Surprised by the sudden change under his feet, George fell, landing flat on his face, his mouth touching the cold death.
“George!” cried Marit. She put out her arms and tried to press herself forward, into the worst of the cold death.
The bear pushed her out of the way and threw himself toward George.
Once he was there, however, he did not know how to get them both out. In the end, George stirred enough beneath him that the bear’s contact with the ground was interrupted. The bear had just enough strength then to push George forward. Then George leaned back and tugged the bear out as well.
Once free, the bear felt numbness in his forelegs and-paws, and a point on his stomach that had had too much contact with the dead ground. George’s lips were discolored, and one of his ears looked deflated.
Marit had to lead him in the right direction, away from the cold death, for he did not walk steadily now.
The hound walked at the bear’s side.
When they had gone nearly to the other end of the forest, George stopped and called for food.
The blond-haired boy and one of the others brought out bread and dried fruit. George had it shared around equally, and offered some to the bear and the hound as well.
The bear ate a little, then turned to see that the hound, for all she had always turned her nose up at such meals before, also took a bit of the bread and chewed on it slowly. He thought she must be terribly hungry and afraid.
“I do not know how to battle this,” said Prince George. “This pulls from me all that I am, all that I feel.”
Was the prince giving up? The bear did not think him a coward, but had hoped for more.
“You are saying we must retreat and leave our dead behind?” asked Marit. The bear remembered her father was a warrior as well as a king. She would not be used to defeat.
“I am saying that it is one thing to cut a new channel for water that is already flowing. That changes only the course of the water, as I have done with you and the hound,” said George. “But it is another thing again to fill a stream that has gone dry with water one must call from the sky to fall just so.”
“And who could do this?” asked Marit.
“One who knows more of magic than I,” said George. “One who breathes it in like a fish breathes water. One who has been part of magic from the first.”
The bear felt a chill run through him, leaving a numbness in his paws. Who was the coward now?
“Let me tell you a story,” said George. “It is a story about the wild man.”
It was the last thing the bear wanted to hear. Had he not suffered enough at the hands of the wild man?
Yet for the sake of the forest animals and their magic, the bear was willing to listen even to this.
“It is a story of a challenge between the two greatest warriors: a man and a wolf. I had to read it through to the end before I understood how it had to do with the wild man.
“His name was Tors and he was a giant of a man,” George said. “His legs were as thickly muscled as tree trunks and he could run as fast as a deer. He knew how to use a sword so well that no man dared stand against him, and he knew the minds of other men so well that he had never been surprised in battle.
“Tors had heard of the wolf known as the Bear-killer, who had killed a bear on his own when he was only two seasons old and then became leader of his pack. In the years following, the Bear-killer gathered more and more wolves to his pack until there were hundreds of them, a terrifying sight to see. So Tors went in search of the Bear-killer and found him with his pack.
“Using the language of the wolves, Tors challenged the Bear-killer to a race across the great globe itself, over mountains, rivers, deserts, snow, and oceans. This race would test endurance and determination as well as physical prowess and sheer ingenuity. It might take more than a year to finish, but the first of the two to return to the very place in the forest on which he now stood would be declared the winner. The other would lie down and give up his life for the first.
“The Bear-killer accepted the challenge. What else could he do? The human warrior had cried out to him in the hearing of his mate, his pups, and all the other wolves in his pack. And truly he wanted to fight the human. He was tired of the way in which humans saw the whole world as theirs. They cut trees and took over forests that belonged to the animals, and killed those who tried to fight for their homes. Humans were arrogant and had to be shown their true place, which was no higher than that of any other creature.
“‘Then let it begin,’ said Tors.
“‘But wait!’ called out the Bear-killer, for he was as cunning as the human warrior. ‘Because you have set all the other conditions of this quest, I add this one: that those of our own kind who are able to help us shall be allowed to. Thus shall this test be more than for one man and one wolf, but for all men and all wolves.’
“Tors could not see that this would make any difference to the outcome of the race. The Bear-killer still had to run every mile of the race himself, as would he. So he agreed to this change, and the race began.
“Tors began to run toward the mountains in the east. The Bear-killer did the same. But a wolf runs faster than a man, so he was miles ahead before night fell. Then, in the dark, as Tors rested, the Bear-killer found another pack of wolves close by and spoke to them about the human warrior who believed himself superior to all wolves. The wolf pack was so incensed that they needed no suggestion from the Bear-killer as to what to do next. They attacked immediately, dozens of them coming in the dark against one man.
“Tors defended himself and killed them all. He cried out his triumph into the dark night so that the Bear-killer could hear that he had not beat the human warrior so easily. But Tors was wounded with many wolf bites and had to tend to himself through the night. In the morning he had not eaten well or slept, and when he began his journey again he was much weakened.
“He asked for help from other humans in villages that he passed through, telling them about his great quest to prove that a man is better than a wolf. They agreed that his quest was a good one, but they would not give him food unless he labored for it. So Tors was forced to stop for several days and was further delayed behind the Bear-killer. He told himself that the wolf, though moving well here in the mountains, would soon falter in the deserts.
“But there were desert wolves as well. And in each terrain that they passed through, the wolf never fell behind. Worse still, the human warrior became more battered as time went on, hungrier and thirstier and further in need of aid from the human villages he passed by. And yet they would give him nothing at all, or very little. They had excuses, for they said the harvest had gone badly, or the winter had been too cold. Tors drank from streams and ate raw meat, and made coverings for himself from leaves and grasses.
“But the wolf, the Bear-killer, was always treated kindly by other wolves, and they helped him in whatever way they could. They thought of any victory he would have against the human as their own victory, whereas the humans were too selfish to think this way. Tors was a man from another village, another kingdom, far away. If he won his contest, they would never know or care. So why should they share their resources with him?
“Tors began to see how selfish humans were compared to the wolves. It made him angry, and yet he wondered if he would have been any different if a stranger had passed through his village asking for help in a contest against an animal. For all his cunning and skill, Tors had never understood the world this way before. And he began to fear that he could lose this race.
“At last the two warriors reached the ocean. Staring out into it, seeing the human vessels that bobbed up and down in the waves, Tors felt he had found hope again. He turned to the Bear-killer and said, ‘Are you ready to give up? If you tell me you are finished now, I will make your death easy.’
“The wolf spat at Tors and then leaped atop him and began to attack him in earnest, as he had never done before. It was a great battle, but it ended too soon, fo
r a tidal wave washed over them and dragged them out to sea. Neither wolf nor man could survive alone in the terrible current. It was only in this intense moment of desperation that they reached for each other to survive. And in that moment when a man and a wolf tried to help each other instead of battle each other, they found the magic that binds humans to animals.
“And the two began to change into one.
“The man first grew the head of a wolf, and then the tail to keep him steady in the water. The wolf grew a man’s long fingers for paddling. They pushed against the water to reach the surface. They kicked and swam as their lungs screamed. But it was not until they thrashed so violently that the two forms could no longer remain separate in one space. The two became one, and they were able to find air and breathe in life once more.
“A man and a wolf had gone into the water, but it was one creature that came out of it. This creature had wild eyes and a beard that was the grayish white of a wolf’s skin. He no longer had the stature of a giant, but had something between the height of a man and a wolf. At times he could make himself into a wolf. At other times he took on only a few of the aspects of the wolf: the teeth, the claws, the tail. Often he looked simply like a very wild man, which he was indeed. A man who had become one with an animal and was happy with the change, and did not seek to return to the two separate creatures he had been.”
The bear felt only a twinge of sympathy for the wild man. He, at least, had kept some of his human side. The bear had no such comfort.
George held up a hand. “There is more,” he said. “The story I read insisted that the magic that bound the wild man into one form also bound him to life. When he is not found among those with the magic, he is to be found in the north, on the very highest peak of the sheerest mountains, where he watches over the magic still. Yet he is no servant of animal or man, but of magic itself, and he aids it always in the battle against unmagic,” said George.
Unmagic. It was the perfect name for the cold death in the forest. Magic was a way of connecting with other lives. This—unmagic—was a way of severing all those connections.
CHAPTER NINE
The Hound
THE HOUND LOOKED at the bear. She had never seen him so curled into himself before. All because of the reminder of the wild man.
George leaned over Marit, then put a hand to her belly.
She whispered to him.
The hound thought of her own child, forever lost to her.
It was the way of the forest, a new generation rising to replace the old. Until the cold death had come.
Turning back, the hound caught sight of a flash of anger in the eyes of the blond boy. Suddenly he threw himself at George screaming, “Let the unmagic take you!” He kicked and punched at George until the bear pulled him off.
“I have protected you,” said the prince. “Taught you. Fed you. Why would you attack me now?”
The boy spat out blood, uncowed. “You think I should be grateful?” he shouted at George. “That I should bow down to you as my prince in magic as well as kingdom?
“You do what you do for your own sake. You call us to this ‘magic school’ of yours so that you can make us your servants, harness our power to yours. You think that I cannot see through your schemes? I am not as stupid as they are.” He waved behind him at the other humans, who flinched at his words.
“Why do you think there are so few of us here? A handful. That is not a hundredth of those who have the magic in a ten-mile circle around the castle, let alone in the whole kingdom. We all know what my father knew—that you will take what you can from us and leave us to die at the stake.”
George opened his mouth as if to contradict the boy, then stopped himself. “Ah, that was your father,” he said, his face going pale. “I am sorry for what happened to him. Truly I am. I wish I could have helped him.”
Marit whispered, “No,” as if she had done some evil herself.
The hound did not understand this human guilt the two felt, which stopped them from taking action against the boy.
He should be silenced, and permanently, whatever had happened to his father. He was a threat to Prince George, and his magic and kingdom.
But no one stopped his tirade. “You could have judged him clean. You could have admitted to your animal magic then. But you turned your back on him and then listened to him cry out for help as he died in agony. And you waited to tell the truth about yourself until it was useful for you.
“I say that if this unmagic is a threat to you, well and good. Fight it alone. As my father said when he was burned, Prince George is no prince of ours. I will not be ruled by him. Not now and not ever!” He shook a fist and looked at the others.
The woman who had been burned spoke hoarsely. “Prince—” she began, then stopped. She looked back at the boy. “What do you say?” she demanded harshly.
“I…was a child,” said George, eyes wet with tears. “I have regretted it all my life. I thought I would make up for it now.”
The woman turned away from him.
The hound bristled at the disloyalty of what she had thought of as the prince’s pack. They could fight him to show their anger. But to turn away was not houndlike at all.
Then the man with the tattoos came closer to George and the hound waited a moment too long, thinking that this was the way it should be done. A nip, a growl, and then all would be right again.
George held out a hand.
And was stabbed in the stomach with a knife that flickered out faster than the hound could follow. She thought as George stifled a cry how unfair it was that his own had used a weapon against him that he could not defend against—and without warning!
Humans!
The bear, stunned, stumbled forward and let loose the boy, who scrambled to his feet and laughed aloud. “To war!” he called. “We will bring down his kingdom and all those who hate magic in it. We are few, but we are strong!”
The hound leaped at the tattooed man, but he was already out of her immediate range.
She would have followed, but George called out, “Stop! They are my subjects. If anyone has failed, it is I who have not done enough to save—” He clutched at his stomach and his mouth made the last word soundlessly.
The hound could smell the flow of deep blood. Marit wept at his side, tore off her own jacket, and pressed it into the wound.
“You must get home, to the palace physician,” she said urgently.
“If he doesn’t also wish me dead,” said George, a hint of a bitter smile on his lips.
“You idiot! Sometimes I could wish you dead myself,” said Marit. She looked up at the bear and the hound as she helped George back toward the castle.
“I wish you well fighting the unmagic,” she said. “But I cannot pledge any help to you now.”
The hound barked her understanding. Prince George would defend magic on another front.
The bear and the hound would have to find the wild man, to see if he could help.
She looked at the bear, thinking how difficult it must be for him to face the man who had taken his human life from him.
Nonetheless, he found a branch and scratched in the ground with it.
The hound saw that he had drawn mountains and an arrow pointing north—to the wild man.
CHAPTER TEN
The Bear
THE UNMAGIC WAS in every part of the forest. There was no way of avoiding it and its effects completely. And, in fact, the bear felt compelled to witness as much as he could of the death of his forest and its creatures. It was his last gift to them, his last farewell.
He and the hound were silent as they walked side by side through the dry section of the forest, where the unmagic was at its worst. The bear walked all the way around the area, forcing himself to get as close as he could, to measure its size. It took several hours.
The forest was shaped like a coin that had been melted on one end, and it was on this end that the unmagic was strongest, though it permeated the whole forest. As he wal
ked the edge, the fur on the back of the bear’s neck rose and the hound whined.
The bear could see more than one mound of what had once been an animal caught in the unmagic and unable to get out, as if pulled down into quicksand. Some of the mounds looked no more animal now than a pile of leaves, but the shape of them made the bear certain of what they were.
And then there were places where there were mounds next to mounds. Families of animals that had died together in the cold death, or perhaps one had died and then the others had died trying to save the first.
The bear had to stop then, to take a deep breath before he went on. He thought of the man he had been and the man he now was, despite the skin he wore. He gave grudging credit to the wild man for a portion of that change. He never would have suspected he could care so much for animals.
At the edge of the unmagic on one side, the bear stopped at a mound that for a moment had seemed alive. There had been movement there, he was sure. But now, when he looked again, there was nothing. He stared at it another moment, then turned away.
A sound pulled him back.
What was the mound? It was the shape and size of a deer, though the legs had been pulled into the graying ground. The outline of the head, turned too sharply to one side to be still alive, was fast fading, and the torso was long and thick.
Very thick, in fact.
Could it be two deer caught together?
Then, as he was watching, he saw the movement again, a faint beat coming through the skin at the top of the mound. The reality came clear to him in a stark moment. It had been a doe nearing her birthing time, and the fawn had been trapped inside of her. Now the unmagic that had killed the mother was burrowing deep into the tissues of her flesh to kill the babe.
The hound was suddenly at his side, whining.
It was the sound the doe herself might have made as her flesh sloughed off, knowing that she would never see her fawn’s face, nor lick it free from the fluids of birth and watch it wobble on its new legs.
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