The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 10: The Veil of Ravens, Part 2

 The screams had ceased but the howls had not. Howls beyond the temple doors out in the street; howls above them somewhere on the second floor of the temple, followed by the unmistakable sound of Barthim the Beast bellowing a savage battlecry and launching himself at . . . something. Within seconds Casimir came pelting down the spiral stairs that led up to the old auxiliary chapels, wide-eyed with terror. He still held a pawn in one hand.

"Ammas, Ammas!" he cried, throwing his arms around the cursewright's midsection, quaking with fear. "A wolf! A wolf on two legs! It jumped through one of the windows, knocked Barthim down! He's fighting it, oh, Ammas, help him, please!"

Normally Ammas would already have been halfway up the stairs and right in the thick of it with Barthim (as if the word "normally" ever applied to an assault by an unknown number of werewolves). But the wards on the front door had been disturbed when Casimir had come back from the Libraries, and Ammas had been too consumed with watching over Carala to think of restoring them. Not for the first time he cursed the fact of working in exile and alone; in the old days that was the sort of thing that would have been handled by an apprentice eager to make a good impression on his master.

"Casimir," he said softly, crouching down but not sheathing his dagger. Ammas's voice was calm but his heart was pounding almost as fast as Carala's when it had become the heart of a wolf. The howls were rising, coming closer, and he had no doubt their owner would be in the temple soon, to join the thing he could hear Barthim struggling with above their heads. Behind him Carala's stood with her hands clutched between her breasts, her eyes as terrified as Casimir's. "Listen to me. They're here for Carala. You have to protect her."

"Me? No, Ammas, I -- "

"You, Casimir. Don't argue with me. If you trust me, you'll both be fine."

Casimir nodded, swallowing hard.

Ammas looked up at Carala. "Follow him down to the catacomb. You'll be safe there."

"Ammas, no, what if they're already down there, you said you don't know where they end -- "

"They won't be. There are wards. Please, Casimir. Just do as I say and we'll get through this."

At last Casimir nodded. He waved Carala over and with a mistrustful look at Ammas she acquiesced. Hurriedly Ammas whispered in his apprentice's ear: "If she seems to take ill, or become angry, put this around her neck. Tell her to remember she is Carala Deyn." He pressed something small and metallic into the boy's palm and rose back to his feet, eying the door. "Now go, both of you!"

Hand in hand they fled to the chancel, disappearing down the catacomb stair, huddling against one wall under the soothing light of the tamed airy spirit.

Above him, floorboards were rattling, dust sifting down in gritty clouds. Ammas's lips skinned back in a frustrated grimace. He should be up there, and Barthim was undoubtedly going to pay for Ammas's folly with either his life or his blood. That would be two people he had failed today. But he had simply not thought to restore the wards at the entrance. There had been too much to do with Carala's illness. Placing wards on the second floor windows was something he hadn't gotten around to, despite Casimir having been his apprentice for almost six months. No one had bothered to try to get in through the upper floor in the five years he had been here, and there were copious wards on the first floor anyway. When a ruined temple already rumored to be haunted became the abode of a cursewright, it did not exactly encourage thievery.

Any moment a second werewolf, and maybe a third, a fourth, who knew, would burst through that front door. He must hold back nothing to stop it from achieving its goal, who was now hiding in the catacombs below. So, laying aside his dagger for the moment, Ammas retrieved from his belt the tin of black spirit salve that had so intrigued Casimir, muttering a soft prayer as he smeared the substance across his face below his eyes. Staring at the ground as he had done on his way to Orson's garret, he took up his skymetal dagger and marched to the brazier, placing himself between the front doors and the altar, bracing the blade against his forearm as he had been trained to do when awaiting an attack.

He did not have to wait long.

And as the spirit salve absorbed into his skin, the whispers began. The edge of his blade trembled ever so faintly.

The doors flew inward, slamming against the inner walls of the nave, almost hard enough to tear them from their hinges. In loped the werewolf, moving sleekly on all fours, then rising up to its hind legs, standing nearly seven feet tall. The male experiences a more significantly increased change in size, he remembered Othma Sulivar lecturing, but do not make the fatal error of imagining a female is any less deadly, for they are far more agile.

It grinned at him, lips skinning back to show red fangs. Blood dripped from its snout; stained its gray-white belly; gloved its thick paws in scarlet. Steam rose from it in the chill night air. A tail swayed over its backside, almost playfully. In its wake came a fetid cloud of musk, far less pleasant than Carala's forest scent. It smelled of blood and spoor and an insatiable hunger that knew nothing of love or tenderness. Its eyes were a brilliant gold, blazing with intelligence and arrogance, its ears flattened back against its skull.

Ammas gave it only the briefest of looks, once more turning his gaze to the floor.

The werewolf cocked its head, puzzled by this display.

"She is not for you, and you are not welcome in this place," Ammas said in a queerly gentle voice, still not looking up at the wolf, as if he feared being mazed. Above them, Barthim and the werewolf's companion crashed against walls, slamming into the floor, cries and snarls mingling in a terrible chorus. "Leave. Leave now. You and all your fellows. You face a cursewright of the ancient fellowship, and I will not be merciful to you."

"Cursewright, I care not for cursewrights." Ammas was startled enough to look up, if but briefly. Never before had he heard from a werewolf's throat anything but strangled snarls and other bestial noises, an occasional word bubbling through in pain if the wolf had not wholly succumbed to the blood. This one's voice was a savage growl, but perfectly comprehensible. The voice that rumbled from its throat was full of a deep and terrible greed that chilled him. "My gods know your lore, my gods have forgotten more than you will ever know. I make an offer of my own, man. Give me the she-wolf. I can smell her. She wants us. Give her to us, and no more blood need be shed."

Despite his shock at being spoken to by this creature, Ammas's voice was as gentle and steady as before. "That I will not do. Leave. I will not ask again."

The werewolf howled and launched itself at Ammas. The brazier cast their shadows against the ancient temple walls in crazed, roiling shapes of flailing limbs and heads, one shape human and one wolfish. Ammas's dagger lashed out, biting deep into the wolf's arms and chest. And the wolf bit right back, its vicious fangs sinking deep into the cursewright's shoulder. Not once did Ammas scream, or make any sound greater than a pained hiss, even as blood flew from each of them to spatter on the floor, to sizzle hotly in the brazier's flames.

But he did, at last, look up.

*