The Wolf Age (70 page)

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 Ulugarriu 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."

Morlock shrugged again.

"Tell me what you did today or I'll say something disturbingly personal."

"I collected silver ore discarded in the waste hills and smelted it. I left it cycling through a five-space web of mirrorglass tubes."

"I didn't get that last part-but never mind. Once you have the metal, isn't that enough? Can't you make your weapon?"

"No, I don't want to use regular silver. As metals go, it's too soft to make a good weapon. Also it melts too easily."

"You're going to change it somehow?"

"Yes. You know that quicksilver is a form of the metal even softer and more malleable than regular silver."

"Of course. Though some people say it's a different metal entirely."

Morlock waved aside this superstition without bothering to discuss it. "There is a form of silver opposite to quicksilver: harder, more brittle, with a much higher melting point."

"I see. Sort of a deadsilver."

"Yes. Once I extract its phlogiston, it should be suitable for the weapon I have in mind."

"What is that, exactly?"

Morlock sketched it on the surface of the table with the point of a knife.

"I see," said Ulugarriu at last. "How can I help? I can't work the silver with you, obviously."

"We'll need a lot of cable for this plan to work-strong and lightweight."

"Yes-yes I can provide that. But it will burn, I'm afraid."

"We'll dephlogistonate it."

"Of course. I'm looking forward to learning that technique from you; it will be so useful."

In fact, Morlock believed that Ulugarriu already knew how to remove phlogiston from matter. He wasn't sure why they were lying to him about this-mere habit, perhaps. But it was a useful reminder that Ulugarriu could not really be trusted.

The meal was done, and Morlock said, "You brought the food, so I'll clear UP.

"Oh, ghost," said Ulugarriu, and tossed an empty dish out the window. "Let the swamp have it. We'll be here a few days, but I can always scavenge clean dishes when we need them."

They threw the dishes out the window, laughing a little, and turned in on their separate couches.

The next day, Morlock left the silver to unquicken in its five-web and built a ballista out of lumber from abandoned buildings in the outlier settlement and rope that he borrowed from Ulugarriu's cable-making project, which they had set up in the empty marketplace. Ulugarriu had rapidly built a rope-winding machine out of wood, and by the time they were done, citizens were already bringing in fiber to feed into it.

"Are they extensions of yourself?" Morlock asked Ulugarriu, when several of these blank-eyed citizens dropped off loads of hemp fiber and left.

"No," Ulugarriu said uneasily. "Just citizens who owe me favors. Well, most of them are were-rats running meat-puppets, all right?"

"It's all right with me," Morlock said. He took his rope and left.

Death and justice, manifest as sisters (which they once had been), were walking arm in arm under the Stone Tree. Justice had swords for hands and Death had reaping knives, but apart from that they made a charming pair, for those who were there to see them.

"And so the werewolf city is dying at last?" Justice signified.

"The instrument threatens it more every day. There were riots and murders through the election season, and then more rioting after the new First Wolf was treacherously sent to his death. Yes, I think it is dying, if not yet dead."

Justice shook her monochrome head. "I saw so little of this. My visualizations were disrupted by my manifestation's captivity."

"Not just yours," Death replied. "Everyone's visualizations have been uncertain, lately. But all that is soon to end."

"Yes. It will be relief to have the plan fulfilled."

"It will be a relief. A great relief."

"Why are the others not manifest, yet? Were we not to meet at this space-time locus?"

"They are here, Justice, but you cannot see them." Death unfolded a piece of space-time and said, "Look."

The Strange Gods were all present. Even Wisdom was there, or at least the shell of Wisdom. Justice knew from his manifestation that he was dead, had long been dead.

Each of the gods, except Death, was bound in a web of otherness that Justice saw, but did not understand.

"What is this, Death?" she asked.

"This is the plan," said Death. "I have labored over it for thousands of years. Each of you is trapped (yes, you, too, justice) in a talic web of my weaving. Each thread of the web is woven to a cluster of human lives. And if you move to break that thread, the lives will be affected in a way inimical to your nature. See poor War there, I caught him first, while he was enjoying the riots after Rokhlenu's death. If he tries to free himself in time, the Anhikh Komos will make peace with the Ontilian Empire. If he tries to free himself in space, the Mupuvlokhu tribes in northern Qajqapca will lay down their arms and unite. If he tries to take effective action without freeing himself, other things inimical to his nature will happen."

"Why? Why are you doing this?"

"So that I can kill you. If gods take action inimical to their nature, their manifestation becomes more loosely associated with their nature. If that separation becomes permanent, death will occur."

"I know that. I know that. I am asking you why."

"So that death will occur. I act according to my nature, and my nature is Death. You are mortal, and my task has been to reap your lives. You have been cunning. You have used power and magic and skill and patience. You have evaded me for long ages, but you could not escape me. I am Death."

"You weren't always Death. We were sisters once."

"We were once, but we are not now. All your symbols, all your dreams and hopes, all that you were and were not and wished to be, all this is nothing to me. Stop your signifying, justice. I am Death, and I always have the last word. "

n the second night of the ninth month, the month Morlock called Tohrt, he took the nexus holding his choir of flames and carried it to the bone-dry grassy slope to the east. He set the nexus down and broke it open.