The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 7: The Cursewright's Failure, Part 4

 So he took off at a full sprint, and traversed the remaining stretch of the Old Godsway to the temple portico in less than thirty seconds. The doors were closed as they always were when Ammas was treating a patient, but one of the first things he had taught Casimir was the trick of urging them open quickly. With a swift rap on three otherwise innocuous stretches of battered wood on the left hand door, both swung open as if on greased tracks. Casimir sprang in, eyes wide and watching, his ears ringing with the terrible screams filling the old temple.

Mari was sprawled on her side, and at first Casimir thought with a cold knife of shock in his belly that his master was doing with the lady what men paid the Lioness girls to do with them. But then he smelled puke, and blood, and a horrible odor that reminded him of rotting wood and leaves like the kind he smelled in the Doge's City Common when the snows left after Wintersend. Ammas was crouched over Mari not in passion but in some desperate attempt to save her, like when he had seen Captain-Commander Thalia breathe the air back into the lungs of a Lioness girl who had been strangled to the brink of death on one of Barthim's infrequent nights off.

(Both the man who had done that, who worked as a page for the Argent Council, and the inexperienced bouncer who had allowed it to happen in exchange for a few silvers were never seen again, so far as Casimir knew, and the one time he had asked Ammas about them, his master had said something he rarely ever said: "That's not something I can discuss with you, Casimir.")

But his master was not breathing air into Mari's mouth: he was speaking quickly and urgently against the girl's throat, sheened with sweat and sticky with vomit. Hair rose up all over Casimir's body: Ammas was using the same incomprehensible and awful words that had come from Orson's mouth while he was possessed.

From Ammas's mouth the words were not harsh and terrifying, but soft and eerie, less like a scream than a tomb-whisper. They were not comforting, but they were not intended to shred and rip and devour as in the demon's invisible mouths. This was not the stab in the gut or the hammer to the cheekbone. This was the sly implication, the troubling fancy, the casual word that raised unsettling questions during the long shadows after the sun set. Casimir instinctively knew that it would be unwise to listen to these words too long but almost impossible to stop oneself.

Almost before this thought could register, Ammas looked up, his face drenched with sweat and his normally smiling gray eyes glazed with fear, which was at once replaced with sweeping, almost teary relief. "Casimir!" he cried. "Get the grave-leeches! Hurry!"

Casimir didn't need to be told twice. As fast as he had sprinted when he heard Ammas's panicked cries, he raced behind the altar and down the ancient steps that led to the catacombs where Ammas stored both their dry goods and more specialized equipment for his trade. Someone was already down there: Casimir could hear the carefully arranged piles of his master's belongings being rummaged through, and the gentle yellow light that always burned by the bottom of the stairs cast wavering, writhing shadows of someone moving in a panic nearly as consuming as that he had heard in Ammas's voice. Casimir smelled Lena's flowery perfume and he understood at once that she had come to help with Mari's treatment.

At the bottom of the stairs was an octagonal cyst of white stone, hewed from the  bedrock of the vast stony pillar upthrust from the Straits of Twilight on which Munazyr had stood since before there was such a thing as the Anointed Realms. The light came from a silver cage in which burned a flickering ball of illumination. Ammas had told him it was a tamed airy spirit. They were difficult to keep tamed and somewhat expensive to feed, but if he was to ply his trade atop a kingdom of the dead then he needed something to keep the shadows at bay at all times.

When Casimir stopped to think that he was sleeping and learning and eating and doing chores atop a kingdom of the dead, he tried very hard to think of something else. Ammas might have chosen his words a little more delicately, but it wouldn't have changed the truth. Like the Princess Carala, Casimir preferred uncomfortable truths to cozy deceptions. Ammas had assured him the catacombs immediately near the altar stair were completely safe and most likely would be even without the comforting light of the caged spirit. The truly dangerous areas were probably miles away, far deeper under the city.

("Probably?" Casimir had asked in a not quite steady voice. "Well, I haven't mapped the whole system, you know," Ammas had replied. Casimir had decided he would pursue the matter further another time, if ever.)

The catacomb entry was cool and dry and, now that Ammas had an apprentice to help with simpler chores, far less spidery than it had once been. There weren't even any bones or sarcophagi here, nor had there been any for Ammas to remove when he had begun working out of the place: the burial places of the former priests, priestesses, and acolytes started a little further down the dark, wide corridor that led to the greater bulk of the catacombs. The bones and preserved remains that had once occupied this area had all been personages of importance (including at least one Saint of the Graces, Saint Keledemos) and had been translated to the temple on the new Godsway when this place had been deconsecrated. Ammas had unceremoniously turned the niches into storage areas, once haphazardly organized, now considerably neater with Casimir maintaining them. On the left hand side the cursewright kept a few small barrels of wine and food which needed to be kept cool (the catacombs' air was downright icy most of the time, and for nearly half the year Ammas could see his breath when he came down here); on the right a collection of objects necessary for the cursewright's trade that were either used infrequently or else required storage in cool temperatures. The grave-leeches were both.

Casimir saw Lena at once, and could almost feel panic coming off her in increasingly agitated waves. Her slender hands were rifling through packets and boxes and sacks, spilling their contents to floor, her painted nails chipped and a look of sheer desperation in her eyes. Even Casimir knew she was terrified to be down here. He couldn't blame her. Though he had overcome his initial terror of the catacombs a while ago, he well remembered how nerve-wracking it was to come down here even to perform simple tasks Ammas set him, and at first he simply could not do it. Ammas was no ogre, and so at first he had simply smiled and set Casimir tasks elsewhere in the temple. Eventually, though, Casimir attempted the chores that had to be done down here and slowly lost his fear of the place. After all, there were plenty of unpleasant tasks he had done at the Lioness without complaint, and not once had Ammas asked him to scrub up a drunk's vomit or wash out a single chamberpot other than his own.

But Lena had no time to prepare herself to come down to this place, and worse, she didn't know where anything was kept. She was in fact rummaging through Ammas's winter clothing, most of which was now in an untidy pile at her feet. Casimir felt bad for her, and under other circumstances he would have shown her where she had gone wrong as politely as he could, but his master had impressed upon him that in an emergency the client's welfare was more important than anything, even his favorite person's feelings. So Casimir barely acknowledged her as he darted to the correct shelf, grabbed the battered leatherbound cylinder Ammas wanted, and pelted back up the stairs. He only paused long enough to call out, "Come on!"

Lena looked up, shocked -- she hadn't even noticed Casimir entering the catacombs. Just like the cursewright's apprentice, though, she didn't need to be told twice.