Darkthunder's Way (35 page)

“Wait,” he said slowly. “Isn’t it true that most of us human folks can’t see this place?” He gestured toward the expanse of shimmering water.

“That is so,” the white bear acknowledged, “and truly I wondered that you found it. Yet that will not save you.”

“But it means that there’s more to me than…uh, meets the eye.”

“That is possible,” the white bear conceded. “To eat a wizard will greatly enhance my power.”

“But—” David began.

“He is right,” Yanu interrupted. “I was called back for a reason, I knew it when I came. The lake showed itself to him without your will. And I have sensed strong medicine about him, as would you, should you choose to look for it.”

The white bear bared its teeth at him and narrowed its eyes. “You are saying…”

“You must see for yourself.”

The white bear did, surveyed David from muddy boots to uncombed crown. “He does have strong medicine; that much I will acknowledge. Very well, what is it you wish?”

“That you engage him in combat, and if he wins, you let him go free.”

“He will not win,” the white bear said amiably. “But that sounds very fair to me.”

“Well it doesn’t to
me
!” David cried, unable to stand any more. “What the hell are you trying to do, anyway, Yanu? I can’t fight this thing!”

“Yes you can,” Yanu said calmly. “And I will tell you how.”

David’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I’m listening.”

Yanu cast a warning glare toward the white bear, then turned back to David. “You have with you a scale of the great uktena; and more than that, you have helped to slay one.”

“You did not tell me
that
,” the white bear noted.

“You were too busy being angry to ask,” Yanu replied, “…or to look.”

The white bear bared its fangs again. Its breath, David thought, was considerably hotter than before.

“Nevertheless it is true,” Yanu told him. “The scale has great magic, but you yourself are not lacking or you could not have come here. You can use the pain to take on the shape of a bear, and thus fight my Chief here, on equal terms.”

David stared at his would-be adversary. “But…” He swallowed. “But couldn’t he just as well become human and fight me?”

The white bear laughed. “Me? Become human? I who never was?”

“I’ve never been a
bear
, either,” David reminded him archly.

“No, but you have tasted our flesh and drunk our blood, and that is enough to work the change!”

“I have not!” David cried, before he remembered that in fact he had—once, when Uncle Dale had shot a nosy black fellow that had hung around his farm too long. The meat had been pungent and greasy. “Besides, you just said yourself that you eat people, so that makes us even.”

“Alas, desire and fact are not always the same,” the white bear observed wistfully.

“Well,” David said, folding his arms on his chest, “I reckon I’ve got to do it.”

“I reckon,” the white bear said, “you do.”

* * *

“And just
how
am I gonna pull this off?” David raged at Yanu a short while later. They had retreated to the edge of the forest to confer; the white bear had drawn away to a patch of short green grass and was patiently grooming its fur with claws as long as David’s hands. And watching.

Yanu grinned at him. “A simple thing: the mingling of blood and magic. You cut yourself with the uktena scale; your blood awakens it; its magic awakens you. Then you must think on the thing you would become.”

David regarded him skeptically. “How deep a cut?”

“Deep, if you would live. Nothing is ever free, and there can be no magic without pain.”

David grimaced sourly and fished the pouch out of his backpack. An instant later the uktena scale glittered in his palm. He raised a brow at Yanu. “What about my clothes?”

“They will not change with you.”

David rolled his eyes and stripped. The setting sun was warm across his shoulders. A mallard waddled up to watch.

“Does it matter which I cut?”

“That with which you fight.”

Biting his lip, David took the scale in his left hand and slashed it across his other palm—too lightly, for only a trickle of blood showed.

“You must do it with more force than that,” Yanu told him. “You spilt far more blood to bring me back and endured far more pain.”

David frowned and set his jaw. This time he folded the scale in his right hand and squeezed as hard as he could, feeling the glassy edges gouge against fingers and palm. Harder…harder. He closed his eyes, and with his other hand grasped the protruding two arms of the scale (the root-ends, he supposed)—and yanked suddenly upward.

Blood flowed out and dripped between his fingers to stain a stand of daisies. Yanu licked it up greedily, and before David could stop him, had likewise slapped his tongue along his hand. “Blood on the earth is dangerous,” he said. “Yours is much safer inside me.”

David stared at the hand incredulously. It was no longer bleeding.

“Now close your eyes,” Yanu said, licking his lips, “and think how it would be to be a bear.”

David did, or tried. At first nothing came to him. It was nerves, he supposed, one more delay—and, he admitted, more than a little plain, raw fear. He would be marching off to fight in a minute, after all: and fight a friggin’
bear
in the bargain. It was a little frightening how matter-of-fact that suddenly was. But a part of him—the part that wanted very badly to be back on his front porch in north Georgia drinking Dr Pepper and talking to Liz—was scared well beyond shitless.

That kind of thinking wasn’t going to get the work done, though. He had to do this, had to do it
right,
and had to get it over with. Which meant he had to concentrate on nothing except the problem at hand.

But how did it feel to be a bear?

It would feel…heavy, first of all; clumsy, hot,
big
.
The muscles would be thick and strong and methodical, not slim and supple like his own. He took a deep breath, felt his chest expand, released it—and found that it did not sink back as far as he had expected. His shoulders felt funny, too; as if they wanted to slump forward. His hip joints hurt. The sun across his back made it itch abominably. But that was distracting.
Bear,
he had to think;
bear, bear, bear.

He would have a big black nose, and long claws, and little pig eyes. And fur—lots of that, black and wiry. He would have ears that twitched, and jaw muscles like iron that would pull back over long white teeth of which he would be very proud.

That was it: heart and blood and muscle, bones and fur and skin. And brain: a beast brain, but one that loved its children, that enjoyed playing in the meadows, that liked to eat wild honey, and—

Pain exploded through him, and he gasped, then threw himself to the ground and rolled in a vain attempt to escape the agony that was suddenly threatening to turn him inside out.

Abruptly the pain was gone. He staggered onto his hands and knees—
no
, his feet! And was a bear.

By the banks of Atagahi twenty yards away the white bear was still grooming itself and swatting bees.

*

They came together without fanfare on the reedy shores of the magic lake, but David could never quite recall how it began. One moment he was simply approaching his foe at a cautious amble; an instant later they were regarding each other across an ever-decreasing distance—decreasing, he realized dimly, because he was covering it at full gallop. And then the white bear was rearing up on its hind legs, and then
he
was—rising higher and higher to match that impossibly tall form. And then they had crashed together and were grappling on the ground.

Claws slashed him, bringing quick blood across his forelegs, and with it pain like raw fibre. He lashed out with his own, defending his face, protecting his belly, landing a few blows here and there, suddenly blind and reckless with very human fear. Then agony flared through his legs, and he realized he’d been clawed there too.

Growls filled the lakeside, echoing off the looming pines: his, and the white bear’s—and Yanu’s.

“Let the bear fight,” Yanu shouted in his own tongue. “It knows how. Your body is young and will give it strength. That is all you need!”

David recalled dimly how it had been when Fionchadd had fought through him before—how much he had resisted. He gasped, and prayed it was the right thing, and let
go.

His bear shape
did
know how to fight, all right; how to use teeth and claws—all four sets of those. Somehow he climbed atop his adversary and gave him a good raking, but then the white bear flipped him over again, and they tumbled together toward the lake. Water lapped them, cold and clear, and with it fled part of the pain. But hot blood flowed over them more quickly; and David realized he was seeing through thickening veils of red.

Back on dry land now, and more blows thrown and taken. His left arm was so savaged it was useless, he could not even curve the claws there. And jaws were coming toward his neck. No, were
on
his neck and gnawing toward his life. Already the world was darkening. He was going to die. Why had Yanu done this to him? It was all a trick, a horrible, bloody trick.

“You can stop now,” Yanu called.

Nothing happened.

“I said
stop
,” he called again. And this time the pressure vanished from David’s neck. He dared open his eyes, saw his foe sit back abruptly.

“What do you want?” the white bear snarled. “Another few nips and he would have been dead.”

“And you would have slain Uki’s chosen,” Yanu replied promptly. “But there is another reason.”

“Very well,” the white bear snapped, “I would like to hear it.”

Yanu scratched his side absently. His small eyes glittered. “Why are you fighting?” he asked.

“You were here, you know the answer.”

“Suppose you tell me, though.”

“Because he took water from Atagahi unasked.”

“Do all who come here crave your permission?”

The white bear shook his head slowly. “They do not.”

“And why do they not?”

“Because it is a place of healing for all the Four-footed Tribes. In particular for my wounded kin.”

An ear twitched. “And just who
are
your kin?”

“Are you
stupid
? Your kind, my kind: the Bear-tribe.”

“And what is that?” Yanu cried triumphantly, waving a paw toward David.

The white bear’s mouth dropped open (rather foolishly, David thought distantly).

“I would say,” Yanu went on before the other could reply, “that that is a wounded bear!”

“You have tricked me,” the white bear spat, leaping to its feet and lumbering toward him.

“Maybe I have spent too much time with Tsistu,” Yanu replied dryly, not moving. “His soul came so often to the Ghost Country during my long years there that he and I have become close friends.”

“And it would seem,” the white bear snarled, halting in mid-step, “that you have now made another.” He said nothing for a minute, simply stood staring at the placid-seeming Yanu, but gradually the fire faded from his eyes. “Very well,” he said at last, “you have defeated me.” He turned and retraced his steps toward David.

David saw him coming, but hardly cared. He hurt all over. His body was a mass of gouges; but worse, tendons had been severed in his left foreleg so that he could not move it. He tried to speak, to cry out his pain, but could only manage something between a growl and a whimper.

The white bear shuffled up to him and poked him in the side with his muzzle. “I am weary of this, human; and truly you have shown yourself a worthy opponent. I suppose I could argue that you are not truly a bear, but the Ani-Tsaguhi themselves are not all of that seeming, and I do not stop them. You are injured, and I have injured you. Go into Atagahi, drink the water. It will heal your body and restore your form. And take away what you will; for any man for whom you would risk so much surely deserves to live.”

David managed a grunted thanks, dragged himself to his feet, and limped toward the lake.

An instant later, he was both whole and human.

And the white bear was nowhere in sight.

Chapter XXI: Healing

(Galunlati—day four
—evening)

The journey back from Atagahi was not remarkable—except for the haste with which it was begun. David had the healing water now, the precious fluid that would—he hoped—save his best friend. It only remained to get it to him and pray it arrived in time. So it was, then, that he jogged as fast as he could through the darkening woods, with only a panting Yanu for company, all the while cursing himself for the casual pace he had maintained the day before. It was pretty damned irresponsible, he told himself, to have taken it easy when Alec’s life hung in the balance. And as for diversions like bathing, eating—sleeping, even. Why, he could certainly have gone without them for a day or two.