The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 6: Taking the Cure, Part 9

Gently Ammas said, "It's time we began. Lena, stand back a little?"

Both women nodded, Carala with a pulse in her throat and closing her eyes, shuddering a nervous breath through her lungs. Gingerly Ammas pulled back the blanket, giving it to Lena. The girl was dressed in a stained and graying roughspun man's undershirt and a modest loincloth. From a pouch on his waist Ammas drew a slender metal wand about eight inches long. Half of this wand was gold; the other half well polished silver. Both ends terminated in a folding crescent of sharp metal, the horns of the crescents curved tightly enough to each other that either end might be employed as a fork. This tool was his twinhooks, an implement often employed by cursewrights and healers alike.

"Do you need to bind me?" The princess's voice was breathless, plainly frightened.

"Not just yet -- Mari." He caught himself just in time before addressing her as "highness." A sound of relief escaped her lips, though Lena seemed not to notice it. "But if you could open your legs just a bit -- there we are."

Shivering she opened her legs enough to give him access to the spot where Tacen had bitten her. A look of concentration on his face, Ammas bent down to examine more closely the cream-colored thighs that Tacen the werewolf had so admired, and which Denisius Gallis had blushed to see unexpectedly at the top of the Curate's Tower. Lena watched curiously, never having seen a werewolf treatment before.

From her body he could smell her natural scent; the stale sweat and faint rankness of a traveler who's had little time to bathe over the months; the musky aroma from beneath her loincloth, just barely detectable under her other odors; and, most tellingly, a clean, wholesome perfume distinctly reminiscent of the great primeval forests. The cursewright had experienced this aroma before, though generally the more pungent variety that wafted from a male werewolf. The smell that came from Carala was far more pleasant, the gentle wilderness perfume of a freshly turned she-wolf. A scent like that could almost make one believe the theories that said the wolf's blood sickness was no sickness at all.

 Though the scents emanating from Carala were what Ammas had anticipated, they weren't the focus of his attention. That honor belonged to the faintly brown imperfection marring the girl's left inner thigh. With utmost delicacy, Ammas traced the shape of the bite mark with the golden end of the twinhooks. There was the shape of the creature's incisors, plainly visible; there the teeth toward the rear of its jaws. The scarring had presented just as he suspected it would, appearing more like a birthmark to the untrained eye. Carala gasped slightly at the cold touch of the metal.

"Mari," Ammas murmured, "this may hurt a little."

With a nimble flick of his fingers Ammas reversed the ends of the wand, so now the silver prongs were inches from Carala's flesh. Silver was not necessary to kill a werewolf (something Vos knew well and which saved not only his life but those of Denisius and Varallo Thray), but they do find its touch extremely unpleasant, as Carala confirmed for him that very moment.

The second the silver prongs touched the mark she hissed. "It hurts, it does hurt," she gasped. Ammas withdrew the prong at once. Her hands clutched the sides of the altar, her knuckles white, and her knees had drawn up, threatening to bury the sharp prongs in her flesh, had Ammas not been so quick in pulling the twinhooks back.

"Does it still hurt?"

"No."

"I just need to touch it once more. All right?"

She sighed, but nodded, gripping the altar all the more tightly. Gently Ammas touched the prongs to her again, and again she hissed, but this time her body did not jump. She did, however, begin to quiver as Ammas held the prongs to her flesh.

"Please -- please -- it still hurts -- "

Ammas withdrew the prong. Carala relaxed at once with a sigh.

"All right. You did very well, Mari. It's as I expected." Ammas folded the prongs down and stored the twinhooks back in his belt. He looked at Lena. "Now comes the part I warned you of. Lena and I are going to bind you, and then I'm going to induce a change in you. It will only go as far as I need to confirm you have the sickness."

Despite her current indignity, Carala actually laughed. "Do you really doubt it at this point, Master Cursewright?"

"I have to do as my training and experience demands. We can stop now, if you want to refuse it. But I won't brew you the cure unless I know what afflicts you."

Carala sighed. "It's not as though I have a choice."

Ammas nodded to Lena and she approached the altar. Behind it, near the postern door, was a rack holding bundles of rope and links of chains. Ammas pointed out the softest ropes and Lena helped him gather them. Slowly they circled the altar, looping the ropes through iron rings driven into the altar's stone by the cursewright himself five years ago. Carala watched them, her chest rising and falling rapidly now.

"Oh gods, it is a blasphemy," she whispered. She sounded near tears.

Ammas nearly delivered a dry remonstrance on when and how the temple had been deconsecrated, but it was Lena who answered her, smiling softly. "Oh no, no it isn't, Mari. Ammas is curing you. He's taking away the wolf's blood. It's the very last thing to blasphemous." To Ammas's immense surprise, Lena laid a gentle hand on the princess's brow. "It's all right, pretty. He knows what he's doing. Trust me when I tell you that."

Carala nodded, swallowing hard. She had looked just as grateful for Lena's unafraid touch as she had been for Ammas's. Perhaps this was why she acquiesced as Ammas and Lena secured her to the altar by the wrists and ankles, her hands lightly drawn above her head, bound akimbo. Still, she trembled from raven crown to shivering feet.

Ammas knew the wolf inside her would realize its vulnerability before long, and so it was with some alacrity his fingers plunged into another pouch on his belt and drew from it a spiralling golden charm similar in craft to the many which hung from the brim of his hat. A thin golden chain depended from it. "Mari," he whispered, nodding for Lena to help the girl raise her head. "This will calm the wolf's blood enough so you shouldn't lose control and -- and hurt yourself."

Lena was not fooled. The smile she gave Ammas was almost sardonic.

"Can't I just wear it all the time instead of doing this?" she whispered, her voice papery.

"Its power is limited. It doesn't hurt. Be as still as you can." Carala nodded with a low moan, her fingernails sinking into her own palms as Ammas drew the charm over her head. The moment the strange device rested on her skin, she exhaled a long slow breath. The trembling began to still.

"I can feel it. Oh thank the gods, Master Cursewright, I can feel it."

Lena favored Ammas with a smile of such sunniness he actually came close to understanding her intentions toward him. But he had more pressing concerns. "I have perhaps ten minutes before the wolf rouses again. It's really not very strong yet. Don't linger too close to her, though!"