Wolf Age, The

by James Enge

  With his Sight in its current decrepit state, it was even harder for him to dismiss a vision than to summon one. Slowly, deliberately, he rewove the ragged threads of his conscious awareness. As he became more and more aware of physical pain, he knew he was getting closer to escape from the vision that had saved his life.

  He finally opened his eyes. The world was coal black, edged with burning red. Even without being in rapture, he could feel the swarms of impulse clouds surrounding him. If they had been water, he would have been drowning in them.

  He sat up slowly. His body ached a bit, but all the parts that were still there still worked. Tyrfing was still strapped to his shoulder. If someone had tried to kill him, they had failed. He took his time about getting to his feet: there was no hurry, since no one seemed to be trying to kill him at the moment.

  The light was dim and bloodred, coming from a distant source that (Morlock thought) was toward the east. Morlock had spent much of his life underground, and he thought he knew what the light was from. He reached into a pocket of his cloak and drew out a cold-light, tapping one end gently on the pommel of his sword to activate it. By its cold moonlike rays, Morlock picked his way through the field of boulders he found himself among, trending westward—at any rate, away from the fiery light.

  He spent a long time stumbling about in the great chamber he found himself in at the base of the volcano. He did not find any vents or air currents that suggested to him a way out. He did form the tentative conclusion that the floor of the cavern, despite its unfinished appearance, was artificial, perhaps the roof to a cavern still further below. And he definitely discovered that it was littered with corpses. Some were relatively fresh; some skeletal; some mummified; several had turned to stone.

  This was all very bad, Morlock thought. If he was going to a dangerous confrontation, he preferred to have a line of retreat ready. Still, there was at least one other possibility open.

  Light footfalls approached him, over and among the boulders and littered corpses. He felt an incongruous lightness of spirit hearing these sounds: it had been centuries since he had heard their like. But they did indicate the presence of danger, so he hid the cold-light under his cloak.

  The footfalls fell silent. Then Morlock heard them again: moving away this time, hesitantly at first, then with more confidence and speed. Morlock didn't try to keep up, knowing that was impossible, but did struggle to keep within earshot.

  Presently they came closer to the source of the red light, and Morlock caught glimpses of his quarry against it. It was a tall beast, with shoulders about as high as Morlock's, with goatlike legs and body. It was most dangerous, of course, because of the long tapered horn that sprouted from its forehead.

  The source of the fiery light was a river of molten stone. They were fairly close to it now, enough so that Morlock felt uncomfortably warm.

  The unicorn began to wander aimlessly up and down the banks of the burning river. Morlock peered out from behind a boulder. There was a bridge, glittering white in its own light, that passed over the river. The unicorn was pacing up and down in front of the bridge, guarding it. The beast was bloodred, but for its black wisping beard and black-slotted eyes, but apart from that it resembled the Swift People Morlock had known (mostly from a distance) in the mountains of his youth.

  It was Ulugarriu's doorkeeper, Morlock guessed, to keep out any unwanted visitor who made his way down here.

  The unicorn stepped lightly over to the bank of the river and lowered its head to drink from the molten stone.

  Morlock thought this a good time to try the bridge. He left his boulder behind and stealthily made his way toward the bridgehead.

  Not stealthily enough, though. The unicorn lifted its head and swung about on guard. Fire dripped from its black beard; the black slots in its red-on-red eyes fixed on Morlock; its red spiraling horn was aimed directly at his chest.

  It did not charge. When Morlock moved to one side, it moved to keep its horn pointed at Morlock. When he took a step forward, it took a step forward. When he stepped back, it did nothing.

  Morlock was puzzled. Before, when he was so far distant from the bridge that he couldn't see it, the unicorn had seen him or sensed him and moved to attack. Now that he was actually near the bridge the unicorn guarded, its behavior was merely defensive. It would not let him pass, but it did not attack.

  Then he realized: it was the cold-light, of course. He pulled it out from under his cloak—and was nearly stabbed through the heart by the unicorn, bearing down on him, glaring with silent rage. Morlock swiftly hid the light again. The unicorn stopped in its tracks. Its equine nostrils trembled with frustration or fury. It backed away slowly, staring at Morlock, waiting to see what he would do.

  Morlock waited until it had backed up to the bridgehead and stopped. He stared off idly into space for a time. Then he spun about, snatched the cold-light from his cloak, and threw it as far as he could away from the river.

  The red unicorn charged past him, furiously intent on the inimical light.

  Morlock ran like a thief to the bridgehead, then up on the arching white bridge. The cool glowing light protected him from the killing heat of the river, as he had hoped.

  Beyond the red river were dark grassy fields scattered with pale flowers like asphodels. Morlock moved cautiously here; the light was dim, and there were shapes moving about.

  When he was well into the dark fields, he approached one of the people wandering there. It was a citizen wearing the day shape; his face was oddly familiar, but Morlock was not sure in that dim light if he knew him.

  The citizen did not seem to see him at all. He turned and walked off, his indifferent face dimly lit by the distant bridge and river.

  Morlock walked on. The shadowy figures paid attention neither to him nor to each other. At times they bent down on their hands and knees and grazed like cattle on the faintly glowing asphodels. Morlock detoured around one of these. Glancing down as he passed, he recognized the pale mottled face. It was Hrutnefdhu.

  “Old friend,” Morlock whispered. “You are alive. You are alive after all.”

  But he could not believe it as he said it. Hrutnefdhu's empty eyes looked at nothing in particular as he chewed his cud of flowers.

  Morlock turned away. But now he had a reason to look at every passing shadowy face.

  He found her by the banks of a narrow stream, near the end of the asphodel fields. Her cupped hands were full of water, and she was lapping delicately at it with her tongue.

  He knelt on one knee and touched her russet hair with his right hand. “Liudhleeo,” he whispered. The name meant She-who-remembers-best in the werewolf languages. He asked her desperately, “Liudhleeo. Liudhleeo. Don't you remember me? Don't you remember the city, the world above—the sun, the moons, the stars?”

  Liudhleeo continued to drink as if he were not there. When the water was gone, she opened her hands and stood. She walked away, her lips wet and motionless, without ever having looked at him.

  He stayed kneeling there beside the stream for a long time, his head bowed. Finally he said to himself, “If this is life, it seems worse than death.”

  He stood and stepped forward into the stream. About midway across, he began to feel that he should really go back—that he must, in fact, go back. The water was up to his knees by then. He ignored the impulse and strode forward; the odd feeling faded, disappeared entirely as he stepped out of the water on the other side.

  He squelched over the shoulder of the hill that faced him on the other side.

  Beyond the hill was a sort of house. The walls were like slabs of brownish ivory bone; there were no doors, exactly, but there were gaps in between the bones. The roof was a kind of canopy of glowing moss.

  He walked up to the house and hesitated before it. A voice called out to him from one of the gaps, “Well, you made it this far, damn you. You might as well come in.”

  The voice was oddly pitched, not exactly a male's or a female's.

  Mor
lock stepped through the gap and found himself in the familiar confines of a maker's workshop. The making was different than any art he normally practiced, but he could not mistake the lighting, the long tables, the racks of tools, the posture of the citizen who was bending over some sort of bowl, incising its broad rim with Sunspeech ideograms.

  “Give me a moment, old friend,” called Ulugarriu. “The image in this bowl of dreams simply won't come clear, and it will be rather important to our conversation. That is, if you don't intend to simply strike me dead.”

  Morlock walked closer. He eyed the long lean build of the maker, as much as could be seen in the folds of the long silk gown. He examined the russet hair, the pale mottled features, the dark eyes. Ulugarriu was conscious of his inspection and seemed to enjoy it. The werewolf maker finished the task at hand, gave a satisfied look into the bowl of dreams, and turned to face Morlock.

  “I can't tell,” Morlock admitted at last. “Which one are you? Are you Hrutnefdhu, or Liudhleeo?”

  “I'm both, of course, and others besides.”

  “God Avenger.”

  “Please don't talk in that filthy way. I know you don't mean any offense, but still. Foul language upsets me a little.”

  Morlock shook his head, dismissing the issue. “Both is neither,” he said.

  “I don't see why. I was really there, you know—all the time.”

  “Through your meat-puppets. Is that what those things on the field are?”

  “In a manner of speaking. The real meat-puppets, as you call them so gracelessly, are the things I make for the were-rats.”

  “Good of you.”

  “Were-rats are people, too, and they are often helpful for my purposes, which is more than I can say for some. But the bodies on the asphodel fields I grew from seeds of my own flesh. I let them wander the asphodel fields when I'm not using them, because it's better for them; meat-puppets I keep in vats sealed with gel until they're needed. They're not me. But the simulacra really are me, extensions of myself, and I can direct my intentions through them. And that is how I usually operate: the way we spoke on the airships. It's been ages since my body here has felt the light of the moon or the sun.”

  “Meat-puppets.”

  “Shh. You don't really understand yet, Morlock. I was afraid to appear before you through a mere simulacrum—I was afraid your Sight would sense my absence and the game would be over. I don't have much in the way of Sight myself, and I don't fully understand it. In extreme cases, I can have my skull and heart transferred to a simulacrum, and that is how you knew me, as both Liudhleeo and Hrutnefdhu. That was the reason for Liudhleeo's late-night excursions and Hrutnefdhu's habit of early rising—so that I would not have to operate one simulacrum by remote while inhabiting the other. I was afraid your Sight would catch me at it. But if one or both were sleeping, you would not expect them to be fully present.”

  Morlock closed his eyes, remembering. How often had he seen his two friends together, and awake? Not often, if ever. “God Sustainer. How blind I was.”

  “Please: I asked you already about the language. And it's not your fault about not seeing. One of my best magics is a kind of indirection, and I deploy it constantly when I'm, you know, up there. It has been very useful in my conflict with, well, certain enemies I shall tell you of.”

  “You mean the Strange Gods, I suppose.”

  Ulugarriu's dark eyes glared at him. “God. God damn it. Do you already know every God-bitten thing I was going to tell you? If I'm not a God's brach-bastard of a bastard's brach! God! God! God!”

  Morlock disliked to see Ulugarriu upset, probably because he was reminded so much of his two lost friends. He reached out and put his hand on the hysterical werewolf's shoulder.

  This calmed Ulugarriu down. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just had a series of surprises planned, leading to a conversational coup of some importance, and you've screwed my plans already. Well, what else is new? May I ask how you know about the Strange Gods? Have you seen them?”

  “At least two. I saw Death in the Bitter Water early last year, and War in the jail in Wuruyaaria on the day of my execution.”

  “Oh yes. You killed Wurnafenglu, didn't you? Wish I'd seen that with my own eyes. I hated that evil son-of-a-brach-and-her-bastard.”

  “Who didn't?”

  “He didn't, but he was about it. War and Death, you say? Not Wisdom?”

  “Just War and Death. Why?”

  “I'm working on a theory about Wisdom, that's all. He ceased appearing in my visualizations some time ago. I think Death may have killed him, which would be very interesting indeed. Do you know anything about their plans for the city?”

  “They both said something, but I didn't pay any attention.”

  “Now that was a mistake, my friend. War is a liar, it's true, and proud of it, which is worse, but on the rare occasions Death speaks it's wise to listen. Even her lies can be revealing, because she's so bad at it.”

  “I didn't pay any attention because I don't care. If Wuruyaaria is wiped off the map it's nothing to me.”

  “But…but…your friends live there!”

  Morlock met the other maker's eyes. “Not so many as before. And the others can live somewhere else, if need be.”

  “I knew I should have killed you. I should have outright killed you when I had the chance. You don't care about anyone but yourself. Oh, shut up, Ulugarriu, shut up.”

  The werewolf maker looked away from Morlock for a time. Eventually Ulugarriu said in a subdued voice, “I know that's not true. I should know. On that night, on New Year's Night, I really thought I was going to die in that stupid corridor. After all my long life, and all the things I'd done, and all the things I still might do, to die that stupid way, because I couldn't nerve myself to run away in front of you and poor Rokhlenu. And you saved me. And I…I…I loved you for that. For other things, too. But to you. To you it was like nothing. It was just a thing that you did, like eating or breathing or cutting your fingernails. On the rare occasions you bother to groom yourself, you ragged bastard.”

  Morlock found that the enemy he had come to kill was embracing him and sobbing. Ulugarriu's head was pressed against his head as if listening to his heart. Liudhleeo had sometimes done the same. He stood there and waited for the other maker to calm down.

  “You really don't know what's going on, do you?” Ulugarriu asked. “Or is it that you don't care? Why don't you ask? Why don't you ask? Don't you care? I know you don't care.”

  “Ask what?”

  “Whether I am male or female.”

  “Then. Are you male or female?”

  “Neither.” Ulugarriu looked up into his face and hissed the words. “That's what you'd say. Because both is neither.”

  “Eh.”

  Ulugarriu leapt back and laughed bitterly. “Oh, I was wondering where we'd hear that one! Concise, but meaningless, the inarticulate maker's all-purpose reply! Stock up now, folks, supplies are limited! Brilliant! Brilliant!”

  He looked at Ulugarriu and shrugged.

  “Oh, god. Oh, ghost. Never mind. Yes, my old friend, I was born with both male and female genitalia. But don't worry. My parents followed the traditional practice of giving me before puberty to the ghost-sniffer, who applied the traditional remedy of castrating me with a silver knife and searing the wound with poison. This will normally kill the child, solving the problem for everyone, don't you see, but I was always an inconsiderate brach and I lived. I was afterward some use to the ghost-sniffer, as acolyte and as sexual object, but only when he was too smoke-drunk not to find me disgusting.”

  Ulugarriu was silent for a time and then said, “I killed them all, of course, in time. My parents, the ghost-sniffer, the females who held me down while he cut me, everyone who watched and laughed and gave helpful advice. They are all dead, and the only reason I regret it is because I can't kill them again and again.”

  Morlock nodded grimly.

  “Oh,” said Ulugarriu, “you don't really mean tha
t. What you want to say is—”

  “I say what I want to say,” Morlock interrupted. “What I do not say, I don't want anyone to say for me, particularly when they will blame me for it. You say you are my friends, Hrutnefdhu and Liudhleeo. Would they oblige me in this?”

  “Liudhleeo would oblige you in any way at all,” said Ulugarriu, “as you know. I am sorry, though. This is how I live, you see: through many masks and under many names. I have not spoken to someone openly, as myself, in oh so long. Except for the Strange Gods, and only then when I couldn't avoid it.”

  Ulugarriu put a long pale hand over a red mouth and laughed silently. “But it's so funny. You still don't know whether to kiss me or kill me, whether to call me he or she. There's no word for what I am, because all of you pretend I don't exist, that people like me don't exist.”

  “I would refer to you as ‘they,' if I were talking to someone else about you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “That's what we do in the Wardlands when someone has more than one sex.”

  Ulugarriu looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Yurr. They. They. I think I like that.” Ulugarriu pressed their hands on their temples. “There are so many people in here. And, oh honey, they cause me a lot of trouble sometimes. Excuse me.”

  Ulugarriu fled up the long room and out a side doorway, leaving Morlock alone in the workshop. When they did not soon return, Morlock found a stool and sat down on it. Soon he was laying his head down on a nearby table, and very soon he was asleep.

  He woke on a couch that smelled intensely of cloves and faintly of more intimate scents. He had no clear memory of how he had gotten there, or of the recent past. “Liudhleeo,” he said sleepily.

  “I am here,” Ulugarriu said.

  Memory stabbed through him. He sat up, propping himself on his good arm.

  Ulugarriu was sitting next to him on the couch (clearly, their own couch). They held a wooden bowl out to him. “I don't suppose you've eaten much, lately.”