The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 10: The Veil of Ravens, Part 4

 Ammas and the wolf were no longer alone in the temple. In truth Ammas was never alone, nor was anyone else, especially where the Veil of Ravens was thin, as it surely was in an abandoned temple that sat atop a gargantuan graveyard of both catacombs and the hastily built resting places of the victims of the Yellow Death. Without the spirit salve on his eyes, he could usually ignore them.

But when the salve was at its full effect, no one could ignore them, if the cursewright desired.

The sight was one he would never get used to, though he had first witnessed it before he had come of age. Ammas knew it was only his perceptions that caused the ruptures in the Ravens' Veil to appear as doors, rather than holes in the floor or ceiling, but without that perception he would surely go mad from lack of ability to shut out his view of those ruptures. They were not pleasant things to see.

Sometimes they did indeed appear as physical doors, complete with frame and hinges -- weathered ancient wood, polished oak, rusted iron as one would find on a sealed mausoleum. Sometimes they were stone or wooden arches concealed by a fluttering curtain, its fabric black and glossy, as if woven from raven feathers. Sometimes they manifested as simple yawning black pits not at all dissimilar to the catacomb entrance beneath this very temple. Whatever their shape, what lurked within them was always the same: the spirits of the Dead, severed from the world by the Ravens' Veil, watchful and forlorn . . . and when roused, very, very angry.

Above the werewolf, a creaking vault like those found in the depths of treasuries and banks. To Ammas's left, a broad archway, icy air wafting from it like an awful exhalation of corruption. To their right, at a slight angle, a jagged hole framed between two of the temple's columns. And in these rooms of the dead, all the same things could be seen: huddled shapes, some bloated with stagnant water, some skeletal shadows, some pale and languid, as if just beyond the moment of departure. Beyond the terrible shapes, windows -- as varied as the doors, looking out on strange and grotesque vistas, alien landscapes that lingered in the memory no more than that of a forgotten nightmare, recalled only when some innocent image in the waking world summons up the dread the sleeper felt as he tossed and cried in the dark of night.

The shapes watched. The windows beckoned. In his youth Ammas found himself drawn toward the terrible doorways as much as he was repulsed by them: the moth flitting into the flame. Where did those windows go? What other doors might be found beyond these? What really lay beyond the Veil of Ravens? 

"You must never go into those rooms," Othma Sulivar had told him long ago. "They are not fit for the living, and if you pass through them you will never be seen in this world again." Ammas had his own copy of a book containing the Lady Terazla's advice, but this book was not the sardonic aphorisms and tales of N'del Teraz. These were stern warnings originally written in a shaky hand: admonitions and pleas of caution for cursewrights who shared Lady Terazla's dubious gift of the haunted eyes. There had never been many cursewrights with that ability. Most drew their powers from far less dreadful wells. Airy spirits, such as the one caged in the catacomb and which gave such comfort to Carala as she struggled to keep her wolf caged, were a common one. In these days so long after the fall of the academies, Ammas might well have been the only surviving cursewright with a connection to the Dead.

Now with the spirit salve burning below his eyes, the doors thrown wide, the Dead watchful and growing agitated by the threat to the man who allowed them to taste the living world from time to time, all those warnings came back to him. The wolf gnawed on his shoulder, oblivious to what was about to happen. Only when Ammas chuckled, a dry and whispery laugh, did unease gleam in its golden eyes.

It reared back. Ammas hissed with pain as the fangs withdrew from his flesh, some of them quite raggedly. Blood flowed freely, and he supposed this fresh set of robes was ruined. No matter.