In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  “Perhaps,” said Boulderbash. She took a step toward Clovermead, and there was hope in her eyes.

  The hope faded. In its place, hurt and disappointment rose up. They were ebony and scarlet flames that flickered in her eyes.

  “Tell Our Lady to send another messenger,” she growled at Clovermead. “I’d rather wander here forever than be helped by you.” She whirled suddenly and bounded farther into the labyrinth. “Send anyone but you, changeling,” she howled as she turned a corner. She was gone. The sound of her footsteps dwindled fast, but the words still echoed among the dark walls. “Anyone but you.”

  Clovermead looked upward. The glow of moonlight on the walls was fainter than ever. “You heard her, Lady,” she cried to the night sky. Tears trickled down her face. “Maybe I could have helped her once, but it’s too late now. I’ve hurt her too badly. Put Saraband into her dreams. Put Father. There has to be someone better. Anyone but me.”

  Black lightning flashed.

  Lucifer Snuff rode on a dark plain. Once there had been a road, but it had cracked long since; now the bear-priest traveled on broken flagstones. Overhead the waxing moon provided just enough illumination for Clovermead to see stone spires that poked up from the barren land on either side of him. He galloped on his white Phoenixian horse, faster than any mortal man had ever ridden. He hunched over his mount, and he kicked it savagely with his spurs. “Onward!” he cried. “We have no time.”

  Clovermead rode easily by his side on Auroche. “Why are you riding so fast?” she asked the bear-priest. “Are you chasing? Or being pursued?”

  Snuff turned to look at her, in momentary surprise, and moonlight shone on his face. He had grown old since Clovermead had last seen him. His goatee was now pure white, and his face was lined. His filed bronzed teeth and his bald head both gleamed in the moonlight. “Hello, girlie,” he said in his familiar tone, half-amiable and half-contemptuous. “Long time, no see. What are you doing in my dreams?”

  “Wandering about,” said Clovermead. “Sometimes I come loose from my head when I sleep. I think it’s something Our Lady does to me. I was in Boulderbash’s dream a minute ago. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you’re looking for? Just think of me as a harmless dream.”

  Snuff laughed. “Not a chance,” he said. “Don’t chatter, even in dreams, that’s my motto.” He jerked his Phoenixian to the left, to avoid a spire in his way, and then he kicked his steed to go faster. “Have you kept up your sword practice, girlie? I want our next fight to be a challenge.” The Phoenixian began to draw ahead of Auroche.

  “Faithfully,” said Clovermead. She tightened her knees on Auroche’s flanks, and her pony caught up with Snuff’s horse. “Day and night, rain and shine. I spend hours each day training for the next time we meet on the battlefield. ‘I must be good enough to beat Snuff,’ I tell myself. ‘No rest for the weary, Clovermead! Third time round is the charm, and if you practice enough, you’ll defeat him in single combat at last.’”

  “Really?” asked Snuff. “How very flattering.” He looked ahead, and he frowned. The spires on the plain were growing taller.

  “Actually, I go into the library and read when it’s raining,” said Clovermead. A hot, dank wind began to blow. “And sword practice is only three times a week. But I do think of you when I whack the practice dummy with a wooden blade. I’ve gotten better. I think we’ll be evenly matched in a fair fight.”

  “I’ll have to make sure it’s an unfair fight.” Snuff looked at Clovermead and chuckled. For once there was no mockery in his laughter. “So indignant! This must be a true dream—I could never have imagined that look. Life will be dull once you’re dead.”

  “I’ll send my ghost to leap at you around corners,” said Clovermead. The ruins of the road had given out. Now they galloped together on the raw, uneven surface of the plain. “I’ll show up as just a bloody head when you’re in the middle of an important sacrifice. Will that help to keep you on your toes?”

  “A bit, girlie,” said Snuff. “I think you will haunt me, come to think of it. You’re not the sort to be stopped by a trivial thing like death.”

  “Not me.” Clovermead found herself smiling—and she froze. “I shouldn’t joke with you like this. Not even in a dream. Old murderer. Old torturer. The world will be better off with you dead.”

  “Ah, you remembered,” said Snuff quietly. “I wondered when you would.” He smiled lopsidedly. “You’re a puling girlie who fights for the sky-crone, and I shouldn’t waste words with you, but it’s just a dream. What harm is there in a few words?”

  The spires had grown enormous. They scraped the sky and blotted out the light of the waxing moon. Clovermead shook her head uneasily. “You want—what? A truce while we dream? Fair words and easy banter? Should I forget everyone you’ve murdered?”

  “You did for a minute,” said Snuff. He smiled, and a spark of his old malice lit his eyes. Then it faded again, and the old bear-priest looked distractedly into the darkness. “I used to dream of all my dead. They came to scream at me at night. But after a while there got to be too many of them. Their faces blurred. In time they went away.” He laughed, but without humor. “I’ve slept peacefully ever since.”

  Clovermead’s face was pale. “You’re a monster.”

  “You’ve called me that before,” said Snuff. “I think I must be one. And a monster set in his monstrous ways.” He shook his head bemusedly. “But not as set in my ways as I once was. I’m happy to have this chance to talk with you, Demoiselle.”

  “I’m not,” said Clovermead after a while. “You’re not even sorry for what you’ve done, and you have no right to be happy. I don’t want to make you feel better. I just want you punished. I just want you dead.”

  Snuff laughed harshly. “Then why did you spare me in the gorge?”

  “I was a fool,” said Clovermead.

  They rode on in silence.

  Clovermead looked at the shadowy landscape passing by her. One of the spires looked familiar. “We’ve been here before,” she said. “You’re riding in circles.”

  “Why should I want to arrive?” asked Snuff. His voice was low, and he shivered. “He asks so much of me.”

  “Ursus? What are you supposed to do for him?”

  “I love him,” groaned Snuff. “I’m willing to kill for him. I’m willing to die for him. But to invite death so?” His filed teeth clattered in the night.

  The dank wind blew hotter still. It was foul breath. A red glow flared in the darkness behind them, and Clovermead saw that the spires were huge bear-teeth. She and Snuff rode inside Ursus’ enormous jaw. From far away she heard the Bear’s great laughter. The spires began to close.

  “Sometimes I want to stop serving him,” said Snuff. The words tore out of him. “Since that time in the gorge. You showed me mercy. You showed me Our Lady’s light. I thought it wasn’t there, but it is. I know that now.” Snuff looked at the teeth closing around him, and fear fluttered across his face. “I wonder if it’s too late for penance. Do you think she would forgive me?”

  “I hope not,” said Clovermead. “That would be too much mercy and not enough justice.” She felt a sour tinge of nausea in her throat. “Nothing you can do can make up for your butcheries.”

  “I suppose you’re right, girlie,” said Snuff. “‘Old murderer,’ she’ll say when she sees me. ‘Old torturer. The world’s better off with you dead.’” Despair flickered across his face—and then jaunty bravado returned. “Well, then. It seems that it’s too late for me to change masters. I’ll just have to overcome my fear.” The jaws had nearly closed on them. Snuff grinned at Clovermead. “No need to be a merciful fool when next we meet, girlie.” He grasped his hilt and drew his sword half a foot from its scabbard. “I shan’t.”

  Black lightning flashed.

  Clovermead was in someone else’s body. She howled as she paced along great battlements that overlooked the gray waves of the ocean. It was late in the day, and the sun sank toward the waves on the
western horizon. Her four feet cracked the granite as she strode the parapet. Her black fur was long and lank, and stained with old blood. She could taste fresh blood in her mouth, and she hungered for more. Her eyes ached. She didn’t see, precisely—the world was shadows built on shadow. She was huge, and very old. She was Lord Ursus himself.

  “It’s been too long, Clovermead,” said Ursus. He swung away from the ocean, to look into the city of Garum. All around him was the obsidian temple the bear-priests had erected to worship him. Bleached bones and half-eaten corpses lay sprawled on a half dozen black altars. Steel knives gone brown with rust and blood littered the floor. The only spot of white was Boulderbash. The great white bear slept in a corner of the temple and whined in her sleep. “Welcome back.”

  “I rejected you,” said Clovermead. She trembled. “I tore out your tooth. You left me scarred, but I left you behind. You aren’t part of me anymore.”

  “As you say,” said Ursus indulgently, mockingly. “Well, little enemy, little cub, take a look at my temple by the sea. Once it was the sky-crone’s, but I made it mine. Do you like it?” He raced past sleeping Boulderbash, and bounded lightly among the altars. They stank of rotting flesh. Ursus bent down his jaws toward a severed arm—and stopped as Clovermead drew in her breath in revulsion. “Don’t you like my favored flesh? Ah, no. You’re a bear who prefers berries and nuts. A changeling who likes pancakes.” His deep, contemptuous growl echoed around the altars. “I shan’t press, little guest. I’ll wait to eat.”

  “Where are you, Ursus?” Boulderbash groaned. “I can’t find you in this maze.” Her paws scrabbled on obsidian, and her closed eyelids flickered. “Come back to me, Son. You’re too small to go out into the forest by yourself. Wait until another winter has passed. Wait until you’re grown.”

  Ursus paced back toward his sleeping mother. She was twenty feet long, but he was far bigger. “Stupid cow,” he whispered, but not loud enough to wake her. “I should enslave her again. Then I wouldn’t hear her maunderings anymore.”

  “Can you hear me, Boulderbash?” Clovermead cried out. Boulderbash’s ears twitched. “Run away while you can! You can’t trust him.”

  Boulderbash sighed, and flopped onto her other side.

  “She can’t hear you, changeling,” said Ursus. “And even if she could, why would she listen to you? You’ve betrayed her so many times—and I love her. Dearest Mother.”

  “You enslaved her,” said Clovermead. “You despise her.”

  Ursus grinned. “That, too. And her love for me is mixed with loathing. Don’t we make a fine family?”

  Boulderbash whined again. “Not so sharp,” she muttered. “I’ll play with you, but you have to draw your claws in first. You almost drew blood. I’ll have to punish you if you do that again.”

  “The time’s passed for that, Mother,” said Ursus, almost gently. “I’m grown.” He grinned. “No one can harm me now.”

  “You’re always so confident, but we’ve beaten you three times already,” said Clovermead. “Maybe we’ll do it again. And, and, even if we don’t, even if you conquer the entire world, one day you’ll die. Even you can’t escape that in the end.”

  “You think not?” Ursus laughed. “You lack imagination. I have plans. Look, little cub. I’ll show you.” He left his sleeping mother behind him and strode past the altars. He entered a great tunnel barely larger than he was. On either side the dark walls were inscribed with pictures of Ursus—Ursus hunting, Ursus killing, Ursus eating his prey. His jaws were depicted everywhere, slivers of ivory embedded in the obsidian. At the end of the wall a mosaic Ursus ate a fresco of the moon.

  “In time I will,” said Ursus. “The way is long, but I’ll reach her home at last. Once Lucifer brings me the key to her door, I’ll hunt the sky-crone down and feast on her bones. Then I’ll reign in her place forever.”

  “That can’t happen,” said Clovermead shakily. “The moon’s beyond you.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” said Ursus. He loped out of the temple and into the town of Garum. The walls of the houses were made of chipped flint and black granite. The sea breezes cooled the town, but no smoke rose from the chimneys. The few passersby flattened themselves to the walls as Ursus ran by. They stank of fear, and Ursus bent his jaws and nipped at them as he went past. His teeth drew blood, but the Garumites didn’t flinch, merely stood still and waited for him to choose one or another of them as his prey. “Not this time,” Ursus roared, and he loped out the town gates.

  He ran along the harbor filled with fishing boats until he came to a stretch of sandy dunes. Inland was a series of stagnant ponds, covered by a tangle of saw grass; seaward the gray ocean stretched to the far horizon. The wind whipped up the ocean waves so that they fell with thundering crashes onto the sandy shore. A few lone fishing boats sailed upon the unsteady water. Salt tang filled Ursus’ nostrils. The sun fell beneath the horizon, and the waxing moon rose to take its place.

  Ursus came to a halt. An arch thrust up from a sand dune, rose fifty feet, and stretched out to sea, ascending as it went. The arch was made of white bones, knotted together with tendons. “My bridge,” said Ursus, and he leaped onto it. His claws clacked on the lacy lattice beneath him, and in seconds he was over the ocean. “Soon it will reach the moon.”

  The wind whistled through the fragile links, and Clovermead gulped as she looked down at the water below. Already they were so far out to sea that the shore had disappeared behind them. The whitecaps beneath them had become tiny. “Be careful!” said Clovermead. “We’ll fall, and we’ll drown.”

  A lance head was coming toward her.

  “Are you scared, changeling?” asked Ursus. He ran a little faster, leaping from bone to bone. The air grew cold and thin. The moon grew large before them. “What is there to fear? The sky-crone will protect you.”

  “Turn back,” Clovermead begged. “We’ll lose our footing, Ursus.” The wind blew harder. The dusk deepened. The gray waters beneath had turned black.

  “Someone will catch you,” said Ursus. “Your good fortune won’t fail you, little cub. Do I see your loving Tansyard ahead? Your mother? Your father?” The black bear laughed. “I see no one. You’re alone.”

  “Stop,” said Clovermead. “Please, I’ll—” She stopped. “Do anything,” she couldn’t quite say. Not to Ursus. “I’m scared,” she whispered.

  “You should be,” said Ursus, and he skidded to a halt at last. The bridge had come to an end. The last thighbones gleamed in the moonlight, far above the darkling sea. The moon had become enormous, and Ursus reared up on his hind legs to scrabble at it with his claws. He grew, until he was a hundred feet high, five hundred feet, a thousand feet—but the cool, white sphere remained far beyond his reach. He roared his frustration. “I will reach you,” he cried out. “I will destroy you.”

  The unwinking moon shone on, bestowed its light unstintingly upon the dark night. “You see, Ursus?” said Clovermead. Now some courage had come back to her. “You’ve tried your hardest, and we have some hope yet.” The black bear growled his rage.

  “Come back, Ursus,” said Boulderbash. The black bear turned, and his mother stood behind him on the bridge. She was awake now. Moonlight reflected in her soft eyes. “You’ve come the wrong way.”

  “You always say so, Mother,” said Ursus. “Those were your very words when I set the first bone into the sand. You have no faith in me! But look how near I’ve come to the moon. Did you ever think I would come so far?”

  “Never,” said Boulderbash sadly. “It will take years to come back to shore. Little one, start now.”

  “Don’t waste your breath, Mother,” said Ursus. “I made up my mind long ago. Your begging won’t make a difference.”

  “I know,” said Boulderbash. “But I have to ask.” She growled uncertainly. Her claws extended for a moment. “I’ll make you come back—”

  Ursus laughed. “How? You’ll cuff me? Nip my ears?” He extended a paw to touch his mother’s, and it was twice the si
ze of hers. He stroked her cheek with his claws, and she trembled in uncontrollable fear. Her claws withdrew. “You don’t have the strength, Mother,” said Ursus, with contemptuous affection.

  “I followed you this far,” said Boulderbash. “That took more strength than you’ll ever know.”

  “The wrong kind,” said Ursus dismissively. He turned his back on his mother. “I’ll reach you yet,” he said quietly to the moon. He reared up again, and swiped once more at the silver sphere—

  His weight overbalanced the bridge. The delicate links crumbled beneath him, and he roared in terror. He began to fall toward the ocean, and Clovermead screamed. Ursus fell amid the bones; she fell. The black water grew larger beneath her; the moon shrank as she fell.

  “Help me, Lady,” Clovermead cried out. “I want to breathe, and there’ll be water in my lungs. Save me.”

  “No one can save you from drowning,” said Ursus. He fell in terror, but was strangely resigned. “You can only try to pass over the water, as I did.” The sea below was very near. “But my bridge has shattered.” They smashed into the water. It was blazing pain, her bones broke, and Clovermead roared.

  Black lightning flashed—

  She was awake in her bed. Her back was sore and she was out of breath. The moon had set long since, but it was still a long time before dawn.

  “It’s not true,” she muttered groggily. “I’ll be rescued.”

  You will drown, whispered Lord Ursus, somewhere far away. Everyone does, little cub. He laughed. But I will not. My bridge will take me to the other shore.

  Chapter Six

  Partings

  “Stop right there, Dillue!” Clovermead yelled to the Yellowjacket as he sneaked into the wine cellar.

  “It sure is thirsty work,” Dillue said mournfully. Sweat streamed down his ruddy face and yellow whiskers as he adjusted the bag of wheat flour strapped to his back. Toiling Yellowjackets filled every inch of the underground labyrinth of the Servants’ Floor, and the air was close and hot. The Yellowjackets behind him, each laden down with more bags, leaned against the walls for a moment of blessed relief as they stopped to listen. “You wouldn’t grudge a hardworking soldier the chance to wet his whistle?”