The Wide World's End (40 page)

“That was Latin, wasn't it?” Morlock asked Angustus, after they had been drinking in silence for a while.

“It was indeed.
Loquerisne Latine?
”

“A little. One of my fathers made me learn it.”

“Well, I commend him for it. There's not much call for it on the northern plains, I'm afraid. I teach logic, rhetoric, geometry, Old Ontilian—whatever they'll pay me for.”

“There's a living in that?”

“I don't remember saying so. Now if I could teach people how to play venchball I'd have it made. The venchball trainers eat custard every night, as the saying goes. The stadia are crowded on game days, and on other days everyone seems to be talking about the next game or the last one.”

“Don't know the sport. It's entertaining?”

“I'd rather be fried in oil than sit through a match. No, on game days I usually go into rich people's storehouses and steal their food.”

“Eh.”

“I sense your distaste, and to some extent I share it. On the other hand, a man has to live and times are hard.”

“I suppose.” Morlock thought of the Khnauronts' invasion of the Wardlands. He shrugged and drank again.

“How would you go north from here—if you had to go alone?” Morlock asked Angustus.

The other shook his head. “I? Would not go. Singly or in bunches. You realize that northeast of here is the dreadful city of werewolves Wuruyaaria?”

“I'm not worried by werewolves.”

“If you're not worried by a city of werewolves slowly dying of starvation, I suppose there's no point in even mentioning the riptide of superpredators fleeing south in search of meat, the desperate gods afraid of losing their worshippers, the ice-monsters that rule the bitter northern edge of the world, or the Sunkillers from beyond it. So I won't.”

Morlock had already met some of the gods and he took monsters on a case-by-case basis. “Who are the Sunkillers?” he asked.

Angustus pointed at the ceiling. “The guys who are doing that. Killing the sun.”

“What are they like?”

“I've never met one. Not to my knowledge. A lecturer at the Lyceum has a theory that they are colonists, making the world habitable for their form of life. Another thinks it's pure malice.”

“How do you know it's not a natural phenomenon?”

“Direct contact in rapture. Some of the seers didn't make it back to their bodies alive, but enough did that we know this is being
done
to us.”

Morlock nodded thoughtfully and drained the last of his wine. “I know someone who says . . . it's a kind of idealism. They are opposed to biological life in principle.”

“Idealism is often incompatible with life,” Angustus agreed cheerily. “You may not see it that way. But as a fat, middle-aged man, I think there's a lot more to be said for kindness than correctness.”

“I'm well into my second century of life, Angustus.”

“Yes, the Ambrosii live long, they say. But you have the restlessness and impatience of a young man—the belief that you can change the world, or save it, at least.”

Morlock shrugged. “I am not impatient.”

Angustus smiled into the dregs of his wine and did not respond directly. “No, I would not walk north from here for any reason. If there were some way to fly, I might try that: I'd like to have a conversation with one of these Sunkillers. But I suppose flying is impossible. That's what they say at the Lyceum. Something about wingspans and weight ratios.”

“What about dragons?”

“Dragons are mythical. Would you like some more wine?”

“No,” Morlock said. He could still fell the bitter metallic burn of the stuff in the back of his throat.

“It's good to know when to stop,” Angustus said agreeably, and gathered Morlock's cup from him.

The time to stop was before you began with the kind of rotgut Angustus served out. But Morlock reminded himself that the stranger had shared with him in a time of scarcity and he said, “Thanks for the drink. Maybe I'll see you around.”

“Maybe. But I'm thinking of getting out of town. Things are getting weird around here.”

“I thought you said that there was no point in going south?”

“There are more directions than north, south, east, and west.”

Morlock nodded. “I suppose so. Good fortune to you.”

“And to you.”

Morlock found himself walking down a narrow street of dark wooden houses. He hardly took note of what his eyes were seeing. Something the stranger had said was taking root in his imagination. In his mind he was seeing a dry leaf dancing in the hot air above a campfire.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

To Market, To Market

When Morlock fell into the air and vanished, Ambrosia grabbed Deor and Kelat by an elbow each. Almost as rapidly, she ascended into rapture and entangled her tal with theirs. In the next instant, the air swallowed them and spit them out on another patch of ground. But they travelled together, as they might not otherwise have done.

They hit a patch of frozen turf in the same instant, and she released her grip on the others in time to keep her own elbows from being twisted to the breaking point.

“What did you do?” Deor shouted, rolling to his feet.

“Kept us from separating,” Ambrosia growled, climbing to her own feet. Kelat was already standing but she ignored the hand he was offering her. “Maybe,” she admitted after a moment.

“What happened to Morlock?”

“What happened to us—only a second sooner.”

They looked around. They were still somewhere on the northern plains, to all appearances. This ground was a little rougher and there was some scrub, not quite trees, toward what seemed to be the northeast. The patch was crosslit by the setting sun—along with something crouching down in it.

“God Avenger,” she whispered. “Come on! Let's get out of here.”

“Why?” asked Kelat reasonably.

“Werewolf over there in that dead brush.”

“We can't handle a single werewolf?” the dwarf asked.

“Werewolves are like rats, Deor. Where you see one. . . .”

“I get you.” The dwarf glanced around. “Some kind of city west of us.”

Ambrosia would have liked to know how he did that. She saw nothing to indicate a city there. Did he hear it? Did he smell it? Was it some kind of specialized talic insight? At the moment it didn't matter, though. She said, “Then that's our next stop.”

They strode westward. The wolf shape broke from cover and followed them, but they outpaced it before night fell.

Ambrosia drew to a halt and looked back uneasily.

“What's wrong?” Deor said, stopping beside her.

“Apart from
everything
? It's like this, Deor. A werewolf should have been able to keep up with us if it wanted to. Regular wolves get bored and wander off during a long chase, but werewolves are more like men.”

“Stubborn, you mean.”

“Yes. And there was something funny about the way the thing moved. Didn't you think so?”

Deor snorted. “I know more about things below the mountain than above it. I'm no farmer, nor
weidhkyrr
.”

“A pity we don't have someone so useful with us,” Ambrosia snapped back.

“It was like a child playing wolf,” Kelat remarked, forestalling Deor's witty comeback.

“Eh?” She kept forgetting that he was there, and that he had things to say. “What do you mean?”

“It ran like a boy or a girl on all fours.” With surprising deftness, he moved his right hand like a child galloping over the open field of his left arm.

“Yes,” she agreed. “It
was
a little like that.”

She decided to wait for it. The others looked at her curiously for a while then settled in to wait, too.

Presently the werewolf came over the ridge they had just passed. It wasn't surprised to see them; of course, it had scented them. It sat politely atop the ridge and waited.

“Who are you and why are you following us?” she sang in Moonspeech, the language of werewolves wearing wolf form (or “the night shape” as they call it). Deor and Kelat both jumped a bit as the howling syllables blew out of her, but they didn't run away or ask stupid questions, so that was something.

The wolf stood on all fours and sang in reply, “I am Liyurrriyu. I was sent to find you, if you are they who go to the end of the wide world.”

“And if we are, and if we do, what business do you have with us, my furry friend?”

“I was sent to help you.”

“Why? And by whom?”

“By the one who watches in the night and guards us against the gods. By the mighty deviser and slayer. By the one who runs with no pack and yet with all.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Ulugarriu sent me—Ghosts-in-the-eyes. I am to help you, if I can.”

“It's your world, too, is what this Ulugarriu is thinking.” The ululation of her howl made it clear that by
your
she meant
werewolves in general
.

“Yes.”

“What's in it for you?”

“Survival.”

“What's in it for
you
?” Ambrosia used the short bark that designated an individual.

“May I come closer?”

“Sure.”

Liyurrriyu loped downhill toward them. He (the werewolf was clearly male, and the
-u
ending to his name was masculine) sat down seven human paces away and held up his right forepaw.

But it wasn't a paw at all. It was an ape's compromise between a hand and a foot.

Ambrosia vocalized an interest in approaching nearer. Liyurrriyu tilted his head left and right in assent.

She walked over and knelt down beside him, taking his hand. It was covered in a leather glove—or maybe more like a shoe for the hand. She tugged the glove off and examined the astonishingly human hand within.

“You see how it is with me,” Liyurrriyu sang in whispered vocables. “I am a nightwalker, never able to assume the day shape. But I am also a neverwolf—never able to fully free myself from the ape.”

“And this Ulugarriu says he can fix you.”

“
Of course
Ulugarriu can fix me. He
says
that he
will
fix me, if I do all that I can to help you kill the Sunkillers.”

“Calm yourself.” Ambrosia put Liyurriu's hand shoe back on his hand foot. “What do you think you can do for us?”

The werewolf growled thoughtfully. “I have lived on these plains all my life. I know many things. I can track and find. I can kill and kill and kill.”

“We're all of us pretty good at killing.”

“You must be better. The bitter cold in the far north is sending all beasts fleeing southward. You must swim through a wave of cruel hunters, desperate to find prey. You are prey. I am hunter.”

Ambrosia had her own opinion about that, but nonetheless said, “You're hired.” She rose to her feet. “Tell me about the city to our west.”

“Aflraun. We're not going there, are we?”

“We are.”

“Urrrr. Better that than Narkunden, I suppose. They make werewolves wear muzzles there, or swear self-binding oaths not to eat fresh meat within the city limits.”

“Monstrous.”

“Dried meat. Burned meat. Salted meat. They put
salt
in it, do you see? Or they stain it with smoke!”

“Each to their own.”

“I suppose you've been there.”

“Frequently. And I have to warn you, if you travel with me, you will see me and my companions eat those variously mistreated meats. Nerve yourself up to it.”

The werewolf shuddered and sang, “I can face what I must face.”

Ambrosia hoped that this was true. She had an idea to make Liyurriu acceptable to the townsfolk of Aflraun, and she suspected it would test his determination to its limits.

The next morning, before dawn, Jonon, signudh on duty for the Shortgate guards, came to a rather sleepy alert and confronted a group of travelers coming from the trackless east.