[i]"Have I told you about curses yet?" Giri's mother was stirring the pot. For dinner, not magic, it was a lovely stew flavored with spring leaks and a hint of cinnamon. The evening was sunny, the sun was still out and wouldn't set for another hour yet, and it was warm without having yet reached the summer heat. Giri had finished sweeping and was sitting with a book as her mother spoke. She had been studying magic for a few years at this point, knew some sigils, a basic calling for the most minor sort of demon, but still her breath quickened. 

"It's a good night for talking about curses. The farmers tell their stories of such things on cold fall nights and in the dark of winter because it produces fear, but you don't want that when learning. It can make them go awry. Curses aren't just magic. Oh, you can give someone boils or rot a few crops with the right spell if you really want, but that's brief, no different than putting conjured fire to poor use. A real curse worthy of the name comes with emotion. It comes with hate in it, with spite." Her mom looked nervous even in the spring light. Stirred the stew a little more, tasted him, sighed with contentment. "Real hate, you've got to feel that in your heart and your soul. It's got to be strong enough that the speaker will ruin themselves for it, will offer anything, desecrate anything. When a person feels that way, even one without any magic, they can bring doom upon the source of their hate. Someone with magic like us, or someone with an ancient right or a high station, they can bring down something lasting, something hard to break. That's a curse, a real honest to the gods curse. That's why we talk about it on a night like this, when things are good and we can stop and enjoy this stew. Because when a curse sets in, things can get bad and stay bad. They'll follow a person or a place they're cast on, and they'll ruin and ruin and ruin. Sometimes they follow their children, their friends, even bounce to the people who try to help them if they're strong enough." 

She sighed, sipped the stew again, and offered it to Giri with a smile. "It's good, try it." Only after they had eaten and drunk, wine as Giri was already in her teens, did her mother continue. "You may be called on to break a curse someday. Tread carefully. A curse may not be yours to break. Ask first. Understand if those afflicted are innocent or guilty and why the affliction is with them. Most curses are best broken with symbolism appropriate to the wrong they stem from. Forgiveness, even belated will often do best. Children are more easily forgiven by magic for the sins of their parents, grandchildren even moreso, but those who have learned nothing may find the curse never broken and you will only harm yourself intervening for them. Being a wise woman requires that you be wise. It can be a heavy burden on these matters. For most people, a curse is like a storm. It comes, it passes, it is beyond them. But if you have the learning of it, then a curse is more akin to a rabid beast: dangerous and powerful, but you can hunt it, fight it, trap it. And therefore just as a hunter will be called on take responsibility for the problem of such a beast, a witch may be called on to be responsible for a curse. Be wise, Giri."[/i]

***

Damn it mom, what the hell was wisdom in all this? Uusha had a Right, gods be damned. She was many things, but stabbed, wounded, holding the role of the stag and following the ancient ways, she had a Right to this. A deeper one than Giri's promise to the Red Wolf or any penance for her blood magic on unwilling subjects. And here was this curse spewing forth like a flood, a darkness that would wash over everyone here. 

Giri had a debt with almost everyone on this deck (and was sorely lacking a certain Rakshasa at whom she'd gladly have directed the whole thing with glee). Even the fool priestess and her spirit of Venus, that had become a tragedy and she could not inflict this on them, they were not the target of Uusha's ire. To the Red Wolf, a debt of service, to Piripiri two debts of life now, to the maid a debt of service. To Uusha herself, a debt of protection.

Only the knight she did not know, who had done no wrong, and her friendship with Kalaya, who had. Kalaya. Why? Did you so disagree with Uusha's methods that you would do this? Was it the prophecy, did you hope in this madness to protect Ven? You don't deserve this, but you've done a great wrong. A wrong not only of harm but of the special sharp sting of betrayal to her own order, her land, her people. That drew the curse, called to it like the blood-crazed hound it was. 

Giriel looks at Kalaya, eyes pained. She prays to every one of the planets that you can forgive her someday. 

Then she raises her arms outstretched, palms out, the oldest gesture of warding there is. She chants in the old tongue, the tongue of magic, and what she says is "not here, not them. Seek thou the heart of thy betrayal and them alone." And then she points, and her finger is upon Kalaya, alone upon the deck, and the great shadow that ushers forth from Uusha has its direction.