The Wolf Age (60 page)

The linen wrappings were falling loose from the hand Wuinlendhono had been weeping over. Morlock looked at the hand, then picked it up and further unwrapped the linen to get a better look at it.

"Leave her alone," Wuinlendhono shrieked, and began to pummel him. "Leave her alone!"

He turned and held the dead hand up in front of her face. "Do you recognize this hand?"

The unexpected question shocked her into stillness. Presently she said, "I recognize it. I first saw it ten years ago. I was fleeing from the Goweiteiuun after killing my husband. I ran into the necropolis. I stole food from the funeral gifts; that was how I stayed alive. Once I saw a hand reaching for the same piece of rotten meat that I wanted, and I bit it. See the scar? See the scar there, on her hand? That was where I bit it. We fought, Liudhleeo and I, and she-we fought. She didn't kill me, though I guess maybe she could have; I was near starving, weaker than a chicken. She was running away, too. She said we should go to the outliers. I. She. I went with her. Came here with her. I don't know what I would have done. Without her. And now. Now I'll have to."

"This is not Liudhleeo's hand."

"Liar. That won't save you."

"She was smoking spiceweed every day for the last month-bowl after bowl of the stuff. It stained her hands and her fingers. Do you see any stains here? Use your dog's nose. Do you smell the spiceweed?"

Wuinlendhono's dark eyes widened with anger and wonder. Then she closed them tight, and her face wore a remembering look. "I saw her only twice the last month. That was your fault: this stupid game you and Rokhlenu are playing. But she was smoking. She was smoking spiceweed both times. It does stain your fingers, and your teeth. That's why I never." She opened her eyes. "What is it you are saying?"

"Liudhleeo may be dead," Morlock said. "But this is not her body."

Wuinlendhono took a step back, straight into Rokhlenu's arms. He wrapped them about her, and she let herself rest upon them, closing her eyes, her face growing calm.

"How can that be?" she asked at last, not opening her eyes.

Morlock had an idea or two about this. He had been thinking of that strange flesh-machine the ratlike beasts had been using, the simulacrum of Yaniunulu. Perhaps this corpse was something like that. Perhaps there was some other explanation. But there was no reason to say all that when one word would do as well.

"Ulugarriu," he said.

Wuinlendhono screamed. Her body arched with the force of it. She screamed until all the air had left her lungs and the scream sank to a croaking, gurgling snarl.

Rokhlenu held her patiently through all of this.

She lay in his arms for a time, neither speaking nor moving.

Then she opened her eyes and stood. She looked at Morlock and said, "You will find the truth of this. You will go and find the truth of this. We will hold a funeral over these things as if they were our friends. Is that Hlupnafenglu's body, do you think?"

Morlock nodded. "Probably."

"Well, we will pretend this thing is her body and burn it with Hlupnafenglu's. It's a kind of blasphemy, but we've all done worse, I guess. And you will find the truth of this."

Morlock said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.

She turned to Rokhlenu and said, "Beloved. Thank you. I needed you, and I will need you, but now I need to be alone. Please don't follow me away." She walked off and disappeared into a stairway.

Rokhlenu waited until she was gone, and then turned to Morlock with something like relief in his face. "What is Ulugarriu after, do you suppose?"

Morlock shrugged.

"He seems to have been interested in the cave. He ransacked it before he left."

Morlock nodded, almost pleased. This confirmed that the killer had not failed to behead Hlupnafenglu for lack of time.

"It looks like Hlupnafenglu left her, came back to find her dead, and then stabbed himself with a glass dagger. That's how we found him."

"That's how it was meant to look."

"I'm afraid he took your sword," Rokhlenu added. "Unless you hid it somewhere."

"No," said Morlock. "I left Tyrfing with Hlupnafenglu. And it is gone?"

"Yes."

Morlock laughed. It was the best news he had heard on this evil strange day.

Rokhlenu was looking at him with open amazement.

"I'll explain," Morlock said.

But first he turned to his dead friend. The red werewolf's body had been washed, but not yet bound with linen. Morlock took some lying ready nearby the bier and wrapped up the red cold hands in the cloth. Then he put his hand on Hlupnafenglu's eyes and whispered a prayer that Those Who Watch would welcome this apprentice through the gate in the west.

"Good-bye, my friend," he said at last. "I hope you have all the breakfast you need or want, wherever you are now."

Then he turned away and walked from the audience hall with Rokhlenu beside him. Someone else would have to stand the vigil over the corpses: there was much to do.

The next morning found Morlock walking through Twinegate in full daylight with a lit lamp.

"Sun's up," said one of the watchers. "Don't know if you noticed."

"I'm looking for a citizen," Morlock said.

"Good luck. There might be one or two in the city somewhere, if you're not choosy."

"I'm choosy," said Morlock, and walked on into the sunlight with his lamp.

Morlock's plan was a simple one. The killer (Ulugarriu or his agent) had taken Tyrfing. That might even have been the motive for the attack on the cave, a possibility that gnawed at Morlock a little: if he had taken Tyrfing with him to the city earlier, Hlupnafenglu might be alive now. But never mind that: the killer had taken Tyrfing, and nothing else it seemed, because Ulugarriu had wanted it. So the sword was with the killer, or Ulugarriu (if there was a difference) now.

And Morlock could find Tyrfing. He had implanted a talic impulse in the crystalline lattice of the sword, so that he might summon it to him at need. That meant he was still in talic stranj with the blade. If he had been in full possession of his Sight, he would simply have summoned a light trance and walked until he reached the blade and the killer. But the ghost sickness, or whatever was causing it, had weakened his talent so that even going into a light vision kept him from taking volitional action in the world of matter.

Still, the matter was easy enough. Morlock lit a lamp, went into a trance, and went into talic stranj with the flame. When he descended to normal awareness, the flame was still linked to his magical blade: the flame burned brighter in its direction.

The lamp had led him here. It would lead him to Tyrfing. And then he and Ulugarriu would have a long-overdue conversation.

The bright edge of the flame guided him through Twinegate Plaza into Apetown. He came at last to a sort of shop, but the sign outside the shop was blank and there was no name or symbol on the door.

He kicked the door open and entered.

The shop within was dim: all the windows were shuttered. The brightest lights in the room entered with Morlock: the fierce sunlight of the spring morning and the lamp he held in his hand.

By their light he saw in the room's shadows an old citizen in the day shape sitting in front of a shop counter. Behind him, on the counter, glittered Tyrfing.

"Are you Ulugarriu?" he asked the old citizen.

The old citizen's lower jaw swung open like a gate. Through the grayish lips peered a mottled pink-and-brown face, almost human but for the long ratlike snout.

It screeched. Morlock heard someone behind him and reached out his hand to summon Tyrfing, but a blow fell on the back of his head and he lost consciousness before he could speak.

orlock awoke to the weary certainty that he was imprisoned again. The dank stone floor was familiar; the stench of unwashed bodies and the crash of iron doors was familiar. There was no cord of honor-teeth around his neck. For a moment, before he opened his eyes, he was afraid that the desperate New Year's escape and all that followed had been a delusion of his madness and he was still in the Vargulleion.

But as soon as he looked around him, he knew the fear was groundless. This was not the Vargulleion. The cell had no window; the walls seemed to be baked brick; and the cell doors had proper locks on them. Nothing he couldn't handle with the slightest excuse for a lockpick and a little time, though. They had taken his cloak, and all the useful and useless items he had tucked away in its pockets. But he had a long stiff wire or two sewn into the seams of his breeches; they might do the trick, if he could get a few moments unobserved.

There was only one guard outside his cell door, a solemn-faced semiwolf with a long face and hairy ears, wearing the dark regalia of the City Watchers.

"Why don't you shave those ears?" Morlock asked him, adding other insults that occurred to him, or that he remembered werewolves using to each other over the months he had been in or near Wuruyaaria.

But the watcher didn't even seem to be aware he was being insulted. He just looked at Morlock solemnly and with a little awe.

Presently a tall citizen with grizzled hair and a great tort of honor-teeth on his chest appeared, strolling up the corridor.

"I'll sit the watch for a while," he said.