Gwenhwyfar Read Online Free PDF Page B

Gwen prayed silently to the Goddess, her lips and mouth dry with terror, that the great beast would continue to be oblivious of her presence.
    Her fear made everything preternaturally sharp and clear, and she saw in that clarity the gray patches on the bear’s muzzle, saw that his eyes were dim rather than bright.
    Then those dim eyes brightened, and the bear growled, a deep rumbling that emerged from its chest and filled the air like thunder. Fear turned to horror as Gwen saw what it was that the bear had spotted.
    Gliding out of the deepest shadows among the bushes came a serpent.
    But this was an impossible creature. It was long, long . . . long enough that if it had its head in the king’s bedroom, its tail would still be sticking out the main door of the castle. At the thickest point, its body was as big around as the chest of one of their horses, its wicked wedge-shaped head was as big as a barrel, and its glittering eyes were the size of her fist. It could as easily have swallowed one of the horses as a grass snake swallowed a frog. And it was black, an oily, glistening black, from the tip of its snout to the end of its tail. Even its flickering, forked tongue was black.
    The bear reared up on its hind legs and roared at it. Gwen smothered a scream as the serpent raised itself as tall as the bear’s head, hissed angrily, and struck.
    It sank its fangs into the bear’s shoulder; the bear roared with anger and pain and raked its head with terrible claws, laying the flesh open in four long, bleeding furrows. Gwen clapped her hands over her ears as the snake briefly released the bear, then struck again. This time the snake cast two coils around the bear and began to squeeze. Its eyes red with rage, the bear wheezed, but it raked the serpent again and again with vicious swipes of its claws and tore at it with it long white teeth.
    As Gwen watched breathlessly, the two combatants rolled and thrashed, tearing up the ground and the underbrush in their struggle. And aside from the sounds of combat, it was a silent struggle; the bear roared no more challenges, and the snake did not utter a single hiss.
    Suddenly there was a tremendous crack; Gwen jumped and screamed.
    For a long moment, serpent and bear were frozen together into a knot of fur and scales and torn flesh and blood.
    Then, slowly, the serpent’s coils fell away from the bear, dropping limply to the forest floor.
    The bear had broken its spine.
    But the bear had not escaped unscathed.
    It stood there, swaying from side to side for a long, long moment, bleeding from a hundred wounds. Gwen gathered herself to try to creep out of the grove and escape, when the bear looked up and looked at her.
    She froze. There was something in its eyes. Something . . . desperate. Something with a hint of recognition . . .
    The bear held her with its gaze, looking at her, making her feel that it was trying, somehow, to tell her something.
    Then it moaned once, its legs buckled, and it toppled clumsily to the ground.
    There was a roaring in Gwen’s ears; little black specks danced before her eyes, then grew, then covered everything with blackness, a darkness that she fell into, and forgot bear and blood and serpent and all . . .
    When she opened her eyes again, there was no sign of the bear, nor of the serpent. The forest floor was undamaged, the underbrush rustled undisturbed, and Holdhard snored on, as if nothing whatsoever had happened.

    Gwen was silent all through the meal, even when her father petted and praised her for the treat she had brought him. She smiled up at him as Little Gwen seethed, but the smile was only on her lips; her mind was still on that terrible fight in the forest, trying to understand how it could have happened, and then—not happened. She had not been dreaming. She was very sure of that. She had not been asleep.
    That meant it could only be one thing: a vision.
    She didn’t want to tell her mother about it, somehow. She really didn’t want to tell