James Enge - This Crooked Way

I is a long way from Aflraun to the eastern reaches of the Lost Woods, long even as the proverbial crow flies. And Morlock Ambrosius, despite certain legends to the contrary, was not a crow: he had to walk on, not fly over, the mazelike paths meandering through the foothills of the Blackthorn Range. Seven kinds of danger would walk those paths with him: thieves, earthquakes, volcanic outbursts, dark-gnomes, werewolves, dragons, and (most terrible of all, perhaps) the dragon-taming Khroi.

He was prepared for a bad journey. In fact, he counted on one. (There was some chance he would be followed, or at least observed.) But the journey was far from over before he realized that he hadn't prepared enough. This reflection struck him most forcibly on the journey's forty-second night: he was being stalked by a pack of werewolves and he had run out of both silver and wolfbane.

So he ran. Werewolves, in their nocturnal form, are like other wolves: if they flush a quarry who is determined and able to elude them, they usually give up and seek easier game (the very young, the very old, the gullible, and the morbid). But with his dark unruly hair, slightly crooked shoulders, and loping irregular stride, Morlock had a rather wolfish look about him. It wasn't impossible that they thought him a werewolf incapable of making the nocturnal change. There were such, Morlock knew, and these imperfect monsters (more were than wolf) were persecuted ruthlessly by their more perfectly ambiguous brethren.

He came to the verge of an unexpectedly bowl-like valley with a high toothlike hill in its center. He didn't like the looks of the place. He would have turned back or gone along the verge-except for his pursuers. Listening carefully, he thought they had broken from single file and were fanning out behind him. Whichever way he turned he would meet them. His only chance lay ahead. It would be better to confront them, if he had to, on a hill, with his back to the slope.

Leaping over the verge, he dashed down into the valley. Here he actually began to gain on them, and on the valley's level floor he held his own. The high hill loomed over him, black against the night-blue darkness of the sky, the silver drifts of stars, the blank unequal eyes of the major moons setting in the east.

Then: the chase was over. He stumbled and fell across a low hedge trimmed with flowers, planted at the base of the hill. But even as he leapt to his feet to defend himself from the imminent predators, he laughed. There was no mistaking the sweet clear scent of aconite rising from the broken leaves.

Wolfbane! He laughed again as he drew his sword and cut a pile of loose stalks with a single stroke. He thrust the sword into the earth and reached over one shoulder to draw a jar of fire-wylm from his pack. He scattered some wylm on the branches and they burst into flame. Swiftly he corked the jar and thrust it in a pocket.

Lifting a cluster of burning stems as a makeshift torch, he saw his pursuers: seven dark wolf-shapes, still as stones, watching the light with green glittering eyes.

After recovering his sword, he whirled the torch in the air, to feed the flame and spread the smoke, both deadly to his pursuers. He barked at them, the short staccato barks of an aggressor, and moved forward to the edge of the wolfbane and then beyond it, sweeping the burning stalks from side to side before him.

If he had challenged them earlier, they would have done their best to tear him to bits. But the werewolves were now far from anything they considered their territory; the intruder had made no claim on it, properly running when challenged; and since he dared to handle wolfbane, he was clearly no kin of theirs.

There was a brief but unhurried consultation as Morlock slowly advanced against them. They touched each other's noses and wagged their tails. Then, without a glance in Morlock's direction, they vanished one after another into the arc of shadows beyond the dying flames. When he was sure they were gone, he dropped the burning stems and ground them under his feet, turning then to stomp out the lingering flames in the wolfbane-lined hedge. Finally he moved back behind the hedge to catch his breath in relative safety.

But glancing up, he realized he wasn't alone. A tall robed figure stood farther up the hill, its features invisible in the shadows.

"Why have you trespassed on my hill?" the figure demanded, in a harsh deep voice. "You have stolen my herbs and wantonly cut and burned a hole in my hedge."

"I was defending my life," Morlock said sharply. Then he continued more slowly, "Still, I regret having harmed something you value. I'm willing to recompense you, within reason."

"What could you have that I would want?" the other demanded scornfully. "A dwarvish hoard in your peddler's pack? Or merely a map to find one, which you will reluctantly part with, for a nominal fee?"

"I am Morlock Ambrosius. Many a dwarvish hoard has been spent to buy the things my hands have made. If you reject my offer, I won't insist. Thanks for the wolfbane." He turned to go.

"Wait!" said the other.

"I'll wait," Morlock said, turning back, "but not for long."

There was a brief pause, and then the figure spoke again, in a light hesitating voice. It was hard to believe the same person was speaking. "I apologize, Morlock Traveller, for my harsh words. Your offer is generous, but …It raises a difficult question. Will you accept hospitality while we discuss it?"

Morlock stood with his weight on his good leg and thought for a moment. He didn't like or trust this person. But the thought of walking away from an unpaid debt nagged at him. He had been raised with too much respect for property, or so he had often been told. But that was the way he was. He nodded reluctantly.

The robed figure turned and walked up the steep hill. Morlock followed.

They came at last to a cave entrance on the west side of the hill. There was no door, but the entrance had once been sealed by a wall of mortared stone-the edges were ragged, if weathered, and Morlock noticed the stones that had been the wall in a grass-covered heap nearby. The opening was radiant with firelight.

The fire was in the center of the chamber within; a pot of herbs was boiling over above it. The infusion stank like poison. A ring of flat stones encircled the fire, blackened through long use. There were some other signs the cave had long been occupied: the pallet of rotting straw along the wall, the dust that covered some of the crude bowls and cups. Yet …the place had the air of a temporary camp, as if the tenant had stopped here briefly some years ago and had never happened to leave.

Morlock glanced at his host, who seemed to be waiting for him to say something. At first Morlock thought the man (it was clearly a man) was standing so that a shadow fell over part of his face. But there was no obstruction between the man and the fire, and the shadow was too dark for any such mundane cause. It was not as if the man's skin were dark, either-the features on the left side, including the eye, were invisible, wholly concealed under the layer of shadow.

"Half of your face appears to be missing," Morlock said then. He was not famous for his tact, but in a situation like this tact was hard to define.

"My face is still there," the other replied, in the light wavering tone Morlock thought of as his second voice. "The darkness simply …overlays it."

"You want me to remove the darkness," Morlock said flatly.

"Yes …that is …most of it. I need some of it to help me hear." In fact, the other seemed uncertain whether he wanted to be rid of the darkness or not; the half of his face which Morlock could see was round and almost expressionless, marked only by confusion.

"I don't understand," Morlock replied finally.