"I think so," Morlock agreed.
He waited.
Hrutnefdhu was waiting, too. He expected Morlock to explain himself presently. But Hlupnafenglu knew better: the maker was waiting for someone else to take the next step-to follow in Morlock's trail, as it were.
"You will put the sunstone at one end of the corridor, the moonstone at the other," Hlupnafenglu said. "Thus you will blast the miasma clear."
"And, perhaps," Morlock said, "tear Rokhlenu's impulse cloud to shreds. That will be death."
"You could try it on another first," Hlupnafenglu said, "if-" He paused, then said, "I am a never-wolf."
"Yes," Morlock said.
"Try it on me," Hlupnafenglu said. "If it doesn't work you can think up something else. The gnyrrand is more important than I am."
Morlock shook his head. "Rokhlenu is my old friend, but I say no to that. If you choose to take the risk, I am glad. But not because you matter less than him."
Hlupnafenglu enjoyed risks the way he enjoyed almost everything, so he laughed.
They placed the Occlusion containing the sunstone at one end of the mirrored corridor. Then Hlupnafenglu walked in the open end. He was no longer laughing: being encased in silver was a nightmarish feeling.
Morlock and Hrutnefdhu rolled the black barrel over to the other end of the corridor. Then Morlock established a Perfect Occlusion there, and Hlupnafenglu found himself in absolute darkness.
"I'm going to introduce an aperture and release the light of the sunstone," Morlock's voice said, drifting down the glass corridor through the darkness.
Hlupnafenglu couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he said nothing.
The aperture opened like a golden eye, and the mirror-bright corridor was filled with burning light.
The red werewolf felt a strange pulling sensation, as if the burning eye were drawing him to it. He resisted.
Then a white eye opened at the other end of the corridor. It pushed him as the sunstone pulled him; the light more than redoubled in ferocity; it passed through him like silver swords. Something left him, something that did not belong in him, and he was less and more because of it.
Then the silver eye closed, and he was left gasping in the bitter sunlight. Moments later, the aperture in the Occlusion clenched shut and Hlupnafenglu was left in a grateful darkness. Soon, too soon, the sunstone end of the corridor opened: Morlock had moved the Occlusion so that Hlupnafenglu could exit the corridor.
Tentatively, he walked out into the tame morning light.
It had been a lifetime since he had entered. The world looked very different than it had a few moments before.
"You look all right," Hrutnefdhu said, glancing at him up and down. "How do you feel?"
"Strange," Hlupnafenglu said. "I …I remember who I am. Do you know who I am, Hrutnefdhu?"
"I suspected," the pale werewolf admitted.
Hlupnafenglu turned to Morlock. "Do you know who I am?"
"You are Hlupnafenglu," Morlock replied calmly.
The red werewolf found he had raised his hands in fists, as if to attack Morlock. He lowered them. What if he could kill the crooked man? Morlock was sick, already dying. It was a deed of no particular bite. On the other hand, the crooked man was Khretvarrgliu, the beast slayer. Sick as he was, he might yet defeat any foe. That, too, would win no honor-teeth for the red werewolf. He looked for a few moments at his fists and then unclenched them.
"I am," he said. "I am Hlupnafenglu now. And who I was before …it doesn't matter."
Morlock shrugged and opened his right hand. (The ghostly left one was hidden under his cloak.) Hrutnefdhu said, "Everyone accepts you as Hlupnafenglu. There's no reason for that to change."
The red werewolf nodded. He looked at the sun, the hillside, his two friends.
"I think it worked," he said.
"We'll wait and see," Morlock said. "There will be a moon aloft tonight."
It did work. After sunset, Hlupnafenglu stood in the light of Trumpeter and felt the night shape steal over him like a dream. He shook loose from his human clothing and capered, howling, in the third moon's light, a dark-red wolf with golden eyes. Hrutnefdhu, now also wearing the night shape, knocked him over.
They chased each other along the eastern and southern margins of the swamp, and from there southward into the plains, running deep into the dark land and deep into the night, laughing and singing in Moonspeech.
When Morlock saw the transformation he turned away and went down the hill. He crossed the water and went to the den on the first floor of the lair-tower where Rokhlenu was being kept.
Wuinlendhono was there alone with her husband, but he would neither look at her nor speak to her. He had not spoken, eaten, or drunk since his fall from the airship.
But Morlock spoke to him and to her. It was a long conversation; Morlock said much and Wuinlendhono said more. Rokhlenu said nothing until the hour before dawn, and then he spoke at last.
The yellow semiwolf was cringing before the gray-muzzles of the Sardhluun and Neyuwuleiuun packs. Their gnyrrands were there, with their reeves and fellow-cantors of the campaign, and the werowances of both packs, with their pack councils.
Wurnafenglu, wearing the night shape, sang while the yellow semiwolf cringed. He sang that they should listen to the informant from the mongrel outliers, the honorable traitor Rululawianu (because loyalty to traitors was the only treason, and treason to traitors was the highest honesty). There was hope like rich marrow in his news, if they had the bite to crack the bone.
The Werowance of Neyuwuleiuun sang a song frostier by far than the night's warm air. He pointed out that his pack had suffered dearly from the opportunities Wurnafenglu had brought them. Their airships, the glory of the Neyuwuleiuun, were lost-one ruined, the other stranded in a field of poisonous silver waste, and apparently robbed of its motive element. They could not afford such a loss, nor another such loss.
The Werowance of the Sardhluun sang a sad song in reply, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the honored and honorable Werowance of the Neyuwuleiuun werewolves. How often he had warned Wurnafenglu that he was reckless and his actions were ill judged! All these comments were before trustworthy witnesses who could be produced at need. He had spoken at length about the perils and shame Wurnafenglu had brought to his own pack by his criminally inept stewardship of the Vargulleion, foundation of the Sardhluun pride, now an empty stone box. Still the Neyuwuleiuun could not hold the glorious Sardhluun werewolves culpable for the bad advice of one disfavored and deranged pack member. They must unite for the betterment of both packs against all their enemies-within their respective packs and without. He did not look toward Wurnafenglu as he sang, but many others from both packs did.
Wurnafenglu replied that both werowances had earned their relatively high and not at all unimportant positions by skills that were by no means to be absolutely despised: even the shortest claw can draw blood. And the Werowances knew, he hoped, exactly how much he esteemed them both. And he was willing to surrender his gnyrrandship, his honor-teeth, and his life …to the citizen who could take them from him.
Silence. Wurnafenglu was unpopular in that assembly, but no one cared to accept his offer. He knew it; they knew it; he remained silent, smiling with moon-bright teeth in the singer's circle, until they knew he knew it.
Wurnafenglu took up his song again. He sang that the costly attack on the outliers was not without effect. He sang that there was a wound in the outlier pack that could not be healed, that they could strike them down, along with their allies of the mangy sap-stinking Goweiteiuun dog-lickers. They must listen and learn; listen and learn: that was the refrain.
He stepped back, and motioned with his eyes for Rululawianu to step forward.
The yellow semiwolf crept rather than stepped forward. Absurdly, he was crouching on all fours-a shamefully submissive stance in the day shape. As he quivered in the moonlight falling on the singer's circle, the most powerful werewolves of the Sardhluun and Neyuwuleiuun packs looked down on him from their couches with interest and contempt. They utterly despised him, and Wurnafenglu would have changed that if he could; he wanted them to trust his informant. But they perhaps thought the semiwolf too timid to lie-and, if so, that was good enough.