The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [16]
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 walked 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