Casimir was huddled against Carala, and he was glad she was clean and warm and soft. A little bony from her journey, maybe, but the arm around his shoulder and the softness of her side was immensely comforting. He knew Ammas had told him that he was to protect her, but he hardly saw how that could be possible. When the howls began, and the sound of some monstrous crash in the temple above reverberated down the catacomb stairs, Casimir shuddered and hid his face against the girl's body, trying very hard not to weep. That had already happened too many times today, if not under circumstances quite as dire as these. But he couldn't help himself. There was nothing he could imagine that sound to mean other than some monster tearing Ammas apart.
For her own part, Carala did not think Ammas would be taken so easily. The stories she had heard of cursewrights and others from the fellowships, stories she had studied despite her tutors' disapproving frowns, spoke of cursewrights commanding some of the most dangerous forces known to all the arcane colleges. Such things were spoken of in all the fellowships -- astrologers and their abilities to summon the storms, seer-magistrates and their skill at confounding the mind, forgewrights and the terrible weapons of war they could build in their workshops -- but there was a darkness around the edges of the cursewrights' tales that she had always found unsettling. Some of those stories felt as though the writers themselves had been afraid to record their own thoughts on the matter.
"It's all right, Casimir," she whispered in his ear, gazing fearfully up the stair. The sounds were not encouraging, but at least they had not heard Ammas scream. Even now the seemingly endless black pit which loomed beyond the cheery light of the caged spirit was far more frightening than whatever she heard rumbling from the temple's hall. Carala's fingers eased through the boy's tightly kinked hair to knead his scalp comfortingly. "You know your master, you know he can handle himself." She wished she knew more than she did about him, but she didn't doubt Ammas's knowledge at least was extensive. As to his combat skills . . . well, she hoped the old legends and tavern fire tales had a modicum of truth to them.
Another howl vibrated through the air. The spirit trapped in the silver cage pulsed and fluttered against its fetters, almost frantic, brightening and dimming as if it were crying out. Whatever dread was affecting the spirit was something the princess also could not ignore, for Carala felt a deep shiver working through her spine, so deep it made her teeth ache.
"Oh gods, no," she whispered. A rank, loathsome woodland scent was invading her nostrils.
And her body was reacting to it. The hand in Casimir's hair, normally pale but healthy looking, was beginning to darken, silken black hair sprouting just above her knuckles. A compelling and delicious urge struck her: to rip off her modest clothing and leap up those stairs. To add her own howl to the song of wolfish voices.
"Oh gods no," she moaned again, clutching Casimir to her all the more tightly.
*
They were rolling back and forth, Ammas with one arm wrapped around the wolf's head, keeping its fangs buried in his shoulder. With his dagger he had scrawled savage injuries across its free arm, repelling the paw which he knew was powerful enough to take a man's head off at a blow. The fresh robes Casimir had provided him were soaked in blood, both wolfish and human. The beast had not expected such fierce resistance, and it seemed to have lost its speech, only making violent noises from somewhere deep in its throat. Ammas was completely unconcerned. The wolf's fate was sealed the moment the cursewright had not kept his eyes studiously fixed upon the floor.
Ammas looked over the wolf's head, to the temple around him. The spirit salve had reached its full potency, and now he could peer beyond the Veil of Ravens into the realms of the Dead.
*
Mari, or Carala, he guessed, was trembling violently against Casimir, seemingly even more terrified than he was. Anxiously he looked up, trying to think of something to soothe her. Fear was something he had not really expected from her, not after the blunt and impertinent way she had addressed Ammas. Most people who came to him for help, man or woman, were at least intimidated by his master, and it often took some soothing small talk and a few cups of seretto tea or wine to get them to open up about why they had come to see him. The ones who only came to him for simple remedies or amusing stories on the weekends as he sipped his tea out on the Old Godsway were not quite so apprehensive, but Casimir supposed it was because they didn't really believe that Ammas was what he claimed to be. The ones who came to him for more serious matters believed wholeheartedly, and it made them more than a little fearful.
But not Carala. She had questioned almost everything Ammas had said, or asked for further details. It had been hard for Casimir not to interject, despite his master's explicit instructions when he was speaking with a client. ("You don't know enough to have an opinion yet, Casimir, but if you keep your ears open and your mouth closed for a few years, you'll be able to handle most anyone who comes through those doors.") Some of her questions he thought reasonable; some of her comments he found downright insulting. "I overestimated your abilities," the nerve of her! Until that moment Casimir had never really understood what Madame Laurette had meant on those frequent occasions she told Barthim the Beast that he had "enough gall to choke a sow," but now he think he got it perfectly.
And yet Ammas had not only not been insulted, he had seemed to enjoy himself! It reminded Casimir of those lessons his master taught him which were devoted to subjects Ammas was especially fond of, such as the lost city of Atrolom and the ghosts that still haunted anything connected to it, or the art of hellwrought blades the brotherhood of forgewrights had once crafted for their cursewright brethren. Why Ammas should enjoy being forced to explain himself to this girl, Casimir couldn't imagine. But since that seemed to be the case, he decided to be impressed by Carala rather than find her irritating. Until, at least, she gave him a reason to feel otherwise.
So her fear puzzled him, until he glanced up and saw her face, which did show fear, but also some of things he sometimes saw on the faces of the girls at the Lioness, especially when they were meeting with a customer they liked rather than just tolerated. Abruptly he also noticed her perfume, which was not flowery like a Lioness girl, but earthy and wholesome and altogether compelling, tickling slumbering parts of his brain that were not yet developed enough for him to understand why he should find that scent so pleasing. In spite of the warring ecstasy and terror on her face, he felt a compulsion to kiss her cheek.
But then he remembered Ammas's hurried words before he'd sent the two of them rushing down into the catacomb. He remembered the terrible thing that had knocked Barthim the Beast -- enormous Barthim, who had boasted he could take any man in not just Munazyr but all the Straits with his bare hands -- that thing, crested in pale gray fur and reeking of animal shit, had sent Barthim asprawl on his back, totally winded. Its eyes, baleful and wonderful at once. The howls that surrounded the temple. What if Carala could not control the creature that lived in her blood?
Frantically, as Carala began to writhe, as she began to make sounds like the ones he heard from the Lioness girls' bedrooms, sounds he didn't really understand; as tufts of black fur began to appear on her hands and her ankles, Casimir opened his hand, fingers shaking as he tried to unravel the thing Ammas had given him from the rough wooden pawn around which it had become entangled. After a few seconds he got it, the chess piece clattering to the floor, the slim gold chain drooping down.
"Here -- here," he hissed to her, trying to help it over her thick black hair. At first she resisted, twisting her face around and wrinkling back her upper lip, showing prominent incisors that had certainly not been in her mouth only a few moments ago. Then she seemed to realize what Casimir was doing, her hazel eyes flooding with gratitude. She lowered her head, her hands touching his (the hair that had sprouted there was shockingly soft), and helped him loop the chain over head and around her neck, the little charm resting against her bare skin.
"Thank you," she whispered. The fangs, the soft black hair, that strange fearful yet eager expression -- all were gone so quickly they might never have been there. One hand rose to her throat, pressing the charm harder to her flesh.
"Wait," Casimir said. "Ammas said I have to tell you something." Carala looked at him expectantly.
Remembering the way his master had pressed his mouth directly to the girl's neck, Casimir leaned up and did the same to her ear. That sweet perfume was still present on her skin, but vastly diminished. Softly he whispered in her ear. "He said you have to remember you're Carala Deyn. He said to remember you're Carala Deyn."
Carala's eyes closed and she nodded, listening raptly to this impromptu chant as she clutched the charm tightly in her fingers. Soon it began to sound in her ear like a prayer.
*