by James Enge
"May ghosts gnaw on the scaly cunning tail-without-a-body!" Ulugarriu spluttered, surfacing in the dark water, still wearing the day shape. "I missed him!"
The werewolf maker looked ruefully at the empty dripping net that had been woven to catch a god-then grinned a narrow, long wolvish grin, not wholly displeased, not wholly hostile. Ulugarriu liked a cunning opponent, and for that reason, if for no other, was a happy werewolf these nights.
his is the way the world ends: a wrinkled lip of blue stone protruding against an unending bitter void. That's the northern end, anyway.
Wisdom was tired of being a snake and wove a new manifestation of himself: a skeletal machine with shining crystalline spikes for eyes. It appeared between one instant and another atop the wreckage that had once been the anchor for the Soul Bridge, spanning the gap between this world-Wisdom's world, the only world in which he was allowed to be Wisdom-and another world entirely.
His presence occurred there on a morning when/where he visualized Death would be otherwise occupied.
The northern landscape was a marshy yellow wasteland, scattered with the decaying corpses of frost behemoths and ice jackals and other beasts who could only thrive in the bitter cold of the world's northern edge. But now the cold was gone, even in high winter, and the animals were dead, except for those that could burrow underground to find deep-hidden layers of frost and estivate there through the long deadly thaw.
The Strange Gods had killed this place, or their weapon against the werewolves had, creating the cruelly warm weather that devastated the oncethriving north. Wisdom had killed it, in a way. He hated that.
Death had brought the weapon to the Strange Gods; Death and her allies (especially Stupidity) had persuaded them to unleash it, binding themselves not to interfere with its course. Ulugarriu had foiled the weapon so far; the war between the gods and the werewolves was a long grinding stalemate. And now Death had escaped from the pact she herself had proposed, leaving the rest of the Strange Gods captive in it-and again Stupidity had been her ally. Now Death was excited, afraid, busy. She was up to something, and Wisdom (also afraid) needed to know what.
That was the need that brought him here. Wisdom's visualizations did not embrace where or how Death had acquired the instrument that was poisoning the north with heat. One possible explanation was that the instrument itself was not of the world, but from outside it.
As Wisdom stood on the anchor of the long-shattered Soul Bridge, he felt an alien presence. A set of unfamiliar symbols impressed themselves on his awareness.
He sensed nothing via his manifestation, nor was this part of his visualization. Somehow, this alien presence was speaking directly to his awareness.
It was what he had hoped for. He patiently signified a nonrandom pattern.
A new set of symbols impressed itself on him.
He signified a nonrandom pattern that followed logically from the previous one.
Time passed as Wisdom and the stranger exchanged symbologies: days, bright calls and dark calls, a month.
In the end he could not only understand the stranger but see it: it had acquired a fine layer of grit and moisture over its presence in the world. Wisdom detected a degree of increasing materiality, also, although he did not signal this to his conversational partner; he guessed it would consider the remark impolite.
Finally, Wisdom was able to ask, "Why are you here? We thought the Soul Bridge had been severed."
The response: "Why is not how. How: the Soul Bridge has been severed, but is not the only way to traverse the gulf. The-one-you-would-call-I will not discuss this further."
"And the why?"
"The implicature of events suggested to the-ones-you-would-call-us that a single instrument would be insufficient for your purposes. Do you wish another?"
"And will you-?"
"The-ones-you-would-call-us-"
"I not only would; I do. Will you supply another instrument?"
"If you require it."
"Why?"
"It furthers the interests of those-you-would-call-us."
"You have interests?" Wisdom wondered.
"Yes."
Wisdom pondered this. The entities on the far side of the broken Soul Bridge were hostile to all life that partook of materiality.
His visualizations were enriched-so much richer now than before. They were darker, though, much darker. He thought of Death and was sad.
"Your structure is elegant indeed," the alien remarked.
"Thank you."
"Innumerable nodes of force concatenate in your being in patterns clearly rational yet difficult to predict in a finite set of dimensions."
"Thank you."
"Yet there is an inelegant cluster of being that seems not to be fully patterned. It changes, but with earthy sluggishness. It is almost organic in its soft inflexibility."
"Thank you."
"If the-one-you-would-call-I understand this thrice-used symbol, you have used it with a slightly different import each time."
"You may well have understood it, then."
"Those-you-would-call-we can integrate the unpatterned to your patterning."
"No."
"It would be more elegant. You would process symbols more efficiently."
"No."
"You should not refuse. Elegance is better than inelegance. Pattern is better than unpattern. Efficiency is better than inefficiency."
"Efficiency cannot be calculated without reference to purpose."
"Conceded."
"Reduction of my unpattern to pattern would be contrary to my purpose. I believe the irregularities you refer to constitute my individual self. Sustaining that self as long as possible is at least one of my purposes."
"You have an individual self?" the alien signified doubtfully. "Is this more inefficiency in your symbology?"
"I do indeed have an individual self. You did not expect this?"
"No. This changes the implicature. You may not have another instrument."
"I don't want one anyway," Wisdom signified.
The alien ignored him thereafter, and he it.
The pattern in events was so clear, so dark. He was sorry for it, sorry for Death, whom he had once loved as the closest of his friends, when they were still mortal, all those ages ago. But he delighted in the intense detail of his divine visualization, also. Unclarity was almost gone. It was bracing, an icy relief, even though one small but personally important articulation of the web was tangled in an almost irresolvable coil.
He turned his back on the end of the world.
Standing close by him was Death, manifest as a many-legged spidery being with a dead woman's face.
"We were wrong to assume godhood," he signified to her. "Do you remember how you feared it? You were right to fear it."
"I will take away your fear," signified Death.
He raised his metal-like arms. "Let me take away yours. The apotheosiswheel that changed us into gods was largely my design. I am the only one who knows what has happened to you, and I am the only one who knows how to help you."
"I will take away your knowledge."
"I am willing to help you. I want to help you."
"I will take away your wanting, and all that you want."
His manifestation rejected her approach: the talic equivalent of a blow. Her manifestation flowed around it. She put her lifeless face against his metallic one in a cold kiss.
Wisdom's shining manifestation faded away, the talic components no longer organized by a divine intention.
Wisdom continued in the intentional design of events and in every mind that schemed and planned. In that sense, Wisdom continued to exist, and would always exist, until and unless the last mind faded away forever.
But the Wisdom who had been one of the Strange Gods, who had once been a man, who had walked in the long-vanished forests that once shadowed the western edge of the world and thought of ways he and his friends could escape mortality, that Wisdom was gone.
In this limited sense, Wisdom was dead.
okhlenu was riding the wicker boat across the swamp to Morlock's cave when he heard a dull thump. Looking up, he saw a great bloom of fire ascend into the afternoon sky, followed by trails of smoke and dust.
"He'll kill himself one day," Rokhlenu reflected, "and us with him."
Rokhlenu beached the boat on the marshy verge and climbed the wooden steps Morlock had built into the hillside.
The never-wolf maker was not in his cave, as Rokhlenu had expected, but Hrutnefdhu the pale castrato was. He was sitting cross-legged just inside the cave, sewing metal rings onto leather or cloth stretched over a wooden frame. Deeper in the cave, Hlupnafenglu was curled up on the ground, holding up playing cards one by one in front of the basket of talking flames.
"Gnyrrand Rokhlenu," Hrutnefdhu said.
"Old friend Hrutnefdhu," Rokhlenu replied.
The pale werewolf glanced about instinctively, as if to see if anyone was listening, and said, "You don't have to call me that, you know. It can't be good for your bite to have a plepnup among your old friends."
Rokhlenu had thought about that, and Wuinlendhono had made the same point to him several times. But the outliers were not the Aruukaiaduun: there were many semiwolves, many plepnupov, many irregular shapes and shadows among his constituency. He thought it would harm him politically to distance himself from Hrutnefdhu. Anyway, he wasn't accustomed to picking his friends according to political convenience.
"Or a never-wolf, either," Rokhlenu added, grinning. "Where is he, by the way?"
Hrutnefdhu dropped his eyes to his work, blushing a little. He was easily affected by the slightest show of loyalty or affection; Rokhlenu thought he must have led a grim sort of life.
"Over the hill," the pale werewolf replied. "Trying something new, he said."
"Is he still alive, do you think?"
Hrutnefdhu grinned a little and said, "It is dangerous. That's why he doesn't do it here."
Rokhlenu looked over at the weapons rack. There were about a dozen stabbing spears with shining glass gores, two glass short swords with sharp points and leather grips, and about a dozen glass knives. Rokhlenu picked up one of these and balanced it on one finger thoughtfully.
"Not too many today," he remarked.
"You said we had enough yesterday, so he started working on this other thing."
"Is what you're doing part of it?"
"Not exactly. This won't be done tonight."
"What is it?"
"He says he'll be able to fly with it."
"Oh?" Rokhlenu walked over and examined the thing. It looked like a pair of bat wings, scaled over with metal discs and bound to a wooden frame. The frame and the wings hid some gears and cables that mixed wood and glass. There were grips on the inside tips of the wings.
"I doubt it," he said finally, "but it's interesting. Why are you sewing those rings all over it? Armor?"
Hrutnefdhu had just grabbed one of the rings from an odd upside-down box on long stiltlike legs. He met Rokhlenu's eye and let go of the disc in his hand. It flew straight upward, as if it were falling. He grabbed it before it rose too far and grinned as Rokhlenu whistled admiringly.
"It's weird in here sometimes," Rokhlenu said. "Like the stories they tell about Ulugarriu's workshop."
"Ulugarriu couldn't do anything like this. Not that I've ever heard," Hrutnefdhu said, turning shyly back to his work.
The pale werewolf seemed embarrassed by something, so Rokhlenu decided to leave him alone. "I'll go see what Morlock is up to," he said aloud, and patted Hrutnefdhu on the shoulder as he passed out of the cave.
He met Morlock coming over the rise of the hill with a sizable boulder in his hands. He looked a little scorched, but otherwise undamaged. There were clouds of smoke and dust settling behind him.
"Let me help you with that," Rokhlenu called.
"You should stay back. This hillside was a silver dump, I think. There may be some of the metal in these dust clouds."
"Urrrm. I think you're right: I can smell the nasty stuff. Well, they had to put it somewhere, I guess."
He saw mummified bodies of werewolves-some in the day shape, some in the night shape-scattered about the dusty hillside. He pointed at them and said, "Why would they come here? If I can sense the silver, they must have been able to."
"They killed themselves, I think. Some of them were carrying things. Notes, mementoes, that sort of thing."
"Horrible. You picked a nasty place for your work, old friend."
"Well, I knew no one else would get hurt if it went wrong. As it almost did: phlogiston is difficult stuff, and I haven't the material to handle it safely."
"What would you need?"
"A lightning bolt or two. The more the better. I could fashion some aethrium instruments from them. But the storms lately have been surprisingly free from lightning, and the landscape hereabouts is totally free from aether deposits."
"I did not know that."
"I think someone collects them. Your folk hero Ulugarriu, perhaps."
"You think Ulugarriu actually exists?" Rokhlenu asked doubtfully.
Morlock nodded toward the moon-clock on the side of the volcano. Rokhlenu nodded slowly. Personally, he didn't believe in Ulugarriu. But someone had built the wonders of Wuruyaaria: if he wasn't called Ulugarriu, he was called something else.
"You're sure you don't want help with that rock?" Rokhlenu said as Morlock came nearer, out of the poisonous dust.
"It's not too bad," Morlock replied.
"The thing must be heavier than you are."
"Just about. But there's something holding it up." He lifted the boulder high, and on its underside Rokhlenu saw what looked like two metal footprints, affixed to the rock with crystalline spikes.
"What are those?"
"Soles for my new shoes," Morlock said, lowering the boulder.
"Ghost. How many have you got?"
"Just the pair. At that, I had to sacrifice a lot of metal and phlogiston I was planning to use for the wings."
"I saw those. Will that thing work?"
"No idea. The crows think it will, or say that they think it will, but crows aren't always reliable. They may just want to see someone crash in it."
Rokhlenu understood that; he'd known a lot of crows. They'd probably laughed watching the werewolves eating silver. He thought about them and didn't feel like laughing.
"Why do you suppose people kill themselves?" he asked Morlock.
"Pain," Morlock said. "Loneliness. Shame. Anger."
Rokhlenu waited, but Morlock didn't say any more. He thought about the singer he had known who ate wolfbane, and he thought about Morlock's hand. He knew it wasn't any better: in fact, Morlock always wore a glove on his left hand now to hide how bad it was getting.
Rokhlenu had an odd feeling Morlock knew what he was thinking about, but he wasn't saying anything, and Rokhlenu couldn't think of anything to say. He grabbed the other side of the boulder, just to keep from being entirely useless, and they carried it back to the cave together.
"Liudhleeo says," he said when they set the rock down in the cave, "that we need to work on Hlupnafenglu soon-if you want to take care of that before we leave tonight."
"Yes," Morlock said. "If one of us is killed tonight, the task may prove impossible."
Hrutnefdhu had put away his metallic thread and ivory needle and was folding up the stilts under his upside-down box of rings. "I'll take him over to the lair-tower," he said to the others. "Liudhleeo will want to do the work over there. She hates it over here."
"The nearness of that silver, I think," Morlock said, and Rokhlenu turned his head in agreement. Different werewolves were sensitive to silver in different degrees, and Liudhleeo was more sensitive than most.
Hrutnefdhu was getting Hlupnafenglu's attention gently and patiently. He persuaded the groggy red werewolf with words and gestures to rise up and follow him. The red werewolf shuffled docilely along after Hrutnefdhu for a few steps.
Then he seemed to wake up a little more. He cast his mad golden gaze around the cave, looking at Morlock, the nexus of speaking flames, the other two werewolves, Morlock again.
"It's all right," Morlock said, meeting his eyes. "It's all right. We will follow you over. We'll see you soon. Go with your friend Hrutnefdhu. Go with him. We'll follow."
It was not clear how much the crazy werewolf understood. But Morlock's words or tone seemed to settle him somehow. He followed Hrutnefdhu out of the cave into the afternoon light and they went together, the pale werewolf and the red one, down the wooden stairs to the wickerwork boat.
When they were gone, Rokhlenu turned to Morlock and said, "I want to see your hand."
Morlock considered the matter for a moment, and then he peeled off the glove without saying anything.
The hand was gray and dead looking. The fingers were the worst. And their tips looked not so much dead as ... ghostly. They seemed to be translucent, almost transparent.
"Does it hurt?" Rokhlenu asked.
"Yes," said Morlock. "But most unpleasant is the lack of control. I-I'm not used to that."
Rokhlenu nodded grimly. "Did she do this to you? Liudhleeo? If she did-"
"I don't think so. I think it was from that spike that was in my head. Part of it may still be in there. Or, while it was in me, it did some damage that is killing me by inches."
"You think it will kill you, then?"
"Probably. Liudhleeo calls it `ghost sickness.' She has heard of it but never seen it."
"The Goweiteiuun have the best ghost-sniffers; maybe they can do something."
"So Liudhleeo says."
"And there's the Shadow Market in the low city, just inside the walls. Lots of crazy sorcerers work that place. Half of them are quacks and the rest are crooks, but they might know something useful."
"So Hrutnefdhu says."
Rokhlenu would have cursed the illness, the Sardhluun ghost-sniffers, Liudhleeo, Hrutnefdhu, and all of the sorcerers in the Shadow Market, but it would do no good. So he punched the wall of the cave instead. Morlock said nothing.
The moment passed. Rokhlenu picked up one of the swords from the weapon rack and said, "Can I take this? I prefer a sword to a spear, when it comes to a fight."