The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 22: The Princess's Hunt, Part 5

 Then, lightly, she glided a paw over the graying curls of his head in an unmistakable caress. With her other paw she took his hand and guided it to her hip, pressing his fingers deep into her pelt. For a moment his eyes flicked from her face to that spot. Under his fingers was the single mark of imperfection amid the uniform onyx hue of her pelt: a tiny splash of white, where her fur had sprouted from the tattooed mark of the House of Deyn.

Ammas's eyes met hers again, and he knew that, whatever existed of Carala behind that amber gaze, her thoughts had drifted inescapably to that moment beneath Munazyr.

"You will not hurt me," he murmured, "and I will not hurt you."

The she-wolf nodded, her paw gentle on the crown of his head.

"There is no need to kill," Ammas whispered. His hand moved slowly along her waist, a shiver of pleasure worming down her spine, her tail fluttering.

Carala-the-wolf shook her head, and for the barest of moments, so brief he might have imagined it, Ammas could see flecks of hazel lurking in the amber.

How long they stayed like that Ammas never knew. Hours, maybe. There seemed to be no viciousness in her; no need to indulge further wolfish appetites now that she had made a single kill. Othma Sulivar's dry chuckle seemed to whisper in his ear: more than halfway there already. Perhaps he was. Or perhaps he had become her pet cursewright rather than the other way around. 

The bonds between his kind and hers from ancient days was the stuff of myth and legend even before the dissolution had scythed them all down. Was it not conceivable the chains of such bonds stretched in both directions? Certainly at the moment his life was in far more peril than hers. There were ways he might drive the wolf away, even with the moon shining brightly, but they would be agonizing and would only serve to anger it. That she craved to mate with him he doubted, for she made no overtures beyond that simple, ceaseless touch on his head (which had further roused his own long-forgotten hungers, however wolfish she appeared). Rather she seemed only to want that connection of physical touch, some link to the human world from which she had been torn.

Abruptly she ceased, both of her pawed hands clutching the earth beside his shoulders, her head darting up, ears perked. She had heard it before he did: distant howls, traveling to them on the night wind. Ammas did not know it, but that wind carried the scent of human blood. But he knew well enough who had uttered those howls. In the tension of her body, the anxious flicking of her tail, he could read her desire clear as day: to dart off into the night, find those other wolves, and hunt with them, no matter what their prey might be.

Hardly able to believe he was doing it, Ammas reached out and touched his fingers to her muzzle, tilting her gaze back toward him. Her lips wrinkled back, showing her fangs in a growled warning.

"They do not call to you for friendship, Carala Deyn," he murmured. The growls began to subside, her amber eyes wide and staring. "They call to you to kill. To kill me, to kill Denisius, to kill Casimir -- "

Casimir's name had an effect on her as neither his own nor Denisius's had. A strangled cry escaped her throat, one paw clutching its center, gripping the stilling charm that dangled from her neck. Panting, her body heaving with what might have been sobs, she sank to Ammas, pressing her muzzle to the side of his neck. Nothing in his studies or experience had prepared him for something quite like this, but he thought under the circumstances he performed adequately enough. Soothingly his hands caressed her back, buried in the silken softness of that pelt. His teeth gritted in pain as she clutched him with all her feral strength, trembling all over. Ammas could feel his ribs straining almost to the point of cracking in that embrace.

"You need not go to them, Carala Deyn," he murmured in one twitching ear. "They are the ones who did this to you. Stay with me, stay with us, and we will find out why."

She lay shivering atop him, seemingly torn between staying right where she was and leaping away in pursuit of those howls. When they again pierced the forest stillness, Ammas swore they were closer. From the soft whimper in his ear, he suspected Carala knew that as well.

They could not stay here. Moonset would not begin for some time, but the night was waning, and Ammas did not want to be so far from the safety of the watchtower or the added strength of their companions' campsite when Carala resumed her human shape. Already the Swiftfoot wolves were calling to her, and when she did not answer their summons he had no doubt they would take some more direct action. 

"Carala," he murmured in that twitching ear, its fur like velvet against his lips. "You've run and hunted enough for tonight. Come back with me. No one else will see your change, and you can be safe and warm before the dawn comes."

As encouraging as her behavior had been so far, he knew how delicate the balance within her must be. Anxiously he watched as her weight shifted off his body, her muzzle raised to the air, then twisted about, loping away from him on all fours -- not toward the sound of the howls, but deeper into the forest. Sighing, Ammas rose to his elbows, retrieving his hat and staring off into the dark. The airy spirit hovered over him, waiting for direction. When it didn't receive any, it began to dance in strange spirals, drawing insensible patterns of light in the forest night.

Just when he began to accept the idea that he had lost her, she emerged again, walking on two legs now, regarding him almost shyly. Water glistened in her fur like shimmering diamonds, and he supposed she must have taken a quick dip in the unseen stream, rinsing away the blood. That was not something she would have done if she were wholly in the wolf's thrall. Whether it was something she was able to do because of the stilling charm on her throat, because of her own inner will, or even his presence, Ammas didn't know. But he was smiling when he clambered to his feet, gazing at her evenly. She was almost his height in this shape.

"Will follow," she growled in that barely comprehensible voice, and touched her muzzle to his cheek, both her paws curling against his chest. Ammas nodded and led her back the way they had come, as swiftly as he could, pausing only to retrieve his dagger. He did not sheathe it this time.

That was perhaps the strangest journey of Ammas's life, and that life had included some very strange journeys indeed. But never had he experienced a werewolf lingering so closely at his side, sometimes dropping to all fours to better clamber over uneven ground and treacherous roots, often stopping to gaze at him with watchful, lambent eyes until he had caught up with her. The Heptarch's wood around them loomed ghostly and gray, utterly still as no night bird or other nocturnal animal dared come close to the strange she-wolf that prowled the night. 

What bond there was between them he had no idea, but he was inescapably reminded of tales of ancient Cursewright-Vigilants and faithful bestial guardians, sometimes partly human, sometimes not human at all. Several times the howls rose again, always a trifle closer than they had been, and while Carala-the-wolf always showed some reaction to them, she did not seem to display any desire to vanish into the night to find them. The last few times they split the night, she answered not with a howl but with a warning snarl.