“He’ll know we’re here, though,” interrupted Susan anxiously. She pointed at the ground. “I mean, exactly here. Back at Coniston I knew where everybody was, every living thing within the bounds!”
“He can’t do much about it right now,” said Vivien. “The right-handed are forcing the demesne back to the New World. He’ll have to use all his strength to stop them. But the contest won’t take long, one way or another. We’ll win, I’m sure, but to be on the safe side we should help, and we’ve got about fifteen minutes—”
“Fifteen minutes!” interjected Merlin. “Is that all?”
“Yes,” said Vivien. She held up her right hand as if weighing some invisible object. “Maybe even less.”
“What happens if they can’t bring the demesne back?” asked Susan. “Bring us back?”
“We’ll be stuck here,” said Vivien. She looked around at the fog, which had not lessened. “To be honest, I’d have thought we’d already see signs of the New World coming back. . . . Southaw is more powerful than I expected. It must be because he has the cauldron.”
“What does being stuck here actually mean?”
“Your usual fairyland thing,” said Vivien. She was still looking around. “Time dilation. A few hours or days here, months or years in the normal world. Maybe centuries.”
“Southaw will kill us straight away,” said Merlin. “So we don’t have to worry about that.”
“So what do we do?” asked Susan.
“Find Southaw’s locus,” said Vivien. “Distract him. If he has to turn his power against us, he’ll have less to use against the right-handed team—”
Something leaped out of the fog.
Merlin spun to meet it with his sword. Vivien dived aside, stripping off her glove and holding her breath. Susan fell over half backwards and scrambled aside to grab a big stone. When she looked back, the fog had swirled across. She couldn’t see anything and could only hear an animalistic grunting, the thunk of Merlin’s sword striking something, and Merlin’s shout, “Blind it, Viv! Blind it!”
Susan raised the stone she held and ran forward, parting the fog. Suddenly, Merlin was in front of her, overtopped by a massive bear. A dead Cauldron-Born bear, its head half-skeletal, part of its skull and jaw showing through rotten fur. One eye was a bloody ruin, doubtless Vivien’s quick work, but the other was bright with a coppery fire.
Merlin swung at the bear, the sword blurring in swift motion. A huge slice of decayed flesh flew from its barrel-like chest, but did not slow it or have any other noticeable effect. It was fast, faster than it ever had been while alive. Merlin leaped back from its counterstrike, his slippered foot turned on a stone, and though he recovered almost instantly, in that lost moment the bear grabbed Merlin by the ankles and twisted his legs.
Susan heard bones break and screamed, her scream drowning Merlin’s own cry of pain. She threw the rock at the bear’s head, striking its remaining eye. The beast threw Merlin away and rushed towards her, she scuttled back frantically, and—
Vivien stepped in front of the Cauldron-Born, her right hand raised, shining with blinding silver light, light reflecting off the shifting planes of the eddying fog.
The bear halted in place, every sinew frozen.
Beads of sweat ran down Vivien’s forehead. Her cheeks were pinched, the muscles in her neck corded with the effort of holding her breath. She fought Southaw’s controlling intelligence inside the Cauldron-Born bear, but she could only hold it as long as she had breath.
“Susan! Bind the beast!” gasped Merlin. He tried to stand but it was impossible, his legs were like snapped twigs. He began to crawl towards the bear, his legs dragging uselessly behind him.
Susan drew the butter knife. The blood had dried on it, and she wasn’t sure that would work. Swiftly, she slashed the sharp edge across her palm, ignoring the sudden pain to wipe the blade. Then she held it tight in her bloodied hand and frantically searched her pockets for the third salt sachet.
Vivien sank to her knees, her left hand down and clenched on the ground, her shining right hand wavering in front of the Cauldron-Born bear.
Susan felt coins, a tissue, and her door key. For a terrible moment she doubted her memory of Vivien giving her three salt packets. Maybe it had only been two. . . .
She found it, smushed up in the corner of her pocket. She pulled it out and ripped it open with her teeth, eased her grip on the knife, and poured the salt in the gap between thumb and forefinger, like a magician stuffing down a handkerchief for a trick.
Vivien made a choking sound, but still her right hand stayed up.
Susan took the blood-and-salt-smeared knife in her own right hand and stepped forward, sliding the knife into the wound Merlin had scored across the Cauldron-Born bear’s massive chest.
“I am your master!” she shouted. “You will obey!”
At almost exactly the same moment Vivien gasped for air and fell down on the spot, completely unconscious.
Unlike when she’d tried to enslave Southaw, Susan instantly felt the effect of this binding. An intense pain blossomed between her eyes, like a severe sinus pain, but through it she also felt a connection to the creature in front of her. She could see the strange golden-red fire that burned within it, the motivating power of the Copper Cauldron that had replaced the living will, and there was a line, a string of that same fire coming out of its head, rising up as if it were a puppet controlled by some presence in the sky above, beyond the fog.
She also saw the misshapen shadow that pooled behind the beast’s feet, the polluted detritus of the bear’s spirit, forced from it by the power of the cauldron, but still connected to the remnant flesh.
Susan bent her will upon the bear, trying to wrest control away, to become the puppet master herself. She felt a sudden flash of nausea as she lost her own vision and senses and took over the bear’s, but a moment later she was thrown out, back in her own head again.
She heard Holly’s bullying, confident voice right next to her, shouting in her ear, and felt his presence, Southaw’s immense power.
“Mine! This is mine!”
He was too strong. She could not prevail against him—and Susan also knew she didn’t want to; that brief, foul taste of controlling the poor bear was more than enough. She would never direct a Cauldron-Born, never.
But Susan instinctively knew there was something else she could do. She lifted her salt-stained, bloodied knife again and slashed through the fiery string emanating from the bear’s head, as Southaw lifted its huge, taloned paws to strike at her.
The bright copper-red cord parted without resistance, curling back up like a burnt hair. The fire inside the bear went with it, blown out like a candle. The misshapen shadow re-formed into the true shape of a sad, bewildered bear, sank into the grass, and was gone.
Susan leaped back as the physical remains of the monster tumbled down in front of her, a gut-wrenchingly awful pile of decomposed bear meat, rank blood, and broken bones. Some of it spilled over Vivien’s feet, but she still didn’t move.
She looked like she was dead. Fearing the worst, Susan knelt at her side and felt for the pulse in her neck, gasping in relief as she found it. Faint, but regular, and she could see the slow lift of Vivien’s chest under her eggshell-blue waistcoat. Blood trickled from her lip where she had bitten it in the effort to hold the Cauldron-Bear. And her bare silver hand still shone.