The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 22: The Princess's Hunt, Part 3

 The interior mind of a werewolf was something Ammas knew only by theory, and his lack of knowledge on the matter was beginning to make him deeply uneasy. Never in his career had he taken the enormous risk he had taken tonight. The cursed wards dangling from the trees at the forest's edge should prevent any unwitting human beings from venturing into what was for all practical purposes a werewolf's hunting ground, but wards could be broken; the fear they instilled overcome by a great surge of willpower. 

This sort of treatment -- allowing the wolf to run free for a while so it did not succumb to hunger and madness -- was not exactly forbidden, but it certainly wasn't advisable so close to a city or even inhabited farmland. Had Carala been more deeply in tune with the wolf; had the sickness infected her blood for years rather than months, he never would have dared it. But Othma Sulivar was right about one thing: the prescribed treatments of his fellowship no longer really existed. He and Carala both were best served by listening to his instincts. And his instincts told him she was still gentle, and that he had forged enough of a bond with her to keep her from harming anyone.

Whether that bond would become the one Othma had advised him to create, he still did not know, whatever he had told Casimir.

But he would feel better about all of this, whatever bond he chose to make with Carala, if he knew what she was thinking; if he could be sure that some portion of her personality and morals remained when she wore the wolf's shape. Ammas knew that the overwhelming primal nature and instincts that went along with such a transformation tended to strip away dishonesty and subterfuge -- witness the unsubtle overtures she had made to him in the watchtower -- but this didn't soothe him. Carala was, after all, the daughter of Somilius Deyn; the sister of Silenio Deyn, and who knew what unslaked violent urges might lurk in her just from her upbringing? 

Such things might not even spring from madness or cruelty. Their sources could be something a human might view as entirely righteous and just. Ammas tried to imagine how she might feel about the siblings her father had disposed of over the years, what resentment and anger she might harbor over their deaths, and what the she-wolf might do with such ingrained grief. 

Or take a matter much closer to himself. What might the she-wolf make of the years she had spent being instructed that he was a traitor to the Throne; that his father had been executed as a would-be assassin? A few weeks of actually getting to know someone she had been raised to believe was a bogeyman might mean nothing compared to a longtime belief in the danger the Mourthias posed to her family, however little remained of his broken house. The she-wolf might tear his throat out merely from a sense of self-preservation.

Lightly he ran his fingers over the scars on the back of his hand, remembering the warmth of her tongue on his skin as she had lapped him like a faithful hunting dog. Ammas wondered if he would have been mad enough to try this experiment if she had not done that. If nothing else, he thought it proved he was safe, even if no one else was. Not the best basis for treatment, but the damage from keeping her chained up in that tower all night might have been even worse for her. 

More and more he began to consider Othma's advice. Not because he wanted her, not because he shared the Doyenne's thirst for what she considered justice, but because he did not know what would happen in Gallowsport. If they found a clan of dozens of werewolves, even finding the correct one would be a monumental task, to say nothing of actually killing it.

Casimir's confrontation had badly skewed his thoughts on the matter. But as upsetting as that had been, as ashamed as he had been by his apprentice's view of such a bond, the thought of Carala throwing herself into the Ortien or swallowing poison rather than continuing her life with the blood sickness chilled him down to his guts. But Casimir was right. Ammas could not do this thing to her without her knowledge, not if he wanted to live with himself, not if he wanted to honor his father's sense of justice. If that made the bond impossible, so be it. Othma Sulivar might curse him for a fool, but she'd hardly be the first.

For the time being a more prosaic matter concerned him. The white moon had traveled across the sky a considerable distance (her darker brother nearly invisible against the inky backdrop of the void), but he had no idea how much time had passed. Ammas was out of breath and slick with sweat, despite the shockingly accommodating way Carala had seemed to wait for him as she prowled the woods. How many hours had passed he could not tell, however much his body ached. He didn't have anything like Lord Marhollow's marvelous timepiece, nor was his wilderness sense all that sharp after five years spent almost exclusively in Munazyr. 

Glancing up at the stars, he tried to recall the fine sense of time he had developed while hiding on the edges of the Scorched Desert. Past midnight, certainly, maybe just into the small hours. Carala's human shape would return not with sunrise but with moonset, which was still hours off. In a pack over his shoulder he carried a simple set of peasant's clothes and a thin cloak. Ideally she would come with him back to the tower before she changed, but the she-wolf might be reluctant to follow any wishes but her own until she was safely asleep again.

The airy spirit was what had made all of this possible. Not for the first time in his career Ammas envied the easy way some of his former colleagues had with the sprightly little beings. His own gift with the Dead might be far more terrifying and destructive, but it wasn't something that lent itself to an especially wide utility. With a moment's focus he could perceive all that the airy spirit saw, but the spirit's concentration left much to be desired, possibly because it spent so much of its time caged in the temple catacomb. Now that it was out and about in the wide world, Ammas was having a fiendishly difficult time forcing it to concentrate on Carala, and not give him a running tally of how many trees it had counted, how beautiful the moss was by moonlight, and speculating on how close they were to the ocean here and what the waters might look like under the night sky.

With a growl even a Swiftfoot wolf would envy, Ammas directed the spirit's attention to the wolf below it. His eyes widened in shock, though he supposed he ought not have been surprised. Hadn't he invited her to hunt, after all? And here she was: stalking something, preparing to pounce. The agitation of her tail and the glitter in her amber eyes were so fierce it was a wonder the spirit could focus on anything else at all. 

For a moment he considered ordering the spirit to lash out at Carala and stun her. It would burn for a time, but it wouldn't really hurt her. That was the spirit's secondary function, after all: to distract her from hurting anyone they might stumble across in the woods tonight. Ammas was hesitant to do such a thing, however much he had planned for it. Carala would no doubt thank him for it when she was back in her human shape, but the she-wolf wouldn't like it at all. Ammas didn't fool himself into thinking the she-wolf would not make the connection between the airy spirit and the man who commanded it. As Vos had told Lord Marhollow that night in Talinara, it did no good to think of a werewolf as a simple animal.

Ammas stood stock still, bracing one hand against the bole of an ancient oak. Concentrating, sweat standing out on his forehead and cheeks, he corralled the spirit into gazing ahead, just in time to catch a glimpse of a flicking white deer tail, long legs cavorting over fallen branches and thick tussocks of moss. So she was chasing prey of the four-legged variety. 

In a way it was comforting, but a deer was not a hare. The wolfish urge had become measurably greater just over the span of one change. If she was to be cured it must be soon. He wondered how eager Lord Marhollow would be to deliver a cure to her if she had to be tied down to the altar again before it could be forced down her throat. The night seemed to press closer to Ammas's skin; the rustling of the leaves in the autumn winds less soothing and somnolent and closer to menacing. This was the wolf's domain, not his. He forgot that at his peril.