The Wolf Age Read online

  "Then how do you know he exists?"

  "I never said he did. Anyway, I exist and I was born, not-so-poor-and slightly-dishonest in the shadow of the great Fang Tower of Nekkuk- lendon-which, before you ask, is the third of the great mesas of Wuruyaaria. Shall I tell you about my childhood, my youth, my musical education, my many battles, my steady-yet-rapid accumulation of bite, my first sexual adventures?"

  "God Avenger, no.,,

  "Well, it's your loss, but I'll skip on a bit, then. My problem was that, like most young werewolves of spirit, I wanted political office."

  "Eh."

  "I did say werewolves. I don't pretend to know what life is like for you people, but we are pack animals. We're not ashamed of it."

  "It's not much different for us, I guess. Except for the shame, maybe. Go on."

  "My father ranked high in the Aruukaiaduun pack, but I wanted to rank still higher. I could have, too: I was favored to win nomination to the Innermost Pack."

  "How many packs are there?"

  "Four, of course-and the outliers, who don't count yet. Each pack has an Inner Pack, who have the most bite in the pack, and millennia ago, when the city was founded, they set up an Innermost Pack with members drawn from all three of the treaty packs."

  "Three? You said there were four."

  "There were three, then. The Sardhluun weren't part of the treaty until later. They bought their way in, essentially. They had slaves, and prison houses, and meat, and as these are three things that no civilized society can do without-"

  "Eh."

  11 -that our society can't do without, the Sardhluun were given places on the Innermost Pack and accepted into the treaty. What would you have done?"

  Morlock gave it some thought and said, "I would gut every member of the Sardhluun Pack with a silver knife."

  This caused a rustle among the ever-watchful guards. Even Rokhlenu jumped a little, but then he said, "Right! And I'll hold them down for you. Anyway. The different packs can nominate members to the innermost Pack, but the nominees have to earn their place in competition with each other."

  "How does it work?"

  "Fight and bite. Bite and fight. You can get bite by fighting, or talking, or singing, or making, or doing. You can buy it: people who make money always have lots of bite. I got a lot of bite from a song I composed."

  "Oh? What's it about?"

  "The way a she-wolf's genitals smelled when Chariot was aloft in midwinter."

  "That's impossible, though," Morlock pointed out, after some vocabulary was explained to him. "Chariot doesn't rise until the first day of spring."

  "You have to make things up for a good song sometimes, Morlock."

  Morlock shrugged dubiously at the necessity of fantasy and said, "So your political career led to the prison house."

  "As it often does-maybe not often enough. I was popular; my family was rich; I was a well-respected singer; people knew I could fight. They knew it so much that I never had to."

  "Wasn't that good?"

  "Yes and no. I'd have liked to get in a few more fights to raise my reputation. But if you run around starting fights with people, it can actually decrease your bite."

  Morlock nodded. "So: the dragon."

  "Exactly. I took many a long run down south to the mountains, hoping to get into trouble I'd have to fight my way out of. Not too many werewolves actually go into the Kirach Kund, though. I had to wait a long time before I found a dragon that was vulnerable, but it was worth it."

  "Go on." Morlock had a professional interest in the killing of dragons.

  "I came upon one that had been drugged by the Spiderfolk. They had just taken its dragonrider prisoner and they were hauling him away. They could not approach the dragon-they're very susceptible to fire. You remember."

  "Yes."

  "So I waited till they were gone and I sneaked up on the dragon and killed it. And-"

  "How?"

  "I crept into its mouth and gnawed through the palate into its brain."

  "Oh."

  "I can't say that I enjoyed the dragon brain much. But the palate, and dragon meat generally, is very pleasant: a firm white meat, somewhat like rattlesnake or chicken. Have you ever-?"

  "No. Not dragon, at any rate."

  "Well, everyone has to draw the line somewhere. I've never eaten another werewolf, no matter how hungry I've been. Not knowingly, anyway. So, after I left you in the Vale of the Mother, I went back and stripped the dragon's skull and brought it back to my father's house for a prize."

  "It must have earned you a lot of bite."

  "It did! It did! My father hired the best ghost-sniffers from the Goweiteiuun Pack to confirm my story in an affidavit, and the pack voted me a new name. They liked the story of how we were taken by the Khroi and the odd Dwarvish word the Khroi used for dragonkiller, so they voted me that for my new name."

  "Oh? What was your name before?"

  "Slenkjariu," Rokhlenu said reluctantly. "After my mother's grandfather. None of my mother's people amounted to much, and with names like that you can see why."

  Morlock didn't exactly see why, but his friend actually seemed embarrassed and he didn't want to make it any worse. "I still sense a long road from there to here."

  "A short one. There was, and is, a gray-muzzle in the Aruukaiaduun Inner Pack, name of Rywudhaariu; he had a list of nominees for the next citywide election, and I wasn't on it and he didn't want me on it. So he had a few of his boys rob and murder a bookie and then frame me for it."

  Morlock needed some words explained ("bookie" and "frame" particularly). Then he remarked, "Was there a trial? Didn't your heroic bite help you there?"

  "Not against Rywudhaariu, who'd been collecting teeth up and down the mesa for more than forty years. Anyway, he bribed the jury-used the proceeds of the robbery to fund the bribes. You have to admit that shows vifna."

  "Do I?" Morlock didn't know what vifna was, but he didn't think he liked it. "Wasn't this all illegal? I don't understand your system."

  "It was illegal, and everyone knew about it, and if things made sense maybe it wouldn't have worked. But Rywudhaariu was probably better off after my trial than before it. Somehow, if it's your job to make or enforce the laws and you break them with impunity, you can get a certain kind of bite from that. I don't understand it myself well enough to explain it, but that's how it seems to work. Maybe it's different in never-wolf cities."

  "I don't know," Morlock said slowly, thinking of the late and unlamented Protector Urdhven and the men who had followed him. "Maybe not that different."

  "Rywudhaariu's guards dragged me to the Sardhluun's plantation," Rokhlenu went on. "I was hoping they would have me working the fields, herding cattle or something. Escape would be easy. That's why they didn't do that, I guess. I started out on the ground floor and then worked my way up here." When he saw that Morlock didn't understand him, he explained, "The top floor is where they keep the real irredeemables. Like you and Khretnurrliu."

  Morlock bowed his head to accept the compliment.

  "I was hoping my father and brothers could bribe the Sardhluun to let me go, or at least give me a chance at escape," Rokhlenu said reflectively, "but I suppose Rywudhaariu is giving them their own trouble now."

  "`It's a fool who kills the father and lets the son live,"' Morlock said, quoting the proverb.

  "`Bare is the back with no brother,"' said Rokhlenu, quoting another.

  "Your back is bare," Morlock pointed out.

  "The god it is," Rokhlenu said, yawning. "I'm going to try to sleep now, Morlock. I don't know how you can stand this."

  Sleeping on a cold stone floor in human form, Morlock guessed he meant. But the truth was that Morlock didn't have to stand it, for he slept very little, and that little didn't do him much good. His body rested, but never his mind.

  Just now, for instance, he saw a fifth werewolf outside the cell. There were two guards in the day shape and two in the night shape, as always. One of the humans seemed to be i
n charge: he wore a neckband and chest-tort that bristled with accumulated teeth. Morlock thought this was Wurnafenglu. Morlock was fairly sure it was the same werewolf, and he was sure that he hated him. The others were just guards; Morlock might have seen them before, but he didn't recognize them.

  It was the fifth werewolf that really had Morlock's attention, although he never looked directly at him. He could not: every time Morlock tried, the werewolf seemed to sidle over to the edge of Morlock's vision. But Morlock knew him: it was Khretnurrliu, the werewolf he had decapitated. The body was in the day shape, carrying its severed head before it like a lamp. It did not speak, nor make any noise. The guards passed a remark to each other occasionally, but never to Khretnurrliu. But Morlock saw him. He could not stop seeing him.

  A pale shadow appeared at the bars: Hrutnefdhu, in the night shape. He coughed shyly, wondering if Morlock wished to talk.

  Morlock moved forward to sit by the cell door. The archers raised their arrows reflexively to threaten him, but he ignored them and presently they relaxed.

  "I'd rather sleep than talk," Morlock admitted, "but I can't sleep."

  Hrutnefdhu expressed sympathy.

  Morlock opened his hands: there was nothing to be done. "Can you change into wolf form without moonlight?" he wondered. "Can those?" he asked, gesturing at the guards.

  Hrutnefdhu sang that he had assumed the hairy cloak of wolfhood last night, with Trumpeter's last light, and resisted the man-shaping rays of the sun all day. He added in a whisper that the wolf-formed guards were unfortunates unblessed by the gift of a second skin.

  Morlock was interested. He'd heard there were werewolves who couldn't change fully from were to wolf or back again; indeed, Khretnurrliu with his twisted legs and hatchet face seemed to be one such. Apparently it was considered a blemish, even a matter of shame. He wondered if there was some way to use this to his advantage-to divide the guards somehow.

  "Are there ... ? Sometimes I see werewolves in the day shape by moonlight," he said, trying to explain the question he could not ask.

  Hrutnefdhu understood. He said that many guards lacked the gift of a second form, walking under the moons as if they were suns, making a lack of gift into a gift.

  "Hm," Morlock said, trying not to sound too dubious. One of the night shape guards had a single tooth around his neck; the other had none. Clearly, they had little bite, even among other guards ... who, Morlock reflected, might not have much bite as a class, outside the prison house.

  Hrutnefdhu sang a single note of query.

  Morlock nodded.

  Hrutnefdhu wondered why Morlock had never answered Rokhlenu's question. He too wished to know what had brought so powerful a maker and a seer as Morlock so far into the north.

  Morlock shrugged. "I have no home. I go from one place to another. How did you know I was a maker?"

  Hrutnefdhu sang that he had heard of heroes who walked into the north ages ago, broke the Soul Bridge, and banished the Sunkillers from the world. One of them was a man with crooked shoulders, and they called him Morlock. He was a maker and a son of makers.

  "That was a different man than me," Morlock said, standing. "A very different man." He turned away and rolled himself up in a corner of the cell. He didn't sleep, then or for a long time, but at least no one expected him to talk.

  It had been a better night than most since Morlock's imprisonment began. Now he knew that Rokhlenu was a rope maker, or had been. Under the circumstances, that was a very useful skill.

  he days grew warmer, and Morlock gradually became convinced that he was going mad. He rather reluctantly raised the topic with Rokhlenu, who laughed it off at first.

  "You'll have to convince me you were ever sane," the werewolf said, one blisteringly hot noonday in midspring. "Then I'll worry about you going crazy."

  But Morlock convinced him in the end. He told him about Khretnurrliu, how he always saw the mutilated werewolf outside the cell. He wore the day shape in the night, carrying his head in one hand; he wore the night shape in the day, sitting with his head at his feet. He never spoke and rarely moved, except to shift away from Morlock's sight when Morlock tried to look straight at him. But he was always there.

  "There's no one there but the guards, Morlock," Rokhlenu said, sounding a little worried now, though.

  "You say so," Morlock agreed, "and I'm almost sure you're right. But I see him. I know he's there, even when I'm not looking. Listen to me, Rokhlenu. It's you this matters to."

  "I don't know what I can do about it," the werewolf said.

  "There's nothing to be done," Morlock agreed. "But you need to know. If I seem to be acting insanely, it's probably not an act. Protect yourself. Maybe you can get one of those field jobs."

  Rokhlenu looked blank for a moment; then he realized Morlock was suggesting he might have to kill him. "Shut your meat-hole," he snarled.

  "No. But I'll do what I can do to keep it from coming to that."

  "All right. What can you do?"

  Morlock shrugged. There was nothing, really.

  That night, when they thought Morlock was sleeping, Rokhlenu had a low-voiced conversation with Hrutnefdhu.

  Rokhlenu sang of Morlock's strength of will, how he had slain the beast Khretnurrliu, how he had faced the torments of the guards with patience, even with humor. He said he could not believe that madness was stronger than Morlock's will.

  Hrutnefdhu conceded much of what Rokhlenu sang. He himself had seen that battle in the cell; he was still in awe that a man, a mere human, had done what Morlock had done. But he apologetically sang about the dangers of a powerful will turning inward, about obsessions that ate away at the strongest minds, feeding on that strength itself. He pointed out that Morlock was a Seer who had lost his magical Sight, and that madness might be the rot from that inward death.

  Rokhlenu wondered if there was anything that could be done-if the spike could be drawn and Morlock's mind healed.

  Hrutnefdhu sang of the storied wisdom of his mate, Liudhleeo, She-whoremembers-best. She waited for him among the long-legged lairs of the outlier pack, in the swamps south of Wuruyaaria. Liudhleeo might know.

  Rokhlenu sang a brief comparison of the distance between the prison and the outlier pack and the distance between the prison and the paths of the moons. Since neither were accessible, they were equally far away.

  Hrutnefdhu's song was apologetic, guilt-ridden. There were ghostsniffers among the Sardhluun, but they would not heal Morlock or allow him to be healed. They had felt his power when he was first captured and they feared it. An insane Morlock would suit them better than a sane one.

  Rokhlenu sang a questioning note.

  Hrutnefdhu gently pointed out that Morlock and Rokhlenu had broken the Sardhluun's system: they used prisoners to terrorize each other. A mad Morlock might be useful as a terror. A sensible Morlock who did exercises and memorized verb-tones was no good for the Sardhluun.

  Rokhlenu speculated on things that might be good for the Sardhluun, such as venom-drenched, spiked silver hooks inserted under the tail.

  Hrutnefdhu turned and walked away, his nails clattering on the stone floor. The guards were listening, and he could not afford to have a conversation of this sort under their ears.

  Morlock found it interesting that Hrutnefdhu hadn't argued with Rokhlenu, even for show. The pale werewolf was a trustee in the prison, but Morlock was beginning to think that they could trust him ... if they could think of a task to use him for. That was the trouble: they could do nothing unless they could escape from the cell, and the guards' unending vigilance made that unlikely.

  It was increasingly difficult for Morlock to think coherently at all. He had begun to worry that Khretnurrliu was edging closer to the cell door. The fact that the cell gate was never opened was a matter of some comfort to Morlock. He began to wonder what would happen if he did have the chance to get into the corridor. If Khretnurrliu were there ... Morlock had already killed him once. (His eyes were rotted away, and his nose
and other soft tissues were visibly decaying. Empty eye sockets ringed with bare bone were what watched Morlock night and day from the corner of his eye.) How could he kill him again? Would he have to go on killing-killing-killing him forever? Wouldn't it be safer to stay in the cell where Khretnurrliu couldn't get at him? So Morlock reasoned to himself as his reason continued to unravel.

  But in fact it was Rokhlenu who went mad first.

  It happened one night late in the last full month of spring. The days were unbelievably, damnably hot, even in the shadows of the stone cell, and the nights brought very little relief to the still blistering air. But Rokhlenu did not refrain from the nocturnal change to wolfhood: apparently there was a special exultation to the transformation when all three moons were in the sky.

  Rokhlenu had just undergone the change; the hallway was echoing with the howls of those doing the same.

  Morlock looked up and saw, of course, Khretnurrliu, holding his severed head like a lantern in one hand. Next to him, in the center of Morlock's vision, was Wurnafenglu, that one gray-muzzled prison guard who seemed to have significant bite. He was looking directly at Morlock, dark lips parted in a wolvish grin that was all-too-human. He was expecting a good show.

  "Rokhlenu," Morlock said, "they're about to try something. Be wary."

  But Rokhlenu didn't listen. He was distracted by something happening in the hallway. Morlock heard the noise, but Rokhlenu was reacting to a scent. His nostrils dilated and he slunk toward the cell bars as if he were being dragged by the nose.

  Several guards dragged a she-wolf into view. It was the first female werewolf that Morlock had seen in the prison: there had been females among the raiders, but none among the guards. This one was collared, her back feet bound to a metal bar that kept them spread-eagled. She was whimpering; blood was dripping from her mouth; she had been beaten, perhaps many times. She was evidently in heat.

  The guards, laughing and making obscene gestures, showed her to Rokhlenu.

  Rokhlenu seemed to struggle with himself for a moment. Finally he threw himself against the bars in a desperate attempt to reach the female.