The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 1: The Cursewright and the Boy, Part 4

The thing on the bed knew it too. It twisted and writhed and screamed horrible things, speaking now in languages the boy didn't know (nor even did the cursewright, for that matter). The red blisters forming strange words on the old man's belly began to spread with unnerving speed, bloody letters scrawling down his thighs and up his chest. They reached his throat and across his shoulders, stretching down to his lamed knee where the blisters seemed dammed by the scarred and knotted joint. The blisters burst, spilling blood and bile across the sheets.

The whispers grew louder, almost frantic. Something else was in the room -- something watchful and eager and terribly hungry -- something that pressed against the creaking old walls and threatened to tear the invisible membrane separating this world from another.

"Gaze from your home, to this room, and see the interloper. See the innocent it would ruin. See the obscenity it commits. See, and speak." Ammas's voice remained firm, something Casimir could scarcely believe.

The garret was illuminated with a few storm lanterns the cursewright had furnished from his own stores -- safer than the candles the old man normally used, should he knock them over in his demonic flailing (and this had in fact happened before Ammas and Lena had bound Orson to the bed). Now those strong, steady flames diminished almost to embers, flickering as something exhaled into the room from nowhere; a thousand voices that hissed together in a single word: "Yessss."

Suddenly Ammas clapped his hands together, fingers steepled upward, his elbows thrust from his body at stiff right angles. His voice was a shout now, as strong as anything the demon had uttered. "Then seize it! Seize the interloper!"

Casimir never saw anything -- no skeletal hands, no wisps of smoke, no gleaming silvery orbs -- nonetheless, something reached into the old man's body, somewhere close to his sternum, his torso jerking upward as if drawn by a fishhook sunk into his flesh. Orson's jaw fell open, his jaundiced eyes bulging in fury. More incomprehensible screaming poured from his throat . . . but even as the boy watched, those screams began to diminish in volume, until they were nothing but a weak whistling noise, like that from a cooling teakettle.

Then the demon appeared at last. Lena screamed.

The boy hadn't any idea what he was expecting. If pressed, he might have described a typical devil: a red man with horns and wings and a tail, sneering as it jabbed a pitchfork into a sinner's backside. Perhaps something more animal and threatening, a goat-headed creature with the tail of a serpent. The reality was much worse.

The eye couldn't easily follow what it was. Later, when he and Ammas had the chance to discuss it, he would describe it as a bundle of worms in the shape of a star, but that didn't do it justice. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of slimy, slithering tendrils bundled together, shifting and rippling through the air, forming a rough shape that sometimes had as few as four points, sometimes as many as two dozen, bulging and throbbing as if some hideous creature nested within, waiting only to be birthed into an unsuspecting world. At the ends of the red-and-purple tendrils were tiny fibrous members like many-fingered hands, clutching the air, looking for something -- anything -- to claw and grasp. Horribly, stretches of the writhing mass would meld together into a single membrane of rotten flesh, drawing smooth, then forming into grotesque faces. Not the faces of strangers, either: Madame Laurette, Lena, the city guardsman who'd once given Casimir a drink of whiskey then tried to take him behind the brothel before Barthim caught him and beat him within an inch of his life, Ammas himself, even a sneering but beautiful and awful face the boy immediately knew to be his mother.

Lena was screaming, her nails harrowing her face. Yet Casimir somehow kept his silence, though his heart hammered in his chest fit to burst.

The cursewright cried out in words of some language the boy didn't know, and thrust his hand into the horrid mass of worms. Tendrils immediately began to wrap around his arm, the horrible fingers clawing, mouths forming in the flesh to bite. Somehow Ammas was unhurt, and before the boy's amazed eyes, he drew from his belt a wickedly sharp dagger with a strange, wavelike blade and thrust it deep into the center of the thing's pulsing form.

The fingers and tendrils and starlike points of flesh shuddered -- stiffened -- then began to smolder. As they all watched, the red and purple striated colors of the thing began to darken, until it was wholly black -- slimy at first, then dry and ashy, like cinders. The charms above the bed jingled madly, a wind from the very throat of winter howling through the tiny room, blowing out the lanterns, shrouding them in darkness. The boy and Lena clung to each other, wetness on the young woman's cheeks, the salt scent of tears redolent in Casimir's nostrils.

The sound of a flint being struck echoed in the boy's ears. Ammas had sheathed his knife and now held aloft one of the storm lanterns, frowning as he adjusted its brightness. A mellow glow filled the room, chasing away the shadows. On the floor between Ammas and the foot of the bed lay a smoldering pile of ashes. Orson was stretched on the filthy mattress, panting, only semi-conscious.

Any sign of the bodiless voices, of the watching presence beyond the world's edge, had vanished completely.

Ammas set the lamp on a low table and retrieved the water bucket, going to the old man's side and kneeling, dipping a fresh cloth in the water and bathing Orson's head and face, washing off the black tarry stuff that had oozed from his mouth. After a moment the old man groaned and opened his eyes, looking blearily around the room.

"Lena?" he said in a low husk, wetting his lips. "Is -- is that you, girl? Oh, gods curse it all -- I've -- I've wet my bed again, gods damn it, Lena, you shouldn't have to take care of me like this, I'm -- I'm a useless old fool -- "

Lena leaped forward, heedless of the filth on the bed or her father's ashamed apologies, cradling his head to her shoulder and sobbing. "Papa, papa!" she cried, kissing his forehead, his cheek, his mouth, unmindful of whatever traces of the awful black ooze might have lingered. With trembling hands she tried to undo his bonds, unable to do so until Ammas drew a knife from his belt and handed it to her: a common blade rather than the glittering dagger with which he had struck the demon.

As Lena cut away the ropes, Ammas slumped against one wall, sinking onto the stool where Lena had spent so many hours as she attended her father (who now seemed frankly bewildered). "Take him downstairs to the kitchen and wash him as best you can. Then to the public baths. Make sure they give him every amenity. Tell them it's on Mourthia's account. My credit is good there." He closed his eyes and slid his hat off to one side, barely conscious himself. His face was dripping with sweat and, Casimir would have sworn, tears that cut streaks through the smeared black paste on his cheeks.

Lena came to him on her knees, seizing his hand in both of hers. She seemed ten years younger, once again the bright and merry Lioness girl who had charmed so many visitors to her establishment, commoners and nobles alike. "Ammas, thank the gods, I can never repay, never, anything you want, anything -- "

"I'll consider it," he said with a touch of dryness. "In the meantime, get him cleaned up. Casimir and I will take care of the bedding. He'll have fresh blankets by the time you get back." He turned his exhausted gaze to the boy. "You don't mind helping, do you?"

The boy shook his head immediately.