by James Enge
“Over the hill,” the pale werewolf replied. “Trying something new, he said.”
“Is he still alive, do you think?”
Hrutnefdhu grinned a little and said, “It is dangerous. That's why he doesn't do it here.”
Rokhlenu looked over at the weapons rack. There were about a dozen stabbing spears with shining glass gores, two glass short swords with sharp points and leather grips, and about a dozen glass knives. Rokhlenu picked up one of these and balanced it on one finger thoughtfully.
“Not too many today,” he remarked.
“You said we had enough yesterday, so he started working on this other thing.”
“Is what you're doing part of it?”
“Not exactly. This won't be done tonight.”
“What is it?”
“He says he'll be able to fly with it.”
“Oh?” Rokhlenu walked over and examined the thing. It looked like a pair of bat wings, scaled over with metal discs and bound to a wooden frame. The frame and the wings hid some gears and cables that mixed wood and glass. There were grips on the inside tips of the wings.
“I doubt it,” he said finally, “but it's interesting. Why are you sewing those rings all over it? Armor?”
Hrutnefdhu had just grabbed one of the rings from an odd upside-down box on long stiltlike legs. He met Rokhlenu's eye and let go of the disc in his hand. It flew straight upward, as if it were falling. He grabbed it before it rose too far and grinned as Rokhlenu whistled admiringly.
“It's weird in here sometimes,” Rokhlenu said. “Like the stories they tell about Ulugarriu's workshop.”
“Ulugarriu couldn't do anything like this. Not that I've ever heard,” Hrutnefdhu said, turning shyly back to his work.
The pale werewolf seemed embarrassed by something, so Rokhlenu decided to leave him alone. “I'll go see what Morlock is up to,” he said aloud, and patted Hrutnefdhu on the shoulder as he passed out of the cave.
He met Morlock coming over the rise of the hill with a sizable boulder in his hands. He looked a little scorched, but otherwise undamaged. There were clouds of smoke and dust settling behind him.
“Let me help you with that,” Rokhlenu called.
“You should stay back. This hillside was a silver dump, I think. There may be some of the metal in these dust clouds.”
“Urrrm. I think you're right: I can smell the nasty stuff. Well, they had to put it somewhere, I guess.”
He saw mummified bodies of werewolves—some in the day shape, some in the night shape—scattered about the dusty hillside. He pointed at them and said, “Why would they come here? If I can sense the silver, they must have been able to.”
“They killed themselves, I think. Some of them were carrying things. Notes, mementoes, that sort of thing.”
“Horrible. You picked a nasty place for your work, old friend.”
“Well, I knew no one else would get hurt if it went wrong. As it almost did: phlogiston is difficult stuff, and I haven't the material to handle it safely.”
“What would you need?”
“A lightning bolt or two. The more the better. I could fashion some aethrium instruments from them. But the storms lately have been surprisingly free from lightning, and the landscape hereabouts is totally free from aether deposits.”
“I did not know that.”
“I think someone collects them. Your folk hero Ulugarriu, perhaps.”
“You think Ulugarriu actually exists?” Rokhlenu asked doubtfully.
Morlock nodded toward the moon-clock on the side of the volcano. Rokhlenu nodded slowly. Personally, he didn't believe in Ulugarriu. But someone had built the wonders of Wuruyaaria: if he wasn't called Ulugarriu, he was called something else.
“You're sure you don't want help with that rock?” Rokhlenu said as Morlock came nearer, out of the poisonous dust.
“It's not too bad,” Morlock replied.
“The thing must be heavier than you are.”
“Just about. But there's something holding it up.” He lifted the boulder high, and on its underside Rokhlenu saw what looked like two metal footprints, affixed to the rock with crystalline spikes.
“What are those?”
“Soles for my new shoes,” Morlock said, lowering the boulder.
“Ghost. How many have you got?”
“Just the pair. At that, I had to sacrifice a lot of metal and phlogiston I was planning to use for the wings.”
“I saw those. Will that thing work?”
“No idea. The crows think it will, or say that they think it will, but crows aren't always reliable. They may just want to see someone crash in it.”
Rokhlenu understood that; he'd known a lot of crows. They'd probably laughed watching the werewolves eating silver. He thought about them and didn't feel like laughing.
“Why do you suppose people kill themselves?” he asked Morlock.
“Pain,” Morlock said. “Loneliness. Shame. Anger.”
Rokhlenu waited, but Morlock didn't say any more. He thought about the singer he had known who ate wolfbane, and he thought about Morlock's hand. He knew it wasn't any better: in fact, Morlock always wore a glove on his left hand now to hide how bad it was getting.
Rokhlenu had an odd feeling Morlock knew what he was thinking about, but he wasn't saying anything, and Rokhlenu couldn't think of anything to say. He grabbed the other side of the boulder, just to keep from being entirely useless, and they carried it back to the cave together.
“Liudhleeo says,” he said when they set the rock down in the cave, “that we need to work on Hlupnafenglu soon—if you want to take care of that before we leave tonight.”
“Yes,” Morlock said. “If one of us is killed tonight, the task may prove impossible.”
Hrutnefdhu had put away his metallic thread and ivory needle and was folding up the stilts under his upside-down box of rings. “I'll take him over to the lair-tower,” he said to the others. “Liudhleeo will want to do the work over there. She hates it over here.”
“The nearness of that silver, I think,” Morlock said, and Rokhlenu turned his head in agreement. Different werewolves were sensitive to silver in different degrees, and Liudhleeo was more sensitive than most.
Hrutnefdhu was getting Hlupnafenglu's attention gently and patiently. He persuaded the groggy red werewolf with words and gestures to rise up and follow him. The red werewolf shuffled docilely along after Hrutnefdhu for a few steps. Then he seemed to wake up a little more. He cast his mad golden gaze around the cave, looking at Morlock, the nexus of speaking flames, the other two werewolves, Morlock again.
“It's all right,” Morlock said, meeting his eyes. “It's all right. We will follow you over. We'll see you soon. Go with your friend Hrutnefdhu. Go with him. We'll follow.”
It was not clear how much the crazy werewolf understood. But Morlock's words or tone seemed to settle him somehow. He followed Hrutnefdhu out of the cave into the afternoon light and they went together, the pale werewolf and the red one, down the wooden stairs to the wickerwork boat.
When they were gone, Rokhlenu turned to Morlock and said, “I want to see your hand.”
Morlock considered the matter for a moment, and then he peeled off the glove without saying anything.
The hand was gray and dead looking. The fingers were the worst. And their tips looked not so much dead as…ghostly. They seemed to be translucent, almost transparent.
“Does it hurt?” Rokhlenu asked.
“Yes,” said Morlock. “But most unpleasant is the lack of control. I—I'm not used to that.”
Rokhlenu nodded grimly. “Did she do this to you? Liudhleeo? If she did—”
“I don't think so. I think it was from that spike that was in my head. Part of it may still be in there. Or, while it was in me, it did some damage that is killing me by inches.”
“You think it will kill you, then?”
“Probably. Liudhleeo calls it ‘ghost sickness.' She has heard of it but never seen it.”
“So Liudhleeo says.”
“And there's the Shadow Market in the low city, just inside the walls. Lots of crazy sorcerers work that place. Half of them are quacks and the rest are crooks, but they might know something useful.”
“So Hrutnefdhu says.”
Rokhlenu would have cursed the illness, the Sardhluun ghost-sniffers, Liudhleeo, Hrutnefdhu, and all of the sorcerers in the Shadow Market, but it would do no good. So he punched the wall of the cave instead. Morlock said nothing.
The moment passed. Rokhlenu picked up one of the swords from the weapon rack and said, “Can I take this? I prefer a sword to a spear, when it comes to a fight.”
Morlock smiled a rare smile. “I made it for you.” He took the sword and unwrapped the leather from the grip. Rokhlenu saw dark runes inset into the glass. “There is your name and a few runes of warding and finding. They won't do much for you, I'm afraid. But maybe you'll be able to find your blade when you need it, anyway.”
“Thanks.”
Morlock shrugged, nodded.
They went down to the wickerwork boat. It was where the two other werewolves had left it, on the far side of the water. Morlock whistled, and the boat swam back toward them on its own. Rokhlenu felt a qualm stepping into the boat, and was relieved when Morlock poled it across the water in the ordinary way.
He grabbed Morlock by the elbow before they went into the lair-tower and said, “Hey.”
“Yes?”
“This ghost sickness. It hurts? It makes you angry?”
“Yes.”
“You're not alone, though. And you have no reason to be ashamed.”
Morlock's pale eyes fixed on him. “I know that. I know it, my friend.”
The never-wolf seemed to understand what he was trying to say. So he stopped trying to say it, and they went upstairs to Hrutnefdhu and Liudhleeo's lair.
Hlupnafenglu was sleeping, somewhat twitchily, and he lay on the floor in the day's last light. Rokhlenu was not surprised to see a worried-looking Liudhleeo bending over him, but he was surprised to see his intended, Wuinlendhono, beside her.
They greeted each other warmly while Liudhleeo and Morlock exchanged a look—smoldering on Liudhleeo's part, rather frosty on Morlock's. Rokhlenu supposed Liudhleeo was trying to have sex with him; her appetites were becoming fairly notorious around the settlement, and even in Apetown and Dogtown, or so Rokhlenu had heard.
“Where's Hrutnefdhu?” asked Rokhlenu.
“Oh, he was getting twitchy,” Wuinlendhono said irritably, “so I sent him on an errand. There's enough of us here to hold Big Red here down—or put him out of our misery if it comes to that.”
“Maybe,” Rokhlenu said, looking at the sleeping werewolf. “Just.”
“My Hrutnefdhu doesn't like to see people cut up in cold blood,” Liudhleeo explained.
“Who does?” muttered Wuinlendhono discontentedly.
Liudhleeo gave her a sidelong look for this. When Rokhlenu realized he was doing the same himself, he stopped. But it seemed like an odd remark for a werewolf to make.
“He's as ready as he'll ever be,” Liudhleeo said, gesturing at the red werewolf, “and I'd like to get some sleep this afternoon, if at all possible. Maybe you, Rokhlenu, would hold down his head and you, Wuinlendhono, would hold his head like—well, like last time. That worked out so ghost-bitten well.”
Morlock put his left hand on her shoulder and looked into her dark eyes. She dropped her gaze, then shyly raised it again. Her posture was almost flirtatious, and Rokhlenu was going to say something about it when she said in a businesslike tone, “Do you want to cut him open or pull the spike? I think that's a fair division of labor.”
“I'll cut,” Morlock said, and pulled a glass knife from his belt.
“And you brought your own knife. Very polite. No magical glass tweezers for me, I suppose?”
Morlock produced a long double-toothed probe from a pocket in one sleeve. That, too, was made of clear glass.
“Ask him for some raw beef,” Wuinlendhono said, already kneeling by Hlupnafenglu's shaggy golden head. “I'm hungry.”
Rokhlenu was in place, too, so Morlock knelt down by Hlupnafenglu's side and deftly incised a cross in the side of his head. He peeled back the flesh, exposing the skull. Under the frighteningly copious blood, there was a network of pulsating light woven through the bone of the skull. It was much like what they had seen in Morlock's skull, the three of them, anyway. Except that there was more of it; it was denser; the light was more golden.
“You knew exactly where it was,” Liudhleeo said quaveringly.
“I saw it in a vision,” Morlock explained. “He has a faint scar there, also.”
“Are you—are you—are you in a vision or whatever you call it now?” She sounded terrified to Rokhlenu. He wondered why.
“No,” said Morlock. He got out of her way, and she approached with the two-pronged probe.
Rokhlenu watched her hand narrowly for any sign of trembling, but there was none. Her hand approached the seeping wound confidently, and carefully probed the skull for the central node.
Then she screamed. She leapt to her feet and she was screaming. Smoke was rising from her hand. A drop of blood there was burning through her skin.
Morlock grabbed her hand and, quick as a werewolf, licked the blood from her hand. Then, unlike a werewolf, he grimaced and spat. “Eccch. Healing is an ugly business.”
There were tears in Liudhleeo's dark eyes, but she was smiling as she looked on him. “Thanks,” she said. “From one ugly healer to another.”
“I guess I'd better pull the spike.”
“I guess.”
“I wonder why it burned you.”
“The blood stinks of silver,” Wuinlendhono said distantly. “If you people are done licking each other, I wish you would pull that spike or sew him up or both.”
Morlock did both. He located the largest pulsating node and applied the pincers of his probe to either side. It took some time to break it free from the skull, which had begun to heal around the spike: it must have been in the red werewolf's head a long time. But, in the end, Morlock held it triumphantly in his hand, and the three (conscious) werewolves looked on it with a mixture of interest and horror.
It was not blood-dark, like the spike from Morlock's brain. It was still luminous as it lay in his hand, a silvery gold sheathed with drying blood.
“It's electrum, I think,” the crooked never-wolf said. “An alloy of silver and gold,” he explained, when they looked at him bewildered.
“What a disgusting idea!” Wuinlendhono said heatedly.
“Gold will cure a silver wound,” Liudhleeo added tentatively. “I read that somewhere, I think. That's how he must have survived.”
“It was some sort of experiment?” Rokhlenu asked. “A game—to see what could be done to a werewolf like this without killing him?” He felt rage building in him. “What kind of crazy ghost-sniffer would do that?”
Morlock pocketed the bloody silver-gold tooth. “Ulugarriu, maybe,” he said.
The name cast a pall over the room. Morlock sewed up the red werewolf's bleeding head in an awful silence that didn't seem to bother him in the least. Of course, he lived his life swimming in awful silences, Rokhlenu reflected.
Hlupnafenglu lay in the sunlight, strangely still.
“I wonder if we killed him?” Liudhleeo said quietly.
“Better dead than running around with a silver spike in his brain,” Wuinlendhono said decisively, standing with her usual fluid grace. “If we are done here, I think I will return to my lair for a sleep. We'll be having a long night, tonight.”
“But—” Rokhlenu said, turning toward her. He hadn't been expecting her to accompany them on the foray to the Khuwuleion. It was insane: some of them would likely die. But she was staring at him with eyes carved from black ice, and his objections died unspoken in his throat.
> “I'd better do the same,” he said. “See you at sunset,” he said to Morlock.
“Then.”
As Rokhlenu shut the door behind him he glanced back and saw Morlock tending to Liudhleeo's hand as she looked on him with a rather predatory smile on her long narrow face.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A LONG NIGHT
Night had fallen. The sky was largely free of clouds and wholly free of moons: it was the first dark call of the month of Jaric—a very dark call, this year, since Horseman had set. They would fight this night in their day shapes—and that increased the chance that some of them would die. Perhaps all of them, if they had miscalculated the forces that would be present to defend the prison.
Rokhlenu assembled his strike force on the marshy verge west of town. Besides him, the First Wolf, and Hrutnefdhu, there were twenty irredeemables and five gold-toothed bodyguards led by the frizz-haired Yaniunulu. The senior bodyguard was hardly more prepossessing in his day shape than his night shape, but he had insisted on his right to accompany the First Wolf into danger and she had smilingly assured him she would do her very best to protect him.
They were waiting on Morlock; and Rokhlenu, getting jittery, sent Hrutnefdhu to round him up.
He was not surprised when he saw the pale werewolf returning alone, poling a boat from the southern gate of the outlier settlement.
“He says not to wait for him,” Hrutnefdhu gasped as soon as he was within talking distance. “He'll catch up to us.”
Rokhlenu shook his head grimly. “That crazy never-wolf.”
“Yes, Gnyrrand.”
They set off at a loping run down the path that led to the long walls of the Sardhluun Pack. They kept their glittering weapons sheathed; what armor they wore was covered by dark surcoats. They were hoping to surprise the enemy. They had no other hope, really.
They came to the long walls at a place far from any gate. There was no guard atop the wall that anyone could see or smell. Ape-fingered Runhuiulanhu climbed the wall with pitons and rope, like a cliff face, and the rest of them went up the rope one by one after him and down by rope on the opposite side.
