The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 7: The Cursewright's Failure, Part 6

Grave-leeches did not live long when extracted from their pools of putrescent liquid, but the more of them there were in one place the longer they could survive. If a cursewright attempted their use, and there was not enough poison in the patient to satisfy the number of leeches affixed to her body, they would instead feed on her vital essence, consuming it and reducing the physical remains to a stinking mass of rot and bones in a matter of minutes. Bad enough, but the grave-leeches that found themselves in such a decayed body were no longer in danger of expiring themselves. Soon enough they would begin to reproduce, their offspring as ravenous as if full-grown. More than one cursewright had miscalculated the number of grave-leeches that were necessary and found themselves the creatures' next meal. They were among the gravest dangers confronted by explorers, scholars, and thieves who plumbed the domains of the dead.

Ammas hesitated not a moment to retrieve a second leech, nor did he hesitate in where he let it land on her body: on her cheek, just below her eye. Lena clapped a hand over her mouth. Casimir had hid his face against her side for a moment. The leech only writhed and hissed, already dying, and with its fellow on Carala's left breast it began to crinkle and dry, a thin smoke rising from its slimy flesh.

The golden prong was now clinking against the glass again. Ammas knew he had more of the creatures, but they knew their fellows had been seized and were now actively trying to avoid the prongs. How much intelligence grave-leeches possessed had once been a matter of great debate among his colleagues, but no consensus had ever been reached on the matter. All Ammas knew was that they were smart enough to be dangerous, and that he found the loathsome little things hateful, however useful they were.

Ammas knelt over Carala, frowning, sweat pouring down his face. It had soaked through his black robes, the lightweight material sticking to his chest. Both grave-leeches were steaming freely now, their movement almost stilled, twitching in the last moments of their unnatural lives. And now he weighed the most important decision of his career since the dissolution: two or three?

She hadn't swallowed much of the cure, but as his attention had been focused elsewhere, Ammas had no idea how much she had swallowed. If it had been a simple physic's brew or a even an arcane healer's potion, her vomiting would already have expelled it from her body. But a cursewright's brew usually entwined itself with many elements in the body beyond the physical, and the cure for the wolf's blood sickness was no exception. The question was not merely a matter of how advanced the sickness was, or how deep into the balance of her physical humors the cure had traveled, but how deeply it had affected the wolf's blood itself, that spiritual wolf essence inside her that made her the werewolf she had become. That was what had reacted so violently to Ammas's brew, and what had led to the theory dawning in his mind as he worked furiously to save the princess's life.

The theory's shape was clear but sorely lacking in details. Whether right or wrong, it would prove a pointless exercise if her heart stopped. Which led back to two or three.

One grave-leech worked on her heart. One worked on her brain. Wolf's blood pumped through her body; wolf dreams and instincts whispering into her mind. Was that all? Had the cure worked any deeper into her than that before the reaction had begun?

The grave-leech trapped in his prongs squealed hideously. The foul thing was already dying.

He might have two more to spare.

If the two on her were not enough, he would have to start over, and he could not fathom how he might harvest another one before her heart finally gave out.

The way she had arched up at him as he touched her on the altar, almost stirring his own sleeping desires through the cloak of his professionalism.