The Wolf Age (51 page)

The man said nothing. But Mercy saw a little into his heart: how he feared death not at all, but disliked the need for parting with friends like this. The werewolf's heart, too, was full of hopeless, helpless affection he could not express, much of it confused with thoughts of his mate Liudhleeo.

Mercy witnessed them for a while, but demanifested herself before too much time passed. She knew that, whatever they felt now, they would change. She had been a god for long ages now, and she knew that Death was right about mortals: they were filled with one divinity, and then another, and then they changed and changed and changed. She preferred to be absent before they were lost to her entirely.

-ROBERT HUNTER, "DIRE WOLF"

t was a blisteringly hot morning in early spring. The First Wolf of the outliers and their gnyrrand were looking at a bucket of muddy water that Hlupnafenglu had just drawn from the swamp.

"How does it work?" Wuinlendhono asked.

"Like this," Hlupnafenglu said, and dumped the contents of the bucket into an open tube with a downward slope. The muddy water poured down the slope, through a glassy mirrored gate at the base of the slope, then up another slope on the other side. Except the water ran on alone; the mud remained at the bottom of the slope in a sludgy pool. There was a second mirrored gate atop the second slope, and another downward sloping tube beyond. Beneath this tube was another bucket. The water ran into the bucket, and when it was done, the red werewolf picked up the bucket and drank from it.

He offered the bucket to Rokhlenu.

Rokhlenu took it, tasted it, drank a mouthful, and said, "It smells a little odd."

"You can run it through more than once to get it cleaner," Hlupnafenglu said eagerly, and then his face fell. "Chieftain," he said, and bowed his head.

The others turned and saw Morlock standing near, with pale Hrutnefdhu beside him. The day was cruelly hot, but the crooked man wore his usual dark cloak over his ghostly left hand. He didn't seem to feel the heat: his pale grayish skin was dry as bone. He looked at the wooden tubes, at the suddenly abashed Hlupnafenglu and said, "So that was your project? A water cleaner?"

"Yes, Chieftain. I didn't want to bother you with it."

"Not bad. But I think you need more than one turn to get the water really clean. A coil of three or four might do."

"Yes, Chieftain."

"Sketch a design or two and we'll discuss them later."

"Yes, Chieftain."

"This will be important to us," Rokhlenu said, in case the red wolf was disheartened. "Especially if this dry weather continues."

Hlupnafenglu bowed his head, but did not call Rokhlenu chieftain.

"Let's step out of this sun," Wuinlendhono said. "Ghost! It's not even noon yet."

They went back into the First Wolf's lair-tower. The red werewolf remained behind to take apart his apparatus.

"Warm weather for spring," Morlock remarked.

"It's like hell," Wuinlendhono said. "Do your people believe in hell? I never did, but now I think I'm going to live through it."

There was a ragged edge to her voice, and Rokhlenu wanted to comfort her somehow, but he didn't know what to say. The weather was odd, very odd, frighteningly odd.

"I don't suppose you have a magic trick that will make food for us, Khretvarrgliu," the First Wolf said wryly. "We've been living on stores for almost a year, and by next fall they'll all be empty, I guess."

"No," said Morlock, "but if I were you, I would set up a colony on the coast of the Bitter Water. Even the swamp will not last forever, if there are no streams to run into it, and the mirror gates will rinse water clean of salt. Plus the drought will not affect sea creatures much."

There was a silence, and Wuinlendhono said with amusement, "Are you proposing that we eat fish?"

"Citizens will be eating worse by winter," Morlock replied. "At least if you are correct about the stores running out."

Wuinlendhono nodded, still not convinced.

"Besides," Morlock continued, "there are red-blooded animals in the sea and around it. Whales, wave-horses, merkine, seabirds."

"Really? I had no idea! What do they taste like?"

"Seabirds are just birds. I can't say about the rest."

"Yurr. Interesting. Of course, it's a few days' run to the coast. They'd have to smoke the meat on the coast to transport it back here."

The males were silent as the First Wolf thought it through. "And if the drought goes on, we can all just move there," she said at last. "Wuruyaaria will be done, anyway." She put a hand on Rokhlenu's arm. "Beloved, I'm going to do something about this. Do you want me with you when you meet the band from the Aruukaiaduun wolves?"

He did, but he stroked her hand and said, "Want, yes. Need, no. Go save our lives, why don't you?"

She gave a long carnivore's grin to them all and hurried away, her goldtoothed guardians scurrying in her wake.

"Morlock," said Rokhlenu to his old friend, "you don't look well."

"I'm dying," the crooked man said matter-of-factly. The pale werewolf looked at him with alarm.

"You look like you're already dead," Rokhlenu said. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

"Not unless you know where to find a unicorn," Morlock replied.

He used the Latin word, not knowing the term in Sunspeech, and when he explained what he meant, Rokhlenu said dubiously, "There are stories about things like that. Children's stories. What's told of them makes them sound like pets. Imaginary pets."