A vow of blood and tears

Chapter 35 Cirri

With my stomach empty, my throat sore and raw, and the chill creeping through my cloak, I slunk out of Wyn’s tent, the basket with the laika under one arm, my journal in the other.

The vampire legions had already brought down the terrible pillar of limbs. They’d dragged the bodies from the snow, leaving nothing but dirty crimson and brown smears behind. In the distance, the barn was collapsing in on itself, its blackened, skeletal frame illuminated against the hungry flames.

Most of the town square was quiet. They had dug pits in the wide field around the barn, my husband among them, doing their best to arrange the dead with respect.

I exhaled, my stomach clenching again, and settled on a large rock fallen from the wall, with a view of the square before me. I put the basket by my feet, giving the pup a scratch behind its pointed ears.

Poor little thing, all of its siblings now consumed.

You’re very fortunate, I told him. Then I pulled out my journal, flipping to the index in the back.

There it was—the symbol I’d translated as Wargyr, that had made my hand shake and sent pins and needles through my fingers as I wrote it. It matched the massive symbol painted in blood across the church’s front.

I turned back a few pages, and began to sketch the church, down to the wolf’s head, the stick-figure-like emblems of people marching into its maw, the symbol clasped in its jaws.

Then I drew the tree of limbs from memory, and wrote what Bane had told me of the conversion from man to warg. The ritual of blood and tears… blood shed with hatred, tears shed in pain.

It was so similar to the ritual I was translating, but why would the vampires have detailed a ceremony on the creation of wargs, their ultimate nemesis?

I added a few details to my sketch, frowning at the page. Despite the similarities, it might not be the creation of wargs at all. They had nothing to do with thorns or roses, and I was positive those translations were accurate.

If there were answers at all, they would be at home in Ravenscry, contained in those ancient documents. But it seemed unlikely at this point. What were the odds that another perfect Silversun Fragment had escaped the burning Arks that ended Liliach Daromir’s reign?

They had to be low. The good luck of even having a priests’ book was unprecedented, not to mention the clear parallel texts I already had. Instead of mourning the lost knowledge, I should be grateful I had that much.

But it was difficult to summon any gratitude while sitting on a frozen rock, looking out at the remains of what had been one of the largest villages in the Rift yesterday. While I was lost in the throes of passion, these people had been in the throes of agony.

It didn’t seem fair, but then if there was one thing I knew, it was that life wasn’t fair at all. Bane would want to blame himself for taking a soft hand with his people, for accommodating their beliefs, and yet it was a fine line between being a strong-hearted leader and a tyrant.

I scuffed my foot in the snow, absurdly glad I’d worn fleece-lined boots. It felt wrong to be happy for such a simple thing in the midst of all this, but there was no going back, was there? What had happened, had happened, and now I would keep living and be grateful for warm boots.

Next time, I told myself. We can stop this next time. 

I turned back to my lexicon, shaking my head.

Wargyr.

A circle of thorns.

Tears and blood.

All so familiar, and yet completely incomprehensible in how they related. No matter how I turned it over, I couldn’t make a ritual with the Mother’s sacred imagery align with Wargyr in any way.

Finally, I sighed and shoved my journal in my bag and scooped up the basket of pup. There were no answers to be found in staring at a page, nor any likely to be found here, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least try.

The barn was gone, which would have been my preferable destination. I would’ve been willing to risk puking up my own stomach lining again to check for any signs of thorns amongst the wreckage.

Instead I went to the church. The dead woman had been taken away, imprints left in the snow where her legs had been.

There was still a horseshoe of cold iron nailed into the door, frosted strands of dried primrose draped over the window sills. I pushed the door open, the laika panting in the cold air as I stepped over the threshold.

If there had been bodies in here, they were gone now. But the pews had been smashed to pieces, the walls battered from the fight that had taken place, the floor stinking of iron and salt and soaked through.

I knelt in the mess, using a splintered piece of wood from one of the pews to poke through the crusted slurry of snow, blood, and dirt left on the floor. I unearthed a silver coin, shreds of cloth, even the horrible discovery of a clump of hair ripped out by the root with a bit of scalp still attached, but not so much as a single thorn.

Dropping the wood, I scowled across the floor and petted the shifty pup.

Perhaps it was a mistranslation, and I was searching for the wrong things. There was a chance I had plowed ahead blindly, so convinced I’d had the proper translations that I’d allowed a single mistake to compound into multiple errors.

I blew out my cheeks as I left the church, knowing this would mean hours of double- and triple-checking past work. I needed to send a letter to the Head Librarian of the Cathedral and ask for a second opinion, as well as a clear copy of the Silversun Fragment.

Dear Sister Loranin, I might have irrevocably fucked up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to translate the High Tongue due to my own inflated ego. Please put a pin in my bloated head and bring me back down to earth. Yours, Cirri. 

No. I might have made a mistake, but I did have faith in my memory of the runes. This was merely a setback, and these documents were ancient, regardless.

Who could have said what the vampires of the Red Epoch were thinking when they wrote the book? The vampires of today were so divorced from the cultural mores of the Daromir reign that the translations might not remotely reflect their modern rites. There was every possibility they were bastardized from a completely different ritual.

Blaming myself for a mistake wouldn’t make any progress. I would write a proper letter to Sister Loranin, ask for her eyes and the runes, and start over from the begi

As the Eldest Sister had been fond of telling us, humility was the greatest of teachers.

Or perhaps she meant humiliation. Either one worked, in this case.

Besides… as I looked down and saw an uprooted tooth ground into the dirty snow, I figured being alive to experience humiliation at all was a lovely gift.

“Carting it around like a pet, now?” Miro was leaning against the broken wall, arms crossed, cheeks reddened with the cold.

I looked down at the bright-eyed laika and shrugged. What else would I do with a pup?

“You should release it into the forest. Give it a chance to make its own way.”

I hauled my journal out, resting it one arm to write as I drifted closer to Miro.

Why would I give it a death sentence? He’s still got milk teeth.

“He’s Forian.” Miro snorted. “He’ll survive.”

I’d rather give him a chance in the keep. 

“Why?” Miro rubbed his cheek, smearing the soot there. “So the vampires can keep another Forian minion around and walk all over it when it pleases them?”

I gazed up at him, tipping my head. Do you really believe that’s why you’re treated like a nuisance?

“Of course.”

Maybe you should spend some time in self-reflection. 

“Or…” He leaned in. “You could release the pup. Give it a chance to go back to its own people. Being a Forian in Veladar… I don’t wish that on anyone. Always treated like an outsider. Always considered lower. He won’t even be considered a proper hunting dog, not by the Master of Hounds there.”

It could be worse. I shrugged again, unable to summon even irritation. My emotions seemed trapped behind a wall, separated from the rest of me. He could’ve been a meal.

Miro’s mouth twisted. “Just so long as you know what you’re doing. Consigning him to a lifetime of being dragged along on a leash. That’s all that’s done to Forians here.”

Aren’t we all? Everyone has a leash. Everyone owes something. I paused to scratch the laika’s soft back. What do you know about wargs?

Miro was obsessed with his Forian heritage, hellbent on complaining how it brought him down. If he was so in love with it, perhaps he knew something more about the ritual.

It was Miro’s turn to shrug, frowning. “Creatures of great strength. Fast, powerful, furious.”

What about their creation? Have you ever heard tales of that?

Those pale jade eyes focused on my face, flicking from my eyes down to my mouth, and back again. “That’s a rather gory interest for a lady to take.”

Indulge me.

“Very well…” He leaned back against the wall, brows furrowed. “I’ve heard you need to be committed. Utterly, absolutely. Saying you want it isn’t enough. You need to believe, down to the marrow.”

I watched his eyes move to the church wall as he spoke, his fingers tapping.

“You need to eat a feast of flesh,” he said quietly. “And it must be terrible. It must surpass the bounds of pain and horror. I’ve heard… some of them ate their own children. The ultimate betrayal, the gut-wrenching knowledge that the thing that trusts you most in the world is ruined by your own hand.”

My stomach turned over, a slow flip-flop, and bitter saliva flooded my mouth. I swallowed hard.

I had asked, after all, and now I was indulged.

“And the whole time that’s happening, you must keep the faith. The belief that you are Wargyr’s claws, his fangs, his hands on this earth.”

Have you heard anything about thorns being involved? I wrote. A circle of thorns?

Miro’s brows crinkled further. “No, of course not. They’re sacred to the vampires’ Mother, not Wargyr. Where would you even get that idea?”

I worried my lower lip, thinking. Just a misconception.

“Hell of a misconception. No, blood and flesh are sacred to Wargyr. Pain. He is the god of torment, of being forged in a crucible of agony and emerging in your most powerful, primal form.” Miro glanced towards the field of pits. “A little like the fiends, in fact.”

How so? I didn’t believe that for a moment. I couldn’t picture Bane lifting a finger against any of his loved ones.

“He never told you how they took that form?” Miro snorted.

I’m sure he didn’t tell you, either.