The Princess and the Bear (18 page)

S
HE HAD FOUGHT
for a time as a hound, but she had stepped back for a moment to try to see where she should go next. Then she heard the odd sound of a tent coming down behind her, the cloth flapping in the sparse wind.

She turned and from a distance saw the royal steward, red-faced.

“No! I told you not to do that!” he cried.

“But you said to pack—” the young servant answered.

The royal steward struck him full across the face. “Do what I say or you will regret it.”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir,” said the servant.

“Now put my things into a single pack that I can set on a horse. I want money and a change of clothes and a weapon. I need no more than that.”

“But now that the battle is nearly won, surely you wish—”

The servant was struck again. “It is not your place to tell me what I wish and do not wish.”

“I only meant—”

“Silence!” the royal steward thundered, far louder than the sound of his tent being struck, though nothing like as loud as the battle.

She remained a hound and watched. It was not much, perhaps, but she did it for Richon. This was a man he hated and would want to punish.

The servant went back into the folds of the tent and brought it back up on one end. He rummaged for a few moments, then came back out with a small pack. “Sir?” he said.

The royal steward opened the pack. “You did not think to add food to this? How long can I journey without food?”

“You did not say to—”

“Get food!” said the royal steward.

In the few moments before the servant returned, the royal steward had mounted a gray horse with a long tail, one the other horses kept away from.

The hound guessed why, but would have to confirm it.

The royal steward started off at a gallop, with no more concern for the horse than a bit of wood.

The hound bounded as fast as she could to keep up with the horse. Now she could see that it was very like
the horse she had seen in the market. It, too, had been stripped of its magic. The creature that remained might look like a horse, but it was not a horse. Not in ways that mattered to other horses, or to the animal world at large.

So perhaps the royal steward was right to treat the horse so, and to not care if it was injured or even died from his mistreatment of it. Such a creature was better dead.

It rode on mindlessly, heartlessly. It did not think for itself. It simply was the creature that the royal steward demanded it be.

The hound could kill the royal steward for that alone. She shuddered in horror, and kept as close as she could without revealing herself.

After two hours at this punishing pace, she was exhausted. As a hound she had always considered herself the match of any horse, but the royal steward pressed his horse past its limits. He did not see it as living, and he did not care if it died. He could easily buy another. And if it was not one that had been touched by the unmagic, well, he would treat it as if it were.

Finally, the royal steward stopped at a village for food and water. The hound noticed that he tied his horse so that it could not graze. But it could drink from a dirty trough, at least, and it did so eagerly.

The hound drank from a clean trough and tried to find calm and strength in herself. She did not let herself doze.

Far too soon, the royal steward came out, looking well satisfied with his meal. He untied the horse and leaped back into the saddle, which he had never removed. He looked around once, as if expecting pursuers, then smiled and went on his way.

He had not looked down, only up, as if assuming that any who came after him would have to be mounted, as he was.

It was painful for the hound to run again after so short a stop. She told herself that if the royal steward stopped for the night, she would have a chance to take a kill. She had been far hungrier than this before and survived.

But she had never had to force herself to continue onward for so long at such a pace.

The hound could see the horse begin to miss steps, falter and correct itself. But the royal steward only swore at it and used a stick to urge it faster.

At last the horse fell and it did not get up.

The royal steward could see that he was not far from another village and that it was close to dark. He did not even bother to end the horse’s life in a quick, decent fashion. He left it there to die slowly, in terrible pain.

The hound waited until the royal steward was out of sight.

She would find him again easily enough. It was clear that he would have to go to the village and rest for the night.

She bent next to the dying horse and tried to speak to it in the language of horses.

“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.

R
ICHON 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.