Though the spell had worked on Jonathan when he was young, it had no effect now.
Leo hid his alarm. Instead, he began walking toward Jonathan, speaking softly as if he were trying to soothe some wild creature, wounded and trembling. “Come with me,” he said. “We will go to Ivar and speak to him together.”
“No!” It was a harsh cry of denial, of despair.
Leo continued moving forward. In a moment, he would grab the boy. He was larger, stronger. He could win a physical fight, then drag Jonathan to Ivar. “Jon, we don’t condemn you. We care for you. Let us—” Only when Leo had almost touched Jon did he see the desperate resolve in those silver eyes, the quick, final gesture of a fire spell readied before his arrival.
A wall of flames broke over him. His last words became a single shriek of agony that gurgled as his body melted and crumbled to ashes.
Jon stood over the charred remains. “Liars,” he whispered, and, as he said the words, the past welled up bitter within him. Tears blinded him. Grief closed his throat as he tried to recite one of the Guardian’s prayers. “May the bright powers of dawn that banish the darkness …” The words fled his mind, as if the deed had made him incapable of recalling them. “Liars,” he repeated, but he continued to kneel and weep.
When the tears ran dry, he buried the grief deep inside himself and walked across the river toward Linde. In the distance, he spied Sondra in her blue cloak standing in the door of the inn. Seeing him, she ran to meet him, to hold his arm, to kiss him affectionately. “Jon, I was so worried about you.”
“Worried? Whatever for?” he asked, his voice deceptively light.
“There have been so many killings. Please, tell me when you’re leaving. I worry. I can’t help it.” She pulled him through the door of the inn as if the stone and wattle walls could protect them from the evil.
He’d done Morgoth’s bidding. Now Sondra was safe from his father’s power. Nothing else mattered.
Maeve stood by the window of her cottage, watching mist rise from the sun-warmed hills as night fell. She’d often dreamed of escaping servitude to the disgusting hags, but had never dared test their curse until now. Morgoth had promised that, after the next full moon when his legions were freed from the cloth, he would destroy the hags and free her from their curse.
Like her, he was beautiful and vain, and their goals were much the same. They were kindred spirits, so much so that she risked serving him willingly.
It was nearly dark. Her pack would be arriving soon. She disrobed and changed to vixen form. Lasos, her most recent conquest, arrived first. Then Marc and the village elder, Zapoli. Even in wolf form, they all seemed so uncertain of their actions, so unsure of the new master they served, that she longed to laugh and taunt them. After she had led Fian into the clutches of the hags, they had used him for so many months of twisted pleasure that they had demanded that her offerings have the healing powers of the lycanthropic change. If Morgoth hadn’t come to this land, Marc and Lasos would have been in the hags’ forcecage by spring, slowly devoured through the summer, dead by the time the first leaves fell.
She waited a while longer, lost in her thoughts. As she expected, Andor didn’t join them. She didn’t blame him. He wasn’t controlled by her, and his presence at the inn would certainly be missed tonight.
She led her pack into the woods above the town. They hunted well into the night, tearing apart a small band of goblins that hadn’t fled the land. They padded silently through the shuttered town, past the inn, past empty cottages, to a cabin where a family had decided to make a foolish, lonely stand.
The wolves’ bodies pounded against the cottage door. The wife held a pair of burning faggots, the husband the silver knife and a short sword purchased from the red-haired stranger so many years before.
Outside, fur-covered hands pulled the vixen’s body onto their roof, fur-covered hands pried open the second-floor shutters, and the vixen crawled inside.
An infant lay on a carved wooden bed beneath a coverlet embroidered with the same vine and grape pattern on the ruined shutters. The infant’s sister lay on a bed near the crib. Neither stirred as the wood cracked, as the cold draft of air and silver mist rolled into their room.
Maeve lifted the infant from its crib and raised it into the glowing mist swirling above her. She felt the terrible cold as it swiftly drained the life from the infant. Then she threw its body out the window to the hungry pack below. The growls of the wolves woke the girl. She slid backward across the bed, her knees pressed to her chest as the vixen approached. A beautiful child, Maeve thought, admiring the girl’s strawberry hair and thin, well-formed limbs. Young. Easily made to forget her past. Easily turned.
Maeve’s hands gripped the girl’s bare arms, lifting her protectively. For a moment, her shape altered enough that she could speak to the Silverlord shimmering beside the bed. “May I have this one for my own?” she asked.
In response, a tendril of mist brushed the child’s face, sending a shudder through the tiny body.
The bedroom door banged open. With a cry of rage, the father lunged, sinking the silver sword deep into Maeve’s shoulder. Still gripping the child, Maeve bit his wrist, forcing him to let go of the blade. Screaming at the burn the silver made on her hand, she pulled the blade loose. “Mama!” the girl screamed and held out her arms to the woman standing, stunned, in the doorway. With a low growl, Maeve turned and leaped with the girl through the window.
Her pack had only been somewhat sated by the infant. Nonetheless, they did as Maeve ordered and circled the terrified child, moving closer, their claws ripping at her bare ankles. The girl’s whimpers became screams of terror. The cottage door opened and her mother ran outside, a flaming brand in one hand, the silver sword in the other. Whipping the flames before her, she moved into the center of the pack and began edging her daughter toward the cottage door.
Strands of mist curled around the woman, mist with enough substance to wrench the torch and blade from the woman’s hand, leaving her helpless. She frantically clutched her screaming daughter as the wolves circled them. Then the mist touched her face, pulling the life from her body as the pack would soon pull the flesh from her bones. As she fell, the child grabbed the torch and thrust it into the face of the wolf standing between her and the door, then bolted for the cottage.
The pack, concentrating on the woman’s body, had little time for the child, scarcely noticing when the vixen shut the door behind the girl. A crowd of men ran from the inn through the streets. They held torches high, answering the girl’s terrified screams. The pack abandoned their kill and scattered into the woods.
The mist remained for some time longer, floating insubstantial as a breeze above the oncoming men, touching their fear, their horror and magnifying it before dissipating into the darkness of the trees.
Blood covered the snow outside the cottage. When the villagers examined the woman, they saw that crystals of ice had formed in the rents in her flesh. Her tears were frozen on her cheeks, her open eyes glazed with frost. The village had seen this bizarre death often enough, but this was the first time they had a witness to the crime.
Inside the cottage, a line of blood marked the father’s torturous descent from the children’s room in the loft and pooled beneath the bite on his wrist, a bite so deep and powerful that the end of the bone showed through his mangled flesh. His face was ashen from shock and loss of blood, yet he was still conscious, still struggling to rise.
One of the men pulled the girl off him so the village healer could dress the wound. When he saw the depth of the bite, the healer avoided touching it, asking the man, “Kezi, what did this to you?”
“A person dressed in silver fur and a silver cloud,” the girl replied for her father.
“Wolves,” Kezi corrected.
The healer hurriedly wiped the blood from his hands and backed away. “Then I can do only one thing to help you,” he said to Kezi as he lifted the silver blade from the floor.
“Take the c
hild to the inn. She shouldn’t see this,” someone said.
Though the sentiment was kind, the words triggered fear. “No!” the girl cried. “I want to stay with Papa!”
Ivar had seen the terrified mood of such crowds often enough. They were willing to destroy the man before knowing the details of the attack, as if there would be some protection in ignorance. Ivar had spent all his life hiding his power, but, as he had told Jon, part of a wizard’s ability lay in knowing when to reveal it. He proceeded with caution. “Wolfsbane can cure the disease,” he said.
“On a bite so deep, never!” the healer countered.
“The curse can be removed,” Ivar said. “I’ve seen it.”
“Removed? Who knows how to lift a curse?”
Ivar breathed deeply, weighed the consequences of his answer one final time, and said, “I do.”
With those two soft words, the man that oversaw the winery, made the best roasted quail, and had the greatest luck at dice of anyone in Linde revealed himself as something far more than a neighbor and trusted friend. His voice, his stance, his air of confidence inspired respect. The terror of the last few days made even the doubters believe his power.
“Take Kezi to the inn,” Ivar said and led the way outside. There Andor was crouched, staring at the carnage, lost in thought.
“Do you think they will attack again tonight?” Ivar asked him in a voice so low no one else could hear.
Andor shook his head. “They’re gone,” he said.
“Those who aren’t staying at the inn should go home now,” Ivar called to the crowd.
Kezi screamed with pain as he was lifted and carried through the streets. At the inn, Ivar ground a poultice of wolfsbane and wine while the healer washed the wound and set the arm. “Find Jonathan,” Ivar whispered to Andor as he placed the poultice. “I’ll need his help.”
Andor started toward the door, then hesitated, waiting for Ivar to finish. When the poultice was set, he motioned for the wizard to join him. “Why did you never lift the curse from me?” Andor whispered bitterly.
“Because I don’t possess the power to do so. Nor can I lift it from our poor friend, either. But Kezi is a good man with a child to raise. I’ll give him the same choice I gave you and hope he has your self-control.”
“Then why do you need Jon?”
Ivar smiled ruefully. “The people are terrified, their minds set on blood. They won’t believe the curse is lifted if we don’t give them the best possible show.”
Ivar listened to Andor climb the stairs, heard his footsteps going from room to room on the upper floors where Jon often took refuge when the crowd in the inn became too large and noisy.
Sondra came into the kitchen. Ivar asked her, “Have you seen Jonathan?”
“He went below,” she replied. “I just told Andor that.”
Yet Andor hadn’t come down. The long night had already drained Ivar’s strength, and Andor and Jon were proving more hindrance than help. Ivar went downstairs. Jon wasn’t there.
Ivar opened his spell book and refreshed his memory of a spell any apprentice could cast. He had hoped for something more dramatic. But the dancing spheres of color, the light that would flow from his fingers to cover the wound on Kezi’s wrist should evidence his power to lift the curse, even if the words that followed were merely a distraction and a sham.
Later, after the “healed” Kezi had fallen into a deep slumber, Ivar went to his cavern to wait for Jonathan. The events of the past hours had sapped his strength and, in spite of his best intentions, he slept. Sometime in the night, the boy passed by him. Ivar never woke.
In the morning, so early that even Dirca wasn’t at her place in the kitchen, Ivar packed his books into a cloth bag, took his staff from the cavern, and began the walk to the fortress. He suspected the Guardians possessed many of the answers concerning the deaths that had plagued the town.
While Ivar tended Kezi, Maeve dismissed her wolf pack and limped home. By the time she reached her cottage, her wound had begun to throb. Once inside, she willed her human form and lit a lamp. Soon after, carrying a basin of lye soap and hot water toward her dressing table, she glimpsed her reflection in a mirror. Her hands trembled and she set the basin down hard, spilling the water over the pile of scarves and feathers.
The blade had been silver, that much was certain from the pain of the wound, but even silver couldn’t do such damage. As she wiped away the dried blood that covered the deep gash on her shoulder, she saw white pustules and sickly yellow skin around them. Without thinking, she drew her hair back from her face. Immediately, three white boils appeared on her forehead. She looked down at her hands and saw that the burns the silver had made on her fingers were covered with the same white sores.
Leticia, the sea hag, had cursed her. If she didn’t serve them, she would become as they were.
She returned to fox shape. In this form, there was the single stab wound, but no sores. A moment later, human once more, she looked at her face in the mirror and screamed, a sound so loud and terrified that families in the center of Linde heard it and prayed for the life they thought had been taken. The sores had spread. The yellow skin covered most of her forehead.
She fled, first on two legs then on four. There were hours left before sunrise, more than enough time for Morgoth to use his power and lift the curse.
Outside Morgoth’s cavern, she paused and listened, swearing softly to herself when she heard Jonathan’s melodic voice. If she weren’t so desperate, she’d wait until Morgoth was alone before facing him.
What a conquest Jonathan would have made! A conquest so powerful he might have challenged the hags themselves. Instead, she now served his father and found herself likewise subservient to the son. Until now she had managed to avoid Jon. As she padded inside, she could only hope he would forget her mockery and recall that they were allies.
In the cavern, she saw Jonathan sitting cross-legged on the edge of the pool, a heavy book covering his knees, his brow furrowed with concentration. His hands and lips moved slowly, and he looked like a musician trying to master a particularly difficult harmony. She lay back on her haunches and, with muzzle between her paws, watched as faint sparks formed near his fingertips. He seemed disappointed at the result. In human form, she might not have stifled the laugh.
“Skill will come in time,” Morgoth said, his voice coming from the shadows at the rear of the cavern. Maeve padded over to him.
“Little fox,” Morgoth whispered affectionately, laying his hand on the side of her neck, rubbing her fine fur between his fingers. “Woman.”
Maeve began to change, but fought his command, forcing him to repeat it. In human form, she knelt before him, her face toward the ground, her hands pressed to the stone floor. Spheres of light moved close to her, bathing her in a pool of yellow and rose. She batted at the spheres. They burned her hand, but didn’t move. “Help me,” she begged and received no reply. “Help me,” she repeated and looked into his face while cloudy, yellow tears oozed from her violet eyes.
“The hags did this?” he asked, staring at her wounds with such intensity that he seemed to find them beautiful.
“The hags said I’d become like them if I betrayed them. This curse proves my loyalty to you. End it.”
“I can do nothing,” he said.
“You haven’t tried.”
“I cannot expend my power on such a trivial thing,” Morgoth said coldly.
“Then release me. Let me beg the hags’ mercy.” Morgoth shook his head.
“I control the pack,” she reminded him.
“Only as long as I will it. Since you wish to test my power, I no longer will it. They won’t come at your call, not tomorrow night nor any night.”
The loss hardly mattered to Maeve. The pack were merely trained dogs fattened for the hags’ feast. She cared for none of them. However, Morgoth’s betrayal stung. “I’ve served you well,” she reminded him.
“You served your own interests.”
“What am I to do?” she moaned.
“You make a magnificent fox,” Jonathan broke in, a twisted smile of triumph on his pale face.
“Serve us both in that form,” Morgoth said.
She shifted, turned, and fled the cavern. As she ran, brilliant peals of Jonathan’s laughter followed her.
The hags had never been so ungrateful or so demanding. Of course she was a magnificent fox—she had never seen another vixen with her perfect beauty—but the fox shape was hardly made for wearing the finery she loved and collected, for charming men to use as slaves, for songs and dances, for what made her years in Tepest so pleasant.
Morgoth would’ve helped her if the boy had only asked. The boy hadn’t. If this was war, so be it.
She went home and examined herself again. The pustules had grown, the wound itself had lengthened. She dressed quickly and, clutching the bloodstained cloth she had used to clean herself, followed the narrow path from her cottage to the edge of town where she lay in human form, arms forward as if she had been clawing the ground.
She was found by three hunters just before dawn. They took her to the inn where the healer, who was spending the night to care for Kezi, was the only one awake. They placed Maeve on a bench near the door. Concerned that she might be sick rather than wounded, they backed away from her and moved closer to the hearth, where Kezi lay wrapped in furs before a hot fire. The healer examined her sores and forced wine into her mouth. When her eyes fluttered open, he asked what had happened.
“I was attacked,” she replied.
“By wolves?”
“By a man whose breath destroyed my skin, whose hands clawed at my flesh … he infected me with a sorcerer’s illness. We all know him.” Her voice still held its power. Her rescuers listened intently as she said the name. “It was Jonathan.”
“Did anyone see Jon last night?” the healer asked.
The men shook their head. One of them looked down at Kezi and commented, “His daughter spoke of a silver cloud. Do you suppose—?” He stopped speaking as Sondra came down to begin her morning work. Her eyes were puffy and her clothes disheveled. When she saw the visitors, she smoothed back her hair and pulled her loose work shift more evenly on her shoulders.
Tapestry of Dark Souls Page 22
