Abomination (19 page)

Each night it awoke, the beast seemed surprised to find itself confined. As though it was born anew each time, with no memory of its prior incarnations. Each night it raged, as it did now, trying to break free of its iron bondage.

The first two chains Wulfric had had made, lighter and weaker than this one, had broken, no match for the creature’s inhuman strength. The third chain, this chain, was more than twice as strong and had not once yielded. So long as he could safely tether
himself each night, the beast within him could compel him to kill no more. But each night Wulfric suffered through its madness as it struggled relentlessly to break free—until the break of dawn, when finally the thing would release him, shrinking back into the dark place within him where it slumbered by day. Only then was he free to sleep for a few merciful hours, the only peace he knew.

It was still raining, though lighter than before, when a beam of daylight breaking through the leafed canopy of the forest fell on Wulfric’s face. He woke to a familiar chorus of bodily aches and pains, his every muscle and bone screaming as though they had been torn apart and then somehow made whole again—which indeed they had. He had never understood exactly how his body remade itself each day after the beast had gone. It was some trick of Aethelred’s infernal magick, a fiendishly cruel touch that forced Wulfric to endure this hell repeatedly, day after day, without end.

Though his body was racked with pain, the bruises from yesterday’s assault were gone, as was the hole in his gut where the tall man had stuck him with the knife. That was the one small mercy of his nightly transformation from man to monster and back again; no wound, no matter how grave, lasted more than a day.

He had awoken, as he had every morning for the last fifteen years, amidst a deep pile of powdery, pitch-black ash reeking of sulfur. It surrounded him like a blanket of freshly fallen snow; it covered his naked body from head to toe, as though a flurry of it had settled on him overnight while he slept. Some residue of his transformation from beast into man, he presumed, although he had never been conscious to witness it and so could not be sure of what exactly happened during the restoration of his human form. All he knew was that the charcoal stains the ash left on him were hell to wash off, and he had stopped making any effort to do so. His hands and face, streaked and smeared with black grime, left him
appearing monstrous even during his waking hours and repelled many who might otherwise stop to speak with a fellow traveler, and that suited Wulfric’s purposes well enough.

He reached his hand into the pile of ashes by his side and groped around until he found the key he had left on the ground beneath. He pulled it out by its length of cord, blew away the ash that remained, and unlocked the chain, shrugging it loose. He stood, rising like some ghostly apparition, and brushed his hands through his hair and beard and all over his body to shake off excess ash before unwinding the chain from the tree and wrapping it once more around himself.

He examined the chain carefully as he did so, link by link, checking for any signs of wear or weakness. It was undamaged, though the tree had sustained severe injury, with deep gouges encircling the trunk where the chain had been wound, the bark stripped away like flayed skin. Wulfric had seen such marks before—rarely did the beast not leave behind some evidence of its violent efforts to break free of its bindings—but never so deep as these. Was the beast somehow growing in strength or in rage? Perhaps both? The thought chilled him on this already cold morning. He reached down to gather up his cloak and threw it on, tying it at the waist.

He considered staying. This was a good spot—remote, secluded, secure. Part of him did not want to give it up and run the risk of not finding another like it before nightfall. But he needed to eat, and the pickings here in the woodland were slim. A few nuts and berries would not be enough to quiet his growling belly. When had he last eaten a proper meal? He could not even remember. What he wouldn’t give for a bowl of hot stew, a plate of roasted vegetables . . .

Despite the risk, he would venture out in search of food, but only so far. He would allow himself enough time to return here before sundown if he found no other safe harbor on his travels. He adjusted the chain under his cloak so that he might bear it a little
more comfortably, then headed back toward the road. Over the years, he had learned to wear the chain like any other garment, but its weight never allowed him to forget that it was there. Nor should it. He had decided long ago that this was part of his penance, his punishment. To wander the earth alone, forever suffering in atonement for the atrocities he had not been strong enough to prevent himself from committing.

Indra was her name, and hardship was no stranger to her. She had lived without a home for ten months now, moving from place to place without a roof over her head except when she could afford to take lodgings, which was seldom. Most nights she slept beneath the open sky on the simple bedroll she carried on her back, along with her camping gear and the twin short swords she wore in crisscrossed scabbards. All in all, it was a heavy load, but she was young, and fit, and well trained. She strode briskly and purposefully, as though hardly burdened at all, marking each step with the planting of a strong wooden staff that she used to help her footing on uneven terrain . . . and for other purposes when necessary.

Living like this for the better part of a year had been hard, but she rarely complained. This trial had been of her own choosing; she had insisted upon it, in fact, over the stern objections of her father, who had always been so fiercely protective of her. In the end, he had been left with no choice but to relent. Once Indra was possessed by a notion, there could be no dissuading her. Many in the Order had laughed when she announced her intentions; in the fifteen years since its founding, no woman had accomplished, nor even dared try, what she had set out to do. She would show them all. She would not return home until her task was done, until she had proven her father wrong and earned the right to stand among them.

Still, she permitted herself a small grumble from time to time. Today she was exhausted and hungry and soaked through, and for all her grit, she was no closer to her goal than when she first set out. These past two months had been the hardest. It had rained incessantly, and food was harder to come by; though she knew how to live off the land, there had been precious little worth hunting in the past few days. There were rumors of some kind of wild beast roaming the countryside hereabouts, slaughtering deer and livestock. But that was why she was here. Perhaps here, at last, was the prey she had been searching for.

She stopped atop a small hill and waited. Venator would be back soon, and in this godforsaken weather, she wanted to be easy to find. He had left earlier in the day in search of food, and Indra hoped he would return having had better luck than she, though in truth she knew luck had little to do with it. Venator was a born hunter; if there was a time when he had returned without having made a kill, she could not remember it.

It was the one condition Indra’s father had managed to persuade her to accept.
Venator goes with you
. He had thought this crusade of hers foolhardy and reckless, but since he could not talk her out of it, he wanted a protector to watch over her, and to bring him word if she ever needed his help. Indra had bristled at the idea that she might need the protection, or help, of another. She had not spent years practicing with sword and staff and fist for nothing and could more than capably take care of herself. But she liked Venator, had grown up with him, and knew he would be good company when the road was lonely, as it surely would be at times. And so she had agreed to take him as her traveling companion. She had been glad of it ever since.

There he was now. At first just a speck on the distant horizon, but Indra knew instinctively that it was him and smiled at the sight. She waved as he approached, marveling at his speed, and as he drew closer, she saw that he was carrying something, something almost as large as him. It had been a fruitful hunt. Of course,
she expected nothing less. She had named him herself, and named him well.
Venator
, in Latin, meant “hunter.”

Moments later, he was soaring overhead, wings spread majestically. She turned to follow him, looking up in wonder.
What a thing it must be to fly
, she thought to herself as Venator banked to the right and began to circle back around, effortlessly riding a current of air.

Indra often dreamed of flying. Once, years ago, she had shared this with a friend, who told her that the recurring dream was an expression of a desire to escape from her life as it was and to seek out some greater purpose, the answers to greater questions. Indra did not know what those questions might be, but her friend’s words had stuck with her, nagged at her, and had played a part in bringing her to where she was now—if no closer to any answers. Her purpose, though, she was not uncertain about in the least. That had always been clear to her.

As Venator passed overhead once more, he released the thing he had been carrying, and it fell to the ground at Indra’s feet. It was a salmon, a big, fat one, freshly plucked from the river. Indra’s smile grew—this was Venator’s best catch in some while. She extended her arm, crooked at the elbow, and Venator touched down gently upon it. She saw now that he carried a second, smaller fish in his beak. He displayed it proudly, for Indra to admire, then swallowed it down hungrily.

Venator hopped up onto Indra’s shoulder when she crouched to pick up the salmon. It was heavier than it looked, ten pounds if it was an ounce. A fish that size at market would cost twice as much coin as Indra had ever carried. To someone who had been, of late, living off little but fruit and the occasional rodent, it was a wonder to behold. She would eat well tonight, better than she had in weeks.

“Good hunting,” she said to the hawk as she reached up and ran her hand affectionately along his back, stroking his silken plumage. They were kindred spirits, she and Venator. They understood
one another. They were, after all, both predators. He would never return from a hunt without a trophy to show for it. And neither would she.

That night, Indra camped on the hill and cooked the salmon for supper. She had feared having to eat it raw, but the rain abated long enough for her to spit-roast it over an open fire. If it had kept raining, she could have sought shelter in a wood and cooked the fish there, but she preferred to stay in the open by night, even if it meant getting drenched. Atop a hill, with good sight lines of all the surrounding area, it was more difficult for anyone—or anything—to approach her undetected. She had studied the Bestiary in the Order’s library, read all its volumes from cover to cover so many times that she had committed all of it to memory. Many types of abomination saw better by night than during the day. And almost all were the color of oil, a deep, shimmering black that camouflaged them by night, making them difficult to spot until they were upon you—and by then you were as good as dead.

By night, abominations had many advantages, and Indra would not cede them any more by camping in a cloistered area that would only afford them more opportunity to approach her by stealth. And as well as they might see in the dark, Venator saw best of all. He often slept on Indra’s shoulder by day while she walked so that he could keep watch by night; the eyes of a hawk were not synonymous with superb vision for nothing, and many times during her Trial they had proven a great asset.

Indra checked that the salmon was done and carved off a thick, succulent flake of pink meat with her pocketknife. She bit into it, and for a moment her eyes flickered; hunger might bias her, but it tasted heavenly, better than anything she had had even at her father’s table, and rarely was anything less than the very best served there. But she had learned that it was most often in small, fleeting
moments like this—the first bite of a favorite food, the touch of cool water on a hot day, the tranquility of a moonlit night—that something close to happiness could be found.