The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [11]
The hound remembered George’s enthusiasm for the school. But there were only a handful here. Was that all the success he had had?
Along with the blond-haired boy, there was a man with the tattoos on his face of a murderer from the southern kingdom of Thurat. One of the women was missing an eye and a hand, and her face had been burned terribly.
The hound wished she believed more in Marit’s new pack’s strength and loyalty. They did not hold close to her as they should, if the danger Marit and George spoke of was so constant.
“Well,” said George awkwardly.
But the hound had no time to make him comfortable again. George might think his place threatened, but there was much worse to come, as he would know when she told him of the cold death.
“Our home is destroyed,” she began, speaking in the language of the hounds.
“What?” said George, starting.
How many of the others understood her? Not the princess, nor from the looks of them the others. And the blond-haired boy seemed utterly uninterested. His whole body was turned away.
“The bear’s cave, where we have lived since—since the transformation,” she continued.
“But how was it done?” asked George. “There have been no earth rumblings, no lightning strikes. Other animals?”
Of a sort, thought the hound.
She looked toward the bear. She wished that he could tell his part of the story. The bear was far more experienced in magic than she was, and had more of the prince’s trust. But the communication was left to her.
“It is a cat man,” said the hound. She waited a moment to see how the prince would react.
“Cat man,” he echoed.
The hound thought she saw a bit of movement from one of the other humans, but she was focused on the prince. “I think it is a cat, but it has been changed into a man. It brings a cold death with it that spreads through the forest,” she said. It was the best she could do to explain.
“A cat man? I believe I have read an old, old tale of such a creature in this area. But it could not possibly be the same one after all this time, and so long away…” The prince trailed off.
“I do not know about your tale, but I know that this cat man takes life with pleasure. Soon the forest will be consumed.”
George nodded. “I will do what I can with my magic. You have but to show me the way.”
He turned back to Marit and the others. “You should go back to the castle. All of you. There is danger in this.”
Marit grinned, a grin of defiance, of challenge. A hound’s toothy grin, learned from her days in another form. “Is it to do with animal magic?” she asked.
“Yes,” said George.
“Then we should go with you. What are we here for if not to learn about magic, dangerous or not?”
George shook his head. “No,” he said, looking at her belly. “Not now.”
And then the hound stared at Marit again. Her balance was different. And her smell. She should have noticed from the first. The princess was with child. Early still, not enough to show on her tall, thin frame, but it was there.
Yes, the prince would want to protect her.
But the princess would have none of it. “We are a school. If you protect us, we learn nothing.”
The hound thought how a male hound would have reacted to his mate who refused to obey him. A cuff to the ear or a slash at the belly. More, if necessary.
But George was human, and so was the princess.
Far easier to be a hound, she thought. Unless one is not a hound.
George nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly. “You will come, then.” He turned back to the hound and spoke to her quietly, under his breath. “The cat man—it is gone now, is it not? You only mean to show us what it left behind with its magic, yes?”
He was asking for the sake of the princess and the unborn child, not for himself.
“I think it has done its work here already,” said the hound.
“Then take us,” said the prince roughly.
The hound turned and led them, the bear following behind.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Bear
COMING THIS WAY through the forest, they found further evidence of the harm done by the cat man. The bear could hear the voices of sick and dying animals