The Lupine Curse: A Tale of Netherway
Chapter 24: Highborn's Penance

The raucous crowds nearly drowned out the clangor of the bells, but they were not nearly loud enough to deafen the sound of Fenris’ blood pounding through him. Everyone was pouring out of their homes, the travelers from the inns and the peasants from their bedrolls in the alleyways, drawing to that noise in the heart of the city like a hypnotized crowd of sleepwalkers.

Vidarr, Fenris, and Ashara slipped their way through the bustle and entered a tavern with a balcony overlooking the square with the bell-tower. The priestess and Deidre decided to stay behind, as it was too dangerous for them to leave the safety of the chapel.

A barmaid looking all too grumpy from having been woken up, noticed the three assassins entering the tavern. “Don’t you go stealin’ anything!” she warned them.

Ambivalent, Vidarr bounded up a set of creaky stairs to the rooms above, with Fenris and Ashara following close behind. His bow was still slung over his back, and almost scraped the walls of the narrow hallway that they entered.

When they arrived on the balcony, greeted by the chilled air, they saw the dark silhouette of a Hand on the bell-tower, though he’d stopped pulling on the rope now. All that was left was the persistent ringing in their ears.

The people of Gods’ Rest shouted demands and questions at him.

Fenris felt a chill as he looked to where hundreds of pairs of eyes were already looking: the scaffold at the center of the square. It had not been there when they arrived.

“Dalibor.” Vidarr growled his name with such animosity, it sounded as if the utterance alone would kill him.

The Lord of the City was there, standing in a heavy, elegant cape with a fur necking and a golden clasp. Without speaking a word, he held up a single hand glimmering with jewelry, before resting it on the leather of a sword he’d never used.

Fenris shut his eyes and clenched the railing of the balcony until the tips of his fingers turned white. It was just a glimpse, yet the image seemed as if it had already been in his mind, stubborn and irremovable, for years: Dalibor’s enacting the authority of the High Priest precisely in the same manner as the day he dragged Fenris by his shoulders; that wicked grin cut into his face, and that damned dagger that smiled in the moonlight just as maliciously. Fenris’ leg hurt just looking at it.

Fenris opened his eyes. It occurred to him that, so long as elves and people like Dalibor existed, the High Priest would be immortal. He had never died, truly. The evidence was standing in front of him, and he had Ash the Bard at his mercy beside him.

“We must help him!” Fenris could hardly say the words coherently while the rage hammered his chest, stirring the demon in him.

Vidarr cursed. There was nothing to do but watch. “Fenris … I—”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“Don’t draw attention. I don’t want to see this anymore than you do.”

Dalibor put the dagger to his palm and slid it across until the blood dripped on the scaffold. The other assassins did the same, bearing their crimson hands above their heads, while townspeople sidestepped and tried to avoid the warm rain coming down around them.

Vidarr cut his palm and smeared his wound across Fenris’ and Ashara’s hands. “That will be the last time,” he swore. “We can’t be discovered yet, if we are to escape.”

Fenris mimicked the movement. Despite the chaos of the city square, the people shouting and the other Hands cheering amidst the crowd, Fenris could hardly feel himself standing there. The scene blurred and melted away to unfeeling.

Ash was stripped naked, his face already bloodied and his body covered in bruises.

“You don’t need to see anymore, Fenris,” Vidarr whispered to him, as Dalibor began a speech that hardly reached through to them. He was shouting of penance and reconciliation, of not only the Cursed Ones, but of highborns, Sun-elves; Netherway needed to cleanse itself in the blood of the godless and unfaithful.

Vidarr started shaking him out of his trance, but it did either of them little good.

Dalibor was beating the air with the hilt of his dagger, pumping it with each word.

Ashara began to cry, and was reaching out for Fenris’ hand, which just barely reacted to her touch.

Vidarr tried to tilt Fenris’ head away, but his eyes were transfixed.

Somewhere, there was a raven cawing in a tree branch; a mound of leaves scattering from a rustle of wind, over damp soil sprouting with new life. All of it seemed unimaginable now, though Fenris knew it still existed. He knew, eventually, he may observe a peaceful day again, that it would come back to touch that part of him, that part which needed to be locked away this very instant, lest he allow himself to suffer the impending wounds.

A hush came over the crowd. They could hear the wind whistling through the open doors all around the square.

All Fenris saw was the scattering of blood across the scaffold floor. A drop of it even reached the top step of the stairs. There was a scream—the last time he would ever hear Ash’s voice—that seemed to Fenris an echo in his own mind, a scream that filled the silence until it was overflowing with it.

“Fenris—”

More scarlet rain, like an elixir knocked from a shelf; the contents sought out the cracks in the scaffold and dripped onto the cobblestone. Fenris saw something topple, and bounce, and then hit the ground with a splat.

He looked away, pale and empty. Where is the Curse now? Where is the fire in my heart?

“Fenris!” Ashara hissed, stroking his face feverishly while Vidarr was busy analyzing the crowd’s reaction.

Fenris finally felt a touch of reality—Ashara’s hand—on his cheek. He didn’t notice that he’d been crying, only that now his eyes felt dry, and it stung to blink again, and that she was crying too, but more for the pain that he felt, not only Ash’s. “Ashara … the elixir.”

Has he lost his senses? she dared to ask herself. “What elixir?”

“The Priest’s. How long does it last?”

“Half a day. A day, at most.” She continued holding his tear-stricken face, as if that action alone could coax the life back into his features. His eyes were already drifting into that void again.

It felt like a frozen fist was clutching his heart and squeezing it, tighter and tighter. He nodded numbly at Ashara. If even his demon would not come out to play, could he be alive, at all?

“This is not good,” Vidarr muttered. The commotion of the marketplace erupted again, and grew louder, as if to confirm what he said.

“What’s happening?” Ashara asked him. Fenris groped feebly for the warmth of her body and held her against him in a sort of daze. There are times when acts like that are not of want, but necessity. She responded to his hands and clutched him closer.

“The Crimson Hand is taking up the torch again. Old methods that the founders used when the Lupine Curse was spreading across the lands like fire. They’re taking over the city.”

Fenris was shaking. Ash was somehow still very alive in his head, yet he had just seen his body slump over moments before, his head bounce like a tossed stone. “Old tactics …” Fenris mumbled. Where is the City Watch? Why are the guards not defending their people?

But Ash was a highborn, a Sun-elf, a member of the race of people exiled from the Moonlands. It did not matter if he killed cult members of the Crimson Hand. His kind deserved death, anyways.

Then Vidarr shook his head. “Dalibor could simply be exercising his new power. Perhaps they will leave the people alone after this. We can’t make assumptions,” he thought aloud.

“Make assumptions! Make a decision! Do something!” Fenris shouted.

Now the assassins that had been flooding the cities for weeks, hiding, were moving around the streets like windswept ashes. They looked like shadows, all detached from bodies, going about their iniquitous business with wolfish determination.

Vidarr was surprised, but not hurt. “At least you are here, now. You can’t get through these crowds if you are too shocked to know where your own feet are. They’ll be looking for the color of your eyes, and yours, Ashara, so keep your heads down. If we sneak by the way we came, we should be safe. And, of these assumptions you wish to make, we can only observe for awhile longer before action is taken. With any luck, this chaos may die down.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Carnage. You should do well for yourself, if the time comes,” he said with a smirk.

“When,” Fenris corrected.

“Well, suit yourself. I prefer to hope, every now and then.”

The three of them looked at the bustling crowds like it was a sea that they were about to jump into from the safety of a ship.

“Will you be able to handle yourself? Things can get lost in crowds like these. We may be separated.”

“I feel numb,” he admitted.

“I would be more frightened if you weren’t. It will keep you from shifting, and I’d rather we get back to the chapel without tearing apart innocent citizens.”