The Bear Read online

  “What do we do?” another attendant asked in despair, and, indeed, the gloom spread wide and far and fast.

  “We open the gates,” Harcourt said, and all eyes looked upon him. “And pray that our conquerors are beneficent.”

  The gates of Delaval City were opened that day, as the sun sank low in the western sky, as, in a field far away, Cormack and Milkeila knelt and cried and kissed the hero who had won the day in Blenden Coe.

  Harcourt of Palmaristown met the royal procession at the gates as they marched. He presented King Yeslnik’s sword to Laird Bannagran . . . nay, to King Bannagran.

  Bannagran took it and looked to Queen Gwydre at his side. Then he glanced at Master Reandu and at Laird Ethelbert, following right behind, who nodded his agreement.

  Bannagran accepted Yeslnik’s sword but in turn gave Harcourt back the sword the general had surrendered in Blenden Coe.

  And in that moment, the horns of Pryd began to blow, and the horns of Delaval City replied, and the horns of Vanguard resounded, and the horns of Ethelbert dos Entel joined in, and from the ships in the river came the horns of Palmaristown, and in that moment of confusion and fear, there came to Delaval City, hope.

  Unlike so many who had left Blenden Coe, traveling straight to Delaval City to attend the formal wedding and coronation of Bannagran and Gwydre, Cormack and Milkeila took a more roundabout route, moving north and west to the bank of the Masur Delaval not far south from Palmaristown.

  It seemed a fool’s chase, even to Cormack, who had insisted upon it, but he was determined to at least try. He owed his unlikely friends that much.

  Whether it was some magic in the powrie beret he wore or a matter of good information gleaned from some of Milwellis’s soldiers or simply dumb luck or some combination of the three, Cormack did not know, but walking along the river, the monk recognized the familiar face immediately, though it was bloated in death and well along in rot.

  But he knew this dwarf, without doubt.

  “And Bikelbrin’s up here,” Milkeila called a few moments later from the rise just off the river. “I cannot believe that we found them!”

  Cormack stood hands on hips, looking down at the powrie who had befriended him. The weight of all the world fell on his shoulders in that one moment, and tears escaped his eyes. Tears for Mcwigik and Bikelbrin, tears for Bransen, tears for Jameston Sequin, tears for all the dead and all the maimed and all the grieving.

  “Bury them?” Milkeila asked, for she was not sure why Cormack had insisted on this expedition.

  The monk shook his head. He drew a knife from his belt and crouched down over his dead powrie friend.

  “Cormack!” Milkeila yelled at him when he started cutting, but he did not stop, and by the time the woman arrived at his side, he stood up and showed her Mcwigik’s heart. Methodically, the monk went to Bikelbrin and similarly cut out his heart.

  “What are you doing?” Milkeila asked repeatedly as Cormack found a clear spot in from the river, a place suitable for his needs. He placed the hearts down gently and began to dig with his knife.

  “Help me,” he said.

  “You bury their hearts?”

  “And then we sing,” Cormack said. Milkeila paused and stared at him suspiciously.

  She went to her work, though, and they finished the hole and placed the hearts of Mcwigik and Bikelbrin within.

  Cormack tapped down the replaced earth, then grabbed Milkeila by the shoulders and bent low in a huddle. He began the cadence of the song he had learned long ago in a place far away, and Milkeila dutifully chanted along, though she did not know the words.

  It didn’t matter, Cormack thought, for what did he know of this ritual anyway? Would two new dwarves, offspring of his friends, actually come forth?

  “That is Sepulcher?” Milkeila asked when they were done.

  Cormack nodded.

  “Why?” the woman asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cormack answered honestly. “A debt repaid?”

  The couple stood holding hands above the graves, the womb of Mcwigik and Bikelbrin, for a long, long while.

  And there they put the past behind them and turned south toward Delaval City, toward the future.

  EPILOGUE

  Bransen Garibond, Prince of Pryd, cast his line into the still waters of the lake and rested back against the stone. This was his favorite fishing spot in all of Pryd Town, a small outcrop that jutted into the water beside the old house, the childhood home of his father and namesake. From the window of that house, his house now, his father had often watched his adoptive father, Garibond Womak, similarly casting.

  At least, so claimed his mother and grandmother, and Bransen could well imagine it. He felt connected to this place, which, along with Castle Pryd, had been his home for all his thirty-five years. Here he was at peace. Here the world was as it should be in the kingdom known as Honce-the-Bear in God’s Year 111.

  “Father!” he heard a call from his teenaged son, and Dynard came into view, sprinting past the house toward Bransen. On the porch, Callen McKeege stood up curiously, but old Dawson, well into his nineties now, hardly seemed to notice the disturbance.

  “Word from Ursal!” Dynard exclaimed, referring to the throne of Honce-the-Bear, a city once known as Delaval.

  Bransen knew what was coming before Dynard even spoke it.

  “To the castle,” he instructed his son, and Callen and even old Dawson followed.

  They found Cadayle, the longtime Dame of Pryd, tending one of her many gardens. Her smile had not diminished with age, though the sparkle in her eyes had never quite returned after the loss of her beloved husband.

  “The king is dead,” Bransen told his mother.

  Cadayle closed her eyes and took a deep and steadying breath. Like Bransen, she wasn’t surprised by the news, for all in the kingdom who knew well the old Bear of Honce knew that he wouldn’t long survive after the death of his wife, Queen Gwydre.

  “What now?” young Dynard asked.

  “It is good that they had a child,” said Cadayle. “Prydae will be king. He is a good man, I think,” she added hopefully.

  “You have not seen him in eleven years,” Bransen reminded. “Not since the Abellican Centennial.”

  “He is near to your age,” Cadayle replied. “You knew him best of all. Do you think me wrong?”

  Bransen shrugged.

  “He’s got his father’s size, to be sure,” said Callen.

  “Aye, but has he his mother’s good heart?” old Dawson added, and that was the rub, after all. For more than three decades, the land of Honce-the-Bear had known peace and prosperity. For one brief shining moment, all the people of the land had mattered, not the king and queen. And no lairds, not Dame Cadayle of Pryd nor Laird Cormack and Dame Milkeila of Vanguard nor any of the many lairds of Entel in the east nor any of the many lairds of the lesser holdings, had hoarded their treasures while the peasants had suffered. For that was not the way of King Bannagran and Queen Gwydre’s Honce, and only once in all the years had an upstart laird in Palmaristown defied them.

  And even there, in the city that had once blamed Dame Gwydre for the murderous attacks of powries, the garrison and peasants of Palmaristown had refused to fight for the treasonous laird when Queen Gwydre and her fleet had arrived.

  But that was all a different age now as the reign of Gwydre and Bannagran had come to an end.

  “Prydae will be his mother’s fine son,” Bransen said, nodding his head. “Or I will become my father’s son and put to use my grandmother’s shining sword.”

  “Don’t talk like that, boy!” Callen scolded, but Cadayle hushed her.

  “No, do,” the Dame of Pryd told her child. “If the world is ever in need of you, then answer that call.”

  Bransen, son of the Highwayman, nodded, and though he believed his prediction about the reign of King Prydae, so, too, did he believe his claim about his own determination, for he was his father’s son, and his mother’s, and he would fight if ever th
e need arose.

  As long as the price was worth the gain.

  At St. Mere Abelle, Father Abbot Reandu, the leader of the Church of Blessed Abelle, received the news of Bannagran’s passing with great sadness.

  He had known the king longer than any man alive and had witnessed the great growth of the Laird of Pryd in the months leading up to his ascension to the unified throne.

  Honce-the-Bear would not easily recover from the loss of Queen Gwydre and King Bannagran, so close together, and his own role in assuring that the light of their reign did not darken in the coming days would not be a minor one.

  Reandu had been in Ursal when Queen Gwydre had died, passing peacefully among loved ones and dear friends, including Laird Cormack and Dame Milkeila, who had sailed all the way from Vanguard upon hearing of her illness.

  Reandu stared out his window, in the same office that had belonged to Father Premujon and Father Artolivan before him, and let the tapestry of his life play out before him. He thought of Cadayle and of Bransen, the Highwayman—the little Stork—a damaged child living in a hole and carrying chamber pots, who had so unexpectedly come into Reandu’s life and had so unbelievably come to play the most important of roles in the great struggle of his day.

  A moment of regret brought a wince to the Father Abbot, but it passed quickly. They had done great things. They had made the world a better place, and, in the end, it could not be denied, in cottages across the length and breadth of Honce-the-Bear, that the price had been worth the gain.

  “And so our work goes on,” Reandu said.

  “It ever will, father,” Master Pinower said behind him. “It ever will.”