Chapter 19…A Curse

Zhjaeve woke the next morning with a low moan and it soon became clear that despite Ilrah's healing, she was far from well. She spent most of the next three days in the tent, for daylight hurt her eyes. Her mind seemed to wander; there were times when I found her murmuring to herself in her own language. The rest of the time she was very silent, answering my questions in monosyllables, if at all. Once she stared at me with startled eyes, as if she had never seen me before, and she actually jerked away from me as if I frightened her. It must be a strange and disorientating sensation, to be injured and hurting so far from home and with no one of her own race to tend to her.

She had little appetite as well. I coaxed her to eat, gave her healing potions from our dwindling supply and had her drink bark tea several times a day. That was all I knew to do.

"She is on the mend," Casavir told me, when he had crawled out of her tent after examining her. He was on the mend as well. He still kept his arm in a sling but he could use it if need be. For small things, anyway—I doubted he could hold a shield yet. If the arm pained him, he made no sign of it. "Head wounds heal at their own pace, I'm afraid."

"How long…" I started and then bit off my words. I didn't have to tell Casavir that I was anxious to return to Crossroad Keep. He knew. We all were. Ammon had been pushing me to leave her and some of the Greycloaks behind, and possibly Casavir as well. The two of us could move more swiftly than a group, he said, and he was probably correct. Splitting up didn't feel right though.

Casavir's face was calm as he looked down at me. I wondered if it was my imagination that made me see a trace of admonition in his expression. That's the problem with paladins. They make you feel guilty whether you ought to or not. Because chances are, you ought to.

Yes, I had considered leaving Zhjaeve behind. And I was still considering it. We had been too long without news from Crossroad Keep and it worried me.

"There is no way to predict when she will be ready to travel."

I nodded and tried not to let my disappointment show too clearly. I knew that if the situation was reversed, she would not leave me.

"Jess, Ammon tells me you have an open wound that troubles you."

My eyes slid away from his. The Greycloaks may have given him some garbled tale of my dealings with the orc shaman but I had said nothing. Sometimes in the night, I would wake and feel Gruumsh's eye upon me. It was just a memory or a dream but it made me feel both frightened and…ashamed. I wasn't exactly sure why.

I couldn't believe that Ammon had brought it up. What was he thinking?

"It's nothing much," I said, which was more or less a lie. My hip hurt when I walked and although the loss of blood was probably no worse than my monthly flows, there was nothing natural about this.

"May I look at it?"

"It's in a bad spot," I said, pressing my hand to my hip. I'd been raised by an elf and had little physical modesty but Casavir, I knew, felt very differently about such things. "I'll wait until Zhjaeve is able to heal…"

"Jess," Casavir said and now there was no mistaking the admonition in his voice. "Let me see." It was as if he thought I was a child afraid to have a splinter drawn.

"Fine," I snapped. "But not here. Let's not give the whole camp a show." And the idea of crawling into a tiny tent with Casavir and undressing—and having to lie down to do it—well, I'm not modest but that seemed uncomfortably intimate. Better to do this out in the open, under trees and sky.

Once we were in the cover of thick brush, I loosened the tie that held up my pants and let them drop. I pulled up my linens to expose the bandage. Casavir knelt before me with no more than a slight stiffness to show any possible embarrassment. Maybe he was just off balance because his arm was in a sling. He peeled away the thick pad that covered my injury.

What had originally been a clean cut from the golem's blade was now a ragged tear, and my skin was red and swollen. The wound wept dark tears of blood. For the first time, I noticed that there was a foul smell as well. Wonderful.

Casavir looked up at me with appalled eyes. He began the words of a healing prayer and then laid his hand gently on my hip. I winced. All around the wound, my flesh was tender like from a deep bruise.

He jerked back and stumbled to his feet.

"Jess!" he exclaimed. "You have been cursed."

I sighed.

"I thought it might be something like that." Why else would it be getting worse despite the healing potions?

"You knew this? And you said nothing? But…"

"Can you remove the curse?"

"Yes, but—Jess, how did this happen? Did the shadow reaver curse you?"

"Um. No. It wasn't him." I sighed again and told him the tale. He let out something close to a sigh of his own when I finished. He made no comment though, just closed his eyes and prayed to Tyr. He slipped his shield arm out of the sling. His hands took on a bit of a glow, hard to see in the daylight but I knew it was there. I could feel his power in the Weave, all shiny and bright. Then he touched me and I gasped and clenched my fists behind my back. Tyr's power burned in my wound like salt. Casavir's healing had never hurt me before.

Casavir snatched his hands away. My hip throbbed and I didn't have to look to see that I had not been healed. I looked anyway. If anything, my flesh was more swollen than ever. My skin was starting to curl back as if it would peel away from the muscle beneath. The blood that trickled out was almost black.

Sickened, I slapped the bandage back in place and yanked down my drawers to keep it from sliding off.

"I…cannot remove the curse," he said, sounding shaken.

"I see that," I said. Hope snatched away is worse than no hope at all. If this was Tyr's judgment upon me, then—I stifled my thought. "Can I pull up my pants now?" Anger wasn't my predominant emotion but you couldn't tell that from my voice. I didn't wait for his reply but pulled them up and knotted the tie with stiff fingers.

"It is…"

"…Tyr's will," I said. I pulled my tunic straight. "I know what you're going to say. This is justice and I brought it on myself."

He shook his head a little.

"I do not have the power to lift so strong a curse."

I noticed he hadn't exactly contradicted me. I turned away from his troubled look. Although he wasn't to blame, really, Casavir's advice had helped bring me to this point. Ever since we'd first come to this valley for the Ritual of Purification, I'd tried to treat the orcs here fairly, like, well, like people instead of beasts. I'd listened to Casavir. We could have slaughtered them like we'd slaughtered the tribes at Old Owl Well. We hadn't done that. In fact, I had helped them. I had killed the ogre mage who threatened these orcs, and although I hadn't done it for their sake, they had benefited. I had sought their permission before entering their lands. I'd even brought them gifts.

I'd bargained with their shaman in good faith and he'd cursed me for it. What had Ilrah said about this wound? It would heal when Gruumsh One-Eye was sated. And I hadn't asked how long that would take, had I? Was an orc god ever sated? Ever?

So this was the justice I received for being merciful. Maybe I should have listened to Ammon instead of Casavir.

But there was nothing to be done so I spent the rest of the morning fletching arrows for our hunters. This was a task that I loathed but was good at, thanks to Daeghun's early training. (I also knew ten ways to cook swamp cabbage and the best methods for preparing brains for tanning hides. Oh, the many joys of my childhood.)

Bodo was constantly underfoot, scattering the feathers, crawling up my arm when I was trying to trim them and twice coming perilously close to knocking over the glue pot. I finally sent him to the tent to keep an eye on Zhjaeve before I was tempted to squash him. Fletching is finicky work but requires no thought, only clever fingers and the ability to tolerate the stench of the sinew and the glue. So it suited my mood fairly well but still, I was far from displeased when Ammon strode into camp from wherever he had been and beckoned for me.

Back at the keep, it was his norm to disappear for days at a time and I'd rarely had much success prying out of him where he'd been or what he'd been doing. I was now more or less trained not to ask. Although distrustful of all others, Ammon demanded a great deal of trust from me. Someday I'd call him on that.

"Do you have your riding boots on?" he asked without preliminary. "Good," he said, looking at my feet and not waiting for an answer. "Come with me."

Oloven had just finished saddling 'my' horse (it had been his before Ammon appropriated it for my use) when we reached the grassy field where the horses were kept. He gave it a wistful pat on the shoulder.

"When will you be back, Knight Captain?" he asked. I gave Ammon a questioning look.

"Probably tomorrow," he said.

I gave Ammon a really, really questioning look. I hadn't packed and I had no idea where we were going. Or why. Oloven's eyes flicked between us.

"And, er, what should I tell Sir Casavir?" he asked hesitantly. I opened my mouth but Ammon interrupted.

"Tell him we will probably be back tomorrow," he snapped. He gave me a curt gesture to mount. I shrugged and nodded for Oloven to stand back.

Now I'm very comfortable with silence. I'd grown up with it, you might say, and although I was filled with questions, I was willing to let them wait. But after we'd ridden out long enough for my stomach to start growling, I had to speak.

"We're getting close to Riverguard Keep," I told him. "When I was last here, the place was taken over by bugbears." He pulled up closer beside me.

"It is still infested with them," he said.

"I have no quarrel with Ralidor's tribe," I said slowly. "They left us in peace then." To my mind, bugbears are considerably more dangerous than orcs. Not because they are so much bigger and tougher (although they are) but because they are so much smarter. "But that doesn't mean they will welcome our company. Why are we here?"

"The horses will be safe here for now," he said, dismounting. I slid off my horse with an ache of dread in my belly. Ammon didn't like to answer questions he thought I ought to figure out on my own. I was getting a bad feeling about why we were here. Ralidor and Uthanck's tribes were rivals, judging by the bugbear corpses on display near the orc's camp. Although the orcs outnumbered the bugbears by a sizeable amount, they would surely find the defenses of this keep a hard nut to crack.

I hoped we weren't here to crack them.

Ammon called up one of his skeleton minions to watch over the horses. His Demonspawn took it in stride although my horse did an unhappy little dance step and snorted a couple of times. He didn't manage to pull up his picket though.

"You talked to Ilrah, didn't you?" I had to move quickly to keep up with Ammon's long legs and my hip pained me. Ammon frowned as he saw me limping.

"I spoke to him about your wound."

"You knew he cursed me?"

"It was a logical conclusion."

"And you knew Casavir couldn't remove the curse?"

"I saw him fail."

"You were watching that?" His face was his answer. He had seen me strip to my linens in front of Casavir and he had watched in secret? That was more than a little disturbing. "Damn it, Ammon! That's the kind of trick I'd expect from Bishop, not you." That comment earned me a frown.

"I was not spying on you."

"Yeah, right. Then why didn't you let us know you were there? All this sneaking around unseen is a bad habit, Ammon." He shrugged.

"My habits of secrecy have saved my life more than once."

"Great. Keep your habits then but don't expect me to be happy about being spied on. Do you think you could let me in on the secret of why we're here now?"

He lifted his head and turned as if he'd heard something off in the brush. I hadn't heard anything but I was willing to believe his hearing was sharper than mine.

"Get your Stoneskin on," he told me.

"Why?"

He gave me a look.

"Oh, no, I won't do it. These bugbears are no threat to us. We can't just go busting in there and attack for no reason."

"We have a reason."

It was my turn to give him a look.

"We don't have a good reason." The Corpsewalker clan was no ally of mine and their enemies weren't myenemies. These were not our lands. This keep didn't belong to me and I had no need to 'liberate' it. "Is this to satisfy Gruumsh One-Eye? Did Ilrah tell you this would lift the curse?"

He nodded.

"No. It's wrong. Ilrah said the curse wouldn't kill me."

"The curse may not kill you but it will sap your strength," Ammon said. "Which leads to the same result."

"Someone will be able to take the curse off me."

"Who? When?" I made no answer because I didn't know. "What will happen when that little limp of yours worsens? Ilrah assured me that it would. Do you plan to attack the King of Shadows from a chair in Crossroad Keep?" His voice harsh, he added, "You are of no use crippled, Jess."

I stared at him in dismay.

"I know that sounds brutal but it is the truth."

"Well, I can always trust you to give it to me hard and brutal," I said angrily. "But it's still wrong. You do know that, don't you?"

"No. I don't agree. This is not a matter of right or wrong, only of necessity. This is no more immoral than killing a deer for its skin and meat. It is a brutal world we live in, Jess," he said. "You made a bargain and now you must live with the consequences. That you did not understand the price does not lift your obligation to pay. This is the only justice I have ever found and… I am sorry it disturbs you."

He put his hand on my shoulder. I wasn't angry (with him) but I wasn't much comforted either. I wished I could believe that there was nothing wrong with what we were about to do. After all, bugbears are hateful monsters. Just because these hadn't done anything wrong that I knew about, that didn't mean they hadn't done something to deserve death. It just meant they were smart enough not to get caught.

I could just imagine how well that argument would sit with Casavir.

"It's not your fault," I said. "I'm the one who got outwitted by an orc. Instead of doing this, why don't we ride back and attack them. I wouldn't mind doing that."

His grip tightened.

"Ilrah's death will not lift the curse. If anything, killing him will strengthen it." He let me go. "Get your Stoneskin on."

A well-placed fireball and a couple of Ammon's blasts pulled the sentries out of their hiding places in the courtyard. Several crossbow bolts glanced off my armored skin but the bugbears didn't have time to muster much resistance. Once the sentries were dead, with my spell-augmented strength I wrenched open the dilapidated keep door. We entered the dark building, swords drawn and magic ready.

There were two of us. There were many of them. It didn't matter. I had Ammon Jerro and the Blade of Gith. I had my outrage and my will. That was all I needed.

By the time we were done, my sword arm hung heavy with fatigue. My boots left bloody footprints on the filthy floor. But my limp was all but gone. Gruumsh, it seemed, was satiated at last.

"This is not wise," Ammon said.

"I know and I wish you'd talk me out of it." With that, I dropped my linens on top of the rest of my clothes and stepped into the icy river. I had no doubt been dirtier in my life but I had seldom felt so unclean.

It was nighttime and a moonless night at that, so I bathed by mage light. I had no soap but I did have a bit of a rag to scrub with. When I was clean enough that I could stand my own presence, I came shivering out of the water. Ammon held a blanket out for me. I would have taken it but he held on to it. He wrapped it around me to shield me a bit from the evening breeze and then he started rubbing me dry. The blanket was coarse wool, rough and itchy, but I didn't complain. I had no clean clothes to change into but I didn't complain about that either. Yet.

"Thanks for the rubdown." I gave Ammon a tooth-chattering smile. "I feel like your horse." I couldn't stop shivering.

"No," he said. "You don't." His hands slowed and his motions became much less…brisk. His eyes glittered in the mage light.

"Gods, Ammon, did you just make a jest?"

"Now does that seem likely?" He bundled me up in the blanket and picked up my untidy pile of clothes, stiff and tacky with blood. "Come lie in my blankets and I will warm you."

"That sounds wonderful," I said, following him up the river bank to our campsite and crawling into his bedroll with all speed. My filthy clothes could wait until the morning. "But I thought you disapproved of dalliance. Or am I misinterpreting your offer?"

Before I extinguished the mage light, I took one last look at my cursed wound. The curse was gone. The bleeding had finally stopped and the healing potion I had drunk had cleared up the redness and swelling. It was going to leave a truly ugly scar though—a fine orcish beauty mark.

"The word 'dalliance' implies that we are shirking our duties."

"Ah." He crawled in beside me and his arms went around my back. I slid my icy hands under his tunic and he shuddered at my touch. "Well, let me tell you, Ammon, that if you are teasing me now I will not be pleased."

A breathless interlude followed in which he presented proof that he was (at the moment anyway) completely in earnest. My teeth had stopped chattering and I was beginning to feel deliciously warm through and through.

"What of your fine speech about the necessity of avoiding attachments? This is not something I do with someone I care nothing about, you know. Were those just words?"

"They were wise words," he murmured into the curve of my neck. "But I find, after all, that I am not very wise."

The next morning, we rode straight to the orcs' camp. I'd had nothing to eat but some leathery plums out of Ammon's saddlebags and my mood was nine kinds of foul. I rode to the center of camp (scattering a couple of youngsters carrying firewood) and, not even bothering to dismount my horse, shouted for the shaman.

Uthanck came out first. He gave me and then Ammon a look that struck me as rather sly. I felt my temper continue to rise. I gave him a very curt nod, not quite trusting myself to speak.

"Ilrah Broken-Ribs!" I shouted again. According to Daeghun, I've been loud all my life but I don't believe that's true. If anything, as a child I'd been quiet and soft-spoken (for a human) but I think all mages learn to control their voice as part of their training. I did, anyway. I now have a voice that can cut across a battlefield if need be and I was certainly capable of making myself heard throughout an orc village.

Ilrah came out from behind one of the huts. If Uthanck's look had struck me as sly then Ilrah's struck me as smug. Not that an orc's face is exactly easy for me to read. But he looked up at me, high on my horse, and his lips drew back, showing an awful lot of tusk.

"Ah, the Orc-Slayer returns."

I felt the blood rush to my face. His voice was as smug as I had expected. I wondered if this all was an elaborate payback for the death of Uthanck's brother at Old Owl Well or if it was nothing more than orcish opportunism. I turned in my saddle, jerked my game bag loose, and flung it down at the shaman's feet.

"There," I said. He opened the bag and pulled out Ralidor's head. He grabbed it by the hair and held it out to Uthanck. They both laughed—big hearty belly laughs, so full of self-congratulation that it set my teeth on edge.

"Did you kill them all?" Uthanck asked. He looked at Ammon, not me, but I answered.

"Yes, blast you. We killed every warrior who would fight. If you want the women and the children, you will have to hunt them down yourself, you damned..." I cut myself off before I started frothing at the mouth. Ilrah had stepped closer. My horse took a nervous sidestep away from him, but the shaman wrapped his clawed fingers around my thigh, close to the wound he had given me.

"Come, Orc-Slayer, you enjoyed yourself. One-Eye knows. You rutted in the grass like a weasel when it was done. One-Eye heard your cries." He turned his face to Ammon and gave him a wolfish grin.

I reached for my sword hilt. I have never fought on horseback but Ammon had tied the scabbard to my saddle so that, in theory, I could draw the blade. I'd probably cut off my horse's ear if I did so but I was considering giving it a try. Practice makes perfect.

Ilrah released me and stepped away. I turned to his clan leader.

"If I ever have to deal with you or your tribe or your god again, I will give your shaman a new name," I told Uthanck. "That name will be Ilrah Broken-Back." My voice was shaking with fury. "And if I ever see you or any other Corpsewalker in human lands…"

A movement from one of the huts caught my eye. I turned and saw Casavir's pale, grimly set face. It was glaringly obvious that he had heard every word.