by James Enge
“Leave her alone,” Wuinlendhono shrieked, and began to pummel him. “Leave her alone!”
He turned and held the dead hand up in front of her face. “Do you recognize this hand?”
The unexpected question shocked her into stillness. Presently she said, “I recognize it. I first saw it ten years ago. I was fleeing from the Goweiteiuun after killing my husband. I ran into the necropolis. I stole food from the funeral gifts; that was how I stayed alive. Once I saw a hand reaching for the same piece of rotten meat that I wanted, and I bit it. See the scar? See the scar there, on her hand? That was where I bit it. We fought, Liudhleeo and I, and she—we fought. She didn't kill me, though I guess maybe she could have; I was near starving, weaker than a chicken. She was running away, too. She said we should go to the outliers. I. She. I went with her. Came here with her. I don't know what I would have done. Without her. And now. Now I'll have to.”
“This is not Liudhleeo's hand.”
“Liar. That won't save you.”
“She was smoking spiceweed every day for the last month—bowl after bowl of the stuff. It stained her hands and her fingers. Do you see any stains here? Use your dog's nose. Do you smell the spiceweed?”
Wuinlendhono's dark eyes widened with anger and wonder. Then she closed them tight, and her face wore a remembering look. “I saw her only twice the last month. That was your fault: this stupid game you and Rokhlenu are playing. But she was smoking. She was smoking spiceweed both times. It does stain your fingers, and your teeth. That's why I never.” She opened her eyes. “What is it you are saying?”
“Liudhleeo may be dead,” Morlock said. “But this is not her body.”
Wuinlendhono took a step back, straight into Rokhlenu's arms. He wrapped them about her, and she let herself rest upon them, closing her eyes, her face growing calm.
“How can that be?” she asked at last, not opening her eyes.
Morlock had an idea or two about this. He had been thinking of that strange flesh-machine the ratlike beasts had been using, the simulacrum of Yaniunulu. Perhaps this corpse was something like that. Perhaps there was some other explanation. But there was no reason to say all that when one word would do as well.
“Ulugarriu,” he said.
Wuinlendhono screamed. Her body arched with the force of it. She screamed until all the air had left her lungs and the scream sank to a croaking, gurgling snarl.
Rokhlenu held her patiently through all of this.
She lay in his arms for a time, neither speaking nor moving.
Then she opened her eyes and stood. She looked at Morlock and said, “You will find the truth of this. You will go and find the truth of this. We will hold a funeral over these things as if they were our friends. Is that Hlupnafenglu's body, do you think?”
Morlock nodded. “Probably.”
“Well, we will pretend this thing is her body and burn it with Hlupnafenglu's. It's a kind of blasphemy, but we've all done worse, I guess. And you will find the truth of this.”
Morlock said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.
She turned to Rokhlenu and said, “Beloved. Thank you. I needed you, and I will need you, but now I need to be alone. Please don't follow me away.” She walked off and disappeared into a stairway.
Rokhlenu waited until she was gone, and then turned to Morlock with something like relief in his face. “What is Ulugarriu after, do you suppose?”
Morlock shrugged.
“He seems to have been interested in the cave. He ransacked it before he left.”
Morlock nodded, almost pleased. This confirmed that the killer had not failed to behead Hlupnafenglu for lack of time.
“It looks like Hlupnafenglu left her, came back to find her dead, and then stabbed himself with a glass dagger. That's how we found him.”
“That's how it was meant to look.”
“I'm afraid he took your sword,” Rokhlenu added. “Unless you hid it somewhere.”
“No,” said Morlock. “I left Tyrfing with Hlupnafenglu. And it is gone?”
“Yes.”
Morlock laughed. It was the best news he had heard on this evil strange day.
Rokhlenu was looking at him with open amazement.
“I'll explain,” Morlock said.
But first he turned to his dead friend. The red werewolf's body had been washed, but not yet bound with linen. Morlock took some lying ready nearby the bier and wrapped up the red cold hands in the cloth. Then he put his hand on Hlupnafenglu's eyes and whispered a prayer that Those Who Watch would welcome this apprentice through the gate in the west.
“Good-bye, my friend,” he said at last. “I hope you have all the breakfast you need or want, wherever you are now.”
Then he turned away and walked from the audience hall with Rokhlenu beside him. Someone else would have to stand the vigil over the corpses: there was much to do.
The next morning found Morlock walking through Twinegate in full daylight with a lit lamp.
“Sun's up,” said one of the watchers. “Don't know if you noticed.”
“I'm looking for a citizen,” Morlock said.
“Good luck. There might be one or two in the city somewhere, if you're not choosy.”
“I'm choosy,” said Morlock, and walked on into the sunlight with his lamp.
Morlock's plan was a simple one. The killer (Ulugarriu or his agent) had taken Tyrfing. That might even have been the motive for the attack on the cave, a possibility that gnawed at Morlock a little: if he had taken Tyrfing with him to the city earlier, Hlupnafenglu might be alive now. But never mind that: the killer had taken Tyrfing, and nothing else it seemed, because Ulugarriu had wanted it. So the sword was with the killer, or Ulugarriu (if there was a difference) now.
And Morlock could find Tyrfing. He had implanted a talic impulse in the crystalline lattice of the sword, so that he might summon it to him at need. That meant he was still in talic stranj with the blade. If he had been in full possession of his Sight, he would simply have summoned a light trance and walked until he reached the blade and the killer. But the ghost sickness, or whatever was causing it, had weakened his talent so that even going into a light vision kept him from taking volitional action in the world of matter.
Still, the matter was easy enough. Morlock lit a lamp, went into a trance, and went into talic stranj with the flame. When he descended to normal awareness, the flame was still linked to his magical blade: the flame burned brighter in its direction.
The lamp had led him here. It would lead him to Tyrfing. And then he and Ulugarriu would have a long-overdue conversation.
The bright edge of the flame guided him through Twinegate Plaza into Apetown. He came at last to a sort of shop, but the sign outside the shop was blank and there was no name or symbol on the door.
He kicked the door open and entered.
The shop within was dim: all the windows were shuttered. The brightest lights in the room entered with Morlock: the fierce sunlight of the spring morning and the lamp he held in his hand.
By their light he saw in the room's shadows an old citizen in the day shape sitting in front of a shop counter. Behind him, on the counter, glittered Tyrfing.
“Are you Ulugarriu?” he asked the old citizen.
The old citizen's lower jaw swung open like a gate. Through the grayish lips peered a mottled pink-and-brown face, almost human but for the long ratlike snout.
It screeched. Morlock heard someone behind him and reached out his hand to summon Tyrfing, but a blow fell on the back of his head and he lost consciousness before he could speak.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE STONE TREE
Morlock awoke to the weary certainty that he was imprisoned again. The dank stone floor was familiar; the stench of unwashed bodies and the crash of iron doors was familiar. There was no cord of honor-teeth around his neck. For a moment, before he opened his eyes, he was afraid that the desperate New Year's escape and all that followed had been a delusion of his madness and he wa
s still in the Vargulleion.
But as soon as he looked around him, he knew the fear was groundless. This was not the Vargulleion. The cell had no window; the walls seemed to be baked brick; and the cell doors had proper locks on them. Nothing he couldn't handle with the slightest excuse for a lockpick and a little time, though. They had taken his cloak, and all the useful and useless items he had tucked away in its pockets. But he had a long stiff wire or two sewn into the seams of his breeches; they might do the trick, if he could get a few moments unobserved.
There was only one guard outside his cell door, a solemn-faced semiwolf with a long face and hairy ears, wearing the dark regalia of the City Watchers.
“Why don't you shave those ears?” Morlock asked him, adding other insults that occurred to him, or that he remembered werewolves using to each other over the months he had been in or near Wuruyaaria.
But the watcher didn't even seem to be aware he was being insulted. He just looked at Morlock solemnly and with a little awe.
Presently a tall citizen with grizzled hair and a great torc of honor-teeth on his chest appeared, strolling up the corridor.
“I'll sit the watch for a while,” he said.
The watcher stood slowly. “I think he was trying to get me to fight, Chieftain.”
“You were too smart for that, I hope.”
“Me, fight Khretvarrgliu?” The watcher seemed genuinely appalled. “Never.”
“That's right,” the grizzled citizen said agreeably.
The watcher wandered off, and the werewolf with the torc said to Morlock, “But we've already had our fight, haven't we, me and you? We've fought, and I've won.”
“Your name is Wurnafenglu,” Morlock said.
“It is,” the werewolf said, quite pleased. “You were not in a condition to converse when last we saw each other. I'm glad things have changed.”
“We have not fought. You are wise to keep this door between us. I'll kill you if I get the chance.”
“But I won't give you the chance!” Wurnafenglu said triumphantly. “No, indeed. That's why I win, Khretvarrgliu. I'll keep you on the other side of this door as long as it suits me.”
“That's what you thought before.”
“I'll keep you on the other side of this door as long as it suits me,” Wurnafenglu repeated, raising his voice. “On a day soon to come, I will have you chained and dragged forth. I will take you to the highest mesa of the city, and I will execute you there between the Stone Tree and the Well of Shadows, as the climax of our final rally against those mongrels who now call themselves the Union.”
“Why wait?”
“A good rally takes preparation. Plus, our astronomers say there will be an eclipse of the sun on that day. That will impress the rabble.”
“Your fellow citizens, you mean to say?”
“That's what I did say. The important people are already with us.”
Wurnafenglu spent some time talking about his plan of independent strength through partial unity. Morlock didn't listen, but spent the time thinking about things he had seen and people he had known.
Presently he saw a decapitated man holding his severed head like a lamp. The man was standing next to Wurnafenglu, as he had stood beside him so many times in the Vargulleion. Wurnafenglu had never seen him then and didn't see him now. But Morlock did. He wondered if his madness was returning—if, perhaps, the ghost sickness was driving him insane.
“No,” said the severed head in Wardspeech, one of the languages Morlock had grown up speaking. “I felt an impulse to manifest to you. I am War.”
Morlock mulled this over for a bit, and said in the same language, “You are one of the Strange Gods?”
“I am.”
Wurnafenglu asked him what the ghost he was babbling about, but Morlock had no trouble ignoring him. “Do you know Death?” he asked.
“She is one of our company. I don't count her as a friend, but we often work together, of course.”
“Why have you chosen to show yourself to me?”
War dismissed the question with a wave of his free hand. “I do what I choose, and I don't explain myself even to myself. I should thank you, though. This has been the most entertaining Year of Choosing that I remember.”
“I have nothing to do with that.”
“Never lie to a god. What's the point? I was manifest when you and your friends escaped the Vargulleion. I was manifest when you fought the Sardhluun on the ground and the Neyuwuleiuun in the sky. I watched the battles your friend has been fighting.”
“They call them rallies, I think.”
“Never bandy words with a god. He may take offense.”
Morlock shrugged and opened his right hand.
“You are indifferent, I see. But in a way, we are old friends. And I often visited you in the Vargulleion.”
Morlock nodded. “Do you know Death?” he asked.
“No one really knows her; she is the strangest of the Strange Gods.”
“I think I met her, once.”
“'Met' is improper usage. She may have allowed you to perceive her manifestation. Yes, I visualize that. I don't understand it, though. Perhaps you can ask her about it when you see her.”
“You visualize my imminent death?”
“Not visualize, no. All things are in flux, and visualizations of the future are near valueless. Still, if I were a gambling god, I would not bet on your living to the next moonset.”
Morlock turned his face away and sensed without seeing War demanifest himself. When he looked back at the corridor, both War and Wurnafenglu were gone and the semiwolf watcher had returned and was staring at him, the long doglike jaw somewhat askew.
Morlock wondered why he was so impressed. Clearly he had heard stories of Khretvarrgliu. But it was not impossible he somehow felt without understanding the manifestation of the Strange God. He had few honor-teeth: one of those Wurnafenglu called the rabble.
“I am not angry at you,” he said to the guard in Sunspeech. “I am rarely angry. But when I am angry, I will blot out the sun. Do you understand me? I will blot out the sun.”
The watcher gaped at him, but did not respond. Morlock decided he would try again with the next shift.
Days passed. Eventually the day for his execution came. The corridor filled with watchers, most of whom stared at him in open terror: he had spent each shift working on their minds. His heart fell, though, when two watchers actually entered the cell. They weren't jailhouse guards. In fact, they were the pair he had met before, patrolling the Shadow Market and again on the stairs of the funicular tower: white-haired Okhurokratu and his scar-faced partner—Snellingu, Morlock remembered. Okhurokratu had chains in his hand; Snellingu a drawn sword.
“Be coming along, Khretvarrgliu,” said Snellingu.
Morlock rose to his feet, prepared to fight if there was a chance.
But there was no chance. Other guards with clubs entered, and they struck Morlock about the head and shoulders until he lost consciousness.
When he awoke, he was being carried up the long stairs of the funicular tower by the white-haired werewolf and the scar-faced one.
“Are you being awake?” grunted Snellingu. “Why don't you get walking, then?”
“Eh,” said Morlock. “Why not?”
He thought there might be more chance for escape while on his own feet, although it turned out he was wrong about that. His right hand was chained to his leg; his legs were chained to each other: there was barely enough slack for him to climb a step at a time. His left hand was free, of course, but there was little it could do. His cloak had been taken, and his ghostly arm was bare to the shoulder, looking strangely insubstantial in the fierce morning sun. They were already halfway up the long tower stairway: there was no chance of his getting away—unless he took the quick route, over the rail. He thought about it coldly, then decided against it. He wasn't the resigned type. He would put them to the trouble of killing him, if there was no other way he could inconvenience them.
He turned his eyes back up the stairwell and met the gaze of the white-haired guard who was leading the way upward. “That's right!” Okhurokratu said, in a relieved tone. “No point getting us into trouble.”
“Don't be trying to be talking him into it,” called Snellingu from below.
Morlock said nothing. He thought he heard someone saying, Kree-laow! Kree-laow! He looked into an unglazed window as they passed it on the stairwell but could see nothing within: the light difference was like a black curtain.
As they climbed, Morlock kept his eyes on the funicular ways. He would have liked to see the gears within the tower, but he thought he understood how the ropeways worked. There was one upward way and one downward way that were in constant motion. At regular intervals, crews atop the towers attached the rope-woven cars to the upward way and detached them from the downward way.
They finally reached the top. Morlock looked with interest at the crews hitching and unhitching the basketlike cars. When a car came down the way, the crew fixed it to the tower with an anchor like a great hook. The passengers got out and trudged away via the down staircase on the far side of the tower. Then the crew unhooked the car from the ropes and carried it over to the near side of the tower. They anchored it, hooked it to the upward rope, but did not fasten the hitch, so that the funicular ropes ran through the hooks without carrying the car away. They motioned the waiting passengers to embark. The waiting passengers were Morlock and his two guards: the way had apparently been cleared before them.
The crews were looking very unhappy in the fierce light and humid air, but they didn't appear to be slaves.
The guards sat down at some distance from him: white-haired Okhurokratu at the left-hand window, opposite to Morlock, scar-faced Snellingu with his back against the wicker-screened window in the front of the car. They had probably been warned against coming within reach of his ghostly hand. This was wise, as Morlock would certainly use it against them if he could. It had occurred to him that if he could distract one of them with it long enough to get a spear, he might kill them both, in which case matters would be very different indeed. He could not hope for real escape, but he did plan on causing harm to those who would kill him.