The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 6: Taking the Cure, Part 7

 "All right, Master Cursewright. I savored it. Better than any meal in my home." Her tone was angry, nearly defiant. But even this was not unexpected.

"And the meals in your home are better than most," Ammas remarked. Carala smiled a little, but the whole turn of the conversation still seemed to unnerve her. The cursewright's next question came in a voice of studied calm. "Did you hunt any humans?"

The princess looked shocked, then glanced at the weathered mosaic floor, the somber tiled portraits of the Saints of the Graces regarding her in silence. Keledemos, Nicostris, Tarnalos, a dozen others. "No." Her voice was barely audible.

"No?" repeated Ammas in that same calm tone. "Not even one?"

The princess said nothing.

"Your highness?"

Still she was mute as a statue.

"Carala, then."

At last she looked up. Her eyes were wounded. But she did not speak.

"Carala, if you did something, hurt someone, the law is unclear on what is to be done with a werewolf for crimes committed before that werewolf is cured. And forgive me for saying this, but your father is the Emperor Somilius Deyn III. You would not spend so much as a single night in the stocks, much less lose your head or be broken on the wheel."

"I know that!" she spat, her eyes still pained but furious now. "Great gods, Master Cursewright, do you think I am blind? Do you think I am soft-minded? Do you forget my brothers are Silenio Deyn, Ursus Deyn, Vetilius Deyn?"

What Ursus and Vetilius had done, Ammas had no idea, but he knew from bitter personal experience all too much about Silenio. "My apologies, your highness," he said softly. "I misunderstood. It is of your own conscience you speak, then. Your guilt."

Still furious, she nodded.

Ammas's voice was gentle. In both his hands he took hers, the anger pulsing through her veins a palpable presence. "I cannot cure your guilt, Carala. That you must leave to your own heart and the advice of whatever people in your life you trust. A priest of the Graces, a deacon of Othillion, your mother, your brother Perseun, if you are close with him."

"I am." Perseun's name had softened her eyes considerably.

"Then you must rely on them to see you through this. What I can do is leech the wolf's blood from you, and not at all judge you for what you might have done while in its fever."

Slowly she nodded. As the fury in her eyes faded, tears began to form within them, glassy and bright. But it was some time before she spoke. "There was a boy. A boy a little younger than your apprentice. I had -- I had just changed. My horse had bolted. I was hurt. Not -- not physically. She was a nag I took from some farmhold. Left a necklace in exchange for her. But she wasn't afraid of me, the way I heard some animals would be. Until I changed in front of her. She panicked. I never saw her again. For all I know, she drowned in Lake Baithe."

Ammas did not press her. This was something she had to bring up in her own time.

"I knew I would have to move as a wolf, on all fours, if I were to make up for the lost time. Reach another village before dawn, hide in the woods. The horse hadn't run off with all my possessions, and I had a satchel I could carry in my -- my jaws, I suppose. I kept to the forest. It's a thick wood there and I wasn't expecting to see anyone -- no people, I mean. But -- " She exhaled a long shivering breath. The tears began to trickle down her cheeks. "I saw him. A little boy. Commoner clothes, ragged ones. Ginger haired. Normally I wouldn't be able to tell such a thing in the dark, but -- " She shrugged. Ammas merely waited. "He had a basket under one arm and a lantern in his other hand. He never saw me, came within feet of me, never saw my eyes or . . . or anything. He was distracted. He was, I do not know exactly, picking mushrooms, plucking worms from the ground -- I thought he might be -- a fisherman's boy, looking for nightcrawlers. And I -- I -- "