Wolf's Cross (22 page)

He gave Telek a few new elements, though. A description of the beast: the golden fur, the ruthlessness. It was quite a different sense hearing about such a thing from a man who had seen it than reading a sterile description on the page. Hearing about how this beast had savaged a heavily armed and mounted contingent of the Order, armed precisely against such a creature …

Telek began to fear for his uncle and the men with him, armed only with the silver sword that Bolesław had taken from this room.
We should have armed them all
, Telek thought, cursing the impulse that had made his uncle keep their knowledge from the Duke and the Duke’s men.

When Josef had finished his confession, Telek set the dagger down and said, “Take what you need.”

Josef picked up a cleaning rag and wrapped one of the silver daggers inside it, so that he had a nondescript bundle that could have been anything. Telek was relieved that the man had chosen something he could carry away without raising questions.

A wounded man is not going to go on a solo hunt for this thing with only a silver dagger
.

“Tell me, Josef: Why is it that you need that now? Do you not think that your captain will convince the Duke to allow you to resume pursuit of this thing?”

“I—I need to protect myself,” he said. It was the only obvious lie he had spoken, but Telek decided that it was worth more to retain an ally in the Order than it was to ferret out that bit of information.

T
elek left Josef with an assurance that they could “continue to help each other.” The massive Pole was obviously troubled by Josef’s tale; though what sane man wouldn’t be?

Josef shambled back to his sickbed, weighed down by the dagger in his hand. He wondered if the silver in the weapon was more or less than thirty pieces’ worth.

She needs something with which to defend herself
, Josef thought.

But, if he was honest, she needed to not be here. The dagger was little more than a gesture—as Telek had said, a pretext. The Poles needed to know what they faced and what its weaknesses were. It was too great a monster to be taken down by Heinrich’s men alone. The dagger was an excuse not only to tell Bolesław’s nephew but to tell Maria.

She would not be safe until she knew what was out there, and he could not in good conscience keep the Order’s secrets. He would give her the dagger when she came with his evening meal,
and he would tell her everything. If she left at daylight and then kept to the farm where she lived, he would be able to count her safe.

He had come to care for her more than any woman since Sarah. And, in the end, he would do for Maria what he had been unable to do for Sarah. Even if she could never be his—it was wrong for a member of the Order to think otherwise—just knowing that she lived was reward enough.

Even so, his pledge of chastity had begun to chafe as much as his pledge of obedience. Had he only turned away from worldly things because he had seen the world turn away from him?

He fell into his bed, aching from the exertion, unable to undress himself for the pain in his belly. He checked his dressing briefly but saw no blood seeping from the bandages, even though it felt as though there should be.

As he closed his eyes and waited for Maria to come, he thought of Sarah and the awful time in Nürnberg. He remembered entering the house of Sarah’s parents, dark and smelling of death. Her family and the servants had long since fled to the countryside. He remembered the goats that had wandered in from the fields to take up residence in the kitchen. He remembered her body, left in her bedchamber, where she had died. It sickened him that he remembered the smell in that room better than he remembered her face. Every time he tried to picture her smile, or hear her laugh, it was now Maria’s face he pictured, Maria’s voice he heard.

And it was Maria he kept seeing dead in her bedchamber.

And his grotesque imagination made it all the worse when Maria didn’t come with his evening meal.

M
aria walked out of Gród Narew wondering if she could ever repair the damage she had done after she had spoken so insolently to her brother. Could she go home after that, after what she knew dwelled within her?

She held her cross and looked out over the woods, watching the evening shadows grow to engulf them. She had left without bringing Josef his meal, but she didn’t want to face his questions—spoken and unspoken.

She believed that she knew the answers, and they frightened her.

I can return
, she thought.
I can pretend nothing has happened
.

The events of the previous evening had already taken on the hazy aspect of a nightmare. The fury that had burned in her then had flickered out, leaving only ashes behind.

Dusk was coming soon, and her brother would be approaching the walls. She watched the sky and thought of what a disaster it might be if Darien met them in the woods. She remembered how he had overpowered Lukasz; she did not want anything similar to happen to her brother.

Her hand tightened on the cross as she thought of the other reason she had left early and alone.

She turned and walked around Gród Narew, to the northern side. The side without any gates or paths, just hilly pasture ending in a wall of unbroken forest. She walked across the pasture, away from the fortress, from her brother, from Darien. She climbed over the low stone fence marking the pasture and walked north, through the trees.

Her heart raced and her face flushed as she pushed inside the shadowed wood. Within a hundred paces she was truly alone. She hugged herself against the first prickings of fear.

I am not a wicked person
, she thought, even as her breath shuddered and her flesh tingled with the anticipation of …

“I need to know,” she whispered.

Had it been some uncontrolled fantasy? Or was it her?

She took off her shoes and placed them neatly by a tree. She took off her belt, her surcote, her chemise, and carefully placed her clothes so they would not be soiled. For nearly half a minute she stood wearing nothing but her father’s cross. The wind was chilly against her exposed skin, and her arms drifted unconsciously to cover herself, even though the only eyes watching belonged to birds and insects.

She shivered, and only partly because of the cold.

It took a long time for her to muster the courage to remove the cross. When she finally lifted the chain off her neck, she did so very slowly. She held it in her hands and kissed it before placing it upon her folded clothes.

“God help me,” she whispered.

She took a step back and stood before the tree where her clothes lay. She felt wicked, blasphemous, evil. Not for her nakedness but for what she felt inside herself. What she
wanted
.

She told herself that she didn’t want this thing inside her. She wanted it to be a dream, some bewitchment that had addled her memory or twisted what she’d seen and felt and heard. Even
some form of insanity would be less threatening to her soul; a madwoman was blameless in the eyes of Church and God.

She opened her arms to the woods around her.

“Is it me?” she whispered to the evening sky.

Even possession by some sort of demon—that would be beyond her volition; she could ask succor of the Church. They would help her to exorcise the evil within her.

“Is it me?” she repeated, more loudly, looking upward toward God.

She shouldn’t want this thing. She shouldn’t want to feel that bestial strength.

She shouldn’t.

But she did.

“Is it me?”
she screamed.

And what God refused to answer, her body did. Pain cracked her like a whip, twisting her voice into a breathless scream. The sudden flare of pain seemed to radiate beyond her, resonating through the woods, causing insects to go silent and birds to cascade upward in an apocalyptic flutter of wings.

This time, without the focus of rage, she felt every bone in her body come alive, twisting and growing, pulling writhing muscles and tendons in a throbbing dance under her flesh. She fell to her knees and pulled in a shuddering breath. The sensation rapidly passed beyond mere pain. Every fiber of her body screamed to her of its existence; every nerve an eye staring into the sun.

She watched her hands as they lengthened, the flesh darkening and sprouting a pelt of midnight-black fur, claws growing to dig agonized grooves into the dirt. She tried to scream, and her mouth and nose fell down toward the ground, pushed by a growing muzzle. Each tooth twisted and sharpened as her legs bent and reshaped themselves.

Her body twisted itself in an ever-increasing spiral of agony.

And then it released her.

When the release came, it was a shuddering climax through the core of her body—an ecstatic inverse of all she had just endured, all at once. It dropped her shaking to the ground, moaning. Lesser shocks jerked through her body five or six times before she could move without trembling.

When the ordeal was over, she lay panting on the sweet-smelling pine needles coating the forest floor. For several moments she couldn’t think clearly of anything except what she had just felt—something that was simultaneously the best and the worst thing she had ever endured.

“It
is
me,” she whispered, surprised that she could still speak.

The character of the woods had changed with her. The smell of the pine-needle mulch was sharper, deeper, filled with traces of things she could almost taste. Even the air felt different, the breeze now pulling against a fur pelt rather than her naked skin. The colors of the evening seemed deeper and of a different character.

She pushed herself into a crouch and realized that the woods were silent around her. She rested on her haunches and ran her newly strange hands across her face. The rough pads of her fingers traced a narrow muzzle and a fringe of fur around her neck. She touched a cold nose, and ears that projected above her head.

She shuddered, realizing that this was no dream. She had called this thing forth from inside her. She didn’t move for the longest time, waiting for the will of this creature to overcome her, to feel the overwhelming rage she had felt the last time it had come.

She licked her lips, her broad, thin tongue tracing teeth made for rending flesh. She stretched her unnatural hands until the joints creaked and her claws ached in the tips of her fingers. But the will of this creature did not come to bewitch her mind.

It began to sink in that this
was
her: her bones, her flesh, her skin, her fur, her teeth, her claws …

Her will. Her mind. Her anger.

Her soul.

She reached over to her folded clothes and picked up the cross. She half-expected it to burn her or to forcefully evict the monster that had taken over her body. Lightning should strike, she thought, or a fissure open in the earth.

But nothing dramatic happened when she touched the cross, or when she lifted it up.

The metal appeared blood-red in the evening light as she held it before her face. She whispered a prayer to God, begging for forgiveness, and strength, and understanding. God did not rebuke her for such words coming from an unnatural mouth, but He didn’t answer her, either.

“I want to be myself again,” she whispered.

She tried to will herself back into the woman she had been, will the beast inside herself.

But nothing happened.

Her heart began racing. What if she had done something wrong, broken some rule? What if she was forever confined to this bestial form?

No. Please God, no …

She concentrated, tensed her muscles, tried to reenvision the ecstatic anguish of the transformation, but nothing happened. Something about her new body made it easer for her emotions to cascade, grow in intensity, and she could feel the fear and rage bearing down upon her like a panicked warhorse.

“Stop it!” she growled at herself.

It made no sense that she couldn’t change back. She had done it the first time without even thinking about it, and if she couldn’t now there must be a reason. She didn’t need to panic; she needed to think.

A calm heart
, Darien had said.

Thinking of him made the anger begin to rise again. It was
Darien who had brought this upon her, telling her to remove her cross.

She looked down at the cross, still dangling from her clawed, black-furred hand.

Was this really what kept this monster from claiming me?

Yet could the cross also keep the monster from leaving? That made no sense. If a cross kept a beast at bay, shouldn’t it also drive it out? Shouldn’t it force her back to her natural body?

“Is it the cross?” she asked.

It is silver?
Josef had asked her.
The chain as well?

They use those silver chains to drag you down
, Darien had said.

Silver was supposed to have power over unnatural things. Could it be that it wasn’t God that had kept this beast slumbering within her but the metal this cross was made of? Perhaps it didn’t suppress the beast, only its ability to change.