The Wolf Age
Page 15
"I'm the one that needs the help. I mean, you could see the water through the weave of the basket."
"Did he explain how he did it?"
"He didn't seem to think it was a secret, but there was stuff he didn't know how to say in Sunspeech or Moonspeech, and I didn't know how to tell him how to say it. I think he was saying that he tricked it-said the water was `gullible.' Only a little at a time, though. `You can't argue with a lake,' he said. `Even a pond can be stubborn.' But I don't know if he really knew what all the words meant."
"Or you didn't know what he meant."
"And I never will. Anyway, he dumps out the basket into one of the channels, and the murky water runs downhill, like you'd expect, and it hits the mirror gate at the bottom and it runs uphill. The muck mostly didn't want to travel uphill-Morlock says earth is less gullible than water-and after the water had been up and down the hill a couple times it was clear as air, clearer than the air usually is around this swamp. He kept dumping baskets of water in the channels until he had a regular brook running upside and downside. We sponged off with the clean water and drank deep-drank our body weight in water, I think. It was around that time the pl-Hrutnefdhu showed up. He came screaming through the swamp like a chicken on fire, and he ran up and down alongside the channels a couple times, and he wanted to be introduced to each flame personally, and he danced around the gold as if he had invented it personally, and he was pretty excited about the whole business, I guess. Morlock and him talked about stuff for half-forever, it seemed like."
Rokhlenu reflected that Olleiulu was more comfortable with Morlock the bloodstained beast slayer than Morlock the work-stained maker and friend of low-status citizens.
"Anyway, the sun was getting pretty low by then. I was going to bring Hlupnafenglu back with me, but he wouldn't leave the flames-just wanted to sit next to them and stare at them. So I came away with the gold."
"How'd you get back across the swamp water?"
"Wickerwork boat," Olleiulu said glumly. "I-well, I had something to do. He had the boat and some other stuff done when I got back. His hands were moving all the time, all the time."
Rokhlenu wondered what Olleiulu had had to do, but it seemed like an unhappy memory, so he didn't press him on it. Instead he changed the topic to the negotiations for the marriage settlement.
The sun was setting, and they were still deep in consultation when a messenger wolf with human fingers ran up to tell Rokhlenu that Wuinlendhono needed him. There was an embassy from the Sardhluun Pack in First Wolf's Lair: they said they wanted their prisoners back.
nce a snake, resting in the cool shadows of a marble quarry, was approached by a werewolf holding a box made of light, glass, and certain heretical opinions.
The werewolf, still in the day shape, leaped to trap the snake; but the snake, who was Wisdom, transited to the other side of the quarry.
"Ulugarriu," the snake said, condescending to speak with its mouth, you will never trap me that way."
"Won't I?" Ulugarriu replied.
"No. My visualization of totality warned me of your approach. Your war against the gods is worse than folly, maker."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Wisdom. "It grieves me that we're enemies-"
"Does it?"
"-but I see that the folly has eaten you deeply-"
"Has it?"
"Be that way, then, you fur-faced ill-born," the snake hissed, and summoned ramparts of madness to attend him.
"I am not wearing my night shape," Ulugarriu observed, edging closer through the quarry shadows. "If I were, I would sing insults back at you. It would be a relief to my spirit, for I fear you. But why do you insult me? Does a god fear a fur-faced ill-born?"
But the snake was done with talking. He raised up a rampart of phobia between him and the werewolf.
Ulugarriu hesitated, and then took from the box a cloak of red-eyed anger. The werewolf donned the cloak and began to force a way through the rampart of phobia.
Wisdom then realized he did feel a little fear. While Ulugarriu was still entangled in the phobia, he transited to the far end of the quarry.
He would have transited farther, but he found he could not. His passage through space-time was obstructed somehow.
Ulugarriu surpassed the rampart of phobia and ran down the quarry toward Wisdom.
The snake raised up a rampart of delusions to block the werewolf.
The werewolf drew a two-edged blade, one edge deeply serrated with ugly irregular saw-teeth of evidence. Using this, Ulugarriu patiently began to saw through the delusions.
"Don't you wish to know why I'm here?" Ulugarriu asked as the sawtooth blade ground away at Wisdom's defense.
The snake knew that the werewolf was asking questions to trap him; it was an ancient way to get to wisdom. But it was a game his chosen nature compelled him to play.
"Yes," the snake replied. "Tell me, if you will."
"I will, indeed. Wisdom, this instrument your people have unleashed against my people-"
"You brought it on yourselves! You most of all!"
"Yes, me most of all. And so if I am to defeat this instrument-"
"You can't. Our united visualizations agree. Wuruyaaria will be destroyed."
Ulugarriu laughed strangely. "Wisdom! Wisdom! If only we'd had this conversation a year or two ago! How happy I could have made you with my despair. But now something has changed. Is it some new factor, not present in your visualizations or my mantic spells? Is it something about the nature of your instrument? (I hate that thing so much. How I long to kill it!) Or are your visualizations no longer united? My insight detects some flaw, some sort of disunity. I think you will tell me. I think you must tell me."
Wisdom belatedly realized that Ulugarriu had surpassed the rampart of delusion and was dangerously close to him. He summoned up a rampart of delirium to defend himself.
Ulugarriu patiently reversed the two-edged blade. The other edge was as smooth as the first was rough: this was a glittering razor of rational distinction. The werewolf whittled away at the wall of delirium, and now Wisdom began to feel something like despair. His only hope was to wait until nightfall. Whatever Ulugarriu had used to confine him, the change of sunlight to moonlight would be in his favor.
"How did you confine me here?" he asked Ulugarriu, hoping to gain time and knowledge.
The werewolf chuckled. "You're hoping nightfall will save you. No, dear Wisdom: it won't. I wrapped this locus of space-time with a four-dimensional coil, woven of dictates from the Aesir. It was a lot of trouble to collect them, but I knew it would be worth it someday. We are bound here in this stone vagina, gaping in the ground. The sun will not set, nor will you leave, until a certain thing happens. So it is not a matter of time after all. There are powers greater than time."
Ulugarriu had surpassed the rampart of delirium.
Wisdom enmeshed the werewolf in the rampart of mania. The werewolf reversed the cloak of red-eyed anger, and it became a cloak of black-eyed gloom.
Wisdom, smiling fiercely, resummoned the rampart of mania as the rampart of depression. Ulugarriu, weighed down by the cloak of gloom, labored sluggishly in the dark wall of depression.
Wisdom was dismayed. Lesser beings would have been instantly crushed by the weight Ulugarriu was enduring.
"What is it you want from me?" Wisdom asked.
The werewolf gasped something between a sob and a laugh. "The instrument! The instrument! Stupidity didn't devise it. Mercy had no hand in it. It has the stink of death and cunning on it. I think you and your friend Death made it, and I can find out from you how to break it. If I don't learn that, I will learn other things. I love to learn."
Ulugarriu was near, then, very near, moving slowly because of the weight of darkness but still moving. The werewolf reached out with the box made of light and glass and heresy.
Then behind the werewolf's darkness was a greater darkness. It wore the shape of a woman, except that she had many branching arms and legs.
"I killed the Aesir," signified Death, and the werewolf shook with the cold indifferent force of her signs. "Now their intentions are one with their hopes and fears: nothing. As yours shall be, wolf."
For answer, the werewolf opened the box. From it came the screams of a goddess: Justice. Wisdom quailed utterly under the assault, and even Death was stunned for a moment. When they recovered, the werewolf maker had escaped.
"Thanks, Death," Wisdom signified.
"We were friends once," Death observed, and began to demanifest.
"Wait!" Wisdom signified.
"For no one," signified Death. "Not even you." Then she was no longer manifest.
Wisdom withdrew his manifestation into the darkness underground and brooded there.
What the werewolf had said was true. The instrument did have the stink of cunning and death on it. Death had proposed the instrument to the Strange Gods, but now Death was free from the sworn intention of the other gods. If there was cunning here, it was not his. He spent some time unren- dering his visualization of the all and rerendering it.
He did not know and he needed to know. He was no god of wisdom. Also, Death was afraid, and whatever frightened her terrified him.
bout sunset, Morlock and Hrutnefdhu had just given up their last attempt to dislodge Hlupnafenglu from his perch beside the choir of flames. They left some dried meat and cheese (which, remarkably, he did not seem to be interested in) and a blanket against the night's chill-assuming there was any chill present in the warm air of this freakish winter. Then they took the wickerwork boat back across the open swamp.
The sun had long since disappeared behind the slope above, but now the curtain of sunlight withdrew over the edge of the world and the single eye of the second moon, Horseman, glared down on the world from a suddenly dark sky misty with clouds.
The transition struck Hrutnefdhu midway through their passage, and he writhed, screaming, into his night shape, almost overturning the little boat. Morlock was distracted by the effort to keep the boat upright and didn't note the details of Hrutnefdhu's transformation. But Hrutnefdhu was a wolf before they reached the far side.
He had been wearing a sort of kilt as his only garment, and now he stood on all fours, staring at it bemusedly. Morlock scooped it up and said he would carry it back to the den.
Hrutnefdhu sang his thanks and leapt out of the boat. Morlock followed, relieved to be on dry land again: he didn't like boat journeys, even as brief as this one.
Hrutnefdhu sang as they were approaching the rickety tenement-lair that they were happy to have Khretvarrgliu with them. Hrutnefdhu had worried that he might want to stay in the cave.
Morlock had considered this, but he didn't say so. The pale mottled werewolf had obviously wanted him to room with him and his mate quite badly. Maybe it gave them status, or maybe there was another reason. Morlock liked him and didn't want to displease him. Rather than say all this, he said, "Eh."
Hrutnefdhu laughed snufflingly and sang that Morlock need not be so ghost-bitten wordy; he could hardly keep up with the flow of eloquence.
"Eh," said Morlock. Then a practical matter occurred to him, and he reached into a pocket. "What do I owe you both? I have some gold left-"
Hrutnefdhu turned on him, barking furiously. He would kill-kill-kill Morlock if he said anything more about money. Never-wolves should stick to grunting; it was the only kind of conversation they were good for.
Morlock sat down beside the pale werewolf on the wooden street. "I spoke badly, it's true. Friendship is not bought and sold. We call it `blood' in my people-blood chosen-not-given. And blood has no price."
Hrutnefdhu wondered why he talked of money at all, then, and why he didn't keep his stupid flat ape-face shut, then; that was what Hrutnefdhu wanted to know. (His barking was still a little hysterical.)
Morlock waved his hands. "Things cost money. Don't you pay money for shelter, for food, for water-for everything but air, here? I have gold. I only wish to share. Why should I have money, and you not. Eh?"
The pale werewolf settled down. He sat beside Morlock and he said that things were fine just now, and that when money was needed they would treat Morlock's money as their own. Would that suit him? Could they stop talking about this ugly subject now?
Morlock nodded, and they sat there in silence for a time as Hrutnefdhu calmed down.
Hrutnefdhu finally sang that his blood was a little wild; he had not slept in the afternoon, as maybe he should have done. His afternoon had been frustrating beyond that. He asked Morlock not to think badly of him.
"Shut your maw," said Morlock agreeably, and was about to get up when Hrutnefdhu held out a paw, and Morlock sat back and waited.
Hrutnefdhu asked if Morlock had thought they would die, back in the tunnel leading out of the Vargulleion.
"I wasn't thinking very clearly then," Morlock said, remembering the night as if it were years or centuries ago. "I did expect us to be killed before we escaped."
Hrutnefdhu admitted that he had planned to ditch Morlock and Rokhlenu during the escape. The last thing he expected was to find himself fighting in the tunnel.
Morlock opened his hands and waited. There was obviously something Hrutnefdhu wanted to tell him.
The pale werewolf sang that he had meant to run away, but there was never a moment when the way was clear. When he found himself enmeshed in the tunnel, he thought they might fight their way through. Then, as time fled before them and the night wore away, he was no longer sure. When he was wounded, so badly wounded, he was sure he would die: there was no moonlight in the tunnel to heal him, or even maintain his life. He had felt himself dying, but he had gone on fighting anyway. It was not the song he would have sung of his life, but that was where it had led him, and he found a kind of contentment in knowing exactly how the rest of his life would pass. Then the enemy line broke, and many trampled Hrutnefdhu in their eagerness to escape, and his limbs were broken. He could see life ahead of him, but knew he would never reach it. But others had, and that was enough. As he was closing his eyes, he felt Khretvarrgliu's grip on his neck, dragging him toward life and light. Coming out of the tunnel, killing the sureness of his death, was like a second birth, a new life.
Morlock didn't know what to say. He patted the pale werewolf awkwardly on the shoulder.
Hrutnefdhu demanded to know why he had done it. Hrutnefdhu was just aplepnup, a trustee who had betrayed his trust, a citizen of no particular bite in prison or anywhere. Why had Khretvarrgliu killed his death, dragged him from death to life?
"Eh," said Morlock reluctantly, wishing he had a better answer to such an obviously important question, "I never asked myself why. It was us against them. You were-you are-one of us, not one of them. That's all."
The pale mottled wolf looked at him with pale moonlit eyes and sang no more of the matter.
They ascended the narrow dark stairs, littered with werewolves drinking smoke from fuming bowls, in defiance of the notice by the door. Liudhleeo was not in the apartment when they arrived. Hrutnefdhu suggested that Morlock wait there while he went and saw about the early night meal.
Morlock didn't argue; the long day had worn him ragged. He lay down for a moment on the rug where he had awoken that morning, and a moment later he was asleep.
It was still night when he awoke again: Liudhleeo was entering the apartment. She still wore her day shape. He rolled to his feet, but she carolled, "Oh, be still you silly ape. You must be half dead. I heard about some of the things you were up to today."
He sat back down on the rug and nearly lay back down, but restrained himself.
"How are you?" she asked, sitting beside him on the rug. "That's a technical question; remember that I'm your healer."
"Eh."
"Oh, blood-drinking, giggling, hairy ghosts. Is that all you have to say? Off with your clothes, then; I'll have to
find out for myself."
Morlock nearly struck her hands away: the indignity of it reminded him a little of the prison. But she was his healer and Hrutnefdhu's mate. He took his clothes off, with her assistance.
She looked him over briefly, and then spent a good deal more time smelling him.
"How are you, really?" she said. "How is your Sight? You haven't fully recovered, have you? Don't spare my feelings; I want to know what's happening."
"My Sight is much impaired," he admitted reluctantly. "I had to go into full withdrawal simply to release some phlogiston from some wood this afternoon."
"I wish I knew what that meant. No, don't bother explaining just yet. I take it that this is something that you used to do easily, and now is markedly more difficult."
"Yes."
"Tell me something, and this too is a technical question, so be absolutely honest and as specific as you can. Is this terseness, this reluctance to part with a syllable more than you absolutely must-is it a relatively new feature of your psyche and behavior? Is it something that developed over the last year when the spike was in your skull?"
"No."
"Ghost. Well at least you're no crazier than you used to be. Am I right?"
"As far as I can tell. Of course ..."
"If you mean, a crazy person wouldn't know he was crazy, I'm afraid that's not true. Many crazy people are dreadfully aware of their decaying faculties, at least intermittently, and so did you seem to be before I pulled that spike out. So we'll call the operation at least a partial success. Well, you still appear very undernourished, and I think that magical healing goo has some sort of unpleasant aftereffect, but apart from that you seem to be in fairly good shape for a rather battered never-wolf of-how many years?"
"I don't keep count anymore. Between four and five hundred."
"Oh, don't tell me, then. But this is a very poor occasion to practice your wit at my expense. I'm your healer, for ghost's sake. Is there anything else? There is, isn't there? Tell me."
"I'm dropping a lot of things with my left hand," he admitted.