In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  Last winter Clovermead had put one of Lord Ursus’ bear-teeth into her arm and let it drink her blood and crumple her flesh. The scar remained. A little later she had put the bear-tooth in her mouth and it had ground away the upper left canine. When she laughed, anyone could see the gap. Clovermead could bend her elbow and move her shoulder without difficulty, and she could talk without a lisp, but there was no hiding the visible signs that she had once let Lord Ursus possess her. Not that Clovermead tried to hide them: She had worn short-sleeved shirts ever since the onset of the broiling Chandlefort summer, and she laughed as often as ever.

  “I can’t wait to finish growing. I’ll wear boots with heels three inches thick, just to rub it in, and then I’ll lean over, pat you on the head, and ruffle your bald spot,” said Clovermead. She reached up to stroke Waxmelt’s thinning hair. He shied away and anxiously felt at the back of his head. “Don’t worry,” said Clovermead. “You look handsome and hirsute. If you were a ram, all the ewes would sidle up to you and bleat that there wasn’t a ram in Linstock with such curly wool.”

  “You aren’t helping,” Waxmelt grumbled. He looked sidelong at a mirror hung on the wall. Save for the thinning hair on the back of his head, his appearance was the same as ever—small and slender, graying and goateed, with lines of laughter and worry on his face. His clothes had changed more than his features: Lord Wickward of the Vale, ennobled by the curious kindness of Lady Cindertallow, dressed in far better style than he had as an innkeeper. Right then he wore a plain gray wool shirt and trousers, but the clothes were of a lordly cut and quality.

  “I’m glad Father sympathizes with me,” Clovermead continued. She directed a killing gaze at Sorrel, which he ignored with great aplomb. “Really, Saraband’s dance class is awful. I hate learning how to dance Chandlefort-fashion with ten-year-olds who don’t come up to my shoulder and snigger at me when they think I can’t hear them. I hate that I never get better. And I especially hate the way Saraband plasters this kind look on her face when I make a mistake. She talks to me slowly and clearly, like I’m the village idiot, and then she shows me precisely what I should have done. She’s always graceful and perfect, and she makes me want to—” She clawed at the air again.

  She could picture Saraband vividly. She was some sort of cousin to Clovermead, but they didn’t resemble each other at all. Pale, raven-haired Saraband was lovely; slender Saraband always dressed in the height of style; tall Saraband moved gracefully. Saraband’s endless perfections would have been more tolerable if she were eighteen, or even seventeen—but she was just sixteen! It was the just sixteen that made her insufferable. Clovermead was almost thirteen already, with none of Saraband’s graces.

  Just once I’d like to see one hair on her head out of place, thought Clovermead. Let me see that, Lady Moon, she prayed, and I wouldn’t mind her half so much afterward.

  “Milady asked Saraband yesterday if I was ready to dance at the Midsummer Ball,” Clovermead continued out loud. “I didn’t want to give her a chance to say anything, so I said, ‘I dance like a clumsy goat. I’m the laughingstock of the class and I’d just embarrass myself.’ Then Saraband said, ‘The Demoiselle exaggerates, Milady, but I believe she is correct to decline to dance.’ Ugh! ‘I believe she is correct to decline to dance!’” Clovermead swiped at a stray pillow, which Waxmelt hastily pulled out of the reach of her claws. “She was so polite, but she let Milady know just how awful I am. I don’t much mind not being able to dance at the Ball—I knew anyway I shouldn’t go—but she is such a snob about dancing! I’ve had enough dance classes with Saraband to last me a lifetime.”

  “Weary is the head that wears the crown,” intoned Sorrel. “Furrowed is the brow of she who will one day rule all Chandlefort. Happy is the simple Tansyard who wanders where he will upon the Steppes, concerned only with purloining horseflesh from his neighbors.” He winked at Clovermead. “Shall we ride together from Chandlefort and leave this torturous life behind us?” He turned to Waxmelt. “Do you wish to come with us, most noble Lord Wickward? When I was on guard outside Milady’s chambers this morning, I heard you exchange some sharp words with her. You looked as peeved as Clovermead is with Lady Saraband when you emerged from Milady’s room.”

  “Were you really angry with each other?” Clovermead asked Waxmelt anxiously. “I hope you didn’t argue too much. I want you to get along with Moth—with Milady.”

  Clovermead still had trouble calling Lady Cindertallow her mother. She had only discovered half a year ago that she was not really Waxmelt’s daughter, Clovermead, but Demoiselle Cerelune Cindertallow, daughter of Lady Melisande Cindertallow, the sovereign of Chandlefort. Clovermead’s real father had been murdered before she was born. Waxmelt was in truth an embittered servant of Lady Cindertallow who had stolen Clovermead away as a baby and fled from Chandlefort to Timothy Vale. There he had started a new life as the master of Ladyrest Inn and raised Clovermead as his own child. When Clovermead had discovered who she truly was and realized that Waxmelt had deceived her all her life, she had been so overcome with anger that she had let Lord Ursus possess her. Yet eventually she had realized that she could not stop loving Waxmelt.

  Lady Cindertallow detested the man who had stolen Clovermead from her, but she let Waxmelt stay in Chandlefort, so as not to alienate her newfound daughter. It was a strange life for Clovermead in Chandlefort, with a father who was no father and a mother who was still a stranger.

  “I try to be civil to her,” said Waxmelt. Now frustration crept into his voice. “But I just can’t keep silent when I see how badly the servants are still treated here. I keep hoping I can convince Milady to improve their lot, but she just gives me a look of cold contempt when I speak to her, like I was an animal that had stood up on my hind legs. This morning she said, ‘You presume too much on the safe-conduct I gave you for Clovermead’s sake.’ Then she left the room before I could say another word. Dear Lady, if she does that to me again, I will—”

  “Challenge her to single combat, Father?” asked Clovermead. “I suggest sharpened skillets at thirty paces.”

  “Saucepans are better,” said Sorrel. “In Yellowjacket training I have learned that they are particularly good for close-quarters fighting.”

  “One in each hand,” said Clovermead. “I’ve been reading The Astrantiad in Milady’s library—it’s a wonderful book, all about the battles between Sir Tourmaline and the Reiver Prince, and their long rivalry for the heart of Queen Aurette—and in the sixth sally, Sir Tourmaline fights a sand dragon with a knife in either hand. You ought to do the same, Father. I’ll bring sand and sprinkle it in the Throne Room.”

  “I sympathized with you, Clo,” said Waxmelt reproachfully.

  “On my part,” said Sorrel, “it is disinterested mockery. I give it to any Wickward I find, father and daughter alike.”

  “I’m just teasing you a little, Father,” said Clovermead. “Now that I’m here in Chandlefort, I see they do treat the servants as badly as you always said. I wish I knew what to do. Milady’s very stubborn!” Quick panic suddenly flitted across her face as she looked out the window and realized how high the sun had risen in the sky. “Sorrel, we should have left for fighting practice half an hour ago.”

  Sorrel cursed in Tansyard and leaped from the windowsill. “Please excuse us, Lord Wickward. I fear we have enjoyed your hospitality for too long. Oh dear, I shall receive another demerit. Somehow they accumulate on me like lint when I am in Clovermead’s company.”

  “I don’t get them except when I’m with you,” said Clovermead indignantly. She kissed Waxmelt on the cheek and rushed to the door. “Bye, Father!” Then she and Sorrel were sprinting through Cindertallow Castle to the Training Grounds.

  Cindertallow Castle consisted of five rectangular floors. The top floor was Lady Cindertallow’s: Wide windows in her rooms gave her a panoramic view of the town, the fields, and the Salt Heath. The floor below was the Cindertallow Nursery, whose rooms had been built for the twelve daughters of the ninth
Lady Cindertallow. Clovermead had one large room all to herself; most of the rest were used by the high nobles of Chandlefort when they were not at their own castles. Waxmelt’s little room was by the staircase at the far end of the floor. It smelled of bleach, and Clovermead suspected that it had been a linen closet not so long ago.

  Beneath the Nursery lay the State Floor, where the business of governing Chandlefort took place. Lady Cindertallow’s Council Room and Hall of Justice were there, and so was the Chamber of Alms, where nuns in Chandlefort service dispensed relief to the poor. At ground level was the Ceremonial Floor, where the Ballroom and the Banquet Hall flanked Lady Cindertallow’s enormous Throne Room. Lords, visitors, clerks, and supplicants entered the Castle through great bronze doors that led from the front courtyard to an atrium in front of the Banquet Hall.

  The Servants’ Floor was at the very bottom, half-buried underground and extending far beyond the perimeter of the Castle above. Its rough-plastered corridors were cut out of the rock, lit by torches even at midday, and provided with fresh air by thin shafts leading down from the surface. The Castle servants came to work through a stone ramp that descended from a back courtyard to the Servants’ Floor, and the servants left by it when their work was done. Waxmelt had been among them twelve years ago, before he had stolen Clovermead from Lady Cindertallow and fled from Chandlefort. Scattered around the underground labyrinth were chilly wine cellars stacked ceiling-high with bottles, cabinets filled with earthenware and silver, laundry rooms filled with soapy clothes, and everything else needed to keep the Castle well fed, luxuriant, and clean.

  It was only a hundred feet from the back door of the Servants’ Floor to the Training Grounds gate. Once Clovermead and Sorrel had received two demerits from the duty officer, they scurried toward the sand-strewn quadrangle of open ground next to the Chandlefort stables, where the other cadets had already finished their exercises and begun to fight. Clovermead quickly donned a helmet, leather armor, and a blunted metal practice sword. She began to sweat, as the summer sun of Chandlefort beat down relentlessly upon her. Clovermead glanced up at the wall that ran alongside the Grounds, where lords and ladies idled along the parapet, and saw a slender figure in a white dress approaching them. It was Saraband. She lifted her parasol politely to Clovermead and drifted closer.

  “Just what I need,” Clovermead muttered to herself. “Now she can see Sorrel beat me at swordplay, and she’ll know I can’t dance or fight.” Clovermead’s swordsmanship had improved steadily during her training with the cadets, but so had Sorrel’s. He still trounced her in most of their bouts together.

  Sorrel and Clovermead hurried through their stretching exercises, saluted one another with their swords, and began to fight. Clovermead could feel Saraband’s eye on her from above, and she just knew that Saraband was judging her as critically as she did in dance class. It was very difficult to concentrate. Sorrel’s blade lunged toward her waist, and she barely parried it in time. Clovermead growled. She was very angry all of a sudden, and she wanted to lash out with claws and fangs.

  Clovermead had torn Lord Ursus’ bear-tooth from her mouth and crushed it, with the aid of Lady Moon herself, but she still could turn into a bear. Indeed, when she got upset, it was hard not to turn bearish. Clovermead didn’t think her shape-shifting ability had anything to do with Lord Ursus, but she couldn’t say exactly where it did come from. It was a mystery that perplexed and discomfited most Chandleforters. After all, Lord Ursus remained at war with Lady Cindertallow, and his army of enslaved bears and worshipful human bear-priests might march north from his capital in Garum to Chandlefort at any point: It was unnerving in those circumstances to realize that Chandlefort’s Heir Apparent could turn into a bear indistinguishable from Chandlefort’s fearsome enemies. But Clovermead didn’t worry too much. She knew how she had felt when she was possessed by Lord Ursus, and it was nothing like what she felt now when she became a bear.

  I will stay human, Clovermead told herself. I’m practicing sword-fighting, not paw-bashing. Control yourself. She tried a particularly subtle feint against Sorrel that she had been practicing for the last week. He evaded it, even more subtly. Clovermead growled again. Sorrel was grinning now, and Saraband gasped with admiration at his skill, which was peculiarly annoying. What’s the use of being subtle and restrained? Clovermead asked herself in frustration. Sorrel will beat me, sooner or later, and Saraband will applaud him. She didn’t want to fight Sorrel anymore. She wanted to leap onto the parapet and snap her jaws at Saraband. She’d be so startled, she wouldn’t know what to do! Clovermead thought gleefully. Then she smiled. I’ll bet I can startle you, too, Sorrel. I won’t turn into a bear, but I’ll fight like a bear, good and angry.

  It was easy to let the bear into her mind. That’s the prettiest girl in Chandlefort standing in front of me, she told herself. That’s Saraband. Then growling rage filled up her mind and she wasn’t precisely thinking anymore. She leaped forward and smashed her blade against Sorrel’s, then followed up with a shower of blows to bludgeon his arm into numbness. She didn’t plan ahead, just let her arms and legs move by exhilarating instinct. Sorrel tried to counter her with the controlled and thoughtful blows he preferred, but this time they melted before Clovermead’s assault. Six months of endless drills had made lunges and parries an instinct in her muscles; her sword was as natural to her as her claws. Sorrel’s blade shook in his hand, and he stumbled away from Clovermead. One by one his practiced stratagems failed him. He slammed into the back of the Training Grounds and desperately parried her assaults with his back to the wall.

  Sorrel’s eyes grew wide and wild, and he began to gasp a ragged chant in Tansyard. His sword shifted in his hand and it became a glittering snake that struck out against her like something alive. Now there was no control or thought in his fighting either, and he began to match Clovermead’s blows. He forced her away from the wall and back to the sand-strewn center of the Training Grounds. His chant was a war cry, an ululation, a savage desire for blood and death. They fought as desperate animals, and his strength matched her strength, his speed her speed. Their swords clashed together one final time—and both blades spun to the ground. Sorrel and Clovermead stared at each other’s empty hands. Then all at once their knees buckled and they collapsed to the sand.

  The bear only slowly receded from Clovermead. When she could think once more, she found that she had a stitch in her side and her lungs were heaving. She swam with sweat underneath her leather armor; its cotton padding was drenched. Her limbs were limp. But so are Sorrel’s, she thought with satisfaction. The Tansyard was just as exhausted as she was.

  “So that is what it is like to fight a berserker,” said Sorrel at last. He sat up, his chest still heaving. “I had always been curious as to what that experience is like, much as I am curious about what it is like to be bitten by a snake. Will you be doing this often?”

  “If it works,” said Clovermead. “Being calm and collected doesn’t work that well against you.”

  “Then I must consider how to defend myself against such an onslaught,” said Sorrel thoughtfully. “I do not wish to become a berserker, but I think I must learn to be a little wilder in my swordplay. I must thank you for that lesson.” He smiled suddenly, making the crosses on his cheeks flutter like flags. “You are a wildcat, Clovermead, a hellion, a spirit of flame. It is terrifying and wonderful to fight against you.”

  “Don’t say such things,” said Clovermead. She was sure her cheeks were glowing red with pleasure from his praise, and she was glad she had her helmet on. “I know you’re still a better fighter than I am. I keep on thinking I’ll get to the point where I can beat you in a fair fight, but then you learn some new trick and you wipe the floor with me.”

  “I do try to improve,” said Sorrel. “I have made it my professional study to find new ways of defeating you in combat, so I may sing of my triumphs, and instill ever stronger in you the virtue of humility. I have concluded that a life spent whacking you on the ribs will
be a life well spent.”

  “One of these days I’ll get to the Steppes and I’ll find out that ‘Sorrel’ is the Tansyard word for ‘cock-a-hoop,’” said Clovermead. She tried to stand up, but her legs weren’t yet in a mood to cooperate. “I don’t think I’ll be able to walk straight for a day. What was that you were singing? It sounded like a wolf howling.”

  “It is the Dirge of Two Knives. When Yarrow lay dying in the Farry Heights, after he had fought alone against ten warriors of the Gray Bar Horde and killed nine of them, Our Lady came and comforted him with the Dirge. In the Cyan Cross Horde we sing it in combat, as we commend our souls to Our Lady. It seemed appropriate as your sword glittered in my face, my shoulders scraped the bricks, and I began to wonder whether I would live to see a nineteenth winter.”

  “We didn’t have songs about dying in battle in Timothy Vale,” said Clovermead. “We sang drinking songs and wooing songs and songs about lost sheep. I tried singing The Song of the Siege of the Silver Knight out loud once, but Goody Weft told me to shush up because I had a voice like a rooster.”

  “That was an admirable bout, Demoiselle,” said a gentle voice from above. Clovermead looked up and saw Saraband leaning over the parapet. She had tilted her parasol forward to shade her face, but its thin fabric let through enough light to show her features to proper advantage. She wore an intolerably fetching circlet of white daisies in her hair. “I see your talent is for fighting. I never saw you so quick in my class.”

  “That’s because dance is torture and this is fun,” said Clovermead softly. Be polite, Clovermead, she told herself. Don’t scowl at her too obviously. “Teach me a sword dance, Lady Saraband, and I’ll see what I can do,” she said more loudly.