The Wolf Age

by James Enge

  Morlock shrugged again.

  "Tell me what you did today or I'll say something disturbingly personal."

  "I collected silver ore discarded in the waste hills and smelted it. I left it cycling through a five-space web of mirrorglass tubes."

  "I didn't get that last part-but never mind. Once you have the metal, isn't that enough? Can't you make your weapon?"

  "No, I don't want to use regular silver. As metals go, it's too soft to make a good weapon. Also it melts too easily."

  "You're going to change it somehow?"

  "Yes. You know that quicksilver is a form of the metal even softer and more malleable than regular silver."

  "Of course. Though some people say it's a different metal entirely."

  Morlock waved aside this superstition without bothering to discuss it. "There is a form of silver opposite to quicksilver: harder, more brittle, with a much higher melting point."

  "I see. Sort of a deadsilver."

  "Yes. Once I extract its phlogiston, it should be suitable for the weapon I have in mind."

  "What is that, exactly?"

  Morlock sketched it on the surface of the table with the point of a knife.

  "I see," said Ulugarriu at last. "How can I help? I can't work the silver with you, obviously."

  "We'll need a lot of cable for this plan to work-strong and lightweight."

  "Yes-yes I can provide that. But it will burn, I'm afraid."

  "We'll dephlogistonate it."

  "Of course. I'm looking forward to learning that technique from you; it will be so useful."

  In fact, Morlock believed that Ulugarriu already knew how to remove phlogiston from matter. He wasn't sure why they were lying to him about this-mere habit, perhaps. But it was a useful reminder that Ulugarriu could not really be trusted.

  The meal was done, and Morlock said, "You brought the food, so I'll clear UP.

  "Oh, ghost," said Ulugarriu, and tossed an empty dish out the window. "Let the swamp have it. We'll be here a few days, but I can always scavenge clean dishes when we need them."

  They threw the dishes out the window, laughing a little, and turned in on their separate couches.

  The next day, Morlock left the silver to unquicken in its five-web and built a ballista out of lumber from abandoned buildings in the outlier settlement and rope that he borrowed from Ulugarriu's cable-making project, which they had set up in the empty marketplace. Ulugarriu had rapidly built a rope-winding machine out of wood, and by the time they were done, citizens were already bringing in fiber to feed into it.

  "Are they extensions of yourself?" Morlock asked Ulugarriu, when several of these blank-eyed citizens dropped off loads of hemp fiber and left.

  "No," Ulugarriu said uneasily. "Just citizens who owe me favors. Well, most of them are were-rats running meat-puppets, all right?"

  "It's all right with me," Morlock said. He took his rope and left.

  Death and justice, manifest as sisters (which they once had been), were walking arm in arm under the Stone Tree. Justice had swords for hands and Death had reaping knives, but apart from that they made a charming pair, for those who were there to see them.

  "And so the werewolf city is dying at last?" Justice signified.

  "The instrument threatens it more every day. There were riots and murders through the election season, and then more rioting after the new First Wolf was treacherously sent to his death. Yes, I think it is dying, if not yet dead."

  Justice shook her monochrome head. "I saw so little of this. My visualizations were disrupted by my manifestation's captivity."

  "Not just yours," Death replied. "Everyone's visualizations have been uncertain, lately. But all that is soon to end."

  "Yes. It will be relief to have the plan fulfilled."

  "It will be a relief. A great relief."

  "Why are the others not manifest, yet? Were we not to meet at this space-time locus?"

  "They are here, Justice, but you cannot see them." Death unfolded a piece of space-time and said, "Look."

  The Strange Gods were all present. Even Wisdom was there, or at least the shell of Wisdom. Justice knew from his manifestation that he was dead, had long been dead.

  Each of the gods, except Death, was bound in a web of otherness that Justice saw, but did not understand.

  "What is this, Death?" she asked.

  "This is the plan," said Death. "I have labored over it for thousands of years. Each of you is trapped (yes, you, too, justice) in a talic web of my weaving. Each thread of the web is woven to a cluster of human lives. And if you move to break that thread, the lives will be affected in a way inimical to your nature. See poor War there, I caught him first, while he was enjoying the riots after Rokhlenu's death. If he tries to free himself in time, the Anhikh Komos will make peace with the Ontilian Empire. If he tries to free himself in space, the Mupuvlokhu tribes in northern Qajqapca will lay down their arms and unite. If he tries to take effective action without freeing himself, other things inimical to his nature will happen."

  "Why? Why are you doing this?"

  "So that I can kill you. If gods take action inimical to their nature, their manifestation becomes more loosely associated with their nature. If that separation becomes permanent, death will occur."

  "I know that. I know that. I am asking you why."

  "So that death will occur. I act according to my nature, and my nature is Death. You are mortal, and my task has been to reap your lives. You have been cunning. You have used power and magic and skill and patience. You have evaded me for long ages, but you could not escape me. I am Death."

  "You weren't always Death. We were sisters once."

  "We were once, but we are not now. All your symbols, all your dreams and hopes, all that you were and were not and wished to be, all this is nothing to me. Stop your signifying, justice. I am Death, and I always have the last word. "

  n the second night of the ninth month, the month Morlock called Tohrt, he took the nexus holding his choir of flames and carried it to the bone-dry grassy slope to the east. He set the nexus down and broke it open.

  "Run free," he said. "Live and die as flames do, my friends. You need not leave the nexus, but I may not return to feed you anymore."

  They were young, as flame-choirs go, and eager to escape and explore the world outside. Long branches of flame were already spreading across the dead dry hillside as he walked away. He did not look back; he'd said harder goodbyes than this, lately.

  Horseman was a bright white eye in the western sky. Ulugarriu was impatiently waiting in their wingset by the door of his cave. It was time to go avenge Rokhlenu or die as well as he had.

  The ballista Morlock had built was a relatively light weapon, if a powerful one, to start with. After Morlock had leached forth its phlogiston and covered it with weight-defying scales harvested from the unfinished wingsets, it was approximately as heavy as a happy thought.

  For Ulugarriu, the thought was a rather grim one at the moment, though: resting on the firing slot were two hooked and flanged spears made from deadsilver.

  "I can come back for these," Morlock said, noting the look of dread that Ulugarriu was giving the spears.

  "No," said Ulugarriu. "We'd best do this all at once."

  The werewolf maker took a long look at the rising moon, took a long breath, and knotted the lift ropes to the harness of their wingset. Morlock had been doing the same, and he met their eye. "Ready?" he asked, and they nodded.

  The two makers gripped their wings and launched from the earth. The ballista came after them, dragged by the ropes.

  They had practiced this a number of times, but it was different nowbecause of the silver spears, weighing down the ballista-and because this wasn't practice.

  They flew straight up at first, into the hot blue night. When they were well above the level of the city and Mount Dhaarnaiarnon, Morlock called out, "Now!" and they levelled off, heading north.

  Ulugarriu could already see the thing. At least th
ere was a smoky red line of fire there that became clearer and clearer as they approached.

  There were citizens abroad on the mesas of Wuruyaaria, but not as many as you would expect on a moonlit night. Ulugarriu wished they were down there, wearing the night shape, singing and causing trouble.

  They felt an awkward tug on the load-bearing ropes. It almost pulled them off course. Looking around for the answer, Ulugarriu saw that Morlock was veering to the right, toward the high mesa of Wuruklendon.

  "What are you doing?" Ulugarriu screamed.

  He called back something about something and the Stone Tree.

  "Don't care!" they screamed back. "North!"

  He got the eh expression on his face: they just bet he was muttering it to himself. But he bent his course northward until there was a little slack on the load-ropes.

  The dark shoulder of the volcano was below them now, with the moonclock and its one luminous eye rivaling the rising moon to their left.

  Then the beast was below them, a red-black border burning from west to east.

  It was a stupid sluggish burning worm that was poisoning Ulugarriu's world, and they hated it. They wished they knew how it worked.

  The turbulent wind carried them up, upward, up-an intense updraft caused by the heat of the Ice-Binder. The air was pretty hot, but not hot enough to ignite the phlogiston-imbued metal scales-that was Ulugarriu's deepest dread about this business.

  Then they were past the updraft and trending downward.

  "There!" Morlock shouted.

  Ulugarriu saw it: a small hill just north of the Ice-Binder. It was dark and lifeless as everything the Ice-Binder left in its wake.

  They turned, in fairly good order, and glided down to perch on the hilltop; the ballista dropped down on the hillside below them.

  They unhitched their load ropes and fetched the ballista. They set it up on the slope, about two hundred paces from the undulating red-black side of the Ice-Binder.

  Morlock bound one of the lightweight coils of rope to one end of one of the deadsilver spears. He pushed the spear (harpoon, really) into the firing slot from the front, and then dropped the coil on the ground where it could run free.

  "What if you miss?" Ulugarriu said stupidly. "We should have brought more than two shots."

  Any other male Ulugarriu had ever known would have said, I never miss, or something equally fatuous. Morlock simply tapped the rope bound to the end of the spear. Of course: they could simply drag the spear back and try again.

  It was only then that Ulugarriu realized how terrified they were of this. They definitely weren't thinking clearly.

  Morlock cranked up the ballista, took several sightings, adjusted the height and position of the ballista, and said, "Watch out."

  Ulugarriu was already well away, so Morlock released the firing bolt; the ballista kicked like an angry donkey and the deadsilver spear was gone, trailing the rope after it into the night. After a moment, though, the rope stopped. Ulugarriu looked up and saw a faint blue light around the side of the Ice-Binder. Soon this was obscured by dark tendrils rising from the IceBinder itself.

  "Clean hit," Morlock said. "I think the hook is in place."

  "It works," Ulugarriu said wonderingly. "It feeds on itself."

  "It doesn't feed," Morlock disagreed.

  With deliberate speed, he performed the same set of actions for the second deadsilver spear, firing a little further east this time, so that the ropes wouldn't get tangled.

  "West or east?" Morlock asked.

  "West," Ulugarriu said, with dry lips. They went and bound the rope from the first harpoon to the harness of their wingset.

  Morlock was doing the same with the rope for the other spear.

  "Morlock," said Ulugarriu, "what if this doesn't work?"

  "Then we'll think of something else."

  "What if it does work?"

  "Then get away as fast as you can."

  Ulugarriu knew what he meant. This thing had millennia of perpetual winter locked in its guts, all the cold of the world's far north. They were hoping it would be released more or less at once. If so, this would be no place to linger.

  "Then," Morlock said, and took to the air.

  Ulugarriu had a speech planned, witty yet tender, designed to make Morlock less inclined to kill them, should the occasion ever arise. They gaped after the winged back of the disappearing never-wolf. "Gaaaah!" they shouted, and took to the air flying westward.

  Due west and fairly low, at first. They didn't want to pull the harpoon loose, but drag it through the side of the Ice-Binder, doing as much damage as possible.

  Soon the cord on their harness jerked, holding them back as they strained with their wings to fly forward.

  That was good. It meant that the hook had set.

  Now came the hard part. Ulugarriu pumped, with their arms and legs, as hard as they could. At first, it seemed as if they were trying to fly through stone. Then something gave a little; then something more. Soon they were plowing forward slowly-not as if the air were stone, but perhaps a thick unpleasant sludge. Which it sort of smelled like.

  They looked back over their left wing and saw a gratifyingly long scar of blue light opening in the Ice-Binder's side. It wriggled at the edges, as the Ice-Binder's legs turned to feed on itself.

  Ulugarriu was repelled, but also pleased, and they turned with a fierce grin to drive themselves a little farther west, to drag that hook through the Ice-Binder's side a little longer.

  It was a lot longer. Ulugarriu lost track of time, but a good deal of it had surely passed when they felt a shadow pass between them and the moon.

  Ulugarriu looked up curiously, and saw something high in the sky, like a tower. A falling tower. And on top of the tower was a kind of mouth ringed with dark flashing teeth.

  It was the Ice-Binder-the end of the Ice Binder. Ulugarriu's first thought was that it was coming to attack whatever was hurting it, that is, Ulugarriu themself. They thought furiously, then regretfully loosed the rope tied to the wingset's harness. They had done as much harm to the Ice-Binder as they could; now it was time to save themself.

  Except it was already too late, it seemed. As Ulugarriu flew free from the rope, the many-toothed worm head swerved to follow. Ulugarriu twisted in the air, veering left, and the worm head followed again.

  Ulugarriu hoped fiercely that they had at least killed the thing that was about to kill them when a winged silhouette impinged on the sky between them and the falling worm. Morlock. That crazy brach's bastard.

  "What are you doing?" Ulugarriu shrieked. "You were going to kill me anyway! "

  Morlock arced high, drawing the attention of whatever the worm used for eyes. It followed him, bending upward again.

  Morlock vaulted straight in the air, spun in the sky, and began to fall.

  He had released both his wing grips, Ulugarriu saw. He was holding that sword of his, Tyrfing, in both hands. He fell past the questing worm mouth and scored a shining blue wound down the side of the worm. The worm mouth turned its teeth on its own wound and began to tear at it. Morlock fell past, dropping his sword, clutching at his wing grips.

  But the close passage with the blazing hot surface of the Ice-Binder had kindled the phlogiston-imbued scales on his wings. Morlock was burning, and burning he fell to the ground and lay there.

  Ulugarriu stooped like a hawk, driving themself to the point where Morlock had crashed to earth. They pulled up at the last minute and stalled in the air, dropping down beside the fallen maker.

  The fall had actually extinguished most of the fires on Morlock's wings. He had rolled in the dusty ground. Morlock was starting to move.

  "Be still!" Ulugarriu shrieked, and heaped dust on his wings until the flames were dead.

  "You hurt anything?" said Ulugarriu. "Idiot. You were supposed to be pulling the hook in the other direction."

  "Rope broke."

  "My ropes don't break! You must have done something wrong! You're always doing everything wro
ng! You should have let it kill me, you idiot, don't you see? Now you'll have to kill me or I'll have to kill you."

  "Ulugarriu," said Morlock, "it's snowing."

  "It-" It was snowing. Ulugarriu stared mutely at the white flakes falling like a benediction around them in the moonlight. Towering over their heads, stretching eastward past Dhaarnaiarnon, the Ice-Binder was busy ripping itself to shreds, releasing deep winter into the humid air of midsummer. "It's snowing!"

  "Yes."

  "We have to get out of here!"

  "Yes."

  Ulugarriu found they wanted to rage some more at Morlock about something, anything, but now was not the time, obviously. "Where away? The volcano? It's still our best bet, I think."

  "Yes."

  "Will your wings carry you? You lost a lot of scales."

  Morlock stretched his wings testingly. He nodded. "Yes."

  "Say something else!" Ulugarriu shrieked in his face. "Say something else! Say anything else! Say eh, or something!"

  Morlock shouted, "Tyrfing!" The deadly blade flew from the ground by the self-eating Ice-Binder into Morlock's outstretched right hand. He sheathed the blade over his crooked shoulders and then gestured politely at the sky.

  After you, Ulugarriu interpreted the gesture. They leapt into the air and flew westward, giving the Ice-Binder a wide berth, then taking a long steep turn eastward, running alongside the dying monster through the sudden moonlit snowstorm.

  Ulugarriu marvelled at the ferocity of the thing's self-attack, as pitiless toward itself as if it were alien to its own being. Morlock was right, they realized. This thing was not really alive. It was a mechanism, not an organism. But it was a mechanism designed to look like an organism-a parody of life, made by something that hated life. Ulugarriu wondered who had made it. It seemed beyond the scope of the Strange Gods.

  When they were over the dark shoulder of Dhaarnaiarnon, Ulugarriu looked back to see how far Morlock was behind. They assumed he would be flying more slowly, because of the lost scales.

  Morlock was not behind them at all.

  Ulugarriu felt the bite of panic and shook it off. They circled slowly in the air, scanning the snow-scattered sky.