Wolf Age, The

by James Enge

  Hlupnafenglu and Hrutnefdhu were not in his cave, which he found disappointing, but also something of a relief. He bent over to pick up the bowl of wine he had set down on the cave floor before he had left. He sat down then, wearily but carefully, so that he would not spill the wine. Then he drank the wine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE

  H lupnafenglu and Hrutnefdhu, after Morlock flew off, ran down and took the boat over to the settlement. They ran side by side, without any need to talk, to the northeastern edge of the settlement that was under attack by the airships.

  But by the time they had gotten there the attack had ceased. The ships were still hovering overhead, but they had retreated higher in the sky, and they were firing arrows at some aerial target, or targets.

  Wuinlendhono was directing the firefighting efforts. Since the slime on the Neyuwuleiuun arrows could not be extinguished once it was set afire, they had to isolate every patch of fire through demolition. It was exacting and difficult work requiring many hands; if the Sardhluun had attacked via boats while they were busy with fires, they would have been in a bad way. But they were left alone to carry out the work, and they were winning.

  The First Wolf looked up at the approach of the pale werewolf and the red one and said, “What are they doing? What, on your ugly jailbird ghosts, are they doing?”

  “They flew away, High Huntress,” said Hlupnafenglu simply.

  “There wasn't much time to talk,” Hrutnefdhu added.

  “Something falling from an airship,” called a sentry in a watchtower. “Not an arrow. Not a fighter.”

  “Looks like a bird,” sang out another. “It's gliding. No, it's falling. Yes, it's gliding.”

  “Mark where it lands,” called Wuinlendhono. “It'll be one or the other of them,” she remarked to the werewolves standing beside her.

  “Morlock, I expect,” Hrutnefdhu said. “He was drunk, I fear.”

  Hlupnafenglu looked at him and shrugged. Others could say what they wanted; he would put his money on Khretvarrgliu in any contest, drunk or sober.

  “It's down,” called the sentry.

  “Come here,” called Wuinlendhono back.

  One of the airships had veered wildly away from the other. The other followed. They were headed south, into the teeth of the wind.

  The sentry was standing there, a semiwolf named Rululawianu whose mostly human form was covered with bristling yellowish hair. “I saw the place it landed, High Huntress.”

  “Then you will guide me there,” said Wuinlendhono.

  “High Huntress, please think again,” said Hrutnefdhu, startled from some distant train of thought by her remark. “There may be enemy fighters in the swamp.”

  “Then it will be your privilege to die defending me,” the First Wolf replied coolly. “Yours too, Big Red.”

  Hlupnafenglu nodded.

  They went to the northern gate, found a fair-sized boat, and rowed away into the great black swamp.

  “What's happening now?” the First Wolf asked.

  Hlupnafenglu wasn't sure what she meant, and then realized she was looking up at the sky.

  One of the airships was headed directly for the other.

  “I think he's going to ram it,” Hrutnefdhu said grimly.

  “He?” asked Wuinlendhono.

  “It has to be Morlock or Rokhlenu, doesn't it?”

  “Khretvarrgliu,” voted Hlupnafenglu. “It's something he would do.”

  “I can't tell if I want you to be right or wrong,” Wuinlendhono replied.

  The red werewolf thought he knew what she meant. If her husband was up there, he was in deadly danger, taking terrible risks. If he were not, he had crash-landed in the swamp.

  They saw him from a good distance away, floating on his wings in the murky water. They rowed to him and hauled him into the boat.

  “This is one of the wingsets that Morlock made,” Hrutnefdhu said, after a moment of dreadful silence. “But I can't tell who this is. I can't tell what this is.”

  Wuinlendhono inhaled deeply, once, twice, again. “He stinks of the mire, and of evil magic,” she said then, “but this is Rokhlenu.”

  “Angry ghosts,” whispered Hrutnefdhu. “What have they done to him?”

  Wuinlendhono put both her hands on Rokhlenu's distorted chest and said with a frosty calm that Hlupnafenglu found himself admiring, “He's still alive. Hrutnefdhu, are there still empty dens in that death trap you rent on the east side?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take Rokhlenu there. Use the boat: row all the way around town. Then stay there with him. And you: Rululawianu,” she said, addressing the yellow semiwolf. “You go with them. I want no one to hear of this. Speak to no one of the gnyrrand's…illness.”

  “Yes, High Huntress.”

  By then, the two airships were directly overhead, the one in flight from the other.

  “I hope he kills them,” Wuinlendhono said, in the same cold tone—although Hlupnafenglu now realized it was not calm at all. “I hope he kills every one of them. Slowly and terribly. If he does, I’ll buy him enough wine to stay drunk every day of his life, even if he lives to be a hundred.”

  “He'll enjoy that, High Huntress,” said Hrutnefdhu soothingly.

  Hlupnafenglu doubted that. He didn't think that Morlock actually enjoyed drinking, and had often wondered why he did it. Also, he was pretty sure that Morlock was more than a hundred years old already. But since he, too, hoped that Khretvarrgliu would kill all their enemies and avenge the harm done to their gnyrrand, he decided to say nothing that would sound like disagreement.

  They left the First Wolf on the plank road below the North Gate and settled in for the long row around town.

  The next day, Hlupnafenglu went with the First Wolf to ask Morlock for help. Rokhlenu had awakened at some point, but either he could not speak or he would not. The First Wolf received a whispered report to this effect at the door of the den, without entering, and then she told Hlupnafenglu to follow her.

  The glass eye of the wickerwork boat recognized them, of course, allowing them to board. Hlupnafenglu handled the oars on the way across the water; the First Wolf seemed lost in thought.

  Morlock had been drunk, Hlupnafenglu guessed, from the stale winy reek of the cave, but he was not now. He was lying on the cave floor next to an odd object like a black barrel. On the other side lay his sword—his real sword, Tyrfing. The black-and-white blade was alive with bitter life, and a faint red light was showing through the never-wolf's closed eyelids.

  “He's working,” Hlupnafenglu said decisively to the bemused First Wolf, who had never seen Morlock in this state. “No one can disturb him, in this state. We might as well wait. Do you want to talk to the flames? They say funny things sometimes. Or we could play cards.”

  Wuinlendhono looked at him with dark-ringed dark eyes and said quietly, “No, thank you. I’ll just sit here. If you're sure we can't wake him.”

  “We can't,” Hlupnafenglu confirmed, “because he's not asleep. Working isn't sleeping, though they look the same sometimes.”

  “I knew an old man once who used to say the same,” Wuinlendhono remarked, seating herself gracefully on the cave floor. “I never found out whether he was telling the truth or not.”

  “Did you kill him?” Hlupnafenglu said, sitting opposite her.

  The First Wolf froze, then looked carefully at him. “Yes. How did you know?”

  “There is a sound in your voice. I hear it in my own when I talk about the big female who ran the soup hut. I’m pretty sure I killed her, or tried to. She hurt me sometimes, when no one else was around. Did the old man hurt you?”

  “No more than some others, perhaps. But he was weaker than they, and paid for their sins. Never be weak, Hlupnafenglu; you may end up paying someone else's debt.”

  “I’ll remember, High Huntress.”

  She was looking at Morlock's left hand. It was a misty almost shapeless shape all the way past the elbow, and dea
d-gray like corpse meat above that. The wooden glove Morlock sometimes wore on his left hand had fallen away: the ghost sickness had eaten away his flesh deep into his upper arm. Hlupnafenglu didn't think Morlock would be able to use the glove anymore. But the First Wolf didn't say anything about it, so Hlupnafenglu didn't either.

  The light in Morlock's eyes—and in the cursed sword—was fading. He opened his eyes and said, “Wuinlendhono. Hlupnafenglu.”

  “Khretvarrgliu,” replied the First Wolf, and Hlupnafenglu just nodded. “I thank you for your deeds in the air last night.”

  Morlock raised his right hand, warding off her thanks. “No need. I had my reasons.”

  Wuinlendhono lowered her head, as if angry or frustrated, but her low voice was calm as she said, “Do you know what happened to my Rokhlenu?”

  “I saw it,” Morlock said. “And now, yes, I think I know what happened to him. In here”—he rapped the barrel with his right hand—“is the motive energy for one of the airships. It seems to be a piece of a moon, or a stone that acts like a moon. I spent much of the morning in visionary contemplation of its light. Rokhlenu was briefly exposed to it, and the results were—well, I assume you have seen him.”

  “Yes. I have seen him. Can you help him?”

  “I have two ideas. One will not wholly heal him, but will not kill him. The other may kill him, but may heal him.”

  “What are they?”

  “The first: surgery with a silver knife. I could reshape his frame, as either wolf or man. He would be more or less whole, but incapable of transformation; wounds caused by silver seem to leave permanent traces on a werewolf.”

  “If you are talking like this to horrify me, you don't know who I am. It would take more than you to horrify me.”

  Morlock looked at her briefly, his eyes wide with surprise, then shook his head. “The other idea is simpler and more dangerous. Rokhlenu's being was infected by something from the moonstone's light. I think I know what it is, and I may be able to blast it clear of him.”

  “That does sound dangerous. Please do it.”

  “Rokhlenu will choose.”

  “He's incapable of choosing. I am his mate and have the right to speak for him; that is our law.”

  “I live by my own law. Blood for blood, and only blood. Rokhlenu is my blood, harven coruthen.”

  “I don't know what that means,” said Wuinlendhono, and now she did sound angry. “But I am the First Wolf of the outliers. And—”

  “How well do you know him, really?” Morlock interrupted.

  “I am him. He is me. We were one at the mating and we are one still.”

  “Then trust him to make the right choice. I will fight with you or with anyone, Wuinlendhono, if there is some point to it. Is there a point to this?”

  Wuinlendhono raised her head and looked at him. “No. Is there anything you need?”

  “Time. Glass. Sunlight. A pair of able hands.”

  “I have hands,” said Hlupnafenglu eagerly.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Wuinlendhono said. She stood in a single fluid motion, looked at Morlock as if she were going to say something, then walked off without doing so.

  The time was time. Hlupnafenglu didn't know where it came from, and he lost track of where it went to. He spent much of it making glass. Morlock wanted enough to make a decent-size corridor of plate glass. He taught Hlupnafenglu how to make it unbreakable by folding it through higher dimensions. That was immensely entertaining to the red werewolf, and he enjoyed doing it. Meanwhile, Morlock often lay working in the sun, the glow of his irises visible through his closed lids even at noon. On the third day, he began to do it with a vat of molten glass beside him. Hlupnafenglu wandered by the vat occasionally. There were odd shapes—outlines and angles gleaming icy-pale through the yellow-orange molten glass. They reminded Hlupnafenglu of the shapes Morlock had taught him for representing fourth-and fifth-dimensional polytopes in three-dimensional space. But he found it too hot to bear for long—the sun seemed more intense there, as if something were funnelling sunlight toward the vat.

  One afternoon, while Morlock worked in the sunlight, Hlupnafenglu was welding glass plates for the corridor. He enjoyed all the tasks of the current project, but this was his favorite, as it involved interaction with the flames. He enjoyed their ill-tempered self-regarding little personalities, and they spoke mostly in a language Morlock called Wardspeech. Learning the language was an interesting contrast to the tasks of executing four-dimensional designs while limited to three-dimensional senses, although he enjoyed that as well. Hlupnafenglu was enjoying most things these days: his mind was finally awake after a long sleep, and it was fun to see all the things it could do.

  Often Hrutnefdhu came by to assist him, but today he was alone, except for the flames. He had just cajoled them to seal up a section of corridor wall when the hill was shaken by a roar like thunder. Hrutnefdhu ran out of the cave and saw a somewhat singed-looking Morlock picking himself up from the ground. The vat was in fragments scattered about the hillside. And where the glass had been was a spiked stonelike object, too bright to look at directly.

  “We must establish a zone of Perfect Occlusion around the sunstone,” said Morlock matter-of-factly.

  It was obvious what the sunstone was, so Hlupnafenglu asked, “How do we establish Perfect Occlusion?”

  “I’ll show you,” Morlock said, and he explained the process carefully to Hlupnafenglu, talking him through it.

  “Khretvarrgliu, why are you teaching me so much?” Hlupnafenglu asked when the sunstone was sealed in the Perfect Occlusion.

  “I am dying,” said Morlock, as matter-of-factly as before. “This way I can pass on some of my skills. Plus, you have natural gifts for making. If you wish to pursue the craft, you should seek out Wyrtheorn of Thrymhaiam. He is a master of making, and was my pupil for many years. He can teach you much.”

  “Khretvarrgliu, I will.”

  “We've done enough for today.”

  That meant that Hlupnafenglu was to leave, because Morlock was going to start drinking. Or at least, that's what it often meant.

  But one day, about five days later, Hlupnafenglu returned around dawn to find that Morlock had been working all night. By now they had actually built the glass corridor, setting it into the side of the hill. In the night, Morlock had silvered all the glass, and laid down a second layer of glass, sealing in the deadly metal. It was now safe to be near, although Hlupnafenglu felt dread standing next to it, and he could see that Hrutnefdhu (who had accompanied him that morning) felt it, too.

  Morlock's face was gray with weariness, and Hlupnafenglu was alarmed to see that the ghost illness had eaten even more of Morlock's arm during the night. Nonetheless, the crooked man declined to rest.

  “There are things we must discuss,” Morlock said.

  Hlupnafenglu thought he was going to talk about his imminent death, a conversation the red werewolf had been dreading. But instead Morlock started talking about the sun and the moon.

  Morlock explained that every living body had three physical parts: a core-self, a shell, and an impulse cloud. This last was so tenuous in being that it was almost nonphysical, but not quite, and it could (under certain circumstances) survive the death of the person or animal whose life had produced it.

  “Is that what a ghost is?” Hrutnefdhu asked reverently.

  “I don't know what a ghost is,” Morlock said. “But this is what an impulse cloud is.”

  He explained how the sun drew impulse clouds up into the sky, so that the sky was full of them. The moons gathered them together and sent them back to earth, entangled in moonlight.

  “That is what powered the airships,” Morlock said. “A moonstone imbued with moonlight and impulse clouds. It is the impulse clouds that distorted Rokhlenu's being.”

  “Is it impulse clouds that make us change from the day shape to the night shape?” Hlupnafenglu asked.

  “Yes,” Morlock said. “Your natures are permeable, someho
w—receptive to the impulse clouds latent in moonlight. Whether you are wolves that can become human or men and women that can become wolves, I don't know. But I suspect that each shapechanger is receptive to impulse clouds from at least one other animal. There may be some who can assimilate and change into many different kinds of animals: I don't know.”

  The pale werewolf asked, “Then why is Rokhlenu distorted? The moonstone just issued light similar to the moons—”

  “But more intense, more concentrated,” Morlock said. “There is a miasma in some impulse clouds, the effluvium of the dead soul. If it accumulates in a werewolf's being, he or she becomes distorted, unable to change.”

  “Like semiwolves,” Hlupnafenglu said. “Or…never-wolves?”

  “I think so,” Morlock agreed.

  He waited.

  Hrutnefdhu was waiting, too. He expected Morlock to explain himself presently. But Hlupnafenglu knew better: the maker was waiting for someone else to take the next step—to follow in Morlock's trail, as it were.

  “You will put the sunstone at one end of the corridor, the moonstone at the other,” Hlupnafenglu said. “Thus you will blast the miasma clear.”

  “And, perhaps,” Morlock said, “tear Rokhlenu's impulse cloud to shreds. That will be death.”

  “You could try it on another first,” Hlupnafenglu said, “if—” He paused, then said, “I am a never-wolf.”

  “Yes,” Morlock said.

  “Try it on me,” Hlupnafenglu said. “If it doesn't work you can think up something else. The gnyrrand is more important than I am.”

  Morlock shook his head. “Rokhlenu is my old friend, but I say no to that. If you choose to take the risk, I am glad. But not because you matter less than him.”