The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 1: The Cursewright and the Boy, Part 3

 "Is it all right if I ask you a question?" He felt that nervousness he usually felt around Ammas when he and Barthim sat on the Lioness's porch trading coin and stories.

"Of course. My voice can fill the silence as well as yours."

"Well," Casimir stammered. There were a thousand questions he had about the cursewright; Ammas hadn't kept shop next to the Lioness the boy's whole life, but Casimir could only dimly remember the time before Ammas had arrived. Five years ago, perhaps? Half his life? That sounded right. Barthim would know. Long enough that he had accumulated a wealth of nervous curiosity about the cursewright and his business, concerning everything from how expensive he was to why Lady Zinna of the Argent Council visited him so often to where one learned to be a cursewright in the first place. But now that he had the opportunity, Casimir couldn't summon up a single question. Except, he supposed, one of the many that really frightened him. "Is it true there's a tomb under your temple? Full of priest bones and things like that? Barthim says there is." He offered this last almost defensively, as though the question might offend.

"It's true." Ammas sounded faintly amused. "I don't think I'd call it my temple, exactly; I just keep shop there. But it was a working temple for hundreds of years -- the Temple of the Graces, actually -- before I ever arrived in the city, and yes, the old priests and acolytes are buried in the catacombs beneath."

Casimir was awestruck. "Do you sleep down there?" he asked in a shaky whisper. Yula had once assured him this was true, and moreover, that the cursewright slept in a sarcophagus with a shroud for a blanket.

Now Ammas laughed aloud, almost uproariously, the hand on Casimir's shoulder tightening into a companionable squeeze. "Gods, no! It's dark and musty, and there are spiders. I converted one of the chapels into a bedroom. Much cozier. Better place to keep my books, too." The pair of them stopped, only a few feet from Orson's door. The things that waited for them inside seemed to pulse against the weathered wood like a sickened heartbeat. The cursewright's hand trembled palpably for a moment. "To be completely honest with you," Ammas said in a not quite steady voice, "I do keep my gold down there."

And that was how Casimir stepped back into the house of the possessed man with a grin on his lips instead of in a grip of terror. It didn't last long. The moment they passed the threshold a roar of profane screams erupted from the rickety staircase that led to the house's upper floor. Past the stairs, through a peculiarly elaborate archway the boy supposed had been scavenged from some finer but now ruined house, stood a kitchen. Lena sat with her head in her hands at a battered table beside the hearth. She looked up at the screams, her haggard face brightening at the sight of them both.

"It's time? You're ready, Ammas?" She stood up, twisting her hands together in the ointment-doused rag. Fresh, jagged scratches marred her flesh from her fingertips all the way to her elbows.

Ammas didn't answer her question right away, swooping through the archway to descend on her injured hands, gently scolding her as he retrieved a pouch of unguent from under his cloak and doctored her new marks. "He can't hear you, Lena. You can't reach through to where he's trapped. All you're doing is opening yourself up to hurts from the thing inside him." He offered her a patient smile. "I don't suppose that it does any good to tell you that, does it?"

Lena smiled back, a bit watery around the edges, and shook her head. "You are ready, then?"

"As I can be." He kneaded fresh ointment into the scratches on her hands, then patted them lightly. "You don't have to come with me."

"You'd have to chain me here, Ammas."

"As you like. Casimir, lead me again, would you?" The boy sprang forward, eager to be of help now. He noticed that, even more so than on the walk from the well, Ammas kept his eyes firmly on the ground. So they progressed from the house's little kitchen up the creaking stairs toward the garret where the shrieking, possessed old man awaited them: this strange little parade of boy; cloaked cursewright; and an exhausted young woman, quite beautiful under normal circumstances, now drawn and pale, scratched and gaunt.

The thing clawing its way through Orson's body knew exactly what the cursewright was and responded as one might expect: with a fresh torrent of filth, both verbal and otherwise. "Cock's useless isn't it, all black and withered and fit only for the boys, what will you pay my slut of a daughter with, I wonder?" Reddish-black ichor drooled from his mouth; a fresh spray of hot piss soaked his stinking smallclothes, adding to the filth already puddled on the fouled bedding. Gently Ammas urged the boy aside, toward the corner furthest from the bed, right at the edge of the doorway should he choose to bolt. He did the same with Lena and, on this at least, the young woman acquiesced to his wishes.

Ammas ignored every bit of abuse the old man hurled at them, standing at the foot of the bed with his eyes resolutely on the floor. After a moment he drew the breviary from his cloak and recited a soft prayer: a plea to the Graces, those guardians of the innocent and the dead whose temple he had turned into a simple shop. The boy couldn't catch all the words, but something about it comforted him, even as the old man continued to bellow his awful words. With a snap Ammas closed the book, tucked it away, drew a deep breath . . . and, at last, looked up.

His eyes seemed to burn above the smeared black paste, glittering like an animal's will in the dark. Sweat stood out on his forehead and cheeks in rivets. A terrible smile curled his lips. Something in his expression made the demon's voice in Orson's throat falter, then still.

Above the bed, the silver charms rang and jingled, stirred by an unseen wind. Demon and cursewright stared at each other, no sound in the room beside the jingling charms and the old man's ragged breaths.

"Look at me, charlatan."

Ammas did not answer.

"I said look at me, you cheap whore. As cheap a whore as the creature behind you. Are you a coward as well as a fraud? I say look at me, look at me, gods damn you!"

The boy hadn't noticed -- as hard as it was to look away from this awful tableau, it was equally hard to see fine details -- but on closer inspection Ammas was not looking at the old man at all. Rather, he gazed at some indefinite point above Orson's head, beyond the headboard.

"Look at me, look, LOOK, you cringing eunuch! I command it!"

At last Ammas began to speak, his voice firm and sonorous, addressing no one in the room that Casimir could see. "I speak through the winding shroud, I gaze through the blackened curtain, I implore you hear me through night-struck ears. I beg your aid, I ask you stand with the mortal realm again. If my voice is heard, if my words please, I ask a sign."

A hundred whispers shivered from nowhere, saying nothing and everything. The charms above the bed rattled and sang as if in a hurricane wind for a moment, then fell utterly still all at once, as if invisible hands had drawn taut the strings from which they hung. The old man stilled, his bloodshot eyes rolling from side to side, an uncertain quiver in his drooling mouth.

The boy had never been so terrified in his life. They were not alone in this room.