Extinction - Lisa Smedman [43]
There was no answer from inside the shelter, save for a low groan. As it sounded, the boy twisted in Ryld's grasp, trying desperately to squirm free. Ryld hurled him to the ground and slammed a boot into his chest. He raised his sword, too furious to care about getting information any longer.
"Stop!" a male voice gasped. "I'll tell you… whatever you want… to know."
Ryld looked up and saw a human with gray hair and a beard that hung to his chest, leaning in the doorway of the shelter with a dirty blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His face had a haggard expression, and his right calf was bruised and swollen to twice its normal size. The foot below it was a shredded, bloody mess, as if it had been impaled on spikes, then torn free.
The boy screamed something at his grandfather in a language Ryld didn't understand, but his gestures made it obvious he was urging the old man to flee.
The gray-haired man-he looked several centuries old, but was probably less than fifty-glanced down at his ruined foot.
"Run?" he asked the boy-speaking in Drowic, obviously for Ryld's benefit. "How can I?" Then he met Ryld's eye and asked, "What do you want… to know?"
"The priestesses of Eilistraee," Ryld said. "Do they have a temple in this wood?"
The boy suddenly stopped squirming and looked up at Ryld.
"You're not part of the hunt?" he asked.
A grim smile appeared on the older man's face.
"He's not. Or he wouldn't be asking." Then, to Ryld, he said, "Let my grandson go… and I'll tell you where the temple is."
Ryld removed his foot from the boy's chest. Instantly, the boy sprang to his feet. He stood warily, hunched over slightly with arms bent as if contemplating a shift into wolf form.
The gray-haired man chuckled, then waved at the boy.
"Yarno, leave him be. You can see by the look in his eyes. He's an enemy of the temple. And the enemy of our enemy…"
"Is your friend," Ryld completed.
The old man nodded and asked, "Have you any healing magic… friend?"
"Answer my questions, first," Ryld said. "And I'll see about healing you."
The old man surprised him by chuckling.
"Not for me," he said. "For you. Your wrist."
Ryld glanced down at the spot where the boy had bitten him. The boy's incisors had broken the skin, and a trickle of blood ran down the back of Ryld's hand.
"It's only a scratch," he said.
The old man shook his head.
"Tell him, Yarno. He… he doesn't know."
"Tell me what?" Ryld asked, suspicious.
"We're werewolves," the boy said. "Most of the time we shift forms because we want to, but whenever there's a full moon we become wolves whether we want to or not. We can't control ourselves when that happens. We attack everyone. Even our friends. When we wake up in the morning, we don't know what we've done."
"Your family is cursed?" Ryld asked, not bothering to inquire as to what a "full moon" might be.
"Not cursed," the old man said. "Diseased. And it's a disease that can be spread… through bites."
"They call us 'monsters,' " Yarno added in a pained whisper. "They hunt us."
Ryld nodded, understanding the boy's pain. Life as a werewolf in that forest would be much like living in the slums of Menzoberranzan.
He recalled his own childhood, always dreading the next group of drunken nobles who round sport in raging through the narrow streets, blasting the screaming wretches of the Braeryn with bolts of magic, slashing as they rode past on their lizards, leaving their victims to bleed to death on the dirty stone of an alley.
The boy, Yarno, was staring intensely up at Ryld, his eyes filled with a lingering, unsalved hurt. Human the boy might be, but looking into his eyes was like staring into a mirror. Ryld's lips parted, and he nearly spoke the words aloud: I was hunted, too. I understand…
Then the boy's grandfather interrupted.
"I have belladonna," he said. "Yarno's parents planted it in the woods, hoping it would… spare their son. This was once their home." He paused to catch his breath, then went on. "The herb will make you sick, but if you eat it… you might avoid the disease."
Ryld nodded