It had been months since I had last seen Giles Scott. Every so often I would catch a glimpse of some stranger a little too often, revealing that I was still watched, but other than that it all went quietly. I continued to gather information from whatever source I could find, using every dark art of journalism and history that I knew. I had so many notes, but so little that was coherent! Hints of stories, not the true history. And through it all I could not find the thing I most wanted to know.
I had just made a scotch-and-water when a knock came at the door. When I opened it, I heard the familiar voice of the Wolf-King.
"I have kept my promise," it said.
I saw nothing outside. It was dark except under the street lamp on the corner. The moon was just a bare sliver of crescent.
Baffled, I closed the door and went back to the den. There, sitting in my overstuffed chair, was Giles Scott.
"I apologize for taking so long," he said, "if that is the sort of thing for which one should apologize. I have had to tie up many loose ends recently, and you were the least important. But I have kept my promise. The Wolf who killed Joanne was Eric; he is no longer a matter of any concern to anyone. Justice, or at least some semblance of it, has been achieved. So...." He spread his hands.
I looked at the floor. "Is there no other way?"
He advanced on me and I, shame to say, shrank against the wall.
He frowned, a slight furrow at the brow. "The art of living well is learning how to die well," he said. "You should have been using the time to prepare yourself."
"Can't you do something else, like make me a Wolf."
The frown became dark and fierce. "I have lived centuries with the trace of Lykaios in me; for most practical purposes I am Lykaios. There is only one thing Lykaios did that I have never done, only one thing that distinguishes him from me, only one thing that marks off the life of Aegidius from the life of Lykaios. I will not become Lykaios merely because you are unable to look death in the face like a rational man."
So spoke the man who had lived eight centuries. But I took I deep breath. "Then at least grant me a favor," I replied. "I have been writing a book about you."
The frown deepened. "No such book could ever be published."
"I don't care if it's ever published," I said. "I just need to write it. Afterward you can destroy it, if you want. But I need to finish it."
He considered this, and as he did the frown vanished. He sat down on the suttee and, leaning back slightly, looked at the ceiling.
"There is a story I have told very few people," he said slowly, still looking at the ceiling, as if the events were replaying in his mind. "Not long after I had been turned by Lykaios, I escaped and fled. I must have run for hundreds and hundreds of miles. We were in pagan territory somewhere around the Baltic, but I had fled so far that I came across a Christian shrine hidden away. It was hardly more than a hovel, a few sticks. I fell down before a crude wooden statue of the Holy Virgin and fell asleep.
"In my sleep I had a dream. We Wolves have very few of them, in the ordinary sense; most of our 'dreams' are as real as waking to us, because the Moon crosses the border between dream and waking. But this was really a dream, elusive, intangible, strangely removed. In the dream I was lying down in the same little chapel, at the feet of the Holy Virgin. But the Lady was real. She stood tall above me, majestic. She wore stars for a crown and the Moon was beneath her feet. My head was near it, and, for the first time ever, I heard it singing. She looked down at me and said, 'Agnoscisne me? quid taces? pudore an stupore siluisti?'
"But I was indeed stupidly astonished, and could say nothing.
"Then she sternly asked, 'Hominemne te esse meministi?'
"Then I, who knew my Boethius as if it were a catechism, replied, 'Quidni, inquam, meminerem?'
"And she returned the next question: 'Quid igitur homo sit poterisne proferre?'
"And the words came from as they did from Boethius: 'Hocine interrogas, an esse me sciam rationale animal atque mortale? Scio, et id me esse confiteor.'
"'Scis, et id te esse confiteris!' she repeated as if she were dismissing my answer as an absurdity. 'Scio morbi tui aliam vel maximam causam; quid ipse sis nosse desisti. Quoniam tui oblivione confunderis. Nubibus atris condita nullum fundere possunt sidera lumen.'
"And at this I did seem overwhelmed with forgetfulness, because I did not know what to say in response. Darkness was all around me, and against its background I could hear, and (it almost seemed) see, the singing of the Moon. Had I been able to speak, I would have begged her to speak, but she was silent for what seemed like centuries.
"Then there was a voice, and perhaps it was hers, but but it seemed like a thundering chorus cascading down on top of me: 'Ad spes animum sublevate, preces in excelsa porrigite! (O felix hominum genus, si vestros animos amor quo caelum registur regat!) Magna necessitas indicta probitatis, cum ante oculos agitis iudicis cuncta cernentis.'
"And I awoke. It was very strange. During the dream I was both distressed and dumbfounded, but it is the most beautiful dream I have ever had. It felt like it meant something. But it was just a dream, fragments of Boethius spinning around in my head."
He looked at me with those fierce dark eyes against his feverishly pale face. The look was cool to the point of being indifferent, but indifferent in a way that seemed menacing and perilous. "Of course," he said calmly, "Lykaios and his henchmen caught up to me shortly afterward, dragging me back the way we had come. As punishment Lykaios beat me and threw me into a pit, and the next several days they threw stones at me and jabbed me with sharp sticks until the savagery inside was uncontrollable. Then Lykaios turned me loose on a village. I killed every man, woman, and infant there. And that was when I first understood that, however things may seem, I was no longer a living man, but a damned soul."
"Because you could do such a thing."
"No," he said impatiently, as one might speak to a child who was fooling around rather than learning his lessons. "Because I couldn't regret it. Damnation is formally the lack of contrition and materially the punishment that comes with being no longer able to regret your wrongdoing. They used to teach people these things." He made it sound as if it were my fault that medieval theology was no longer taught in schools. Then he waved it away. "I suppose you are not alone; it is a common defect. But it is the whole point. The difference between a man and a monster is that the man can repent. And the difference between a monster who is not yet wholly insane and a monster seized by inescapable madness is that the rational monster, unable to repent, still at least knows that he should. I have seen endless numbers of Wolves slide from rationality to savage madness."
He put his hand to his mouth and stroked his chin a moment. "The wolf in me is howling for your blood. You will not live to see the dawn. But I will let you finish your book."
And so here I am, finishing the book, the Wolf of Wolves sitting like the Angel of Death a few feet away. He has given me information I would not otherwise have, and corrected a few mistakes. Some part of me holds out the hope that he will for some reason, somehow, change his mind, but that is the part of me that hopes regardless of what reason says. A less foolish side of me hopes that he will not destroy this book, that it will last and one day be read by someone. But that, too, is perhaps foolish; it is all the future. I cannot see what will happen beyond the dawn.
But I did what was required to bring your killer to justice, Joanne.
