The Princess and the Bear

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  “I will help you along to the end,” she said softly. If the horse did not understand her meaning, perhaps it would understand her tone.

  But she could see no sign of any response in the horse.

  The hound sighed, then bent close to the horse’s neck, bared her teeth, and bit into it, severing its jugular vein. The taste of blood filled her mouth, and for the first time in her life she spat it out. She would not make herself stronger on the life of this creature. And she did not like the thought of the unmagic flowing into her. She did not know if that was possible, but she would not take any chances.

  She waited until the horse was dead. Then she left its body where it was, and entered the village.

  It was full dark now, but she could smell where the royal steward had walked. It was not only her tracking skills at work here, but also her sense of the unmagic. It was too clear a path to ignore. The hound only wondered that all the villagers did not notice it. But perhaps they did and did not care.

  The trail of unmagic led to an inn at the other end of the village. It was small and dank, and one end of it seemed to be falling down. It was also very quiet, not at all the sort of place one would expect a man such as the royal steward to stay. Which made it a good hiding place, the hound supposed.

  She heard voices within. One was the high-pitched, irritating, scraping voice of the royal steward. The other was lower—and familiar. It made her hackles rise even before she saw the face through the window staring back at the royal steward.

  The cat man.

  Here, in this time. Indeed, the path of unmagic she had followed to this inn was more likely the cat man’s than it was the royal steward’s.

  The hound had to force herself to breathe again. The sight of the cat man in person was enough to make her vomit. But she had eaten nothing that day, so it was only dry retching.

  When she was finished, she was trembling.

  Truly she could not imagine anything more terrifying than the cat man. He had destroyed her forest home and it must have been he who had dribbled his unmagic throughout Richon’s kingdom, destroying the animal army en masse.

  Thinking of it made her feel cold, as if she herself had been touched by the cat man.

  She had meant to attack the royal steward alone, to kill him and bring back evidence of his death to Richon, to show him he need worry about the man no more. Now her task had just increased a hundredfold. She did not know if she had any hope of destroying the cat man, but she knew she had to try.

  Within the inn, she heard the royal steward and the cat man laugh together, a terrible sound. And then she turned away and went into the woods to hunt.

  She dared not go into the inn, as a human woman, and ask for food. She had no coin, and begging would draw attention she could not afford.

  But she needed sustenance, and it would not hurt her to remember the violent rush of the chase, and the way that turned away fears.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Richon

  RICHON RAN TOWARD the lord chamberlain, and justice.

  By the time he reached him, the man had fallen off his horse and was trying desperately to get back on. All around him men were scrambling away from the battlefield, if they could still move. The ground was soaked with blood and there were dead Nolirans everywhere.

  Richon called out to the lord chamberlain’s horse in the language of horses.

  “Away! Leave him and do not look back!”

  The horse needed no more encouragement than that. He fled with the rest of the army.

  The lord chamberlain gave a cry of despair, then turned and saw Richon approaching him.

  He looked around, as if hoping to find help. But his guards had disappeared and left him to his fate. He turned back and put on a smile.

  “King Richon, you cannot know how glad I am to see you!” he exclaimed, waving his arms widely as if that would distract Richon from the truth. “I thought that when the wild man had changed you into a bear you were gone forever.”

  “And so you turned to aid my enemy instead?” Richon asked.

  The lord chamberlain swallowed, then stared at Richon. The spineless, foolish boy king he had last known had turned into a man.

  “You misunderstand,” he sputtered. “The royal steward—he took control of the armies. I knew that was not what you would want. He would have destroyed your kingdom, or if not that, taken it entirely for himself. Surely you noticed how power hungry he always was. When he saw the wild man turn you into a bear, he thought it was the perfect opportunity to take over your kingdom and crown himself. I had to stop that.”

  “Stop it by making yourself king instead?” asked Richon.

  “No, no, Your Majesty. It was not for my sake. I only thought I would hold the kingdom for you until you returned. But I knew the royal steward would do no such thing.” He was babbling, panicked enough that he was inadvertently letting truth spill out.

  “Until I returned from being a bear?” asked Richon, his eyes narrowing. “What on earth made you think that I would have the power to fight the wild man’s magic?”

  “But you—your parents—”

  Had the lord chamberlain suspected all along that Richon might one day inherit his parents’ magic? He had never given the least hint of it in all the years that Richon had ruled. He had certainly never encouraged Richon to discover his magic.

  Just to see the lord chamberlain’s reaction, Richon turned himself into a bear.

  It was as he might have expected.

  Horror.

  The smell of piss.

  And then abject groveling. The lord chamberlain actually got onto his knees and wept.

  Richon turned himself back into a man. And waited for the lord chamberlain to run out of words.

  It took a surprisingly long time.

  “You thought to keep me from my magic by keeping me ignorant and afraid, and selfish,” said Richon. Though truly he could only blame the lord chamberlain for part of this. The rest of the blame belonged to himself.

  “No, no. I did not care about your magic,” the lord chamberlain insisted. “I knew that once your parents had been killed you would be easily—” He stopped abruptly, his face gone pale.

  “Once my parents were killed?” echoed Richon. He had not suspected it at the time, and yet it did not surprise him. Nothing the lord chamberlain had done in his quest for power surprised him now. And the royal steward had been just as ruthless.

  “It was the royal steward who hired the men. I could not stop him!” said the lord chamberlain.

  Richon played along. “Of course, you tried. You alerted the captain of my father’s guard.”

  “I…well…I…The royal steward would have had me killed.” He licked his lips and stared at Richon, as if hoping for mercy.

  Richon sighed. He did not know if there was any truth in what the lord chamberlain said. He only knew he did not wish to hear any more of it.

  What should be the punishment for such treason? Richon tried to imagine his father in this situation, but of course his father had never inspired men to commit treason.

  Still, there had been one man King Seltar had found worthy of a truly terrible punishment. He had been a nobleman who had defiled two young servant girls. The first had not dared to come forward until the second had, and then they came together to corroborate their stories to the king, to ask him for some small sum of money to make recompense for the fact that they would never find a man to marry them because of what the nobleman had done.

  The king had listened to them and had given them the sum they asked for times ten. And then he had taken that same amount from the nobleman’s wealth and called him to hear why it was done. The nobleman had expected to be given the chance to excuse himself, to beg forgiveness. It was what King Seltar had always done, in Richon’s memory.

  But instead King Seltar sentenced him to death.

  And still the nobleman had not understood. He had blinked and turned toward the dungeons, expecting to be sent
there, that he would have time before he had to face his death. But King Seltar had taken a sword and run the nobleman through. Without another word. When the nobleman had tumbled from the sword, the king had let it fall with him. He had turned away and walked back into the palace, leaving the servants to take care of the body.

  And Richon had gaped at his kind father and wondered if another soul had possessed him at that moment.

  He had never seen anything like the anger on his father’s face that day, and he had thought perhaps he had imagined it.

  But now he knew he had not, for he felt the same anger himself. There was no remedy for this, no forgiveness possible. This offense was a personal one, and no public trial was necessary.

  Richon lifted his sword and ran the lord chamberlain through. It only took strength, not skill, for this.

  The traitor gave one bubble of complaint, then lay dead among the others.

  Richon left the sword where it was, as his father had, and walked back to his own men, who celebrated the end of the war, shouting congratulations to each other, slapping backs and falling down in tears and laughter and rejoicing. Those who had been dead spoke of the animals healing their wounds, then remaining for the duration of the battle to make the humans stronger, fiercer, and wilier. But afterward the animal spirits had departed, leaving the humans whole but no longer magically enhanced.

  The story made Richon smile and weep at once. There was no promise that the revived men would live out the remainder of their lives. There might yet be a price to be paid for the animals’ gift of magic. But for now, to see so many of his men living was enough to make him feel all his guilt washed clean.

  Now he had to decide what to do next. He had never allowed himself to think this far ahead, because it seemed impossibly unlikely that he would win this battle and survive with so many of his people. He thought perhaps he could go back to the palace quietly and show his people gradually the kind of man—and king—he could become.

  But as he was moving across the battlefield, he was stopped by one of the men who had been dead and touched with the spirit of a wolf (for Richon could still see the faint green outline of the creature on him). The man seemed fierce and Richon held back in fear, but then he called out to the others around him.

  “The king! The king has led us to triumph!”

  Richon changed into a bear, to disguise himself.

  But it had the opposite effect than he had intended. The men around him shouted at him. “It’s the king! He’s the bear! He came to help us! It’s his magic at last!”

  Richon turned himself back into a man then, thinking to argue that he only resembled the king.

  But by then he was being lifted on shoulders, carried about, and sung to. Terrible songs with lyrics sung by men with voices that were torn and weary.

  It was a kind of music he had never heard before. It was made for him, as king, but not because it was due him. Rather because he’d earned it.

  Richon was so caught up in the celebration, in the passing of bottles of wine and ale, that he forgot for a moment about the royal steward. When at last he remembered, he asked all around, but no one had seen the man since the battle.

  He cursed himself for his lack of focus. He had allowed a few cheers and his own satisfaction at having dispatched one traitor to distract him from chasing the other. He had to find the royal steward and see him pay for his crimes.

  He meant to have the hound go with him, and he searched through the battlefield in the dark, calling for her. But she, too, was gone. He did not know where. Had she left him and returned to the forest? Was she hurt? Killed?

  He turned into a bear briefly and caught her scent. As he followed it past the edge of the battlefield, he discovered that it was mingled with the scent of the royal steward.

  He turned back into a man and smiled to himself. She had gone after the royal steward!

  No doubt she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, as she had proved more than once, but he felt a twinge of concern, for the royal steward was dangerously clever and had no love for those with animal magic.

  In the morning Richon went back to his men and told them they were free to go home, and to take with them any supplies they wished, from livestock to swords, clothing, wood, or wagons.

  He was cheered for this, and more than one man came to offer his service to Richon, for whatever was needed. Richon directed this man and others back to the palace. He needed people who were loyal to him there, and he did not much care if they had been wellborn or not. He cared that they were good and that they respected animal magic, as he did now.

  He promised to be there soon himself.

  With Chala at his side.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The Hound

  AFTER FILLING HER stomach, the hound went back to wait outside the inn. It was one of the most difficult things she had ever done. If only she could have simply leaped through the window and attacked. That was what the hound in her longed to do. No thinking about choices, about chances. Do it, or don’t do it. But don’t stew over it like a human.

  Perhaps it would help if she were not so torn between the two sides of herself.

  She tried changing herself back to a woman, wondering if that would help her to be more patient. It did not.

  So she watched as a hound while the shadows of the royal steward and the cat man sat by the hearth late into the night. And then at last went up to their rooms to sleep.

  At dawn her legs were cramped and tight. Her head was hot and heavy. And her magic was itching to be used.

  But she could do nothing as spectacular as what Richon had done. She did not have the magic that he had taken from the animals who had died at the hands of the cat man. She had only her own magic, and little experience with that.

  Who was she to stand against the cat man? Why did she not flee back to Richon and tell him of the danger, and warn him to keep himself and those he loved as far from the cat man as he could?

  Because she could not do it. Hound or woman, she was too strong and too stubborn to back away from a battle. And perhaps because, like the cat man, she was made of two parts, she was meant to stand against him.

  Even if she had no hope of defeating him.

  It was nearly midday when she saw the royal steward emerge from the stairs and call for breakfast. A serving girl at the inn brought it to him and he ate near the window. His expression seemed bitter.

  It was at least another hour before the cat man appeared. Perhaps because of his unmagic, he appeared exactly as he had when the hound had seen him last, two hundred years hence, down to his chilling smile.

  She had seen that smile before, when he had destroyed the spot in her own forest, and when he had followed her to the bear’s cave. It was a smile of joyful destruction.

  The serving girl was gone when the cat man stopped in the middle of a conversation he was having with the royal steward. He leaned over the royal steward and put a hand on his arm.

  And the hound felt the cold of the cat man’s unmagic.

  The royal steward’s face froze. Then crumpled. Then began to turn to dust that fell to the floor in a heap that could have been the ashes from a very small fire.

  The supposed ally of the cat man was dead, as simple as that. He had caused so much trouble in Richon’s kingdom, but in the end he was nothing.

  As if he had never been.

  The hound could tell Richon that much at least, if she ever saw him again. He need not fear that the royal steward had escaped, or that he had not suffered enough. An end like this was worse even than a painful death in her mind.

  She moved away from the window for a moment to catch her breath, and to save herself from having to look into the face of the cat man any longer. She knew the story, knew how the cat man had been abused by the magic and by a human, but still it seemed to her that his corruption had gone beyond any reasonable revenge.

  He had to be stopped, and it was left to her to do it. She had not said a fa
rewell to Richon before she left the battlefield. If she had, he would not have let her go. She had done the right thing, and so had he.

  The cat man was standing in the window, staring out at her.

  Did he sense her?

  He did not smile or try to signal her or speak to her.

  Just stared.

  The hound kept very still.

  Could he use his unmagic on her from there? She had felt it, but it seemed he had to touch her to send it out. That was the way it had worked before, when she had seen him in the forest. And with the royal steward.

  She could feel no sympathy for the cat man. She wanted only to see his end.

  Despite the shaking in her legs, she stood and turned her face away from him to the sky. Then she howled, as a hound would howl. A call to challenge, to battle, to death.

  The cat man answered her call by coming out of the inn to meet her.

  They stood face-to-face and the cat man smiled again, and reached for her.

  She could have stepped away, but she did not. She moved forward and allowed his hand to touch her back.

  How it hurt!

  The unmagic was terrible enough when it touched the ground she walked across. But this was inside her, not to be turned away from, never to be escaped. It burned and cut through her vitals. She thought she had no more heart to beat, no more lungs to pump air.

  She could hear the cat man’s soft laughter. “You do not fight against me at all. Do you wish for death, then?”

  And the hound found it in herself to spit and stiffen and to feel that she still had a body, though she did not know how. It took her another moment to find her magic and to pull it around herself like a cloak. It was not enough.

  As she expected, the cat man’s unmagic burned through.

  She pulled up her magic once more. This time she did not use it as a defense, but pressed it into the cat man. As she did so, she thought of all the moments that had made her life precious and sharp with joy.

  Her first hunt.

  Her first coupling with her mate.

  The birth of her daughter.