The Wolf Age

by James Enge

  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 fourdimensional 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, somehow-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."

  Hlupnafenglu enjoyed risks the way he enjoyed almost everything, so he laughed.

  They placed the Occlusion containing the sunstone at one end of the mirrored corridor. Then Hlupnafenglu walked in the open end. He was no longer laughing: being encased in silver was a nightmarish feeling.

  Morlock and Hrutnefdhu rolled the black barrel over to the other end of the corridor. Then Morlock established a Perfect Occlusion there, and Hlupnafenglu found himself in absolute darkness.

  "I'm going to introduce an aperture and release the light of the sunstone," Morlock's voice said, drifting down the glass corridor through the darkness.

  Hlupnafenglu couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he said nothing.

  The aperture opened like a golden eye, and the mirror-bright corridor was filled with burning light.

  The red werewolf felt a strange pulling sensation, as if the burning eye were drawing him to it. He resisted.

  Then a white eye opened at the other end of the corridor. It pushed him as the sunstone pulled him; the light more than redoubled in ferocity; it passed through him like silver swords. Something left him, something that did not belong in him, and he was less and more because of it.

  Then the silver eye closed, and he was left gasping in the bitter sunlight. Moments later, the aperture in the Occlusion clenched shut and Hlupnafenglu was left in a grateful darkness. Soon, too soon, the sunstone end of the corridor opened: Morlock had moved the Occlusion so that Hlupnafenglu could exit the corridor.

  Tentatively, he walked out into the tame morning light.

  It had been a lifetime since he had entered. The world looked very different than it had a few moments before.

  "You look all right," Hrutnefdhu said, glancing at him up and down. "How do you feel?"

  "Strange," Hlupnafenglu said. "I ... I remember who I am. Do you know who I am, Hrutnefdhu?"

  "I suspected," the pale werewolf admitted.

  Hlupnafenglu turned to Morlock. "Do you know who I am?"

  "You are Hlupnafenglu," Morlock replied calmly.

  The red werewolf found he had raised his hands in fists, as if to attack Morlock. He lowered them. What if he could kill the crooked man? Morlock was sick, already dying. It was a deed of no particular bite. On the other hand, the crooked man was Khretvarrgliu, the beast slayer. Sick as he was, he might yet defeat any foe. That, too, would win no honor-teeth for the red werewolf. He looked for a few moments at his fists and then uncl
enched them.

  "I am," he said. "I am Hlupnafenglu now. And who I was before ... it doesn't matter."

  Morlock shrugged and opened his right hand. (The ghostly left one was hidden under his cloak.) Hrutnefdhu said, "Everyone accepts you as Hlupnafenglu. There's no reason for that to change."

  The red werewolf nodded. He looked at the sun, the hillside, his two friends.

  "I think it worked," he said.

  "We'll wait and see," Morlock said. "There will be a moon aloft tonight."

  It did work. After sunset, Hlupnafenglu stood in the light of Trumpeter and felt the night shape steal over him like a dream. He shook loose from his human clothing and capered, howling, in the third moon's light, a dark-red wolf with golden eyes. Hrutnefdhu, now also wearing the night shape, knocked him over.

  They chased each other along the eastern and southern margins of the swamp, and from there southward into the plains, running deep into the dark land and deep into the night, laughing and singing in Moonspeech.

  When Morlock saw the transformation he turned away and went down the hill. He crossed the water and went to the den on the first floor of the lair-tower where Rokhlenu was being kept.

  Wuinlendhono was there alone with her husband, but he would neither look at her nor speak to her. He had not spoken, eaten, or drunk since his fall from the airship.

  But Morlock spoke to him and to her. It was a long conversation; Morlock said much and Wuinlendhono said more. Rokhlenu said nothing until the hour before dawn, and then he spoke at last.

  The yellow semiwolf was cringing before the gray-muzzles of the Sardhluun and Neyuwuleiuun packs. Their gnyrrands were there, with their reeves and fellow-cantors of the campaign, and the werowances of both packs, with their pack councils.

  Wurnafenglu, wearing the night shape, sang while the yellow semiwolf cringed. He sang that they should listen to the informant from the mongrel outliers, the honorable traitor Rululawianu (because loyalty to traitors was the only treason, and treason to traitors was the highest honesty). There was hope like rich marrow in his news, if they had the bite to crack the bone.

  The Werowance of Neyuwuleiuun sang a song frostier by far than the night's warm air. He pointed out that his pack had suffered dearly from the opportunities Wurnafenglu had brought them. Their airships, the glory of the Neyuwuleiuun, were lost-one ruined, the other stranded in a field of poisonous silver waste, and apparently robbed of its motive element. They could not afford such a loss, nor another such loss.

  The Werowance of the Sardhluun sang a sad song in reply, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the honored and honorable Werowance of the Neyuwuleiuun werewolves. How often he had warned Wurnafenglu that he was reckless and his actions were ill judged! All these comments were before trustworthy witnesses who could be produced at need. He had spoken at length about the perils and shame Wurnafenglu had brought to his own pack by his criminally inept stewardship of the Vargulleion, foundation of the Sardhluun pride, now an empty stone box. Still the Neyuwuleiuun could not hold the glorious Sardhluun werewolves culpable for the bad advice of one disfavored and deranged pack member. They must unite for the betterment of both packs against all their enemies-within their respective packs and without. He did not look toward Wurnafenglu as he sang, but many others from both packs did.

  Wurnafenglu replied that both werowances had earned their relatively high and not at all unimportant positions by skills that were by no means to be absolutely despised: even the shortest claw can draw blood. And the Werowances knew, he hoped, exactly how much he esteemed them both. And he was willing to surrender his gnyrrandship, his honor-teeth, and his life ... to the citizen who could take them from him.

  Silence. Wurnafenglu was unpopular in that assembly, but no one cared to accept his offer. He knew it; they knew it; he remained silent, smiling with moon-bright teeth in the singer's circle, until they knew he knew it.

  Wurnafenglu took up his song again. He sang that the costly attack on the outliers was not without effect. He sang that there was a wound in the outlier pack that could not be healed, that they could strike them down, along with their allies of the mangy sap-stinking Goweiteiuun dog-lickers. They must listen and learn; listen and learn: that was the refrain.

  He stepped back, and motioned with his eyes for Rululawianu to step forward.

  The yellow semiwolf crept rather than stepped forward. Absurdly, he was crouching on all fours-a shamefully submissive stance in the day shape. As he quivered in the moonlight falling on the singer's circle, the most powerful werewolves of the Sardhluun and Neyuwuleiuun packs looked down on him from their couches with interest and contempt. They utterly despised him, and Wurnafenglu would have changed that if he could; he wanted them to trust his informant. But they perhaps thought the semiwolf too timid to lie-and, if so, that was good enough.

  "Look, I don't know if it matters," Rululawianu began at random. "I mean, I don't know if it's important. But I think Gnyrrand Rokhlenu is dead, or worse than dead. And they say that crazy never-wolf Khretvarrgliu is dying, too."

  Wurnafenglu barked that he should tell the tale.

  So he told it: how Rokhlenu had fallen distorted from the sky; how Morlock was dying from the ghost sickness; how he had made a corridor lined with silver and claimed it could cure semiwolves and never-wolves, but how, when they had put Rokhlenu in it, something had gone terribly wrong. Morlock was said to be poisoning himself, a slow suicide in self-punishment for the harm he had done his friend.

  Wurnafenglu stood behind the semiwolf and watched the story's impact on its audience. He was quite pleased with the effect. The Neyuwuleiuun werewolves drew themselves up and exchanged glances when Rululawianu described Rokhlenu's distortion. They knew something that confirmed this part of the story-some deadly secret about that "motive part" that their werowance had incautiously mentioned.

  And the silver corridor had been seen. No werewolf of the Sardhluun or Neyuwuleiuun packs could get near enough to examine it-there were traps and fences, seen and unseen, all around the hill that held Khretvarrgliu's cave. But it was there. It could be seen from miles away on the hot, dry, sun drenched days that were coming with the end of winter-the sort of days that used to come, rarely, in high summer.

  The allied pack councils exchanged a few whispered words among themselves. Then they turned and started barking questions at the yellow semiwolf. Most of them asked him to repeat or give more details about something he had already said. Wurnafenglu didn't object to this: he had conducted many interrogations, and he had often seen a liar's story unravel when he gave differing answers to the same question asked twice. The liar wants to be found out; so Wurnafenglu believed. Liars lie from fear, and they want their fear to end, even if the end is death.

  But Rululawianu's story did not unravel. It held together, as Wurnafenglu had been sure it would. And one good question was asked, by a familiar friend and enemy.

  The Werowance of the Sardhluun wondered why Rululawianu had come to them. He must know that, except for his new friend Wurnafenglu, the noble Sardhluun Pack despised traitors, and a traitor to traitors would get no warm welcome from them. Was it money? Was it meat, now that food was growing scarce? What had brought the yellow semiwolf forward with this tale?

  Rululawianu shouted, "They won't use it on me! They won't put me in their magic tunnel! Oh, no! `Silver is too scarce, Rululawianu. The more important wolves must be healed first, Rululawianu. Stop making noise; we don't need whiners like you, Rululawianu.' They could have healed me, made me a real werewolf. But they didn't. They were never going to. Maybe it was all a lie; maybe there is no cure. It doesn't matter. I hate them. I hate them. I don't want anything from you. I wanted it from them, but they wouldn't give it to me. So I'll help you wreck them. That's next best."

  The council of allies nodded sagely. Yes, satisfied desire was best, always. But next best was revenge, the bitter drink that quenches frustrated desire, and hate, and love, and every other thing that pains the wolvish heart.
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  It was all they needed. They were utterly convinced. Wurnafenglu stepped forward, and the yellow semiwolf skittered away.

  Wurnafenglu sang to them of a time and day soon to come: midnight on the nineteenth day of the fourth month. The great moon, Chariot, would arise. They, the great alliance of Sardhluun and Neyuwuleiuun werewolves, would challenge the dog-licking Goweiteiuun and their mongrel allies among the outliers to an election rally in the Great Rostra of Nekkuklendon. The challenged would appear and be defeated, for without the great heroes of the Vargulleion escape they were nothing. Or they would not appear, and they would be mocked in word and song on every mesa of Wuruyaaria. It was certain victory. And if it brought the Aruukaiaduun twine-twisters to their alliance (in an inferior position, of course), it would be a final victory in the year of Choosing. They need only settle which of those present now was worthy to be First Singer of the Innermost Pack.

  With cold measuring eyes, the Werowance of the Sardhluun watched him all through his song. But the Werowance was the first to give hotthroated assent to Wurnafenglu's plan. The other wolves howled in agreement as the yellow semiwolf shuddered at the edge of the singer's circle.

  The challenge was issued openly, in every market square and smoke den of the city, including the squalid settlement of swamp-dwelling outliers. The rumors spread as widely: stories that Rokhlenu was dead or worse, that the never-wolf Khretvarrgliu had killed him and then himself, that the First Wolf of the outliers had sold herself to a wild pack in the outlands.

  The chosen night came, not soon enough to suit Wurnafenglu. A crowd began to gather at the Great Rostra of Nekkuklendon just after dark. The Sardhluun-Neyuwuleiuun Alliance had purchased great bales of bloodbloom and crates of cheap clay smoking-bowls for the victory party, and a story had spread that these would be distributed well before moonrise. It was, of course, illegal to give citizens gifts in the hope that they would vote for you. Fines might be levied against the offending pack, perhaps even substantial ones, if they lost the election. On the other hand, a victory party after a rally, to which the general citizenry was invited, was another matter. And if the party began before the victory actually occurred, who could be so smallminded as to object? Certainly not the high-minded public officials who had done the same when they were seeking election.