Hugh Cook - The Werewolf and the Wormlord

And his mother, intruding upon this dialogue with delirium, said:

‘There now, there now. Lie back. Rest. Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.’

But Alfric was not all right.

He was mortally ill, and he was living in torment.

In fever he imagined himself become a zombie, enslaved by witchcraft; his drudgery it was to be a corpse yet have to shift black wood and water until his bones neared breaking point from the strain of labour. At other times, he thought himself mutilated, staring at the world with one eye solo; and so convincing was this delusion that he tried to pluck out his rotten eye with his groping fingers.

Then, in one rare episode of peace, his hallucinations took him into a wonderwolf of pastoral bliss. It seemed to him that he spent an entire afternoon on a mellow-misty lakeside lawn, watching the wings of a bird making tracks upon the water. Then dark raindrops fell, and storm drenched down, and Alfric’s world dissolved to water.

Then to fire.

He lived with fire and in fire, and watched fire consume the hush of a bird’s egg, the bird itself, the bird’s nest, the tree which held the nest, and then the world which held the tree.

Such was the heat of Alfric’s fever that he imagined himself to be that world-burning fire. Wide he swelled, then shrank, diminishing in strength and freedom until at last he found himself burning in the confines of the hearth of a great hall, listening to bold singers declaring the deeds of dragons and telling of salamanders lapped in flame.

Later, he thought himself one of those singers; and imagined he stood by that fire. While thus standing, he saw the deathblade Bloodbane bury itself in the blazing hearth. It hurt him to see that weapon shrivelling amidst the fire-fretted wood. So Alfric, loathe to see such many-splendoured death destroyed, reached for the weapon and took it by the hilt.

For a moment he held it.

Then the sword turned to an eel, which writhed in Alfric’s hand, wet and slippery.

Alfric reproved himself:

‘This must stop. For this hints of neurosis, and my bank account cannot withstand the assault of any ailment so expensive.’

Obediently, his mind abandoned neurosis for madness, and he found himself plunged into an underhall deep in the earth where he fought against uncouth creatures of orange and umber, struggling long with nightmarish foes until at last he escaped to the world above.

Where was he? Dark thronged the shadows in a fastness of forest haunted by the deep-soughing song of millennial winds. Those winds began to weather and wither Alfric’s flesh as he quested beneath dead, creaking branches. He was looking for a path, a track, a road. But none such he found. The cold wind blew through the rags of his clothes, flirting with the ghosts it found in his pockets. The wind was mauve and tasted of lemons. Lemons?

‘None such grow in Wen Endex,’ said Alfric. ‘So these-’

But even in his fever-dreams he could not bring himself to speak of the Secret of the Partnership Banks.

‘Freeze,’ sang the wind.

Alfric thought its malice superfluous, for he was sure to freeze effectively without any such invitation.

Or was he?

By dint and endeavour, Alfric found a glowing ember — plucked it from the flesh of a toadstool and fanned it to life with a stuffed flamingo — and with that ember lit his own fever and fanned it into fire, until he was once more flame, and, thus incarnated, flourished skyward as an avatar of the sun.

At last, after much such turbulent adventuring, Alfric Danbrog slipped from fever into honest dream, and dreamt of bones scattered amidst the greyskull stones of a beach below the cliffs of the Winter Sea. There he stood, sadly contemplating life, time and mortality.

— Ever we die.

Thus thought Alfric Danbrog.

Death is the common fate of all. The fate of cowards and the fate also of those brave men and bold who seek to win a long-lasting glory with steel-edged swords. As even the heroes have found, to elude death is not easy. Even the mightiest, in time, must concede their wills to mortality. While the generosity of the flesh which allows the spirit to pursue its designs through many a year, each of those passing years is but a stay of execution, with the ultimate outcome unchanged.

But such knowledge led Alfric not to despair.

All men are dust; all men are bones. Yet, even so, much is allowed to the moment. Yes. Though all hopes are ultimately vanity, and though every reward is transitory, each moment is worth winning in its own right.

— The goodness of the moment for the moment suffices.

So thought Alfric Danbrog; and, imagining that he had a great truth to tell to the world, strove to wake from his dreams. But he could not wake, for the fever was coming upon him again.

Fever modulated dream to nightmare, and Alfric found himself trapped in a confused montage of overlapping epics, a world of monsters and heroes, sword-shields and blood. It was so exaggerated that he knew it at once for a dream.

— I’m dreaming.

So thought Alfric. But, try as he might, he could not awaken. For what seemed like forever, he was doomed to live through a sagalife of questing and battling. Swords splintered. Shields split. Castles rose and crumbled. Monsters weltered into blood. Ancient hatreds stirred to fresh murder, the blood of which was almost sufficient to drown him.

The swirling blood of a great feuding lapped round Alfric’s ankles then rose to his knees, swirled round his waist then ascended to his neck. Then Ciranoush Norn loomed over Alfric and pushed him down, down into the blood which was welling all around. And such was the heat of the blood that Alfric’s own blood boiled, and he screamed, though his scream was muffled as he could not breathe.

At last, such nightmares eased; and Alfric enjoyed sweet dreams again, for his blood was cooling, and he dreamt of big seas billowing to a misty shore, swamping against dunes and booming into the sea-caves of granitic cliffs. Of that he dreamt, and dreamt too of a cleft rock where there was a peace which sheltered him from wind and rain alike.

He hid himself in the warmth of that rock as the world cooled. At last the world grew so cold that there was ice sufficient in the world to bridge the oceans, and bridged indeed they were.

Then Alfric found himself sitting on the shore by the frozen sea, watching old women watching fire eat wood while they spun their spells. To his horror, Alfric dreamt himself drawn toward the fire by those spells. He knew he was going to be plunged into that heat, to be melted and baked, his shape to be changed, and his flesh to be fated Knowing what fate awaited him, Alfric struggled mightily to escape. In a rare moment of wakeful lucidity, Alfric found himself struggling with his mother by the household hearth.

— So I live.

Thus thought Alfric, waking entirely.

And such was his relief that he fainted clean away; and his mother gathered up his feverish flesh and returned it to its sickbed.

Seven days and seven nights passed in such turmoil before Alfric’s illness eased one last and final time. The result of that easing could well have been death, but his constitution was fundamentally strong, and he lived.

Just.

When the fever abated, Alfric did not ask what had happened. Not at first. But his mother put his spectacles in place, which told him, at the very least, that someone had found the slaughter-sight, and that something at least had been recovered from the forest.

Later, when Alfric was feeling stronger, his father came to his side. And Alfric at last asked what had happened. He thought it best to ask until he knew what other people knew. Once he knew that, then he would know what lies he would have to tell, though he hoped he would not have to lie to his father.