The Wolf Age (40 page)

Liudhleeo had Morlock over at one of the tables and was fussing over him with bowls of food and water. No doubt she would continue her epic quest to get into his pants tonight: mating ceremonies were famous for promoting spontaneous couplings. She tried to give him a bowl of smoke and he waved it off-and that reminded Rokhlenu of something.

He grabbed a jar sitting at a nearby table and ran over to Morlock and Liudhleeo. He took the bowl of water from Morlock's hand and dumped the contents back in the serving bowl. Morlock looked at him, his eyebrows lifting in surprise and amusement.

"You don't want that swill," said Rokhlenu. "Try this!" He cracked open the jar, poured a stream of purplish red wine into the bowl, and proudly handed it to Morlock.

He had been planning this for some time, ever since Morlock told him about drinking and bartenders. If Morlock didn't like smoking bloom, if he wanted wine to celebrate, Rokhlenu reasoned, why not get him some wine? It hadn't been easy, but he had done it, and the effect was all he could have hoped for.

Morlock's eyebrows raised even farther, his eyes widened, his mouth parted slightly. He was completely stunned.

"Is it the good kind?" Rokhlenu asked. "There were a couple of different colors. I got this from a gang of road robbers who dragged it back from Semendar without looking inside. There are crates of the stuff, as much as you could want."

"It's fine," Morlock said faintly.

"You're sure?" Rokhlenu asked.

"Morlock," Liudhleeo said out of the side of her mouth, "drink it. He's got some business to attend to."

Morlock put the bowl to his lips and drank a sip, then a larger mouthful.

"Excellent," he said, lowering the bowl. "Thanks, old friend. I know you mean well."

Rokhlenu laughed, punched him in the arm, and turned away. He had lost count of the breaths that had passed-and then he realized he didn't care. He walked, with as much dignity as he could, to the dais and mounted the steps. Wuinlendhono was watching him with her night-dark starless eyes. He found he had to step very slowly and carefully, lest he trip and fall-the worst of omens for a mating.

As he climbed the stairs, the room grew silent. By the time he reached the top, no one was speaking.

Wuinlendhono took his hands and they stood for a moment, wordless, staring into each other's eyes.

She shook his hands loose and said, in the dark contralto lightning she used as a voice, "I take you and all you are and all you own as mine."

He replied, in his clearest singing-while-speaking voice, "I take you and all you are and all you own as mine."

She undid the fastenings of her shirt, and it fell to the floor. She stood proudly naked in the red light of evening.

One of the knots in his fastenings would not come undone. He'd have cursed the one who had tied it, except it was himself, distracted by love and grief, only a short time ago.

Wuinlendhono smiled and brushed his hands aside, deftly undoing the knot. His shirt fell away, and he now stood as naked as she.

She ascended the couch on the dais and, never breaking eye contact, went down on all fours.

He climbed onto the couch behind her. She turned her head to watch him over her shoulder. Her eyes were wide, excited. She was panting slightly.

He mounted her from behind. As he entered her, her eyes half closed and she gasped. She writhed in pleasure, and the sinuous motion sent muscles rippling all down her glorious back.

Union with her was silken ecstasy. The world was afire with the day's last light. He wanted to drive into her until he came, but he could not; he must not yet.

She moved again and moaned.

"Be still," he said to her.

"Can't," she whispered.

"You must," he said, and put his hands on her back to keep her still. That was a mistake, perhaps: it sent soft streams of sensory fire up his fingers. He sank his fingers deeper in her soft firm skin, because he could, because they belonged to each other now. He almost started to move his hips.

"You're right," she whispered. "I'll be still."

Somehow that helped. He waited, adrift in a fog of pleasure-that-was and the agony of pleasure self-denied.

The room waited, silent, as sunlight died. The room grew dim, then dark. No lamps were lit.

Blue light appeared in the windows: the eyes of the moons were opening with the departure of the sun's light. The light grew stronger, bluer, more bitter, more intoxicating. Rokhlenu looked through the window straight into the face of Trumpeter and knew that this was the moment.

He yielded to the moment of transformation, and Wuinlendhono did the same. His shadow rose up and towered over him; hers did the same. The two shadows passed through each other, mingling as their bodies mingled, transforming them as they coupled; day shape with night shape and female with male they were bonded in an endless instant of transformation and sexual union.

Their screams gave way to ecstatic howls; they lay, still joined, in the night shape.

Slowly, hungrily, intently, patiently, Rokhlenu began to grind into his mate as she rocked back against him. They were mated now.

Rokhlenu found that his grief was not gone. If anything, he was even more aware of his loss, of his beloved dead. And he grieved for Wuinlendhono and their love. They were mortal; they would die; their love would be forgotten as if it never had been.

But this was their hour, and all the ages of nothingness to come could not wash away this one glorious moment of being and becoming. If this was life, and he felt it was, it was worth even the price of death to feel this way.

Morlock was drinking slowly and he was not yet drunk. But he had begun to drink on purpose, not merely to be polite, and that meant that most of the man he thought of as himself was gone.

It was as if there were two Morlocks. Drunk Morlock was careless, selfish, lazy, stupid, cruel-everything that Morlock hated about himself, everything he rejected. It was like the werewolves, with their day shape and night shape.

Not-drunk Morlock was still holding the reins. But drunk Morlock was slowly getting a grip on them.

This internal struggle numbed the shock he felt when he noticed Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono consummating their bond by having sex in the presence of the wedding party. In any case, it was no skin off his walrus: different lands had different customs.

Rather more worrisome to him was the way partners were beginning to pair off and nuzzle each other on couches. Apparently the ceremonial union of the couple was accompanied by more informal unions among the wedding party. Looking back on weddings he had attended over the centuries, he realized that things were not so different here-just more open.

When the pair mating on the dais assumed their night shapes, and a tide of moonlit transformations spread across the room, the coupling began in earnest, many pairs eschewing the couches and tumbling about on the floor. There were wolves, semiwolves, and a few unfortunates in their day shape, apparently unable to make the transition. Morlock thought this-and nearly laughed aloud. Werewolf notions seemed to be soaking into his skin. If he stayed among the werewolves much longer, at the next wedding he might actually join in. That was an amusing thought, and this time he did laugh.

He looked around for the wine jar: time to grab it and make his escape. He found it. He also found that Liudhleeo was still standing beside him in her day shape. Her eyes were half closed; she was smiling at him with shy eagerness.

"I'd've thought you'd've switched shadows by now," he said, waving his wine bowl vaguely at the rest of the room.

She looked hurt, then sly. "Is that what you'd prefer? Some never-wolves like it-coupling with a partner in the night shape."

"They're not as never-wolfy as I am. I've never coupled with someone who was not a never-wolf." Morlock covertly tried to count up the number of negatives in that sentence, was unsure of his total, and added hastily, "I have only ever coupled with never-wolves. If you see what I mean. It's worked out pretty well for me so far," he said wryly, thinking of his ex-wife. There was a little wine left in his bowl, so he emptied it.

"There are none like that here," Liudhleeo replied. "If there were, she'd be a slave or meat. You aren't only because of who you are. I'm not the only female in the room who finds that fascinating. Or your scent fascinating."

"I never argue about matters of taste-or, in this case, smell."

She laughed too much and took his arm. He impatiently shook her off.

"Why are you being so cruel to me?" Liudhleeo asked, not as if she really minded.

"I don't know what's going on," said Morlock, "but I can't believe you look on me with favor."

Liudhleeo was amused. "Why not? You smell so wonderful, like blood and burning bone with a hint of poisonous leaves. And you're perfectly dangerous. Ghost, when you glare at me like that I just melt. And maybe you're not as beautiful as my sweet Hrutnefdhu, but nobody is, and anyway a female doesn't have to look at her partner during sex...." She paused, horrified by a thought that struck her. "Unless. Unless they do it ... face-to-face. Do you do it that way, Morlock?"

"Sometimes. It doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter? It bites me what males think matters. Not even monkeys do it that way, you know, face-to-face. It seems so depraved. Soft wet mouths and soft wet bellies pressing against each other. It seems so nasty. So nasty. Oh. Oh. Oh, ghost. You have to do that for me. I know you don't care about me. I know you don't care about anybody, but you can't leave me after putting that idea in my head."

"Now I see why Hrutnefdhu didn't attend," Morlock said. "Did you ask him to stay home?"

Now she stepped a pace back from him, her brows knitted in bafflement. "No," she said. "Of course not. But how do you suppose he'd feel if he were here, right now, with pairs coupling all over the floor and the room stinking of sex-"

"-and his mate trying to couple with his old friend-"

"Is that it? You don't understand. You really don't understand. It's not a betrayal."

"And I never will understand."

She bowed her head, defeated. "Do you want me to find you another female, then? Or a male, perhaps? There are other never-wolves in town."

Morlock stared at her. "My love life, grim and empty though it may be, has never been soiled by the presence of a pimp."

She stood back another pace, tears leaking from her eyes. She gave him a last reproachful look and fled.

Morlock took his wine jar and a couple of still-sealed ones for backup. He made his way unsteadily out of the moonlit room, stepping carefully around (or, in one case, over) groups of werewolves in various stages of sexual congress.

The air outside was clean, by contrast, but warm as a summer's night. He drank a jar of wine as he walked slowly across the outlier settlement, dropping the empty into a stretch of swamp showing next to a walkway. When he reached the lair-tower, he found that he couldn't face Hrutnefdhu (drunk Morlock was a coward, among his other vices), so he decided to sleep that night in his cave. The last thing he remembered was sitting in the wickerwork boat, finishing another jar of wine.

The night was dark, though moonlit. The swamp water was darker and smelled bad. His mind was darker still and smelled worse.