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."
"I don't know anything about your local kinds," Morlock said. "They lived in the mountains where I was raised. I suppose they still live there."
"Then we'll take you there. Or we'll send there for a horn."
Morlock shook his head. "No. I'll be dead soon. The ghost illness will reach my heart and I'll be done." Again, Hrutnefdhu was looking at him with a stricken expression, but Morlock didn't seem to notice. "I'll teach Hlupnafenglu what I can before I die. I'll do what I can for you before I die. It's not what I would have chosen, but it will have to be enough."
"What about Ulugarriu?" broke in Hrutnefdhu. "Maybe-maybe he could do something."
Morlock opened his right hand, closed it. That seemed to be a dismissal of the subject. He turned to Rokhlenu and said, "I tore down the mirror corridor."
"Yes, I saw that."
"The moonstone failed after I healed Lekkativengu. I can't recharge it with moonlight; it's designed differently than my sunstone. In fact, I don't think it was made at all; it may be a piece of a moon."
"How did they get it?"
Morlock shrugged. He continued, "When I was breaking up the silvered glass I had an idea."
He drew a short stabbing spear from a sheath under his cloak. The spear head was glass, woven through with threadlike cracks. And in the center was a silvery wedge.
"In the haft, there's a rune-slate bonded in state to the glass spearhead," Morlock explained coolly. "You stab someone with the spear, break the runeslate, the glass shatters, and the silver point remains in the wound."
Rokhlenu finally understood the feeling of dread gripping him since Morlock had appeared. "Put it away, please," he said, as mildly as possible.
"I think they'll work," said Morlock, "though I haven't tested one yet. I have enough silver and glass from the mirror corridor to make many of these."
"I'm sure they'll work; everything you make works. But we can't use them."
"They're safe enough for the user. The-"
"Politically impossible. You need to take my word for this, Morlock. I cannot use silver weapons against other werewolves. Every citizen in Wuruyaaria would march against us."
Morlock shrugged, nodded, and sheathed the spear. "Well, maybe I can use the stuff for something else. This really bothers you, does it?" he added, tapping the sheath.
"Yes. It really does."
"I'll get rid of it. You'd better stay here," he said to Hrutnefdhu. "Some silver might be lying around the cavern yet."
The pale werewolf nodded and said, "Either Liudhleeo or I will bring you lunch. You'll eat it or find another den."
Morlock smiled, gripped him by the forearm, punched Rokhlenu lightly in farewell, and left.
"Is he drunk?" Rokhlenu asked Hrutnefdhu. "He smelled like that stuff he drinks. The wine."
"He never drinks during the day," the pale werewolf replied. "But he is drunk every night."
"I wish I'd never given him the stuff. I thought he'd like it."
"I can't tell if he does. It seems to be hurting him somehow. But what does it matter, if he's dying anyway?" The pale castrato's voice was shrill with despair.
They entered the great audience chamber of the First Wolf. She wasn't there. In fact, no one was there. They sat down on couches and talked in low voices about one thing and another: the election, and Morlock, and Ulugarriu, and the deadly weather. They reached no conclusions, but that, Rokhlenu thought to himself, isn't what talking was usually for.
Wuinlendhono appeared presently. She dismissed her guards and began to talk about her plans for the seacoast colony. They were getting more people in the outlier settlement because of their successes in the elections-more than they could really feed, as it was turning out. This was a chance to give some of the newcomers a chance to earn some bite, if nothing else.
Hrutnefdhu left them during this conversation. Rokhlenu waved him an offhanded farewell, involved in discussing the new plans and their political impact with his beloved.
Presently he looked up to see that the red werewolf Hlupnafenglu was standing nearby, patiently waiting for them to notice him.
"What is it, Hlupnafenglu?" he asked.
"Do you know who I am?" the red werewolf asked in turn.
"Yurr." Was the big red werewolf going crazy again? "Aren't you Hlupnafenglu?"
"I am now. Do you know who I was?"
"Oh. Before the Vargulleion? No. Is it important?"
"I don't know if it is." The red werewolf looked keenly at the First Wolf. "Do you know who I was, High Huntress?"
She seemed reluctant to reply. Finally she said, "Well. I thought you might be the Red Shadow. I saw him a few times in Apetown. From a distance, mind you. But he didn't look like anyone else I've ever seen, except you."
"I was the Red Shadow."
"All right," Rokhlenu said. "Someone has to explain this to me."
Wuinlendhono turned to him and said, "The Red Shadow was an assassin. You wouldn't have heard about him; you were a respectable person before they framed you. But for five or six years, if you wanted someone killed in Apetown or Dogtown, and you didn't care how much it cost you, you hired the Red Shadow. He never failed. A few years ago, he disappeared. Some people said he was killed by one of his targets, and some people said he had retired to live among the wild packs. But apparently he was in the Vargulleion. Eh, `Hlupnafenglu'?"