strengthen the shackles on his slaves. Clovermead pulled at the bars with all her anger. They creaked, but they would not break.

  “I can’t do this by myself,” Clovermead half-cried, half-roared. “Sorrel, help me!” He came to her side and put his hands around the grillwork, pulling in tandem with Clovermead. Lady, help me, Clovermead cried inside. Give me your light, she begged, and in her mind she was swinging Firefly to snap the bloody bonds around the iron. She pulled against the gate once more, with Sorrel, and her paws were bright with moonlight. She had no time for anger now, only for concentration on the task in front of her. Sorrel’s face was red, Clovermead’s ribs ached with the strain, and the grill creaked, groaned, and pulled apart with a horrendous scream. The steel plate shattered, and blood trickled out of the broken iron and faded into air. A chunk of metal caromed off Clovermead’s ribs and she felt a dull pain. Then she was lumbering through the broken gates toward the cross. With one paw she held up Roan, let Sorrel’s mother rest against her weight, while with the other she plucked the spike out of the woman’s right wrist. Roan’s arm slumped over Clovermead’s shoulder, bleeding, and Clovermead shifted to pull the spike from her left wrist. Then she held Roan while Sorrel ran and pulled the last spike from his mother’s ankles. Free at last, Roan fell from the cross. Clovermead placed her gently on the floor, and Sorrel, weeping, tore strips of cloth from his yellow jacket to wind around his mother’s wounds. Clovermead shrank to human, and as she did so she saw the Shaman-Mother slump to the floor by Roan’s side. Her hand let go the crucified woman’s foot, and the wounds faded from the Shaman-Mother’s flesh. Clovermead knelt by her side and touched her hand—

  She jerked away. A lash of pain scoured deep into Clovermead’s flesh, so harsh that her muscles convulsed helplessly. Acid ate at her fingers where she had touched the Shaman-Mother, and burned away her fingerprints.

  “I am sorry,” the Shaman-Mother whispered. “I cannot control it any longer.” Her hand fell against rock, and the rock softened at her touch. She smiled faintly. “You are here, bear-girl. I saw you in quicksilver, you and Sorrel. You will free us.” She paused for breath, and her breath was very faint. Her face was more gray than silver now. “I saw the broken gate. I could not do it myself—Oh, Lady, I tried. I looked in a pool of quicksilver, and Our Lady sent a vision. Free Roan, free Mullein—that much I could do myself. Put a little of myself in Mullein to help you here, and you would come, Sorrel would come, and do what I could not. You are here at last.” She lifted her hand, a frail twig, and gestured at the women and c
hildren around them. “Free them.”

  “You first,” said Clovermead. She put her hands on the Shaman-Mother’s shackles, making sure to keep from touching her flesh. “You deserve to be free.”

  The Shaman-Mother shook her head. “Save your strength, bear-girl. I am dying.”

  “Maybe you are and maybe you aren’t,” said Clovermead. “Even if you are, I’m not going to let you die in chains.” She glanced back to where Mullein sat sprawled in the tunnel. “You’re going to be free.” She concentrated on the Shaman-Mother’s shackles, and she could see a live thread of crimson blood curled around it, stronger and more vibrant than the blood in the gate had been. Clovermead concentrated hard. She had to untie the bond, and she fumbled at the slick red wire with her mind. It slithered out of her grip and she tried again. It was a little easier to catch hold of the blood-bond this time—and she had it! Her hands turned to paws, they glowed again with moonlight, and she cracked the Shaman-Mother’s shackles in two. Blood dribbled from the sheared metal down to the silvery floor.

  The women in the cave gaped as they saw the Shaman-Mother’s shackles broken, then surged toward Clovermead with sudden hope, raised their own shackles to her, and babbled at her in Tansyard. “Get back!” Clovermead cried in sudden alarm. They’re going to suffocate me! she thought, and she windmilled her paws in front of her. The women drew back. “One at a time,” Clovermead growled. She went to the first slave.

  She grabbed the chain with mind and paws, and now it took less time to grip it properly and break it. The freed girl cried softly in wonder. Then Clovermead went down the line of slaves, breaking each chain between her moonlit paws. The metal was hard and screamed as it broke. Slivers of iron dug into Clovermead’s paws.

  Soon the fifty slaves of the Cyan Cross Horde were free. “What now?” asked Clovermead, and she turned to the Shaman-Mother.

  Mullein sat by the Shaman-Mother’s side. “Don’t die,” she said through her tears. “Not now! We come, rescue you.”

  “Thank you,” the Shaman-Mother whispered. “You have done more than enough.” She lifted her hands an inch, so her broken shackles waved. “Here, little one, let me take your burden from you.” She muttered a sentence, made the sign of the crescent, and a silvery shadow flew from Mullein to the Shaman-Mother. The silver faded from Mullein, and so did the lined weariness. She breathed fully and healthily for the first time in weeks. “I am sorry I asked so much of you,” said the Shaman-Mother.

  “Ask more,” said Mullein. She was weeping harder. “Come with us.”

  “I cannot,” said the Shaman-Mother. Then she gasped. “I hurt so much,” she moaned. “Let it end, Lady. I have done enough.”

  “Don’t hurt,” said Mullein. She took the Shaman-Mother in her arms, and rocked her back and forth. Glowing silver crawled up her arms and flowed into her, and Mullein cried out in pain, but she didn’t let go. “I hurt for you. I choose.”

  The Shaman-Mother relaxed. “It is not so bad now,” she said. She smiled, at Mullein, at the unseen sky beyond the walls of the mine. “Thank you. You should not do this, but I am glad. There is no pain now.”

  A glowing crisscross tattoo, the pattern of the Cyan Cross and the color of quicksilver, was etching itself into Mullein’s cheeks. “Don’t worry, Shaman-Mother,” she gasped. “I bear pain, awhile.”

  “Not too long,” said the Shaman-Mother. “You are too little.” She smiled. “Oh, Mullein, Our Lady was kind to send you to me.” She closed her eyes, breathed out, and no inward breath followed. She was dead.

  Mullein cried tears of quicksilver. The crisscross on her cheeks glowed, and all her body shone.

  “We must come away, before the bear-priests find us,” said Sorrel. He hoisted his mother onto his back. Her hands and feet had been bandaged in yellow cloth, and she had fallen unconscious. She was a dead weight on her son. “Mullein, we must leave the Shaman-Mother. She is with Our Lady now.”

  “She always here, for us,” said Mullein. Her body trembled as liquid metal surged through her. “Everyone die, but us. She save us. What we do now?”

  “Live as we can,” said Sorrel. “But now we must hurry from here.”

  “More slaves next us,” said Mullein. “Free them, too?”

  “Some,” said Clovermead. She went over to Mullein and scooped her onto her back. Even through her fur she could feel Mullein’s mercury-drenched arms burn into her. “As many as we can before the alarm is raised.” She ducked her head and squeezed through the broken bars, and then they were rushing into the tunnels again.

  They staggered through the passageways, Mullein guided Clovermead, and they came to another cave. Here there were more Tansyards and men of Linstock, slaves from Selcouth and from the Thirty Towns. Clovermead broke another gate and broke more bonds. There were only thirty alive in this cave, and they were thinner, sicker, closer to poisoning and death. The women of the Cyan Cross Horde spoke to these new slaves in a harsh argot, a babble of Tansyard and common tongue, and the new slaves came shuffling after Cyan Cross. Clovermead’s hands were raw and bleeding, with iron shards in every inch. They came to a third cave—here were forty! They came to a fourth cave, and only a dozen men, almost skeletons, came staggering to their feet. Another dozen lay dead in their chains, and Clovermead had come too late for them. She broke the living slaves’ chains, she wanted to weep, but her eyes were burning with poison, and she could only blink them against the swirling silver dust. A trumpet echoed through the tunnels.

  A Tansyard woman spoke to Sorrel. “She says guards are coming,” he said. “It is the shift-change. We have to leave now.” He spoke to the woman in Tansyard, and she replied quickly. “They patrol in pairs. I think we can deal with two, Clovermead.” He shifted his mother to one side, drew his sword, then let her fall back upon his back.

  “Yes,” said Clovermead wearily. She adjusted Mullein’s weight, and she followed after Sorrel.

  They waited at a corner where an overhang of rock hid them in shadow, and peered down the corridor that shone deadly silver. Sorrel put his mother down to sit on the floor behind him, and Clovermead did the same with Mullein. Then two bear-priests came walking down the corridor. They carried short-swords and long whips with jagged nails at the end of coiled leather. They looked into a cave, where more slaves slept. Then they came down toward Sorrel and Clovermead.

  Sorrel leaped out as the first came within reach. He rammed the bear-priest against the opposite wall, and smashed his head against the rock as hard as he could. With his other hand he stabbed underhand into the bear-priest’s chest with his sword. The bear-priest barely had time to shriek before he died. Clovermead followed Sorrel a second later. Her claws raked the whip out of the second bear-priest’s hand, then turned back and slapped the bear-priest’s head with all her force. His head turned, twisted, and snapped, all in one dreadful instant. He hadn’t even had time to see who had struck him.

  Clovermead looked at her claws turned red with blood. Her stomach churned, her eyes burned, but not so badly as the first time she had killed a bear-priest. I’m growing used to killing, she whispered to herself. I knew I would. And she could not help asking Our Lady resentfully, Why must I do this? It isn’t fair of you to put this burden on me.

  “They will be missed soon,” said Sorrel. “Let us get away from them quickly.” He slung his mother over his back, and Clovermead picked up Mullein. The little girl had fallen unconscious again. Quicksilver surged through Mullein’s flesh, and she moaned with nightmares. Her hands still trembled with pain.

  “Do you remember the way out?” asked Clovermead. Sorrel shook his head, and she groaned. She wanted to give up, to let someone else save her—but there were more than a hundred shambling wretches waiting behind them. My nose, she thought suddenly. “I’ll sniff for a breeze,” she said out loud. “If I can find one, I’ll follow it out.” She let her nose grow into a bear-snout, and now she could smell a faint odor of fresh air. “This way,” she said, and Clovermead began to lead them
through the labyrinth.

  They wove this way and that, up and down, through an endless length of silvery corridors. Half the time she had to bend double to progress. Now and then, they passed cells filled with other slaves, but they had no time to stop for them. Clovermead had bear-ears out for the sound of an alarm—she was sure it would come any minute. And when it came, there would be no way out. The bear-priests would shut the gates of Barleymill, and then they could round them up or just let them starve.

  Help me, said Boulderbash. I’m not far from you. Her voice was loud inside Clovermead’s head.

  Where? asked Clovermead.

  There are patches over my eyes, said Boulderbash. She roared—and Clovermead could hear her. She was only a corridor away, achingly near. Free me, little cub.

  They came to a crossroads in the tunnels. One way Clovermead could smell the outside, nearer and fresher than ever. I don’t want to be caught down here, Clovermead thought unhappily, but she kept her feet from rushing toward the way out. Roar again, she said to Boulderbash. Boulderbash obeyed, and her growl was just around the corner. Clovermead took a step toward her and she sent her mind questing for the blood-net that held Boulderbash. She could feel it! It was tight and intricate, but she could undo it. All she needed was a minute.

  A horn blew, a terrible, echoing crescendo. The slaves moaned with dread.

  I have to go, said Clovermead. I’m sorry, Boulderbash. I don’t have a choice.

  You always have a choice, said Boulderbash. And it is never me.