Wolf Age, The

by James Enge

  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 unclenched 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 do
ne 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.

  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 hot-throated 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 small-minded as to object? Certainly not the high-minded public officials who had done the same when they were seeking election.

  In fact, a little bloom was being smoked well before midnight when the gnyrrands of the Sardhluun-Neyuwuleiuun Alliance showed up, with their reeves and their cantors in train behind them, and a cascade of campaign volunteers in loose clothes of black and green and short capes of red and green (the Neyuwuleiuun colors). They ran in close order down the stairs into the singers’ pitch sunk into the center of the rostrum and ran all the way around the pitch, receiving the hopeful cheers of the audience. Some bloom was good; more bloom was better—and if the Alliance won, much bloom would be smoked.

  This was a more important rally than the last one, which the Sardhluun had lost so ignominiously. If for nothing else (and there was much else) because of the location. The most common pack affiliation on Nekkuklendon was Aruukaiaduun. Many important members of their Inner Pack had come here to watch the rally and judge the prospects of the new Alliance. If they were impressed, they might see fit to join, virtually assuring victory for the Alliance.

  The betting ran seven to one against the Goweiteiuun even showing up tonight. The Alliance was so confident, they started their speeches before the Goweiteiuun appeared, and the crowd shouted their approval. The sooner the talking began, the sooner it would end.

  The speeches were not noted, then or later, for their impressiveness. The Neyuwuleiuun gnyrrand congratulated the Sardhluun Pack for its association, almost as younger brothers, with one of the original treaty packs, and congratulated his own pack for inventing the pack, the city, and civilization itself. Wurnafenglu, speaking for the Sardhluun, made a remark about the potency of youth that was either pointless or obscene, but not particularly witty either way, and went on to explain that this alliance with the Neyuwuleiuun was a natural extension of the Sardhluun's longstanding policy of solitary strength. The strong and the solitary had the strength to recognize when a greater strength could be gained by alliance, thus actually preserving the solitary strength of the strong allied partners. They stood together because they stood alone. He said this several times, and his cantors cheered louder every time, but members of the crowd seemed to be trying to figure out what it meant.

  Wurnafenglu was saved by moonrise. As his speech thundered to a vigorous but not-altogether-coherent close, a bitter blue light grew in the sky, drowning the feeble lamps and torches: Chariot rising in the west.

  All the citizens turned to the west and raised their hands—even the never-wolves and semiwolves who could not hope for a metamorphosis. They did it because others did it, and because they wished they could hope, even though they were hopeless.

  Citizen after citizen fell under their own shadow, their day shape lost to the night shape; screaming men and women became howling wolves in the hot blue night. Winter was over. Spring had begun. They rejoiced and they were afraid.

  As the howling of the crowd began to die down, everyone heard a band of wolves singing somewhere in the city. It was a song about a battle in the air—a song about the night the new Alliance had tried and failed to destroy the outliers, and lost its boasted airships in the bargain. Everyone in the city remembered that night—how they had watched and wondered at the battle in the
air.

  It dawned on the assembly that the Goweiteiuun were indeed coming to the assembly, and that they were bringing their outlier allies with them.

  The crowd by the stairs parted to admit the newcomers. There were wolves and, shockingly, never-wolves in their company. The never-wolves wore strange glass armor that glittered in the moonlight, and some bore banners on staves: blue and red for the Goweiteiuun and green and gold for the outliers.

  At their head was a great gray wolf with blue eyes; he wore cord upon cord of honor-teeth, and among them was the long curving fang of a dragon.

  “Rokhlenu!” shouted the crowd. “Rokhlenu!”

  Many of them were Aruukaiaduun, and he was born to their pack. They had lost him to the machinations of the old gray-muzzle Rywudhaariu, but they were still proud of him, still ashamed they had let themselves lose him. They chanted his name as if it would let them reclaim him, as if he could still be their hero, their native son.

  Wurnafenglu turned to lock eyes with the yellow semiwolf, the coward, the traitor-to-traitors, Rululawianu.

  The semiwolf was not cowering. He was laughing. He threw back his head and shouted, “Where are the prisoners of the Khuwuleion? Where are the prisoners of the Khuwuleion? Where are the prisoners of the Khuwuleion?”

  It was the question the Sardhluun didn't want asked, the question they could not answer. It was the nature of the city's legal system that justice didn't enter into it: only the powerless went to prison. But there had been many of them, and they had left many kin and friends behind them, and perhaps in those numbers was a kind of power. Also, the city had paid the Sardhluun to tend those prisoners, not to sell them or butcher them. The next government would also ask: where were the prisoners of the Khuwuleion?

  Now the band of newcomers began to chant the deadly question. The crowd took up the cry. The Sardhluun were baffled, the Neyuwuleiuun embarrassed.

  Wurnafenglu was not baffled. He saw just exactly how he had been fooled. He leapt on the laughing semiwolf and tore his furry throat out. Then the gnyrrand swung about and, jaws still dripping with Rululawianu's blood, he charged the outliers, his cantors at his heels.