The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 7: The Cursewright's Failure, Part 5

 Ammas was still crouched over Mari -- he was nowhere near as old as Khozar El-Nalrah, but his knees were already singing a Vilais opera -- and still chanting those unsettling words against her throat. The girl herself was now deathly pale, no longer screaming but sobbing, the cries in her throat weak and whispery. Muscles flexed and twitched all up and down her body, and her toes and fingers alike were curling into misshapen claws as arthritic as an old woman's, as if the wolf's paws of her other nature were clenching in the agony of being caught in a steel-fanged trap. He looked up to see his apprentice and Lena sprinting back into view. His eyes were frantic gray lanterns set into the sweat-streaked mask of his face.

"Help him open the case. Bring it to me, Cass. Be careful. If it breaks, this is all for nothing."

Ammas using the diminutive of Casimir's name had unsettled him more than almost anything else: his master hadn't addressed him so since the day of Orson's exorcism. After a brief moment of the case's seal sticking, he and Lena were able to open it. Gingerly Casimir reached in and extricated a glass cylinder full of a sloshing, dark green liquid and some shadowy clotted obstructions floating within. 

As Lena had been terrified of the catacombs, so Casimir was terrified of these strange things. He knew little about them, for not once in the months he had been apprenticed had Ammas had cause to employ them. His master had, however, described their general use to Casimir and shown him where he kept them. Casimir knew they were used for cases of magical poisonings, but they were as dangerous as they were potent. He also knew that Ammas did not keep a regular stock of them, as harvesting them required him to venture deep into the catacombs, far beyond the areas where Casimir was permitted to go. Ammas's instruction to Casimir not to go into the catacombs alone was one he repeated regularly. "I don't want you to get so curious about it you go by yourself. If you really want to explore them, tell me, and I'll go with you. I might even be able to get Barthim to come with us. I know a few sections of them very well, and so does he. But it's possible to get lost down there and not come back. If that were to happen to you I'd never forgive myself."

Every time Casimir peered down that yawning black corridor that led into the catacomb depths, and deeper into the sewers, cisterns, and forgotten charnel pits and burial chambers left over from the Yellow Death, along with the gods alone knew what sort of ruins Munazyr had been built and re-built over through the many centuries of its life, he remembered Ammas's warning, and could not even fathom what sort of madness would inspire him to head down there on his own. The existence of something as perilous as the grave-leeches, which even Ammas seemed to fear, only strengthened his resolve not to go beyond the well-lit chamber his master used as a cellar and pantry.

The glass cylinder was capped with a matching lid sealed with wax over which Ammas had said certain spells. The spells were intended only to keep calm the creatures swirling and undulating through the brackish fluid, and Casimir had no more trouble opening it than a jar of preserves. A foul odor filled the chancel at once, even worse than the smells of sickness rising from Mari. Ammas looked up again from the girl's throat. "Don't spill it, Casimir. Just open it and step back. Lena, don't come closer."

Lena nodded, swallowing hard, her wide and frightened eyes now fixed on the glass cylinder and its contents instead of the whimpering, writhing princess. Casimir removed the lid and backed away, never taking his eyes from the fluid. Ammas gritted his teeth, drew from his belt his skymetal dagger, its wavy blade casting strange silvery reflections across the foul liquid that filled the cylinder. With none of the delicacy or solicitousness he had shown Carala while she was awake, the cursewright slipped the tip of the blade into the collar of her shirt and sliced down, tearing it open to expose her breasts and belly. With a second stroke he did the same to her breeches, exposing her mound and the triangle of silky hair that covered it. Lena gasped. 

The girl had not eaten well in a long while, and her breasts, usually as full and fetching as any in the Prideful Lioness, had begun to sag a bit; while not emaciated her ribs were visible through her pale skin. On her hip was a simple discreet tattoo of the Deyn family crest, probably inked into her flesh by a priest of the Graces before the girl could even crawl. But none of this had made Lena gasp. From her sex there flowed a slow, steady trickle of dark blood, as if from her monthly course. It had puddled in the crotch of her breeches, and it was as thick with the odor of sickness as every other fluid her body produced.

Sitting back on his heels, panting hard, hoping the words he had uttered against her throat would keep the agonized wolf inside the girl asleep, Ammas retrieved from his belt his twinhooks. The device boasted a telescopic center, and with a crisp flex of his hands the cursewright turned it into a long baton with a sharp set of prongs at either end. With a look of utmost concentration he peered into the brackish liquid, then jabbed the golden end of the prong into it. From within there came a minute screech of outrage, like a squeaking rat drowning in a rain barrel. Swiftly he pulled from the liquid one of the grave-leeches. 

Now both Lena and Casimir cried aloud, for although Ammas had described the little creatures' purpose to the boy, he hadn't shown him one. It hadn't been to spare his sensibilities. Grave-leeches did not live long once exposed to the air. But they could do a lot of harm in their dying spasms, which is where a cursewright might find them useful.

The grave-leech was perhaps four inches long and glistened in sickening shades of black and purple, wriggling little legs adorning the entire length of its slick body like some sort of nightmare centipede. Its head twisted this way and that, a cluster of gleaming red eyes seeming to glare at all four of them with a mad hatred even a frenzied werewolf could not muster. The brackish fluid trickled from it in a steady stream, pattering on the mosaic floor where it began to smolder.

Ammas drew the leech over Carala's body and dropped it on her left breast.

"Ammas!" Lena cried out in horror, though later she would wonder just what else she had been expecting him to do. Perhaps it was simply not possible to see a grave-leech touch a human body and not feel disgust. Casimir curled his fingers around Lena's arm and shook his head. She stilled, letting the cursewright work, but her expression remained horrified.

It didn't matter. Ammas hadn't heard her. Every ounce of his concentration was devoted to the vile creature trapped in those golden prongs, and on the dying girl sprawled on the temple floor. These tiny things were too dangerous for him to do otherwise. In all the years he had worked as a cursewright he could count the number of times he had employed grave-leeches on one hand. They were frightfully useful, and so good at reversing the effects of the deadliest poisons that, if used immediately after a patient expired, they could technically raise the dead, banishing the effects of a poison before the expired body's soul departed past the Veil of Ravens and into the worlds beyond.

The danger lay in what happened should an erring cursewright use too many of them.