Twenty-Seven

Dragons’ fire outdid the hottest forges. Trained on a living creature that didn’t have dragon’s blood, it left very little behind. Looking at the bones of the “elk,” Toinette was glad of that.

Fire might have warped, but it wouldn’t have twisted bones in the way she was seeing. Spikes grew out of ribs, ridges burst forth from spines, and teeth bred like rabbits, warping the skulls around them with their sheer numbers.

“It couldn’t have lived like that,” said John. He poked gingerly at a skull, using a long branch—none of them wanted to touch the bodies, and Toinette saw no reason to fight that impulse—and shook his head. “How would it have eaten? Or moved, with that mess on its back?”

“Not long,” said Sence. “Or well.”

Toinette nodded. The beasts would have been in constant pain, if they’d been capable of any feeling. Their charge at Erik looked as much a rush toward death, in that light, as it did any attempt to kill or feed—unless they’d been acting on another’s will.

There were…spaces…in the bones: not mere breaks, nor missing chunks, but places where bone had faded and a shadow taken its shape. The stick went through those places, but they obscured the ground behind them. When Toinette reluctantly knelt to eye one femur more closely, she felt a chill in the air around it, far more than wind would have accounted for.

Youuuuu, sighed the trees. Recognition, accusation, or warning?

She straightened up again quickly, for all the good that did. “I’d say we’re done here for now. Let’s go back.”

The others were fast to agree. “I’ll help you walk,” Sence told Erik. “Best leave the Captain free, in case.”

Toinette saw the logic and was glad Sence didn’t have to be prompted or persuaded; yet she watched Erik drape an arm around the man and felt a quick pang before telling herself not to be an idiot.

Before they left, she scraped dirt and branches over the bones. They weren’t men, much less Christians, to make a grave necessary, but she disliked the idea of leaving them bare to the sky. “And,” she rationalized aloud, “that’ll make it easier to see if they’ve been disturbed.”

The notion of a creature that would want to disturb them, or of a scavenger desperate enough to eat such leavings, visibly crossed through everyone’s mind, leaving lips curled and nostrils flared in disgust. “What were they?” John asked. “Elk, maybe—the females, without antlers—but—”

He trailed off. Erik cleared his throat. “The word we want,” he said quietly, “is ‘cursed,’ I’m thinking.”

Around them, the trees—or a voice beyond—kept whispering, noises that were almost words, words that could mean anything. Toinette didn’t bother looking to the undergrowth for watchful eyes, though; she didn’t think eyes came into the matter at all. The fight and the fire had left her heated, and she was walking, but her flesh was goose-pimpled all the same.

Back at the beach, she and Marcus examined Erik’s wounds: Marcus with the eye of a first mate turned makeshift physician at need, Toinette with greater knowledge of how the dragon-blooded hurt and healed. Neither found anything to contradict Erik’s initial statement, and they settled for tying a scrap of Toinette’s red dress, washed in salt water, around the bleeding wounds. Erik gritted his teeth at the sting of salt, but agreed that it would probably counter most evil spells that might have lingered.

“But you’ll tell us if your side turns green or grows horns,” she said, resting one palm lightly on his naked shoulder. It was a casual touch, as one man might have given a comrade, but Toinette felt every inch of her skin against his, and glanced around quickly to see who among the men might have noticed.

If any had, they gave no sign. They were talking, certain enough, but neither Toinette nor Erik figured largely in the conversation—or, rather, nothing between them did.

“And he truly breathed fire?” Raoul was asking Sence. “What was it like?”

“Like fire.” Sence’s mouth twitched as he watched his younger companion’s face and added eventually, “Brighter than most flame I’ve seen. A trace bluer.”

“And it did kill the…whatever they were?” Samuel asked.

“It did.”

They questioned, told stories, and prepared. Nebulous curses and occasional blood-drinking plants had left them stunned, but although none of them was unafraid now, they all seemed a sight less shaken. Toinette knew that Samuel was considering forms of fire already, and ways to have it ready quickly without the need of a dragon; Franz would invoke his saint of hunters again and give thanks for deliverance from prey-turned-predator; John would want to know how many more such creatures they might expect, and what kind of sign they left.

“Thank you,” she said to Erik, quietly. “You put yourself between them and harm.”

He shrugged, carefully. “They took my pay. I’m their lord until the end of this journey—or, rather, they’re my people, and I’ve obligations in turn. Besides, if we do get free of this place, we’ll need a crew for the return trip, no?”

“Very practical of you,” said Toinette.

Slowly Erik sat up and pulled his tunic back on, belting it only loosely out of concern for his healing cuts. “If I’m to be practical,” he said, “I’ll say we must give thought to a few matters, and that right quickly.”

* * *

As always, the first thought was for defense.

“Fire worked,” said Marcus.

“Our fire did. Normal flame…” Erik remembered the slow way the creature had smoldered, even when he’d breathed at it, and could only sigh. “It’s worth a try, if you’re in need. But I’d not count on it.”

“Might a crucifix?” Franz held up his rosary. “Demons abide those not so well, if the stories are true.”

“It could,” said Toinette carefully. “I don’t know.”

“They weren’t demons, though, were they?” John scratched his chin and looked at Erik. “‘Cursed,’ you said. Though I don’t know the difference.”

“I wish I knew it better,” Erik replied. He shifted his weight, leaning back against the cave’s rock wall and trying to ease the ache of various wounds. His ribs were healing; he could feel them, which was a relief but also a distraction, like a swarm of ants beneath his skin. “Demons come here from hell and, I think, save the sort that possess a person, they’re not made of the same substance as things here. Those beasts…were, and weren’t, in parts. Magic…overgrew bits of them, you might say? Like lichen on a tree. And they warped around it.”

He would have to think more about the precise form of that magic, and of that warping, in due course, though he would’ve preferred to let it remain a mystery.

“Could it change us?” Samuel asked.

“I don’t know,” said Erik. “I believe—I hope—that men with souls and minds would be harder than dumb beasts, where that sort of…twisting…is involved. But it’s not a matter I’ve studied, nor one I’ve encountered before.”

“No point taking chances,” Toinette put in. She leaned forward, holding her hands to the fire as she spoke. “Don’t go off alone. Don’t go running off at all without at least three others, all armed. If you see anything odd, say so. If a beast you don’t recognize bites you, or a strange plant scratches you, say that. And we’ll not eat any more food we don’t know.”

“The beach seems all right,” Marcus said, “and the woods around the cabin, mostly. If the food or the water from here to there was cursed, we’d have seen it in the plants and the beasts before now.”

Toinette nodded. “Likely enough.”

“There’s magic that can help,” Erik said, though he knew he’d have to rack his brains to think of the spells, and he could only pray that he’d remember them all rightly enough to cast and teach. “Spells that can keep a spot of land pure or bless a weapon. Prayer is always good, and pine might be of use. Might have been already,” he added, thinking of the black web he’d seen and the way moods shifted when near the fire. “It may be that the trees here keep this place from being as bad as it might be.”

He saw speculation in the firelit faces, and then a dreadful curiosity. It was Samuel, of course, who asked the question aloud: “Who, or what, do you think they’d be holding back, then? That is”—Samuel spread his hands, dark skin gleaming in the firelight—“whether it’s a curse or a wraith, why would it change those things so? And when did it? And did it send them after us, or did they come of their own? And what of the dreams, and the lights?” He stopped, looked up, and smiled apologetically. “That is perhaps too many questions. But the one at the bottom might be worth considering: How much of what we’ve seen is an attack, and how much is only…what is?”

“The creatures,” Franz said after a few breaths of silence, “the elk, they wouldn’t have come after us. The bulls can have tempers, in rut, but the cows and their calves, they would have run. If they were normal.”

“Beasts run mad,” said Marcus. “Dogs. Even horses. Obviously,” he added, raising a hand to quell forthcoming objections, “this was no simple madness, but it could have been alike. If the bull didn’t have it—”

“They stay separate, often. The bull we killed maybe sired two of those three, then left. So if they found the curse, or it found them, he wouldn’t have been there.”

“Poor creatures,” said Sence.

The others stared at him, but out of surprise that he’d been the one to say it, not at the sentiment itself. Solitary by habit or no, there was a certain tragedy in the bull’s plight: likely the last of his kind on the island, and that due to a force that even men had trouble understanding. His death might have been a mercy as well as a good hunt.

“So,” said Samuel, “did the curse, or the curser, change them deliberately? Or did they pick it up, as though it was a worm? It’s not as scholarly a question as it might sound—if there’s a living man behind this, one who thinks, he’ll know we’ve killed his creatures.”

“There is that,” said Toinette, putting in the three words the quiet yet profound unease that had settled over the whole company.

“But surely”—Raoul spoke up after a touch too long—“a man would have done more earlier against us. Tried to talk, or to threaten, or to send his minions to attack us before. We’ve faced nothing until today.”

“Nothing save the plants,” said Toinette, with a grimace.

Raoul blinked. “Yes,” he said, “and—am I wrong, Captain? Both were to the northeast.”

The silence shifted, gained potential. “That’s where the light comes from too,” said John.

“The light comes from over there,” Marcus countered, waving his hand in the vague direction of the cliffs. “The last I heard, none of us had seen a source.”

“But would you bet against it?” Toinette asked.

“No,” said Marcus with no hesitation. “Then we have either a man defending his territory with deadly force, not bothering with any sort of diplomacy, or—”

“—or a cursed land, and perhaps the center of the curse in it,” Erik finished. “But either way, we now have a route to follow, and it could be we have signs to seek as well.”