The Wolf Age

by James Enge

  He came to the place where he felt the impulse clouds swirling through the air like leaves in autumn. He lay down among the stones and the corpses and, holding tightly to Tyrfing as his focus, summoned the rapture of vision.

  It did not come easily, but he was in no hurry this time. He focused and unfocused. He thought and he dreamed. He unwove his consciousness and in its place spun a vision as deep as his wounded powers could permit.

  When he was deep in rapture, he began to draw impulse clouds to him. They flocked to him like birds to scattered grain, eager to be directed by a living will. When he was densely cocooned with the shadowy clouds, he directed them to lift him upward.

  As he rose through the cone of the dead volcano, he saw much with his inward eye that had been hidden before. He saw a network of underground channels like dark rivers, leeching impulse clouds from the Well of Shadows. He saw the unlife of the fiery beast to the north and the thousand winters it carried in its cold veins. He saw the colonies of were-rats up and down the slopes of Mount Dhaarnaiarnon. More were dead than alive: the cruel weather had been deadly for them, too.

  The impulse clouds lifted him above the lip of the crater. It was night, and they began to disappear in the open air; they could not carry him much farther. He unbound them from his will and let them dissipate in the faint misty starlight.

  He knew, rather than felt, that his body slid down the side of the volcano for a while until it came up against a tumble of stones. Carefully, as deliberately as he could, he rewove his conscious connection with his dying flesh. It took a long time, and he didn't have much time, but he was strangely unconcerned.

  He had come looking for knowledge and for vengeance. He was leaving with knowledge and guilt-and a unicorn's horn. That added up to something very like hope.

  orlock made his way back to his cave past the necropolis covering the eastern face of the city. No moon was aloft, but there were faint lights moving among the tombs, no doubt from citizens who had taken refuge in the graveyard, or were robbing the graves for meat. The slopes of the city were outlined in fire. Morlock wondered if the city was on fire. But he was not especially concerned: his friends would be safe enough in the outlier settlement. As he climbed the ridge above the silver-waste fields, he saw that at least two mesas of the city were stained with fire-Iuiunioklendon and Nekkuklendon. The outlier settlement, in contrast, was unusually dark and quiet-there were usually some citizens abroad during the night, but tonight it seemed almost funereal. Perhaps they were helping fight fires in the city.

  He was deeply weary when he reached his cave, but he set immediately to his task. He could not afford to rest; he might wake up dead, or unable to work. The fragmentary page he had purchased from Iacomes described a mirror made from a unicorn's horn, but not how to use it. He was fairly sure he could make the mirror, anyway.

  He broke up the unicorn horn with Tyrfing and ground the shards to powder with a diamond mortar and pestle. The powder had a gritty sandlike quality, and he hoped to melt it like sand to make glass for the mirror. He eventually succeeded in doing so, though it took his entire choir of young flames working for hours in a reflective furnace. He poured the bloodred molten glass into a shallow mold, cooled it, polished it, and cut it into an octagon, to match the form sketched on his fragment.

  He had intended to treat the back with quicksilver or some other reflective agent. But the glass, though thin, was opaque. Its redly opalescent surface was not especially reflective, even when polished.

  He picked it up with his right hand and looked intently at the faint image of himself he saw on the surface. It seemed faint and ghostly.

  On impulse, he tried to pick up the mirror with his left hand. The drifting mist that were the fingers of his left hand, unable to move anything more substantial than a leaf, closed on the red glass and easily hefted it in the palm of his left hand.

  Fairly easily. It felt heavy-heavier than it should-heavier than a dead body. But he could hold it.

  And the image of himself on the red surface suddenly became much clearer. It was indeed ghostly, a drifting mist in Morlock's image. But the gray eyes were luminously clear, even through the red glass, and his mirrorleft hand and arm looked hale, unharmed.

  The mirror-Morlock met his eye and said, "So it's come to this. I have to save you."

  It occurred to Morlock that his reflection was drunk. His heart sank. He would have spoken, but he found he could not.

  After brooding a while, the mirror-Morlock said resentfully, "You'd never do it, you know. If our positions were reversed. You hate me. You'd rather die than be yoked to me forever. Well, I hate you more. But I'm not an idealist, like you are. The only way I can go on living is if you do. So buy me a drink, sometime; we'll call it even."

  The mirror-Morlock reached through the mirror with his misty rightreversed hand and past Morlock's eye, pushing the misty fingers deep into his skull. Morlock would have backed away or protected himself somehow, but he could not move: his free will seemed to have been wholly seized by the mirror-Morlock.

  The mist-fingers moving through his brain were searing agony. But eventually he felt them close on something, an alien presence, like a splinter of glass or metal lodged in his mind. The fingers drew it forth. This, too, was agony, but also a relief, like a weapon being drawn from a wound. At last, healing could begin.

  He briefly saw the dark splinter in the mirror-Morlock's misty hand before he passed out.

  When he awoke, it was still night. Or perhaps, it was night again. His head was pounding like a drum; his throat was as an old shoe buried in the desert; he was hungry enough to eat a live stoat and too weak to chase one even if it were right in front of him.

  But he didn't care about any of that. Because the wound in his spirit was gone; his arm and hand were whole again, and even without summoning the rapture of vision, he knew his Sight had been healed as well.

  The red mirror lay shattered in his hand. He thought about what the mirror-Morlock had said. He wondered if this flaw, this division of himself into drunk and sober Morlocks, had been the entering point for Ulugarriu's hostile magic. It was worth considering.

  He found some flatbread and a bottle of water in a breadlocker and ate and drank, exulting in the freedom to use his left hand. When his thirst was finally satiated, he grabbed the fragments of the red mirror and started to juggle them. When that no longer amused him, he threw glass daggers, lefthanded only, at marks on the cave wall. He spent an hour or two writing in the palindromic script of ancient Ontil, which requires the left hand and the right hand to write simultaneously. In short, he engaged in a bacchanalia of sinister chirality.

  He was still exulting in his regained hand and the hope for life that had returned with it when he looked up and saw that the sun had risen. He felt briefly ashamed that he had been wasting time so childishly.

  "No, to hell with that," he said aloud, changing his mind. If self-hatred was the secret door by which this illness had entered him, he was going to lock that door-mortar it shut, if possible. "Look," he said, addressing his despised drunken self. "I'm not going to buy you a drink. But there must be something else I can do to amuse you. Let me know."

  There was no response, but Morlock didn't really expect one; he was aware he was talking to himself, that there had never been more than one Morlock.

  He packed a knapsack with flatbread, cheese, and bottles of water; he took a few glass knives and a glass sword from the weapon rack. He noticed someone had taken two of the silver-core glass spears. He wondered what they had been used for: Rokhlenu had been so set against them. Perhaps someone else had been less squeamish.

  Everything else in the cave he left for Lakkasulakku. The young citizen was not much of a maker yet, but he was intelligent and quick-fingered and he knew some useful skills. Morlock thought he would do well.

  Morlock had decided to leave Wuruyaaria. It was no place for him, if gods were clashing with immortal werewolves there and both had plans for him. It was no
place for his friends, either: he was going to recommend to Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono that they flee to the shores of the Bitter Water and wait for the Strange Gods' vendetta against the city to play out. That would be their choice; he had made his, and it was a great weight off his crooked shoulders.

  He ran down the wooden steps to the wicker boat and poled himself across to the eastern gate of the outlier settlement. The gate was unguarded, which struck him as odd at first, but then he realized that the election must have passed and with it the time for open warfare between the packs.

  He had not gone far into the settlement before he realized that something was wrong, though. There were no sounds of city life at all in the hot still air: not a single voice, or any footfall beyond his own. The settlement had been abandoned.

  It was the same through the market and all the way to the First Wolf's lairtower. Not only was the tower empty, it had been cleared of its contents. There was no destruction; it had not been looted. The tenant had decided to vacate.

  As he was looking about the second floor, he did notice some citizens around the old headquarters of the irredeemables. He descended to the street and went over to investigate.

  That, too, was almost empty. But Wuinlendhono was there, wearing dark clothes that must have been uncomfortable in the hot heavy air. There were a half dozen irredeemables present also; Wuinlendhono seemed to be giving them some sort of instructions when Morlock entered, and she, seeing him, broke off.

  She was looking oddly at him. They all were, except Lekkativengu, who had turned his eyes away, his face dark with shame.

  "Khretvarrgliu," Wuinlendhono said, "have you come for the funeral? It is over, I'm afraid."

  Morlock assessed the mourning quality of her face and clothes, the sullen anger in Yaarirruuiu's face, the shame in Lekkativengu's. He knew then that his friend Rokhlenu was dead.

  "I didn't know," he said. "I've been-" to the underworld and back; baiting unicorns; talking to myself "-away."

  The anger in Yaarirruuiu's face faded. "Your hand is better, Khretvarrgliu."

  "Yes."

  "I'm so glad," said Wuinlendhono's voice. Her face said, What do I care? And Morlock completely understood this.

  "How did he die?" he asked. Wuinlendhono winced, and he added hastily, "I'm sorry. I will ask someone else."

  "Lekkativengu can tell you," Wuinlendhono said, in tones that were almost too even. "He was there."

  Now it was Lekkativengu's turn to wince. But under the First Wolf's cold dark eye and with a minimum of prompting, he told the story of Rokhlenu's last fight and death.

  Morlock listened with bowed head. He was thinking of those images he had briefly seen in Ulugarriu's bowl of dreams before turning his face away. The images of Rokhlenu fighting desperately, the images of his friend dying alone. He wished, now, that he had taken the time to look at them. But that was done, and he wrapped Lekkativengu's words around what he had seen, and he thought he had learned something important.

  Lekkativengu had finished speaking, and an embarrassed silence reigned. Morlock looked up to see that the citizens were all eyeing him, waiting for him to speak.

  "I'm glad you, at least, returned, my friend," he said to Lekkativengu.

  He could tell the werewolves thought this was in very poor taste. Even Lekkativengu seemed to be offended.

  "Should have died with his chieftain," Yaarirruuiu muttered.

  "His chieftain didn't think so," Morlock replied. "And neither do I. It was a tale worth hearing."

  They all bowed their heads as if he had said some sacred word. "Yes," said Wuinlendhono eventually. "And it will be a song worth singing, in time."

  She shook her head and lifted it. She calmly wiped away the tears that were leaking from her eyes and said, "Khretvarrgliu, we are leaving for our colony on the Bitter Water. We would welcome you, if you wish to join us. In my stalwart's name, for my stalwart's sake, you will always be welcome in any dwelling of mine."

  "No, thank you," Morlock said, thinking that the coils of the gods were difficult to escape. "I am glad you are going, and taking the outliers with you. I will go and see if I can kill the beast that killed Rokhlenu. Blood for blood."

  "Blood for blood!" the werewolves cried.

  "Let us help you, Khretvarrgliu," Yaarirruuiu said eagerly. "We'll fight alongside you to avenge our chief."

  "The First Wolf needs you," Morlock pointed out. "Besides, my weapon will be made of silver, like Rokhlenu's. Only a never-wolf could wield it."

  "Of course! Of course!" cried a new voice from the doorway. "They had to have some way to slay the beast themselves. But they didn't want us to be able to do the same. Brilliant, really. I wonder who thought of it: most of those gods don't strike me as being terribly bright."

  "Is it-oh ghost," whispered Wuinlendhono. "Is it you, Liudhleeo? Have you-have you come back?"

  "Not exactly, sweetling," said the newcomer gently. "You knew me as Liudhleeo, and as Hrutnefdhu, and as others still whose names may someday occur to you. But my true name is Ulugarriu."

  The werewolves bowed their head in reverence and fear at the great name.

  Morlock, of course, did not. He looked coldly on the werewolf maker and said to them, "You visualized this moment."

  "It appeared faintly in my bowl of dreams," Ulugarriu acknowledged. "But I could not be certain of it. Events I myself may take part in do not visu alize clearly for me. And by then I had already decided to come help you, if it came to this."

  "Then you don't know if we will slay the Ice-Binder or not?"

  "No-not 'know' exactly. In fact, if I were a bookie, I wouldn't give good odds on us. But it's a fight I wouldn't miss, my friend."

  The citizens left before noon. Ulugarriu and Wuinlendhono spent some time talking urgently together in the arch of Southgate, while Morlock and the others stood apart. In the end, Ulugarriu tried to put their hand on Wuinlendhono's face and she recoiled, her face a mask of fury. Ulugarriu looked mildly on her, bid her farewell, and walked away without looking back.

  Wuinlendhono stared after Ulugarriu in frustrated rage. Her eyes caught Morlock's, and her expression changed as if she had been stabbed. He had reminded her of her dead husband, he guessed. She raised her left hand in farewell; he did the same. The irredeemables, shouting their good-byes to him, surrounded her in a guard formation and they ran off together in long loping strides down the plank road to the marsh's edge.

  Morlock left Ulugarriu to their own devices in the empty town. He returned to his cave to forge the weapon that had come into his mind when he had heard Lekkativengu's story. For it, he would need silver, a great deal of silver. Collecting it from the silver-wastes would probably be quicker than transmuting it out of swamp mud, so he spent much of the first day doing that.

  A crow flew into the cave that night after dark. After remarking that it was as hot as a bonfire outside and as hot as fifty bonfires in the cave, she asked if he was coming home for supper anytime soon. His den-mate wanted to know.

  Morlock said he was surprised that there were any crows left around Wuruyaaria and suggested that she and anyone she cared about should get out.

  The crow absentmindedly agreed and wondered if he had any of that bread stuff around?

  Morlock gave her some crumbled flatbread and then observed that he had used the rest to stoke his smelting furnace. This was a lie, strictly speaking, but he didn't want crows hanging around Wuruyaaria hoping for more handouts from Morlock. Whether they defeated the Ice-Binder or not, the region was likely to be unhealthy for some time.

  He set the molten silver to cycle through a fifth-dimensional pattern of mirrorglass pipes and went down the hill, across the marshy water, through the empty gate, and up the lair-tower to the den he had shared with Liudhleeo and Hrutnefdhu-or, as it turned out, Ulugarriu.

  Ulugarriu had set a low table on the floor; there were several covered dishes on it and bowls of clean water. There were two couches set on opposite sides of the room, and Ulugarri
u was spreading a sheet on one as Morlock entered. They watched him as he took in the scene, and then they said stiffly, "We needn't both sleep here if you dislike it. The den below this is vacant. In fact, nearly every building in town is vacant. But ... anyway, I promise not to touch you. I'm well aware that you find me disgusting."

  "No," Morlock said, "but we should sleep in separate couches at least. I haven't decided whether I'm going to kill you yet."

  "Haven't you, my stalwart?" Ulugarriu turned to finish their work on the couch, then turned to face him again. "That seems unusually indecisive."

  "I don't believe your story about Hlupnafenglu's death, but it may be true. If it isn't-"

  "It is true!"

  "If it is true, you, at least, can't swear to it. According to you, Hlupnafenglu committed suicide in your absence."

  "Oh. I guess you're right."

  Confident assertions beyond the evidence were one symptom of lying; Morlock had noticed others in Ulugarriu's account, but did not choose to say so.

  "Aren't you being incautious in telling me of this, Morlock?" Ulugarriu continued. "I might kill you to protect myself."

  "No. You need me to do your fighting for you."

  "Oh! That's true, I suppose. When I caught you in my intention, you also caught me. Life is odd sometimes, isn't it?"

  "Yes. What's for supper?"

  "Nothing remarkable. Some dried fish, cheese, peas, a bit of smoked seal (I think). I didn't bother to heat it up, because ..."

  "It's hot enough already, yes. Thanks for gathering it."

  "It was no trouble, dear." They sat and began to eat without ceremony.

  "Your appetite certainly has returned," Ulugarriu remarked approvingly.

  Morlock nodded. "Not dying agrees with me."

  "Well, I agree with it. Can I ask you a personal question?"

  Morlock shrugged.

  "Taking that as a yes-aren't you reluctant to share a meal with someone you may later have to kill?"

  "Not if I've warned them. Then there's no deceit."

  "So you were being polite. In your rather brutal way. How strange you are."