The Lupine Curse: A Tale of Netherway

As soon as the werewolf had fled, the High Priest emerged from his cottage, angrier than a god with blasphemous followers. A flicker of rage was in every glance, sharper than the dirk hung at his waist.

Once before, after some wine had loosened him, the Priest confided to one of his followers, saying that, ‘A leader’s wrath should be like a poison: subtle, undetectable, and deadly.’ And indeed, his was.

The cult gathered again—hours later—for the second time that night, but now it was the early morning, and the chill was biting through their furs and leathers.

This time they brought with them crates and barrels as makeshift seats in the open night air. A bonfire splayed fiery fingers up at the stars, burning in the heart of the village. Four followers singled out from the rest were kneeling with bound hands and unmasked faces. They were wounded and bleeding. Three of them trembled under the accusing stares of their High Priest, but one of the faces was unyielding, unmarked by fear. She was Sinara, the sister of Ashara, another Hand amongst the others; another member of the Scarlet family tree, like the rest.

Ashara stood out of the crowd like a lingering patch of snow in a barren field of soil. Her hair was white like the tips of flame, curling at uneven ends that stopped at her shoulder. Her eyes, the only pair that weren’t red—instead grey—looked upon her sister kneeling before the Priest, taking furtive glances at others and their pitiless expressions. Her eyes shimmered with concealed tears. No one had quite ever understood where Ashara’s strange traits came from. When she was brought into the cult, the High Priest spoke nothing of the anomaly. She was, after all, brought in cradled in his arms.

When asked if she was a pureblood of the Scarlet family, the Priest would only reply: “She is of my blood. That is all you need to know.” The look he would give you if you asked him is perhaps more convincing than the words alone.

Ashara was a beautiful creature; unique … and so tortured now as the outcast in a syndicate of pariahs.

Now she was sitting on an empty barrel stacked on several other crates that stank of stale mead. Up here she was as tall as the stretching flames of the bonfire. With trembling lips, full and beautiful, she whispered prayers to the gods.

None of the cult members seemed disturbed by the thought of watching the impending executions. Some were biting their nails lazily while they looked about, slightly bored. There were corpses still scattered on the grounds; the fortunate ones who died from their wounds.

Ashara turned her head away from the heat, letting the cool air caress her cheek while she thought how the flames must burn her sister tenfold. A gentle breeze sifted through the trees and wafted the smell of the burning firewood around. It would have been an almost pleasant aroma, had it not also carried the stench of death.

Not far from the makeshift seats was Shamus, blank eyes staring up at the starlit sky with his own blood dampening the soil around him. Ashara forced herself to look again towards the High Priest.

He was pacing past the four of the wounded kneelers, holding a dagger with a curved blade which was almost as menacing as himself. It was already tipped with someone’s blood.

“Fools,” he sighed. He shook his head, then looked down the road as if he could still see the Cursed escaping. “Look at your wounds, watch them bleed the very curse you were born to eradicate!” His voice erupted like distant thunder. Loyal to the end, three of the followers looked down at their battle-worn armor and saw blood glistening beneath ripped fabric and torn leather. One of them couldn’t look at all, the youngest on the far left; three deep gashes were across his face.

Sinara ignored his words, stared at the fire, feeling the sting of the cold breeze on her wounded arm. The sleeve was soaked with blood that had long since gone cold.

The Hand on the left—an elf no older than Shamus—could not hide his trepidation, and whimpered like a mishandled pup. Someone scoffed at the weakness. Another guffawed. The remarks were from the older assassins, whose blood ran colder than the rest.

Ashara saw a look in the Priest’s eyes that told her to turn away again. But she remained still. The Priest stepped closer to the young elf and put a hand on his shoulder as if to soothe him. Then his grip tightened, and with his armed hand he drove the blade into the back of his skull. It went to the hilt. A line of blood began to fall like a tear down the cheek, right below the eye. When he took the blade out, the dead elf fell face first into the embers of the bonfire, and his hair went up with the flames.

Silence.

The remaining three tried to keep their composure, meanwhile someone in the crowd was gulping ale loudly.

Ashara wanted to run until the bones in her legs splintered. But she couldn’t. Deserters of the Red Hand didn’t survive long. There was a common tale of one who had gotten as far as Portsworth and even caught a ship to the Runelands, only to find one of his brothers waiting for him at the docks, a knife in his hand with his name on it.

The High Priest wiped his blade on his robes and stared at his guiltless followers: the unwounded. “Whose wrath is this? Mine? I think not. This is the wrath of Afimer, the God of Our Moon. Do not suspect that this blade is mine. Think of it as a divine tool, purging these lands of the Curse, cleansing our own kind and others alike. Now, think on this while you observe. Think about Siflos, that wretched god. That thing who made this.” The High Priest grimaced, and someone near him pulled down his mask to spit into the dirt. “Do you think it’s difficult for him to reach down and touch you, inflict you with this … this pestilence?” He looked at the crowd, stopping briefly at Ashara’s eyes, then looking over the rest. No one responded.

Ash from the fire irritated one of the wounded follower’s nose, and he sneezed. The High Priest turned swiftly, calmly, and kicked him into the bonfire. There was a loud crack as firewood broke under the weight of the follower, his bound arms and legs little use to escape the flames as he screamed once, twice, and then a long wailing sound that didn’t stop until his writhing ceased as well. Even some of the eldest Hands raised their eyebrows at the unusual severity. The integrity of the fire lessened as several logs moved to accommodate his weight. Then the flames picked up again, and fed on him.

“You are all just another hand of Afimer, extending across Netherway to heal the Cursed and the lesser,” he said, itching his own nose.

Ashara heard the death cry still echoing in her mind, and pulled her hood further over her eyes so she could release the tremendous pain and fear that she’d been holding back. She caught them in her hand, and clenched them into fists. It had been a long while since they had executions like this. The last time she saw it, she was only nine. Just a young girl, not entirely sure what it meant when a pint of blood fell like water from a tipped pitcher of someone’s throat. She supposed, then, that it was for their own good.

It was not often the Red Hand made mistakes. Tonight the whole cult was being reminded why.

Clearing his throat as if it was a minor interruption, the Priest continued. “Have you ever watched a moth consumed by flame? That is how easily Siflos drags you into his clutches. Pray. Pray and beseech Afimer that his unholy reach does not extend to you.” The flames on the second corpse advanced past the waist and were now eating the leg. It was beginning to singe the sides of one of the remaining wounded. He inched away from the approaching flame.

Ashara looked around. Where is Vidarr?

The High Priest caught the movement of the wounded. He put the blade’s edge to the Hand’s throat …

And Ashara tilted her head, avoiding the sight.

“Gods … have mercy,” the dying strained to say. The Priest let go, and the deadweight collapsed. His body lurched backward, exposing his wound like a second mouth beneath his jaw. Blood spilled and fed the earth in sluggish pulses.

The High Priest sighed. He wished the body would’ve fallen into the fire. These interruptions were really getting on his nerves.

Sinara was still alive. Her face was unyielding, her breath calm. She glanced over her shoulder and found her sister in the crowd. Ashara hurriedly wiped her cheeks, smearing the tears while she tried to think of something to mouth, to say to her sister. Her lips trembled. Her mouth hung slightly open, while terror clutched at her throat. She felt like screaming, calling out her name. Instead, she just sat there, mute and helpless, fear-stricken and almost dead; the fire catching her eyes, making them glisten like frozen starlight.

Sinara gave her a small grin.

Then the High Priest moved behind her. Now Ashara could not see her anymore. The moment was theirs, and it was gone as fast as it had come. That last expression would be the one she remembered so clearly. The look of quiet agony and momentary joy in the fact that this pain exists and you might as well grin through it.

Ashara was not as strong as she wanted to be. She buried her head into her knees and shook uncontrollably with muffled cries and croaks. The air was suffocating, permeated with both ashes and burning flesh, and every gasp of it stung her lungs.

She heard the sound of a knife going through flesh and bone. Tried not to imagine what it looked like. Then the sound of a body thudding against earth, like a heavy stone dropping; crackling of flames as her hair added to the conflagration. Ashara shut her eyes so tight her head hurt. The tears were hot, burning with a new hatred, and a terrible despair. Death swayed and turned with a dark, ethereal cape that spread his presence. He swirled, an elegant dance, above the flames, in the form of smoke and ashes.

The High Priest cleared his throat, still angry and not satisfied by the brief punishments. “This won’t happen again. No more foolhardy mistakes, no more forgetting elixirs that could’ve spared your brothers and sisters. That Cursed was as good as a cold hunk of flesh, and he shifted like one. His human skin fell off like … like it was just another garment to be stripped away.” He shook his head slowly while he cleaned his blade on his robes. “You had to watch your companions become afflicted, and now you watched them pay for it. You’re all dismissed. Sleep well and reflect on this.” He motioned toward the bodies, almost forgetting. “Pray for them.”

The followers got down from the barrels and crates, picking them up to carry them back to the house. The ripple of quiet jokes and laughter began instantly.

Ashara looked around, searching for compassion or sorrow in their eyes but found none. Whenever she met someone’s gaze, there was, at most, an awkward recognition that her sister had just died in front of her.

Ashara was not ready to talk to Vidarr, or anyone, for that matter. She couldn’t bear to wander amongst the dormitories, or to hear what the others were saying about the executions, or even the light conversations that ignored the events entirely. In the Red Hand, death came and went like meals, and they forget them as easily.

She decided to go away, at least for half an hour—not long enough to be considered as missing or running—to collect her thoughts by a river. There was one not too far into the Duskenwoods, near the edge, that hurried downstream to a fluorescent lake in the heart of the woods. She wouldn’t go to the lake, but she would crouch for awhile on the river; sit at the bank and wonder about things her sister loved, like the ocean.

“Dalibor, Signy, come this way,” the High Priest called, beside the bonfire. The two followers darted from the crowd moving toward the main house and stood before him.

Dalibor always wore a sly smile like he was amused at something. He had sharp facial features and judgmental eyes. His hair was long, past his neck, and put up in a ponytail. He was past his twentieth year. Signy wasn’t as starved for the High Priest’s attention, but he came when he was told. His look was more observant, loyal, simple; a good soldier with disheveled hair past his ears. He kept his right hand on the hilt of his blade, always. Since the day he turned twelve, finished with training and received his dagger, he had been proud of it.

“I need you to stay here until the morning. Watch the bodies burn, then put the fire out. Take care that good blades aren’t left to rust. If some are tarnished, burn them. And keep an eye on the road. It’s unlikely the beast will return, but we’ll need watchers here if that misfortune should befall us. Understood?”

The two nodded silently.

“Gods watch over you, High Priest,” Dalibor added hastily as his leader walked to his cottage.

He put up a hand as a sign of thanks. “And you,” he muttered before he went through the oaken door.

Dalibor was nearly red with pride, eyes shining in admiration for his ‘father.’ Signy could not suppress his smirk. It was always laughable to see someone so menacing turn into a child that quickly. Dalibor had fought so boldly that evening that the creature nearly tore his head clean off. Signy knew, he distracted the beast with attacks at his hindquarters when it was advancing on his brother.

Dalibor caught the glance from the corner of his eye. “What are you smirking about?” suddenly growling, not fawning.

“Maybe you should creep in there and give the High Priest a goodnight kiss. He may offer you another blessing as thanks.” Signy chuckled. Neither of them were fazed by the sight of the burning bodies, nor the smell.

Dalibor’s eyebrows furrowed and his lips tightened. He breathed heavy, enraged breaths. Anyone else seeing that expression for the first time would retreat in fear, but Signy had seen it before and was not fooled. Dalibor wasn’t harmless, gods no. But harming another Hand was forbidden.

“Siflos take you,” he cursed. “And that wouldn’t happen. He keeps the door barred at night.” Dalibor was so ashamed and angry he didn’t realize what he’d implied.

Signy raised his eyebrows, silent for a moment, then laughing so much that it echoed past the forest. “And you would know this how?” he could barely comment through his hysterics.

When his sides hurt too much and Signy’s guffaws reduced to chuckles, Dalibor spat, “Idiot,” and started hoisting the unburnt half of one body into the bonfire. “Come help me before you wake up the whole cursed forest. There’re dozens of these.”

Signy glanced around and found Shamus’ body. He sighed, recalling how easy it had been to kill him. A shame.

Vidarr watched the cult pool into the house from his window on the third story. He had not attended the execution, instead observing from behind the windowpanes. Now he saw Dalibor and Signy work to pile the bodies on the fire. All the flesh and damp fabric was consuming most of the flame.

He thought he was alone. Then he felt a soft touch on his shoulder.

“Gods,” he cursed, startled, thinking no one had reached this floor yet. The elf turned, saw that the door to his dormitory had been opened. Then he saw a pale face and red eyes and felt that familiar cold sensation whenever he looked at a devout neophyte. “What are you doing here, Sindri?” After hours, no one wore their masks. She had thin lips grinning lustfully and a playful look to her eyes.

“You know, Vidarr. I could ask you the same,” she said, raising an eyebrow. Vidarr was unnerved that everyone in the cult had the same colored eyes, the same blood, yet each was so different in its gaze. You could tell what a man was thinking through his eyes. He wondered what his eyes said when she looked at him.

“I didn’t see you at tonight’s meeting,” she said softly, the finger that touched his shoulder now trailing down his arm.

Vidarr squirmed from her touch, disgusted. So young, and so impure. “I’ve seen enough executions.” Vidarr was on his twenty-eighth year, feeling a thick cloud of doubt coming over the horizon of his devotion to the Scarlet Hand that seemed to grow every day. But rebellion was dangerous. Vidarr knew, he watched Shamus get cut up like a sack bursting with fluid. It was a splendid view from his window into the courtyard, and a reminder of his fate should he choose desertion.

“Oh, not enjoying the festivities?” Sin tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and grinned. She was barely sixteen and had a freakish obsession with the older acolytes.

He scoffed. “Oh, thoroughly.”

“Aren’t you concerned with being punished? Maybe I should go tell the High Priest where’ve you been this evening. I don’t recall you helping us defend our sanctuary.”

“You all seemed to have handled it well enough,” he said curtly. Vidarr snuffed out a candle on his nightstand, not at all troubled that the nearly fatal mistake had been made that night. And he had helped defend. He shot several arrows from the roof at the beast, though no one noticed, and he was secretly hoping he’d miss and take someone else’s head off, though Sindri didn’t need to know that, and he certainly wasn’t about to tell her.

In any case, he had bigger worries. Ashara will need comforting. What will she think if she sees Sindri so close that she can breathe down my tunic? He thought of her grey eyes, imagined them shining with tears as they had done before in utter fear. Pity filled him, but a fatherly duty came over all else.

Sin took a shuddered breath, suppressing her desires. Then a little more formal, she said, “Praise Afimer we survived. He blesses us in small ways, does he not?”

Vidarr grumbled. He shook off his hood, and dark hair that had not been neat since the early evening fell in loose tangles.

His silence disturbed tradition.

“Is that blasphemy I hear? Where’s your devotion?” Sin asked, putting a lazy hand to her ear as if he had said something lowly.

“Afimer doesn’t give a sack of satyr piss. He wasn’t here tonight when Ashara’s sister was stuck like an animal, or when Shamus, not a day older than you, was attacked like he was a savage. So no, I don’t praise any god that would gift us that.”

“Now that is blasphemy,” Sin feigned surprise. However, she knew of his rebellious side. In a twisted way, she found it alluring. She moved closer to him, close enough he could feel her breath on his neck.

Vidarr wanted nothing more than to say, ‘yes,’ and push the darling little neophyte out the window. Sin had just earned her dagger last week on her sixteenth, always four years after the males. With that came an arrogance in her that almost frightened him. Young blood, stubborn passion for an old cause. “Afimer may be the father of our race, but he didn’t create the Curse,” he said, eyeing the silver pommel of her dagger. “Siflos allowed it to manifest amongst races like the Leors. Afimer has got nothing to do with this.”

Sindri shrugged, bored, trailing her finger along Vidarr’s arm. Somehow he managed not to growl. “Then you curse Siflos instead?”

Vidarr heaved a sigh heavy enough that it casted steam on the window. Another one lost to dogma, he thought with a frown. Sometimes he wished he was executed, if only so as to not hear this rabble every day, whether from her or another one of the cultists.

The sounds of other Hands ascending the long stairs to the dorms were echoing in the house. Doors were closing, candles were being snuffed. A low fire was crackling in the hearth of the main room, a teapot whistling. If the house had been filled with any number of other people, it would have been a wonderful feeling to be apart of such a tight-knit family.

That feeling is somewhat spoiled when the family is a group of murderers.

Vidarr yearned for sleep, for his bed, the most seductive object in the room. But Sindri’s presence was too damned threatening for him to feel relaxed.

Outside, a pale light was sneaking up on the horizon, pushing up the ancient soils of the Duskenwood Forest; a dark sage sea of canopies that stretched for several miles, opening up to grass plains and woodlands surrounding city lands. Such was the beauty of the moonlands: lush tundra that dipped into lowlands, and spread to meet foothills at the base of mountains that rose so high their peaks were covered with deep layers of frost that had been there for ages, even when the Moon and Sun-elves were peaceful.

“The gods don’t need another one of us cursing or praising them. I’m sure you do it enough for the both of us, anyways.” Vidarr yawned behind a black bandana, imagining Sindri on her knees in front of old shrines that they visited at the ends of the week. Vidarr always snuck away for a quiet walk. Afimer be damned. He didn’t know what to think of the other gods like Calan, Morros, Bafimer: the peacekeepers, and the lesser gods, some with names, seemed more or less like leaves on the divine tree, unaccounted for and drifting as they would.

Sindri was stubborn, like the rest. “Our relations with the divine goes both ways, my brother.” Suddenly she was formal and any hint of affection was gone. “We pray to them just as much as they speak with us,” she stopped, then added hesitantly, “ … in their own ways.”

Settling into the uncomfortable air, Vidarr looked at his own dagger hanging from the strap of his thick belt. Feeling confident, he said, “You know what I think, little one?”

“You know I could never guess the complexities of your mind, dear elder,” she mocked back. It was a nearly friendly quip.

He flashed a grin. “Here, come closer.” Vidarr put an arm over her shoulder. For a moment Sin’s heart fluttered, thinking she might’ve finally won him over. But the look on his face told her different, and she frowned, discouraged. “Take a look through this window, tell me what you see.”

The pointed window in Vidarr’s dorm was half as tall as he was. It yielded a perfect view into the yard below. From here they could see Dalibor and Signy, dark shadows going about dark work. They were carrying one of the last of the bodies into the bonfire now.

“Do you see the mercy of Afimer in that?” he asked her.

She didn’t seem fazed. “I see the Curse being purged. I see rebirth in death and the color of blood like the hand on our garments. I see a scarlet blessing, and a scarlet death.”

Something in that saying seemed to defeat Vidarr’s hope every time. Perhaps it was how eloquently composed it was. He decided that he could never convince her, but he spoke as if he could anyway. “And what does that act of ‘purging’ entail?”

“Death. The only cure.” Sin looked away from the scene and back at Vidarr’s eyes. A trace of pity in that fiery stare? Is it foolish to hope?

“So it is Death who is truly present, here. Not Afimer, not Calan, or Morros. So who, Sindri, should you be praying to?” He found himself putting his hands on her shoulders and staring deeply into her eyes. His cold exterior melted away. He wished only to reach out to her, to make her see things … if only for a moment.

Sindri glanced at the burning corpses, then at Vidarr, and without another word, went briskly for the door with a bowed head. Just as she left, Ashara came through the doorway. The neophyte jumped at the sight of her as if she’d seen a ghost, only to rush to her dorm room.

Vidarr’s demeanor shifted immediately. “Ashara. Blessings on you,” he said warmly, and never had he meant that trivial greeting more.

She was in no mood for courtesies, young as she was—the same age as Sindri—her demeanor was laden with numb pain. “What was she doing here?” Her eyes wandered over to his desk. A stack of books with a half burnt candle in an iron holder was resting on top. Her movements were beyond grief. There was only emptiness there. Vidarr rarely felt uncomfortable in silence, but this thick feeling of hopelessness haunted even him.

“Inquiring about my absence, no doubt for her own curiosity. I’d be surprised if she was doing reconnaissance for our dear High Priest. Then again, if she is, I wouldn’t be surprised. Then I’d just be—“

“—dead,” she finished for him.

Before Ashara had arrived, Vidarr had thought through what he would say to her, how he would push her off the edge of loyalty to this band of assassins and merciless lackeys. But when she stood there, staring at him in the darkness, he saw there was no need to convince her of anything.

“I’m so sorry, Ashara,” was all he mustered. She’s only a girl. Sixteen years of age. And now she’s seen what I have. Only I’ve seen more of it in my extra decade. He had the strangest urge to reach out and stroke her stark, white hair, to lay a warm hand on her cheek, gone cold from the shock.

“Perhaps tomorrow we can go hunting early in the evening before the rest of them are awake. We could walk, be in silence for awhile. Sometimes that is all you can do. And, if you don’t tell anyone, I won’t; we could sit on a fallen tree and watch owls together. They are very active nowadays.”

Ashara did not give any indication that she had heard him. She simply stepped closer to him, her arm reaching out to the edge of the window for support, so that she may look out of it.

“You don’t want to be seeing that now,” he warned.

“I’m tired of being told what I do and do not want to see,” she snapped. “Can or can’t. Do or don’t. Step aside, let me watch my sister’s body turn to ash. That’s the least you can do for me right now. Keep your sympathy for yourself; this is your path, too.”

It was the first time anyone had ever spoken to him so honestly, seeing him for how he was. There was little else she could do to earn his respect. He stepped aside.

She was only inches from him now, the back of her head brushing against him. Her hair smelled of fallen leaves, blood, and firewood. For the Red Hand, these were the scents of autumn.

Ashara began talking, though Vidarr sensed it was not for him to hear, although no one else was in the room. “Of all the guilds in these lands, of all the craftsmen, artisans, spell casters, and noblemen, the Red Hand are singled by the crowns and all their wealth to take care of this Curse. Our methods are from centuries ago, in the times when the gods’ blood still ran through some of our ancestors, and the women who birthed peasants still had the face of Calan in their agony. The weavers of magic created spells worthy of Morros’ admiration, and the elven races were still peaceful. Bafimer and Afimer were still brothers, loyal to each other. And so much else, besides …”

There was a dead silence throughout the dormitories now, and her hushed voice, low as it was, made him nervous.

“Then, our lands were scourged and torn apart by that Curse. It’s a small hill for Netherway to overcome, but no mountain, certainly not. Wars had been waged before, but never against a single creature, whole armies had never been massed for one being. But the panic was too great, and anyone bold enough to step up with a sword in hand was praised as the gods are. Thus the white hand became red, and here we are.” She chuckled. Bitterly.

“Why, Ashara—”

“We are not heroes any longer. Our methods are old, Vidarr. The innocent can’t die as they have before. The Curse is ebbing as any plague would, and Siflos’ wrath is dwindling. The lands are nearly cleansed, and it’s not as oft you hear the Cursed’s calls in the night. But so long as the Red Hand complains to the crowns and the people are kept fearful, we’ll have the coin to go about as we choose. To sacrifice ourselves for the sake of this madness.”

Vidarr shivered. Signy and Dalibor had finished with the bodies and were watching them burn. A keg of mead was brought out and they clinked iron tankards together as they watched the death-smelling smoke plume into the air.

“Before long there will be another disease, but for now, we are fighting that which is already on its knees. And before long, we will be fighting ourselves. Perhaps we already are.”

You could hear a feather hit the ground in that silence.

“Your words are noble and true, Ashara.” Vidarr sighed and let himself fall onto his bed. The wood creaked under his weight, “but you cannot speak so openly, not here. Lest you think that fate of those below is befitting to you. You’ve known from a child’s age that the nature of this sanctuary is … strange. This life is not the life of others. But we did not choose it, just like others did not choose theirs. If you want to survive this place with a good head on your shoulders, you must also remember how easily it may be cut off.”

The fire cackled. Sap was popping, a cascade of sparks plumed into the courtyard.

Bones crumbled along with the wood beneath them, and skulls sat atop the mound of the dead, staring upwards in their fiery cocoons.

“One day, I will choose my own life.” Ashara was motionless, draped by the

moonlight falling in through the window.

Vidarr caught one glance of that image of her, and believed every word.