The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 26: The Wolf of Light, Part 7

 All across Gallowsport the doors were opening. Not whispering slowly ajar, but thrown open as if the Dead had of a sudden decided to besiege the living. In narrow arches between slovenly row houses; through cellar doors that slanted against the cobbled streets; even through some of the vast city gates, sending the guards running in terror to their barracks: the Veil of Ravens was not so much tugged aside as torn to shreds. 

The Dead poured through, howling and shrieking, sending the chill autumnal night into the ice of darkest winter. Frost blossomed on tavern windows; ill-dressed beggars fell to the ground clutching their rags around their bodies as they were gripped with an unseasonable frozen air; the waters of Hangman's Harbor became white-capped and storm-tossed, screaming winds tearing stiff canvas sails from their rigging. The Swiftfoot wolves had infested this place -- they were hidden in inns, in smithies, in messenger houses, in brothels. Perhaps half of them had been summoned to the Grand Curia, others stationed in the streets to watch for any of Ammas's company who might flee the Curia, the rest in their usual positions but watchful for anything out of the ordinary. None escaped.

The ones summoned to be at Andreth's side, among them his most skilled lieutenants and some nearly as wise in the wolf's blood as he had been, went first. None reached more than a hundred feet past the Grand Curia's main entrance before the Dead caught up with them, grasping and tearing and vengeful. Wolf's blood flowed like crimson rivers, pouring down the gutters of Rowancroft Street. Into their hiding places the Dead stormed, ignoring the terrified humans but unerringly finding the wolves, whatever their shape, hauling them into the streets before annihilating them. 

The wolves minding the streets were the only ones to offer any shred of resistance, and that amounted to little more than plunging toward the city gates in a desperate effort to escape Gallowsport altogether. None did. They found themselves facing not a gateway to the scrubland beyond the city walls but a portal to the worlds where the Dead dwelt. Spectral hands reached forward, dragging these most unfortunate wolves beyond the Ravens' Veil, and what happened to them in that darksome world not even the wisest scholar could say. But they were never seen in this world again.

Not a single inch of Gallowsport was untouched. No forgotten alley, no ruined house, no half-collapsed warehouse. Where the wolves hid, the Dead followed, and as the night drew on the howls that had inspired uneasy dreams in the Gallowsport citizens became first screams and then death-cries. But the Dead were focused most thickly around Ammas Mourthia as he strode down Rowancroft Street, his arms aloft, guiding them with the gleam of his blade, the spirit salve burning on his cheeks, his heart pounding with sorrow and fury and the knowledge that this was his final act among the living. He would pass on one final piece of information to Casimir, and that would be the end of it all.

Soon he would be at rest. For the most part he found that a relief.

*

Mourthia House was little more than a foreboding mass of shadows, but to Casimir it might as well have been the most brightly lit and sweetest-smelling tavern in the world. Carala fell to the ground as they passed its gates, curled on her side and panting. Although Casimir knew Ammas had drawn wards right at the gate, he didn't like it. He wouldn't feel even remotely safe until they were secure behind the house's walls, preferably down in the cellar where Ammas's enchantments were strongest. 

"Please," he whispered, his lips skating against the twitching black velvet point of her wolfish ear. "Please, Carala, we're not safe yet. Just a little further."

Slowly Carala-the-wolf rose to all fours, panting. Her ears flattened against her skull as she turned her muzzle toward the Curia. Ammas was doing something desperate and terrible. She could sense it. Whatever he had done had slain Andreth. The Swiftfoot leader's hold on her had not been as strong as he had thought -- or perhaps it was better to say that her affection for Ammas and Casimir and Denisius was far greater than Andreth imagined -- but she had felt more than a whisper of temptation when he called to her in the advocates' well. And now, from halfway across the city, she felt his agony as some dreadful power was unleashed upon him, destroying him utterly. 

A whimper of fear escaped her muzzle and she hid her face against Casimir's side. The boy embraced her, unafraid of her shape, looking over his shoulder at the Curia. But they both knew they could not linger. With a shuddering breath, Carala pushed forward, following Casimir as he pulled open the doors to Mourthia House, locking them behind him.

The cellar was the brightest thing they had seen since fleeing the Grand Curia, and both of them were immensely cheered upon descending those steps. The airy spirit, free of its silver cage, darted and flickered and gamboled around them joyously, circling Carala's head and perching on Casimir's shoulder, pulsing with a speed that suggested gaiety. From Ammas's lessons Casimir knew that airy spirits were really only semi-intelligent, and the fact that this one seemed oblivious to the peril all around them only reinforced that. But its light was warm and comforting, and should something breach the cellar it would do all it could to defend them.

Carala huddled in the open cell, drawing a blanket around her shoulders, shivering lightly. Although she knew a transformation when the white moon was not at its brightest was possible, she had never experienced it before, and she had no idea how she might slip back into her human shape. Ammas would help her, she thought -- but then realized Ammas might well not survive whatever was happening at the Grand Curia. The thought pained her like a knife to the chest. She nestled deeper into the blanket, hiding her muzzle against her knees. Casimir sat at her side, skymetal dagger drawn. The two of them waited this way, for Ammas, or for their friends, or for the wolves that might somehow break the wards.

But in the end it turned out they needn't have feared anything passing the doors of Mourthia House. Rather they should have feared the doors that were already there; the doors they could not see.

It began with a creaking sound, a whisper of stone on stone. In the cell across from them, the bars began to recede into shadows whose source could not be determined, less an occlusion of light than a living void, spreading across the air like oil across a clear pond. Strange stars glittered behind that darkness, wheeling arms of rotted stone and endless stretches of blasted heaths. Shapes roamed across these terrible plains, shapes of men and women, shapes of the dead who walked. Crimson eyes turned toward them as the door swung open. Skeletons like those beneath Munazyr began to emerge, accompanied by pale figures robed in black, shrouded things, reaching corpses. Their dead gaze alighted on Carala with a terrible hunger: here was one of the wolves the man who had summoned them commanded them to slay.

Casimir cried aloud, leaping to his feet, brandishing his blade in both hands. His blue eyes stared hotly from his face, bulging with terror. These dead shapes were far worse than anything he had seen under Munazyr. But he loved Carala, as he had loved Lena and so many of the other girls at the Lioness, as he loved Barthim and as he loved Ammas, and he wouldn't let these creatures harm her if he could help it. Why they would come for her he didn't know -- he wondered if Ammas had somehow lost control of the Dead.

"Not her! Not her! He doesn't want you to hurt her!" Casimir tried to make it a bellowing cry, but what came out was thin and papery. The shivers running up and down his body were not borne solely out of fear: the Dead brought the chill of the grave with them. The cellar had become so cold that Casimir could see his breath; little puffs of vapor rose from Carala's muzzle as her amber eyes stared in horror at the advancing figures.

The Dead paid no attention to Casimir whatsoever. They slipped around him, neither threatening nor sparing, the object of their rage the she-wolf quivering under a blanket. As fear began to consume Carala totally she began to snarl, amber eyes blazing furiously, showing her fangs, flattening her ears. But she made no move to pounce on the Dead, shrinking against the hard stones of the cell wall. Fingers began to reach for her. Crimson eyes brightened from embers into flame.