The Wolf Age (52 page)

"I don't know anything about your local kinds," Morlock said. "They lived in the mountains where I was raised. I suppose they still live there."

"Then we'll take you there. Or we'll send there for a horn."

Morlock shook his head. "No. I'll be dead soon. The ghost illness will reach my heart and I'll be done." Again, Hrutnefdhu was looking at him with a stricken expression, but Morlock didn't seem to notice. "I'll teach Hlupnafenglu what I can before I die. I'll do what I can for you before I die. It's not what I would have chosen, but it will have to be enough."

"What about Ulugarriu?" broke in Hrutnefdhu. "Maybe-maybe he could do something."

Morlock opened his right hand, closed it. That seemed to be a dismissal of the subject. He turned to Rokhlenu and said, "I tore down the mirror corridor."

"Yes, I saw that."

"The moonstone failed after I healed Lekkativengu. I can't recharge it with moonlight; it's designed differently than my sunstone. In fact, I don't think it was made at all; it may be a piece of a moon."

"How did they get it?"

Morlock shrugged. He continued, "When I was breaking up the silvered glass I had an idea."

He drew a short stabbing spear from a sheath under his cloak. The spear head was glass, woven through with threadlike cracks. And in the center was a silvery wedge.

"In the haft, there's a rune-slate bonded in state to the glass spearhead," Morlock explained coolly. "You stab someone with the spear, break the runeslate, the glass shatters, and the silver point remains in the wound."

Rokhlenu finally understood the feeling of dread gripping him since Morlock had appeared. "Put it away, please," he said, as mildly as possible.

"I think they'll work," said Morlock, "though I haven't tested one yet. I have enough silver and glass from the mirror corridor to make many of these."

"I'm sure they'll work; everything you make works. But we can't use them."

"They're safe enough for the user. The-"

"Politically impossible. You need to take my word for this, Morlock. I cannot use silver weapons against other werewolves. Every citizen in Wuruyaaria would march against us."

Morlock shrugged, nodded, and sheathed the spear. "Well, maybe I can use the stuff for something else. This really bothers you, does it?" he added, tapping the sheath.

"Yes. It really does."

"I'll get rid of it. You'd better stay here," he said to Hrutnefdhu. "Some silver might be lying around the cavern yet."

The pale werewolf nodded and said, "Either Liudhleeo or I will bring you lunch. You'll eat it or find another den."

Morlock smiled, gripped him by the forearm, punched Rokhlenu lightly in farewell, and left.

"Is he drunk?" Rokhlenu asked Hrutnefdhu. "He smelled like that stuff he drinks. The wine."

"He never drinks during the day," the pale werewolf replied. "But he is drunk every night."

"I wish I'd never given him the stuff. I thought he'd like it."

"I can't tell if he does. It seems to be hurting him somehow. But what does it matter, if he's dying anyway?" The pale castrato's voice was shrill with despair.

They entered the great audience chamber of the First Wolf. She wasn't there. In fact, no one was there. They sat down on couches and talked in low voices about one thing and another: the election, and Morlock, and Ulugarriu, and the deadly weather. They reached no conclusions, but that, Rokhlenu thought to himself, isn't what talking was usually for.

Wuinlendhono appeared presently. She dismissed her guards and began to talk about her plans for the seacoast colony. They were getting more people in the outlier settlement because of their successes in the elections-more than they could really feed, as it was turning out. This was a chance to give some of the newcomers a chance to earn some bite, if nothing else.

Hrutnefdhu left them during this conversation. Rokhlenu waved him an offhanded farewell, involved in discussing the new plans and their political impact with his beloved.

Presently he looked up to see that the red werewolf Hlupnafenglu was standing nearby, patiently waiting for them to notice him.

"What is it, Hlupnafenglu?" he asked.

"Do you know who I am?" the red werewolf asked in turn.

"Yurr." Was the big red werewolf going crazy again? "Aren't you Hlupnafenglu?"

"I am now. Do you know who I was?"

"Oh. Before the Vargulleion? No. Is it important?"

"I don't know if it is." The red werewolf looked keenly at the First Wolf. "Do you know who I was, High Huntress?"

She seemed reluctant to reply. Finally she said, "Well. I thought you might be the Red Shadow. I saw him a few times in Apetown. From a distance, mind you. But he didn't look like anyone else I've ever seen, except you."

"I was the Red Shadow."

"All right," Rokhlenu said. "Someone has to explain this to me."

Wuinlendhono turned to him and said, "The Red Shadow was an assassin. You wouldn't have heard about him; you were a respectable person before they framed you. But for five or six years, if you wanted someone killed in Apetown or Dogtown, and you didn't care how much it cost you, you hired the Red Shadow. He never failed. A few years ago, he disappeared. Some people said he was killed by one of his targets, and some people said he had retired to live among the wild packs. But apparently he was in the Vargulleion. Eh, `Hlupnafenglu'?"

"Yes. I don't know how I got there or what they did to me. I don't remember a lot. But I do remember the murders. Many, many murders."

"Oh," said Rokhlenu. Killing in fights was an accepted part of life in the werewolf city, but secret murder was another thing entirely. "Maybe that does make a difference."

The red werewolf bowed his head. "I'm done with all that. Can't I be Khretvarrgliu's apprentice, Hlupnafenglu? Does it matter that I was the Red Shadow?"

"Not to me," said Rokhlenu. "We were in the Vargulleion together, and we fought our way out together. That matters more to me than the crimes of someone I never heard of until just now."

"But this is a Year of Choosing," Wuinlendhono said gently. "It might matter to the citizens of Wuruyaaria."

The red werewolf nodded, not looking at either of them. "If you say, I will go."

Rokhlenu would have liked to turn him down then and there. No; stay; you're one of us now. But it wasn't that easy.

"Let's think about it," he said. "I have a meeting to go to now"-ghosts, that sounded like something a politician would say, but he was a politician these days-"so let's talk it over later on, perhaps tomorrow. If you can stay, we want you to stay: not as the Red Shadow, but as yourself, as Hlupnafenglu."

"Chieftain, my real name is-"

"Your real name is Hlupnafenglu, unless you choose otherwise. Think on it."

The red werewolf looked at him with his golden eyes, turned, and walked away.

"I handled that badly," he said to his spouse, after Hlupnafenglu had gone.

"No," she said. "Not if you weren't lying to him. If you really want to keep him around. Because now he probably won't leave unless we send him away."

"I wasn't lying."

"Then go meet with the Aruukaiaduun band. Them you can lie to. They'll be disappointed if you don't."

"Them I live to disappoint."

The Aruukaiaduun band were awaiting him in the old barracks of the irredeemables. Lekkativengu, claw-fingered no longer and wearing perhaps the first pair of shoes he had ever owned, was entertaining them with polite conversation. The subject at hand was the last rally fought between the Sardhluun-Neyuwuleiuun Alliance and the Goweiteiuun with their outlier partisans.

The Aruukaiaduun gnyrrand was a smooth-faced, brown-eyed, shinytoothed emptiness named Norianduiu; Rokhlenu knew a little bit about him from the old days (as he thought of his life before the Vargulleion), and had not expected much trouble with him. He knew the Aruukaiaduun cantors, as well; they were just inferior versions of Norianduiu.

No, the only person who counted in this embassy was the oldest and ugliest member, a werewolf with no official position in the Aruukaiaduun Pack, the old gray-muzzle Rywudhaariu.

He was nearly a semiwolf. He could assume the night shape, but in the day shape his nose and lower jaw were strangely prominent, almost meeting, and the end of his nose had a strange spongy look, almost like a wolf's nose. His arms were somewhat crooked and leglike, too; he always wore clothes with long sleeves to disguise this.

He was too impaired to run for office; no one liked him enough to vote for him without pressure. But his neck was almost hidden by ropes of honorteeth he had acquired or extorted over the years. He had been running things on Nekkuklendon, with claws into business on every other mesa, for generations. And he controlled the representatives of the Aruukaiaduun to the Innermost Pack of the city, always through some face-without-a-personality like Norianduiu.

It had kept members of the Aruukaiaduun on the Innermost Pack for as long as anyone could remember. Citizens were more than willing to enlist the famous cunning of Rywudhaariu in the service of the city. But no Aruukaiaduun werewolf had ever been First Singer of the Innermost Pack. That was a job for a puppet master, not a puppet.

This was why Rokhlenu had decided to meet the Aruukaiaduun werewolves alone. The risk was that he would look like a gnyrrand with no followers. The message, though, was that there was only one citizen in the Aruukaiaduun embassy worth talking to. He saw the chagrined looks among the Aruukaiaduun cantors as he approached, and decided that the message had been received. They had been hoping at least to meet his notorious mate, the First Wolf of the outliers. Instead, they would be shuffled off to an underling while the grown-ups talked-as usual.

"Lekkativengu, show the gnyrrand and the cantors around town a bit," Rokhlenu said as he approached. "Citizens, I leave you in good hands"-he winked slightly at Lekkativengu, who grinned and proudly flexed his fingers"and perhaps we'll talk later. But I must consult with your leader now."

The gnyrrand and the cantors looked at Rywudhaariu, who nodded, and they glumly rose from their couches and shuffled after Lekkativengu into the searingly hot spring sunlight.

Rokhlenu sat down on a couch opposite and tried to look his old enemy in the eye. It was difficult, as old Rywudhaariu was somewhat wall-eyed and he enjoyed making interlocutors uncomfortable by turning his face toward them and his eyes away.

"That was rather high-handed," said the old werewolf, not as if he disapproved. His voice was reedy, not good for singing or speaking.

"Not so high-handed as when your clowns sent me to the Vargulleion."

"That was the biggest mistake I ever made. But you wouldn't be led, old sport, and I'm not ready to lie down and be barked at yet."

"That's to be seen. If you had my people killed, you may find it an even greater mistake."

"I had nothing to do with that."

"That's to be seen, too. But I'm here to talk with you, not as a citizen with a private grudge, but as the gnyrrand of my new pack and the consort of my First Wolf. We have a common interest against this new political alliance of the Sardhluun and the Neyuwuleiuun."

"That's to be seen, in the words of your own refrain. You need us; that's clear. And the Alliance does not need us; that's clear. But it may be in our interest to stand apart, as neutrals, rather than join in a losing side."

"We're not the losing side. We're the winning side. Don't take my word for it. Look what's happened every time the Alliance has tangled with us."

"I have been looking, and I am impressed. But your victories have been very costly for Wuruyaaria, you know. Those airships of the Neyuwuleiuun brought in a lot of slaves and meat-animals. This is going to be a hungry year, and the next one hungrier yet. We'll miss them. And citizens will blame you."

"Slaves do the work once done by citizens. The fewer slaves in the city, the better."

"The better for citizens of very little bite. The worse for citizens of very large bite."

"That may even out."

"You need it to be better than even, in your favor, and I'm not sure that's the way it is."

"You can help with that."

"Maybe I can. What's in it, for me and mine?"

"I can make you First Singer of the Innermost Pack."

Rywudhaariu almost spoke, then paused. He was genuinely surprised. "Would you?" he said at last. "If you could. They are separate issues, I suppose."

"I might: if you give me evidence that you were not involved in the murder of my kin. I'll waive my personal grievance against you. You need not be elected to the Innermost Pack to be First Singer; the Innermost normally choose the First Singer from among themselves, but not always. If a union of the Aruukaiaduun, the Goweiteiuun, and the outliers win the election, the first act must be the admission of the outliers to the treaty. Then I and the gnyrrand of the Goweiteiuun will support you for First Singer. If you can persuade your own unruly band to support you, your election is certain."

"Certain only in the wake of many uncertainties. Still: what an offer! Well, I must think on this."