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 ribswerehealing; 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—Ihope—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.
