James Enge - The Wolf Age

Mercy reached down and caressed Morlock's scarred sleeping face with her flower.

Ulugarriu watched this with interest, thinking furiously all the while. "I thought it was Death who appeared to Morlock in the Bitter Water. That's what he told me, anyway."

"She did, and she thought she was acting for herself when she saved him from drowning. But it was I who prompted her to act against her own nature, separating her manifestation from the phenomenon that sustained it. It took time for that seed to blossom, but now it has, and she is finally at peace."

Ulugarriu lowered their head and thought about this for a long time. Finally they said quietly, "Are you telling me that that was what this whole thing was about? Everything that happened was so that you could bring death to Death?"

"I was sorry for her suffering, which was more terrible than you or I can imagine, and I wanted it to end. That was my purpose, and it was very simple. Other entities had other purposes (you among them, Ulugarriu), and so the pattern of events became very complex."

Ulugarriu raised their head and saw in the light of Mercy's lotus that Morlock was gone.

"What have you done with my stalwart?" they blurted.

"Hardly yours, poor Ulugarriu. I hid your presence from him, and he has gone his way through the dark roads under the earth. Don't be afraid for him; he has lived much of his life underground, poor man."

"We didn't have a chance to say good-bye."

"I can't see very deeply into his mind, Ulugarriu. It is almost as strange to me as yours is. But I do know that he might have felt obliged to kill you for what you did to his friend, and I felt obliged to prevent that."

"I did not kill Hlupnafenglu!"

"I know. I was referring to Rokhlenu."

"Oh." Ulugarriu thought it over and decided it was fruitless to make a denial. "Everything would have been fine if Aaluindhonu or someone like that had been elected to lead the Innermost Pack. I couldn't have Rokhlenu as First Singer, don't you see? The city's social pattern is a delicate thing, and too-rapid change will create chaos. Don't you see?"

"No," said Mercy, making a protective sign against the name of the alien god Chaos, "but it's not necessary that I do. Do you think Morlock would see?"

"I guess not. Thanks."

"He would have been sorry if he found out afterward you were pregnant."

Ulugarriu was silent for a time, and then said feebly, "I'm not pregnant."

"Your simulacrum Liudhleeo is. Or is my visualization in error?"

"No," Ulugarriu admitted finally. "You're right. It is pregnant. I haven't been sure what to do about that. What does your visualization say?"

"I see no unclarities. The child will lie in Liudhleeo's womb for two years. He will be born with a full set of teeth and a full head of hair. Not even you will consider him handsome, but he will have very long, strong, clever hands. You will call him Fenrir Ambrosius."

"I bet I'll think he's handsome."

The red mouth on Mercy's flower smiled gently. "What will you bet, poor Ulugarriu?"

Morlock walked many long twisting ways under the ground, seeking a way out of the warm ghost-thick darkness and into the cold light of life.

He finally followed a breath of bitter air to a shallow snow-filled flaw in the earth. Cutting his way through with Tyrfing, he emerged in a trench filled with snow, and the gray light of a daytime blizzard.

The dirt of the trench smelled and tasted like silver ore to him. If he was not very much mistaken, he had emerged close to his cave on the verge of the outlier settlement.

He thought of taking refuge there from the cold, but shook the thought off. He had shed that skin.

The framework of his wings had broken in his several falls; as wings, they were unusable. But the scales that still remained on them kept him light on his feet, and he could wrap the wings around him like a coat, until he found (or made) better.

Not far off, he was interested to see a steaming pit in the snow, about three hands wide. He slogged closer and peered over the edge.

At the bottom of the pit was the flame nexus. Three shivering flames, the last of his choir, were quarrelling over the last bit of wet smoky fuel.

"Friends," he said, "I'm headed south. Care to come with me?"

They accepted his offer with dignified, if sparky, restraint. He reached down and lifted the nexus out of the pit.

He fed them scales off his broken wings, and they assured him that metallic phlogiston was the best thing ever, even better than coal, unless he actually had any coal. Since he didn't, they gladly continued to consume the burning metal. This, in turn, warmed Morlock.

Sheltering the three flames under his wings from the midsummer blizzard, the crooked man took the long road south.

This, lacomes, is the extent of my visualization. May I return now, to rest among my stones?

The sky of Laent has three moons: Chariot, Horseman, and Trumpeter (in descending order of size).

The year has 375 days. The months are marked by the rising or setting of the second moon, Horseman. So that (in the year before The Wolf Age begins) Horseman sets on the first day of Bayring, the penultimate month. It rises again on the first of Borderer, the last month. It sets very early in the morning on the first day of Cymbals, the first month of the new year. All three moons set simultaneously on this occasion. (The number of months are uneven-fifteen-so that Horseman rises or sets on the first morning of the year in alternating years.)

The period of Chariot (the largest moon, whose rising and setting marks the seasons) is 187.5 days. (So a season is 93.75 days.)

The period of Horseman is 50 days.

The period of Trumpeter is 15 days. A half cycle of Trumpeter is a "call." Calls are either "bright" or "dark" depending on whether Trumpeter is aloft or not. (Usage: "He doesn't expect to be back until next bright call.")

The seasons are not irregular, as on Earth. But the moons' motion is not uniform through the sky: motion is faster near the horizons, slowest at zenith. Astronomical objects are brighter in the west, dimmer in the east.

The three moons and the sun rise in the west and set in the east. The stars have a different motion entirely, rotating NWSE around a celestial pole. The pole points at a different constellation among a group of seven (the polar constellations) each year. (Hence, a different group of nonpolar constellations is visible near the horizons each year.) This seven-year cycle (the Ring) is the basis for dating, with individual years within it named for their particular polar constellations.

The polar constellations are the Reaper, the Ship, the Hunter, the Door, the Kneeling Man, the River, and the Wolf.

There is an intrapolar constellation, the Hands, within the space inscribed by the motion of the pole.

Solar eclipses are rare but not unheard-of. They do not involve the three known moons. Some speculate that there is a fourth nonluminous moon whose course runs north-south through the sky. Others insist that the sun has a nonluminous hemisphere that appears as the sun rotates at irregular intervals.

The calendar below was first developed in the Wardlands, and then spread to the unguarded lands by exiles. In the Wardlands, years are dated from the founding of New Moorhope, the center of learning. The action of The Wolf Age begins in the 465th Ring, Moorhope year 3247, the Year of the Reaper. But in the Ontilian Empire, the years are dated from the death of Uthar the Great, a system that came into widespread use north and south of the Kirach Kund. According to that scheme, the action begins in 335 A.U.