The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 10: The Veil of Ravens, Part 5

 Ammas had barely gotten halfway to the spiral stair, his hat freshly adorning his head after he'd scooped it up from the floor, when movement behind the altar caught his eye. With a cry he raised his dagger, then stilled when he saw who it was. "I told you to wait down there," he said, sounding far angrier than he had while addressing the werewolf. "It's not safe up here yet."

Carala looked past Ammas. By the brazier was an unspeakable gore-flecked pile of fur and sinew and even worse things. She struggled with her gorge and forced herself to look away from it. "We heard you shout. Then silence. We were not going to leave you to face it alone, Ammas. If it got through you, then it surely would have gotten through to us."

Ammas considered this. Casimir was staring at what remained of the werewolf, utterly transfixed. "All right. Stay behind me. Barthim and another one are upstairs, and I don't -- "

Before they reached the stairs, however, there came a deep cry and a heavy thudding sound. Something large and limp was tumbling down the stairs. It sprawled out at the base, crumpled and obviously dead: a pale gray werewolf, its head twisted around at an unnatural, almost comical angle.

Barthim followed, grinning hugely, bruised and battered, claw marks festooning his arms and chest. "I knew it! There is no need for silver or magic if you are breaking its neck!" Barthim raised a triumphant fist to his mouth, kissed it, then smote the symbol of the Hethmar inked on his chest. His gaze roamed from the stunned faces before him to the steaming pile of bloody fur and viscera that befouled the center of the hall. Barthim's smile curdled as he looked wonderingly at Ammas. "You did that, Ammas?"

Ammas nodded, his eyes roaming Barthim's injuries.

"Perhaps I will buy next month's tea."

"Barthim," Ammas said hesitantly, taking a step forward. "Were you bitten?"

Barthim laughed uproariously. They might have been at the Four Winds trading dirty jokes with that Q'Sivari magician with the rings. "A werewolf is not to be biting you when you break its jaw! Who is the cursewright here, anyway?"

"Barthim, I need to test it."

"Eh?" Barthim scowled. "All right, Ammas, if you insist. But if this is being an excuse to get me to strip, I do not apologize for making you feel inadequate."

Carala laughed shrilly at that, though Casimir and even Barthim himself merely looked bemused. Ammas drew his twinhooks, tracing the silver prongs lightly along Barthim's wounds. Barthim winced, but it was only from Ammas prodding his injuries, which Ammas confirmed by pressing the dull side of the prongs to Barthim's cheek for a solid twenty seconds with no reaction. 

Shrugging, he pocketed the tool. "You're not infected. I would very much like to hear how you managed it. I've studied werewolves, but I don't believe I've ever heard of a man killing one with his bare hands."

"That is because you are not Siraneshi. This is a city of book-crawlers and porridge-eaters and whining minstrels."

"I gathered that was pretty much everyone but the Siraneshi."

"Then you do understand."

"Enough," Carala said, who had watched this absurd conversation with a growing sense of bewilderment -- what was wrong with these men? Ammas and Barthim looked at her, Ammas a little shamefaced and Barthim completely unabashed. Carala gasped. "Oh, gods -- Ammas -- "

"Yes?"

Now Barthim was looking at him closely as well, and the bouncer's good cheer vanished completely. "Ah, gods damn it, Ammas -- you -- you -- "

Casimir did not seem to understand, but as he looked more closely at Ammas his face made a smooth and awful transition from quiet relief to horror.

"What is the matter with all of you?" Ammas sounded puzzled if not vexed. At last he seemed to grasp that they were not looking at him so much as they were staring at the obvious bite mark on his shoulder. Gingerly he ran his fingers along it, hissing a little at the sting.

To their collective shock, he burst out laughing.

"Forgive me," he said, speaking most of all to Casimir, but giving Carala a conciliatory look as well. "I had forgotten how much of my trade has been forgotten over the years. I cannot be infected. Not by the wolf's blood sickness, nor by most other enchanted maladies. It's part of the bargain one makes to become a cursewright." He thought of the Veil of Ravens being peeled back; of the whispers that were always with him to some degree. His hands spread apologetically, as if he was responsible for their ignorance. "If I were vulnerable to such things, I couldn't practice my trade."

Seeing that they all remained rather skeptical, if not bewildered by his lack of concern over being bitten, Ammas sighed and retrieved the twinhooks. Rather than just trace his flesh, he jabbed the silver crescent as hard as he could into his upper thigh, and let it remain there until the disbelief on their faces began to diminish. With a hiss he plucked the tool from his flesh, wiped it down on his robes, and pocketed it once more.

"My apologies, Ammas," Carala said shakily. "I have studied your kind, but this was not something I knew."

Ammas waved it off. "Never mind. We have other things to deal with. There may be more of these things. You and Casimir stay behind us. Barthim and I will take the lead. If I tell you to run back in here, do it. There may come a time when one or both of you will have to stand against these creatures alone, but it's not tonight."

They both nodded, though neither seemed very happy about it.

As they approached the doors, Barthim muttered to Ammas, "Perhaps you should be staying behind me, Ammas. I am not the one with werewolf teeth in his shoulder, after all."

"We'll see," Ammas replied softly, bracing his dagger to his forearm again. Barthim might well be the greatest hand-to-hand fighter he had ever heard of, but he had no illusions about how the man would fare against two or three of these things, much less a pack like the ones the Sons of the Moon had once fostered.

The doors stood wide open as Ammas and Barthim stepped through them. They were aware at once of a crowd gathered on the porch of the Prideful Lioness, many more lamps blazing than the single red lantern. Soon enough they glimpsed the thing watching them all. Barthim sneered as Ammas raised his dagger, turning his black-painted gaze to the skyline.

Across from the old temple of the Graces stood a tall and narrow structure that bore the marks of having been a counting house, a sacred one consecrated to Tol Daether, father of wealth. It had been abandoned even longer than Ammas's place, and for as long as anyone could remember had not been much more than a hollow shell. Its facade remained impressive, though, and the pediment at its crown was far more elegant than the broken stump that topped the temple of the Graces.

On that pediment was crouched a wolfish shape. Poisonous green eyes could be seen even from here in the street. As it saw Ammas and the others it raised its snout to the sky and howled, then turned and vanished.

"Ought we to chase it, Ammas?"

Before Ammas could answer he looked to the street. His stomach swerved and his heart froze as he saw what lay there.

"Oh, gods damn it, gods damn it," he whispered.

Barthim followed his gaze, his eyes widening in shock and growing despair. Lena lay sprawled and dead, her throat torn out. The Beast shambled to her like a man in a dream, fell to his knees, and touched her bloodstained crown of blonde hair. Then he raised his face to the sky and bellowed an inarticulate cry of rage and grief, one fist pounding his chest.

Casimir and Carala clung to each other, Carala unable to take her eyes off the Lioness girl.

Ammas closed his eyes and tried to pray to gods he not believed in since the murder of his father. There was no help there.