The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 26: The Wolf of Light, Part 1

 "He's been gone too long." Denisius closed his timepiece with a snap and slipped it back into his tunic. Ammas had disappeared into the Overseer's chambers nearly forty minutes ago, and the city clocks had long since struck midnight. The silence of the Grand Curia was nervewracking, and the longer Ammas was gone the more he feared the cursewright was lost somewhere in the bowels of the archives, facedown in a pool of his own blood. He remembered the gruesome fancies of what might have happened to Somilius Deyn III during his long wait at the Chalcedony Palace, except when that had happened he'd no idea there was a werewolf on the loose, much less an entire pack of them.

Silenio scoffed. "It's a maze down there, like he said, Gallis. Give him time. Unless you're volunteering to go crawling after him." 

Denisius flushed. Whatever modicum of respect Silenio had found for Ammas didn't seem to extend to him, and the prince clearly hadn't changed his opinion concerning Denisius's loyalty to the Malachite Throne. But then, Denisius supposed, Barthim hadn't thrashed Silenio for his sake. 

The prince glanced up to the starry sky above. "Clouds rolling in off the harbor, I think. The light's changing."

Denisius, who whatever his flaws knew himself to be an experienced sky-watcher from nights in the arboretum at Marhollow, found that absurd. This was as clear a night as one could ask for, and if they'd been back in Munazyr rather than in Gallowsport it would no doubt be a perfectly lovely dawn to watch over the harbor. Then he saw shadows moving across the floor, and realized that Silenio was right. The light was changing, but far too rapidly. Uneasily he looked up. A clot of ice formed deep in his belly. 

Things were prowling across the glass dome of the Curia, their shapes obscuring the fading moonlight. Silenio's casual manner abruptly vanished, a hard look of anticipation setting into his bruised face.

The prince's wariness spread to each of them. Vos gripped his blade in both hands, eyes darting from the shapes moving along the lattices of the dome above to the Curia's main entrance, to the dozen or so side entrances that ringed the great arena. Barthim paced the length of the High Bench, determined not to be caught in the depths of the advocates' well when the wolves made their move. Carala, Denisius noted with growing apprehension, was seated in one of the galleries, clutching the hilt of her dagger and staring at seemingly nothing.

"Cara?" he whispered. "What is it? Do you scent them?"

As languidly as if she were underwater Carala shook her head. "No, Deni. It is more than that." The tone of her voice was dreamy, almost disjointed, and Denisius felt the crawling chill of fear in his stomach intensify. When she tilted her eyes toward the glass dome, he flinched at their amber hue.

The glass dome far above them began to shake and tremble, echoing with the sound of furious pounding against the panes. Vos's gaze flicked around the latticework, and wordlessly he waved off Silenio's men, directing them to positions far from the panel that was under assault. "They may not see us," he hissed to Sergeant Morell, who nodded grimly. "We may yet surprise them."

"They will not be surprised," Carala said in that dreamlike voice. Silenio looked at his sister, a troubled frown creasing his battered visage.

"What is this?" he hissed to Denisius.

"I wish I knew," Denisius replied in a whisper. "She's never been like this before."

Barthim interposed himself between Casimir and one of the seats behind the High Bench, instructing the boy to take cover. "There will be a great deal of glass coming down on our heads," he muttered, watching the wolfish silhouettes writhing along the dome. "And that will be the least of our problems. Be keeping that good dagger of yours close, Cass."

At last the pane exploded, a shower of glass raining down into the Curia. Vos's quick read of the wolves' position prevented them from being seriously cut, though a few smaller fragments scored them here and there. Shards fell in a glittering rain. They all braced themselves for what they knew was to come, except Carala, who merely stared upward with a look of near ecstasy. Her dagger slipped to the floor, ringing against the stone, her fingers seining against her upper thighs. But what fell through that shattered pane was no wolf.

Instead a human-shaped bundle plummeted bonelessly to the ground, landing on the Curia's floor with a loathsome crunch, its legs hooking over the top of an advocate's table. Its upper and lower body were twisted at impossible angles to each other, and its bloodied, dead face stared blankly at the ceiling. It had been stripped of whatever clothing it had once worn, and its flesh was rent with the unmistakable marks of wolf claws.

The men stood shocked, staring in horror at this broken corpse, at first confounded as to the purpose of this assault. But Carala seemed not to have noticed it at all, gazing at the double doors at the far end of the Curia with a terrible longing. 

Then Silenio's eyes widened in absolute fury, an enraged scream escaping his throat. "What did they do to him?" he bellowed, sweeping to the advocate's well and crouching by the body. "Paltus, it's Paltus, those miserable beasts -- "

Another of the panels burst in a rain of shattered glass, pouring down into the Curia, no small number of the shards striking Silenio as he raged over the body of his soldier. A second body crashed onto the gallery, sprawling across three of the pews, shattering their sturdy wood, blood spattering across the stones. Silenio looked up, flushed and panting. "Garsa -- "

Before the prince could summon so much as another breath for his other fallen soldier, a shape landed on him, a wolfish shape, sleek and dark and compact, not one of the brutal male silhouettes but closer in form to Syerre . . . and Carala. He was knocked at once to his belly, completely winded, choking on the animal reek that flooded his nostrils and the fierce heat pulsing from the feral shape clinging to his back. It darted its muzzle to his shoulder and with a hungry snarl sank its fangs into his flesh, eliciting a whistling sound from Silenio, his lungs too empty for a scream.

"Ah, gods," Vos groaned, advancing on the she-wolf with his blade raised high.

 Barthim hauled Vos backward, clutching his shoulder and dragging him toward the High Bench. "No," he growled, no trace of humor in his voice. "That is what they are wanting."

At once Vos saw Barthim was right. At least a dozen wolfish shadows paced to and fro on the dome above them. More alarmingly, the doors to the Curia -- not only the wicket gate cut into the double doors, but nearly all the humbler portals tucked into the walls here and there -- were swinging open, admitting a score of men and women.

Clad in simple clothing of dark gray they did not wear wolfish shapes, but nor were they entirely human. Tufts of fur sprouted from cheeks and the backs of hands. Mouths were lent a lush fullness or cruelly deformed by fangs lurking behind lips. And every eye glittered in bestial shades of gold and green, amber and yellow. The stench of them was overwhelming. 

Ammas or Othma could have told them why, but Carala, gazing at these emerging figures as listlessly and half-fascinated as ever, knew the source of their aroma instinctively: these were wolves who did not feast on human flesh only occasionally, but at every opportunity. They had made a sacred rite of it, as they had so many other aspects of their existence.

Silenio's men gathered around him in a circle, challenging but fearful, the she-wolf wrapped around the Prince too tightly for any of them to strike a blow without injuring him. This didn't seem to trouble Silenio. As his lungs began to achingly refill, he barked an order to his men, ignoring the agony of the fangs buried in his shoulder: "Kill this bitch! Kill her! She's poisoned me, gods damn it, I don't care if you kill me too!"

"Surely that is no way to speak of your betters, your highness." At the wicket gate, standing with military bearing, was a scarred yet handsome figure, a crown of ragged piebald hair tumbling to the nape of his neck. No trace of the wolf was visible on him, save for his lambent golden eyes. Idly he toyed with the hilt of a sword, smirking at the Prince's dire circumstances. Carala sighed when she saw him, her shoulders slumping. Denisius watched her with mounting alarm.