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.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Capitulum Vicesimum
A small hut, little more than a hovel, stood on a snowy hillside in the midst of the woods. The woods, I think, may have been in Tver Oblast. A man came out from behind the little hovel with an axe. He was a large man, perhaps in his late twenties, with a beard of reddish-brown, and he wore robes like that of a monk or hermit. As he began to chop wood from a woodpile, another man, pale with black, curly hair, dressed in an expensive knee-length coat of modern cut, came walking up the path. The man in the robes stopped chopping and simply watched until the other man came up and spoke.
"So," said Giles in English.
"So," replied the other man in the same language.
"This is it," Giles said, looking around at the hovel, the woodpile, the trees.
"This is it," said the other man.
Something like a smile flickered at Giles's mouth. He continued to look around.
"I had a dream the other night. A dream, not the living nightmare under the Moon."
"And what was it about?"
"I dreamed that I was on my knees in prayer when suddenly the ground opened up beneath me to reveal the flames of hell. I simply stayed there, suspended, though. I looked to my left and I saw the devil. In his hands was the scroll, or rather one end of it, because the other end stretched away so far that it could not be seen. The tale of my sins, of course, the charges against me. But then I looked on my right and I saw the Virgin with her hand raised above of her head and a scepter or rod in her hand. And they were contending for my soul."
There was a long pause, and the other man said, "And that was it?"
"That was it," said Giles, who had begun to pace a little. "I woke before the decision had been made."
"What do you think it means?"
Giles continued to pace slowly. "Who knows?" he said at last. "Dreams are not like nightmares; they have no governing logic. Some residual de profoundis, perhaps, some memory of a long-forgotten miserere."
"Perhaps a part of you thinks you are still human."
"Perhaps," said Giles. "But I think it was just a flicker of a memory from a time when I was too inexperienced to know that I had already been weighed and found wanting." He took up a log and upended it, then sat on it. The other man did the same.
"How are you finding Russia this trip?" the other man said.
"It is much the same as it was. The last time I was here the major question was which Party official to bribe. It was usually quite clear. Now, however, one has to guess which businessman to bribe, and they are much more expensive. I suppose that is progress." They were quiet for a while.
"Bitka is dead," Giles said suddenly in Russian.
"Unfortunate," replied the other man, also in Russian. Then, after a moment: "Was it Jolie or Aveline?"
"Ava has many strengths, but she could never have outmaneuvered Bitka. Jolie cornered her in a warehouse. Quite brutal."
The other man shook his head. "Unfortunate," he said again.
"Yes," said Giles simply. "She was almost exactly right. Just a little too much Wolf and a little too much ice. And the centuries made her wilder and colder." There was silence for a while, then he shrugged. "Infima summis, summa infimis. She tried to kill me, too."
The other man looked at him shrewdly. "Am I to assume from your standing here that Jolie is dead, too?"
A brief smile. "The last pennies in the purse are suddenly precious. It just seemed...wasteful. Perhaps I am getting weak. Too much 'celibacy of fang', to use the phrase Jolie uses when she feels like insulting me."
"But you are right that there are not many."
"Not many at all." Giles sighed. "They all seem to break so easily, Usiaslau. And sometimes I wonder if we lost our opportunity, because every new Wolf seems worse. Weak of will, weak of character, fools who could never skin a rabbit but think they could be the fiercest wolf in the forest. There was a time when every single one was a possibility; now they come to us already useless."
"No discipline."
"Worse than that. We were all made to be creatures of reason and grace. You and I understand that. We were born to it, raised in it, taught it from the beginning. And we know that if one is gone forever the other has to be held at any cost. But how can you explain that to people who have never felt in the marrow of bones what either reason or grace are?"
"They do not know what has been lost," said the other, nodding slowly. "So they cannot understand what must be kept. Perhaps that is it. "
Giles nodded in turn, and they were again silent for a while. It was the other man who broke the silence first this time.
"How did you find me?"
He was answered with a small spread of hands. "Do you even have to ask? You hid well, but it was clear enough that Vsesalevich was not dead. The Moon kept singing about you. So I hunted, and soon enough found a Wolf in hermit's pelt."
"I assume Ivan is dead," Vsesalevich replied.
"You assume rightly; about three weeks now. He was one of Dmitry's. How did he slip past you -- us? He should have been killed three hundred years ago."
"I never met him in person."
"Lax."
"Tired of dealing with idiots," returned Vsesalevich.
"That I understand," said Giles. "But it is no excuse. You have had your little vacation. Now it is back to work, and with effort this time."
"And if I refuse?"
Giles looked at him sarcastically. "You know as well as I that the only 'No' I accept is my own."
"I could fight."
"You could. You probably need the exercise."
"You could just kill me."
"Your memory is going in your old age; we were just talking about how there are too few of the possibles. I didn't kill you the first time you were pretending to be dead because you were the first Wolf I had met who already understood what needed to be done and yet was able to do something about it. That's why I made dead Vseslav rise as new Vsesalevich. Why would I kill you now, after centuries have shown that you are still the only one to measure up to the task? You could kill me."
Vsesalevich was silent a moment. Then he sighed and said in English, "I could not rule them all. I can hear the Moon sing, but I cannot talk to her; I could establish nothing like the Will of Aegidius."
"Then we are stuck with each other, Charodey. Without me, the magic ceases; without you to share the task, the madness destroys. Our task is not done: Numquam purpuream nemus lecturus violas petas cum saevis Aquilonibus stridens campus inhorruit -- Aquilo trembles on the heath, my friend, and we have winter things to do."
There was silence again, both lost in thoughts, memories of endless centuries, perhaps, of people dead or of evils committed and endured. Then Giles rose.
"Come along," he said. "I have been lax myself, taking my time hunting you rather than destroying the remnants of Ivan's power base. There are Wolves who do not understand the importance of the Will of Aegidius. It will be like old times."
Vsesalevich stood looking at him a long while. Finally he sighed. "Very well. Where shall we start? There's bound to be a few in Novobirsk who need to be reminded."
"Novobirsk it is, then. The last time I was there I think there was a symphony hall or opera house or something, newly built, that I never managed to visit."
"So," said Giles in English.
"So," replied the other man in the same language.
"This is it," Giles said, looking around at the hovel, the woodpile, the trees.
"This is it," said the other man.
Something like a smile flickered at Giles's mouth. He continued to look around.
"I had a dream the other night. A dream, not the living nightmare under the Moon."
"And what was it about?"
"I dreamed that I was on my knees in prayer when suddenly the ground opened up beneath me to reveal the flames of hell. I simply stayed there, suspended, though. I looked to my left and I saw the devil. In his hands was the scroll, or rather one end of it, because the other end stretched away so far that it could not be seen. The tale of my sins, of course, the charges against me. But then I looked on my right and I saw the Virgin with her hand raised above of her head and a scepter or rod in her hand. And they were contending for my soul."
There was a long pause, and the other man said, "And that was it?"
"That was it," said Giles, who had begun to pace a little. "I woke before the decision had been made."
"What do you think it means?"
Giles continued to pace slowly. "Who knows?" he said at last. "Dreams are not like nightmares; they have no governing logic. Some residual de profoundis, perhaps, some memory of a long-forgotten miserere."
"Perhaps a part of you thinks you are still human."
"Perhaps," said Giles. "But I think it was just a flicker of a memory from a time when I was too inexperienced to know that I had already been weighed and found wanting." He took up a log and upended it, then sat on it. The other man did the same.
"How are you finding Russia this trip?" the other man said.
"It is much the same as it was. The last time I was here the major question was which Party official to bribe. It was usually quite clear. Now, however, one has to guess which businessman to bribe, and they are much more expensive. I suppose that is progress." They were quiet for a while.
"Bitka is dead," Giles said suddenly in Russian.
"Unfortunate," replied the other man, also in Russian. Then, after a moment: "Was it Jolie or Aveline?"
"Ava has many strengths, but she could never have outmaneuvered Bitka. Jolie cornered her in a warehouse. Quite brutal."
The other man shook his head. "Unfortunate," he said again.
"Yes," said Giles simply. "She was almost exactly right. Just a little too much Wolf and a little too much ice. And the centuries made her wilder and colder." There was silence for a while, then he shrugged. "Infima summis, summa infimis. She tried to kill me, too."
The other man looked at him shrewdly. "Am I to assume from your standing here that Jolie is dead, too?"
A brief smile. "The last pennies in the purse are suddenly precious. It just seemed...wasteful. Perhaps I am getting weak. Too much 'celibacy of fang', to use the phrase Jolie uses when she feels like insulting me."
"But you are right that there are not many."
"Not many at all." Giles sighed. "They all seem to break so easily, Usiaslau. And sometimes I wonder if we lost our opportunity, because every new Wolf seems worse. Weak of will, weak of character, fools who could never skin a rabbit but think they could be the fiercest wolf in the forest. There was a time when every single one was a possibility; now they come to us already useless."
"No discipline."
"Worse than that. We were all made to be creatures of reason and grace. You and I understand that. We were born to it, raised in it, taught it from the beginning. And we know that if one is gone forever the other has to be held at any cost. But how can you explain that to people who have never felt in the marrow of bones what either reason or grace are?"
"They do not know what has been lost," said the other, nodding slowly. "So they cannot understand what must be kept. Perhaps that is it. "
Giles nodded in turn, and they were again silent for a while. It was the other man who broke the silence first this time.
"How did you find me?"
He was answered with a small spread of hands. "Do you even have to ask? You hid well, but it was clear enough that Vsesalevich was not dead. The Moon kept singing about you. So I hunted, and soon enough found a Wolf in hermit's pelt."
"I assume Ivan is dead," Vsesalevich replied.
"You assume rightly; about three weeks now. He was one of Dmitry's. How did he slip past you -- us? He should have been killed three hundred years ago."
"I never met him in person."
"Lax."
"Tired of dealing with idiots," returned Vsesalevich.
"That I understand," said Giles. "But it is no excuse. You have had your little vacation. Now it is back to work, and with effort this time."
"And if I refuse?"
Giles looked at him sarcastically. "You know as well as I that the only 'No' I accept is my own."
"I could fight."
"You could. You probably need the exercise."
"You could just kill me."
"Your memory is going in your old age; we were just talking about how there are too few of the possibles. I didn't kill you the first time you were pretending to be dead because you were the first Wolf I had met who already understood what needed to be done and yet was able to do something about it. That's why I made dead Vseslav rise as new Vsesalevich. Why would I kill you now, after centuries have shown that you are still the only one to measure up to the task? You could kill me."
Vsesalevich was silent a moment. Then he sighed and said in English, "I could not rule them all. I can hear the Moon sing, but I cannot talk to her; I could establish nothing like the Will of Aegidius."
"Then we are stuck with each other, Charodey. Without me, the magic ceases; without you to share the task, the madness destroys. Our task is not done: Numquam purpuream nemus lecturus violas petas cum saevis Aquilonibus stridens campus inhorruit -- Aquilo trembles on the heath, my friend, and we have winter things to do."
There was silence again, both lost in thoughts, memories of endless centuries, perhaps, of people dead or of evils committed and endured. Then Giles rose.
"Come along," he said. "I have been lax myself, taking my time hunting you rather than destroying the remnants of Ivan's power base. There are Wolves who do not understand the importance of the Will of Aegidius. It will be like old times."
Vsesalevich stood looking at him a long while. Finally he sighed. "Very well. Where shall we start? There's bound to be a few in Novobirsk who need to be reminded."
"Novobirsk it is, then. The last time I was there I think there was a symphony hall or opera house or something, newly built, that I never managed to visit."
Capitulum Nonum Decimum
Snow drifted down upon a small cabin. It seemed a quiet and an unexceptional place, but the appearance was misleading. Beneath the surface appearance there were terrible things. Wolves in human form patrolled the woods around it with AK-74 assault rifles. Observation posts, themselves equipped with Pechenegs, were cleverly located so that they could see and not be seen. For miles not a rabbit, not a bird, not a mouse stirred without notice.
The uproar, consternation, and panic was therefore all the greater when a knock came at the door and, when opened, it revealed Giles Scott himself standing as patiently as if he were a neighbor in need of a cup of sugar. Not a single alarm had been raised, not the slightest sign of him seen.
"Dobry den," he said with a sort of quiet cheerfulness. "I wish to see Ivan."
He was seized, dragged into the cabin, and put in a cage which had, no doubt, been prepared for him when it had been assumed that he would arrive under different conditions. There was only one room in the cabin, and it was sparsely furnished. The cage was in the center of the room and contained only a chair; outside the cage there was nothing but a bare desk and another chair. Giles simply looked around with mild curiosity and waited.
It was not long before a large man with a black beard entered and scowled at him. Several others entered after him, so that the room was quite crowded.
"You seem somewhat familiar," Giles said in Russian, "although I have not met you before. Somewhere I've known the Wolf who gave you the Bite."
The bearded man sat down behind the desk. "You have courage, I'll grant you that," he said. "Even I would not have expected you to walk right up to the front door."
Giles shrugged. "It is full moon." A cold smile played around his mouth. "And as it happens, my dear Ivan, I am the only Wolf here who knows how to kill a Prime Wolf at full moon."
"Full moon becomes new moon soon enough."
"Where I am, the moon is always full."
"You are outnumbered."
Giles shrugged again. "Your numbers are insignificant. You would all be dead by now, but I am in a less savage mood than usual, and constrained by a mild curiosity. I have an offer for you all. If any Wolf surrenders now, I will spare his life."
Ivan laughed, although it was a humorless laugh. He swept his hand at the room. "You are in a cage and we can wait you out."
"Any Wolf who does not surrender now will be dead by sunset tomorrow."
"I would like to see you try," Ivan said in English.
"You will not live to see me try," replied Giles in the same language. Then he smiled coldly and continued in Russian. "I think I know the lineage now. You were given the Bite by Dmitry."
"Yes," said Ivan. "And he by Lykaios. I, too, am a Scion of Lykaios."
"Dmitry was a fool."
"He evaded you long enough."
"True," said Giles. "He was the last of the old court of Lykaios we destroyed. He had an extraordinary talent for running away. The most slippery coward I have ever met. He begged for his life at the end, but Aveline tore him apart with hardly a fight."
"You lie."
"Lykaios kept him around for amusement, nothing more. No one could lick a Wolf's paws better than Dmitry. The perfect court jester."
Ivan rose suddenly. "You will have no food and no water. And you will die as soon as the moon wanes. I will tear your heart out myself and devour it as they say you did with Lykaios."
Giles merely smiled. Ivan walked out, with a string of Wolves in train, leaving only a few guards.
Nothing happened until late that night. Ivan came into the room and began looking for something in the drawers of the desk. Giles watched him, coldly smiling, the dark eyes more unfathomable than ever.
"You have made a mistake," he said finally. Ivan ignored him, but he continued to talk. "It is a mistake most people make. It has destroyed more impressive Wolves than you. Everyone thinks that a Wolf is part animal, but this is not true. A Wolf is madness. A Wolf is nightmare. A Wolf is where reality ends and becomes something else. An intimation of death, an intimation of Hell, a touch of that terrible thing in your worst dreams, the thing you cannot bear to look at but cannot ignore. The difference between a would-be Wolf-King like you and a true Wolf-King like me is that I understand this and you do not. We are not playing the game you think we are. How did I find you? How did I get here without you knowing it beforehand? Why would I walk right into a Pack of enemy Wolves without the slightest worry? Why am I certain you will be dead by morning? You have made a fatal assumption."
Finally Ivan said, angrily, but almost as if the words were drawn out of him. "And what is this fatal assumption? Merely capturing you?"
The cold smile grew wider and colder, and the dark eyes above began almost to glitter. "That goes without saying. No, I mean an assumption you are making right now, the one that will lead to your death. It is the assumption that is fatal whenever you deal with a nightmare monster. You think you are awake."
The last sentence seemed to come from everywhere at once, making Ivan jump suddenly and look around him. When he looked back at the cage, it was empty.
"Dreams are strange things," said Giles. He was leaning against the wall. "Anything can become real in dreams. And if you are a Wolf who understands what it is to be a Wolf, anything in dreams can become real."
Ivan became Wolf, a big, fierce, black beast, leaping at Giles. But Giles was no longer there.
"You should be more calm," said Giles mockingly from the other side of the room. "This is all in your head. You are just dreaming. What harm can come from a dream?"
Ivan leaped again, but Giles caught him by the throat and threw him against the wall. Ivan yelped in pain.
"It seems real enough, though." The room, which had before seemed lit by electric light, began to take on a different color and tone, black and white, like moonlight pouring into a dark room. Giles was no longer visible, but his voice could be heard.
"Once Lykaios knew that he could not beat me, he fled, the first time he had ever fled another Wolf. He was a savage and ferocious creature. But he too did not understand that a Wolf's life is just madness and that you cannot flee an enemy who knows how to hunt you in your nightmares. I chased him over fields lit by an impossible Moon, through forests where dark things are, through marshes where nothing but despair can live, out upon an infinite plain of uncaring snow and ice, and there he turned to fight again. But my madness was stronger than his madness. My nightmare, in which I was the most terrible monster, overpowered and overwhelmed his nightmare. Since it was my dream, I stripped him of his Wolfishness, he who had been Wolf so long he could not even remember being human, and beneath the full moon I tore out his heart and devoured it. It was all just a nightmare he had one night." The voice took on a sharper, colder edge. "But it was a nightmare so dark that he was dead in the morning with his heart torn out of his chest, and I was the new Lykaios.
"You have been very foolish, Ivan, going about your business as if you were some man with special powers. You are as stupid as Dmitry. You do not know what you are. But I do. You are Death in the shape of a Wolf. A cold, silver Hell burns inside you. You are damned, and part of the punishment of your damnation is that you will continue to deserve it. Damnation never ends, but tonight is your last night of being damned in the form of a Wolf."
Ivan searched around in the shadows for his enemy, but found himself thrown against the wall again by an unseen hand. At that he fled, breaking through the door and rushing out into the snow.
It was a dark night, and yet the Moon was shining with impossible brightness, rising too swiftly and too vastly above the horizon, charging the snow with a glow somewhere between brilliantly silver and sickly pale. It hit the eye with a million diamond-like sparks, but it hit the stomach with something like nausea. The entire world seemed too vivid, too real, like something that you could only see in a fever. Ivan, still in Wolf form, sped out of the cabin, fleeing through the snow like a beast gone mad, scattering diamond powder with every leap. His speed would have suggested that he would soon reach the trees, but instead they never seemed to get any closer, as if the snow stretched out as swiftly as he raced through it.
The wind began to blow -- it formed into words -- all the world blinked -- and in mid-leap Ivan was no longer Wolf but man, sprawling face-down into the snow. As he struggled up, he glanced back. Framed against the impossibly large moon was Aegidius -- 'Giles' seems here too small a name -- the features of his pale face even at this distance somehow sharp and crystal-clear. There was something very wrong about him, though, and it was in the eyes, which were no longer dark but shining with silver light like that of the Moon. He gestured -- the world blinked again -- down Ivan went again. He felt himself seized by some irresistible force and dragged backwards. He could see nothing except moonlight-bright snow and dark furrows where his fingers were digging into the ground. The furrows grew longer and longer.
The Moon continued to rise, growing more and more vast until it filled the entire sky. In a silver voice and a strange language it began to sing.
Two weeks later some hikers stumbled across a pair of dead bodies in the snow. Upon investigating, the police found dozens more, and came upon a quiet cabin. Inside they found an empty cage and a man dead from severe trauma to the chest, his heart missing. In the door and across the floor were grooves, such as might be made by a human hand, yet impossibly deep. The gruesome murder was attributed to internecine conflict between two rival factions of the Russian mafia.
The uproar, consternation, and panic was therefore all the greater when a knock came at the door and, when opened, it revealed Giles Scott himself standing as patiently as if he were a neighbor in need of a cup of sugar. Not a single alarm had been raised, not the slightest sign of him seen.
"Dobry den," he said with a sort of quiet cheerfulness. "I wish to see Ivan."
He was seized, dragged into the cabin, and put in a cage which had, no doubt, been prepared for him when it had been assumed that he would arrive under different conditions. There was only one room in the cabin, and it was sparsely furnished. The cage was in the center of the room and contained only a chair; outside the cage there was nothing but a bare desk and another chair. Giles simply looked around with mild curiosity and waited.
It was not long before a large man with a black beard entered and scowled at him. Several others entered after him, so that the room was quite crowded.
"You seem somewhat familiar," Giles said in Russian, "although I have not met you before. Somewhere I've known the Wolf who gave you the Bite."
The bearded man sat down behind the desk. "You have courage, I'll grant you that," he said. "Even I would not have expected you to walk right up to the front door."
Giles shrugged. "It is full moon." A cold smile played around his mouth. "And as it happens, my dear Ivan, I am the only Wolf here who knows how to kill a Prime Wolf at full moon."
"Full moon becomes new moon soon enough."
"Where I am, the moon is always full."
"You are outnumbered."
Giles shrugged again. "Your numbers are insignificant. You would all be dead by now, but I am in a less savage mood than usual, and constrained by a mild curiosity. I have an offer for you all. If any Wolf surrenders now, I will spare his life."
Ivan laughed, although it was a humorless laugh. He swept his hand at the room. "You are in a cage and we can wait you out."
"Any Wolf who does not surrender now will be dead by sunset tomorrow."
"I would like to see you try," Ivan said in English.
"You will not live to see me try," replied Giles in the same language. Then he smiled coldly and continued in Russian. "I think I know the lineage now. You were given the Bite by Dmitry."
"Yes," said Ivan. "And he by Lykaios. I, too, am a Scion of Lykaios."
"Dmitry was a fool."
"He evaded you long enough."
"True," said Giles. "He was the last of the old court of Lykaios we destroyed. He had an extraordinary talent for running away. The most slippery coward I have ever met. He begged for his life at the end, but Aveline tore him apart with hardly a fight."
"You lie."
"Lykaios kept him around for amusement, nothing more. No one could lick a Wolf's paws better than Dmitry. The perfect court jester."
Ivan rose suddenly. "You will have no food and no water. And you will die as soon as the moon wanes. I will tear your heart out myself and devour it as they say you did with Lykaios."
Giles merely smiled. Ivan walked out, with a string of Wolves in train, leaving only a few guards.
Nothing happened until late that night. Ivan came into the room and began looking for something in the drawers of the desk. Giles watched him, coldly smiling, the dark eyes more unfathomable than ever.
"You have made a mistake," he said finally. Ivan ignored him, but he continued to talk. "It is a mistake most people make. It has destroyed more impressive Wolves than you. Everyone thinks that a Wolf is part animal, but this is not true. A Wolf is madness. A Wolf is nightmare. A Wolf is where reality ends and becomes something else. An intimation of death, an intimation of Hell, a touch of that terrible thing in your worst dreams, the thing you cannot bear to look at but cannot ignore. The difference between a would-be Wolf-King like you and a true Wolf-King like me is that I understand this and you do not. We are not playing the game you think we are. How did I find you? How did I get here without you knowing it beforehand? Why would I walk right into a Pack of enemy Wolves without the slightest worry? Why am I certain you will be dead by morning? You have made a fatal assumption."
Finally Ivan said, angrily, but almost as if the words were drawn out of him. "And what is this fatal assumption? Merely capturing you?"
The cold smile grew wider and colder, and the dark eyes above began almost to glitter. "That goes without saying. No, I mean an assumption you are making right now, the one that will lead to your death. It is the assumption that is fatal whenever you deal with a nightmare monster. You think you are awake."
The last sentence seemed to come from everywhere at once, making Ivan jump suddenly and look around him. When he looked back at the cage, it was empty.
"Dreams are strange things," said Giles. He was leaning against the wall. "Anything can become real in dreams. And if you are a Wolf who understands what it is to be a Wolf, anything in dreams can become real."
Ivan became Wolf, a big, fierce, black beast, leaping at Giles. But Giles was no longer there.
"You should be more calm," said Giles mockingly from the other side of the room. "This is all in your head. You are just dreaming. What harm can come from a dream?"
Ivan leaped again, but Giles caught him by the throat and threw him against the wall. Ivan yelped in pain.
"It seems real enough, though." The room, which had before seemed lit by electric light, began to take on a different color and tone, black and white, like moonlight pouring into a dark room. Giles was no longer visible, but his voice could be heard.
"Once Lykaios knew that he could not beat me, he fled, the first time he had ever fled another Wolf. He was a savage and ferocious creature. But he too did not understand that a Wolf's life is just madness and that you cannot flee an enemy who knows how to hunt you in your nightmares. I chased him over fields lit by an impossible Moon, through forests where dark things are, through marshes where nothing but despair can live, out upon an infinite plain of uncaring snow and ice, and there he turned to fight again. But my madness was stronger than his madness. My nightmare, in which I was the most terrible monster, overpowered and overwhelmed his nightmare. Since it was my dream, I stripped him of his Wolfishness, he who had been Wolf so long he could not even remember being human, and beneath the full moon I tore out his heart and devoured it. It was all just a nightmare he had one night." The voice took on a sharper, colder edge. "But it was a nightmare so dark that he was dead in the morning with his heart torn out of his chest, and I was the new Lykaios.
"You have been very foolish, Ivan, going about your business as if you were some man with special powers. You are as stupid as Dmitry. You do not know what you are. But I do. You are Death in the shape of a Wolf. A cold, silver Hell burns inside you. You are damned, and part of the punishment of your damnation is that you will continue to deserve it. Damnation never ends, but tonight is your last night of being damned in the form of a Wolf."
Ivan searched around in the shadows for his enemy, but found himself thrown against the wall again by an unseen hand. At that he fled, breaking through the door and rushing out into the snow.
It was a dark night, and yet the Moon was shining with impossible brightness, rising too swiftly and too vastly above the horizon, charging the snow with a glow somewhere between brilliantly silver and sickly pale. It hit the eye with a million diamond-like sparks, but it hit the stomach with something like nausea. The entire world seemed too vivid, too real, like something that you could only see in a fever. Ivan, still in Wolf form, sped out of the cabin, fleeing through the snow like a beast gone mad, scattering diamond powder with every leap. His speed would have suggested that he would soon reach the trees, but instead they never seemed to get any closer, as if the snow stretched out as swiftly as he raced through it.
The wind began to blow -- it formed into words -- all the world blinked -- and in mid-leap Ivan was no longer Wolf but man, sprawling face-down into the snow. As he struggled up, he glanced back. Framed against the impossibly large moon was Aegidius -- 'Giles' seems here too small a name -- the features of his pale face even at this distance somehow sharp and crystal-clear. There was something very wrong about him, though, and it was in the eyes, which were no longer dark but shining with silver light like that of the Moon. He gestured -- the world blinked again -- down Ivan went again. He felt himself seized by some irresistible force and dragged backwards. He could see nothing except moonlight-bright snow and dark furrows where his fingers were digging into the ground. The furrows grew longer and longer.
The Moon continued to rise, growing more and more vast until it filled the entire sky. In a silver voice and a strange language it began to sing.
Two weeks later some hikers stumbled across a pair of dead bodies in the snow. Upon investigating, the police found dozens more, and came upon a quiet cabin. Inside they found an empty cage and a man dead from severe trauma to the chest, his heart missing. In the door and across the floor were grooves, such as might be made by a human hand, yet impossibly deep. The gruesome murder was attributed to internecine conflict between two rival factions of the Russian mafia.
Capitulum Octavum Decimum
The next day Seneca came into Giles's office and found a large manila envelope with his name on it. There were legal documents of various kinds, related to the operations of the Aegidian Corporation, and a note: 'Off to Krasnoyarsky Krai.'
The events of the next several weeks are impossible to trace with any exactness, but I believe that, having made his way somehow to Moscow, Giles boarded a train at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station for a relatively leaisurely trip of at least two days to Krasnoyarsk; but as this leaves gaps, he may well have stopped at other places along the way. But at the Krasnoyark station a curious event makes it possible again to say something of his actions.
Giles had hardly stepped off the train when he was met by Ivan's thugs, two large and brutish-looking men, or, rather, Wolves, wearing rather nicer suits than almost everyone around them. A short discussion in Russian followed. It was simple and to the point: he was told that he would be coming with them, and he cheerfully agreed.
As they began to escort him through the station, however, Giles brushed past someone else, a businesswoman coming back from Novobirsk on a business trip, perhaps. She was, in any case, dressed in a stylish, albeit not very expensive, suit, and she was with a group of others, both male and female, also dressed in good but understated suits. It is difficult to say much about them because there was nothing extraordinary about them. They went their way and Giles and his escort went theirs, and that might have been the end of it.
A few seconds later, however, the entire station was startled by a blood-curdling scream rising high above the ordinary passenger noise. It was the woman Giles had brushed past; she was brushing at her suit and screaming about paukí. Her startled companions attempted to calm her down, but could not; she continued to scream about spiders. Then it began to spread, as those who had touched her also began to be in the grip of terror. With each person it was something different, but each one began to scream as well. Some began to run. Whoever touched them, whomever they touched, also began to experience the madness.
Soon, however, the commotion was spreading by other means than touch. Sanity is no security against panic. It was a very early hour, so the station was not as busy as it might have been, but there were plenty of people who were departing or arriving, greeting or bidding goodbye. As the screaming spread, most of these wholly sane people began to panic, convinced, as we all would be, that something terrible was happening. They began to push and to shove and ultimately to stampede out of the station.
In all the chaos, Giles had vanished away. There were injuries, mostly from the stampede, but no deaths, and the Russian government blamed events on terrorists from some obscure border area; hallucinatory gas was as specific as they would get -- hallucinatory gas, no lasting ill effects. But several of those who had been there and who were able to give more coherent reports claimed that in their hallucination had were herded this way and that by a terrible monster with shining eyes and the form of a wolf, and thus you and I know better.
The thugs, having lost their prey, made their way to a shady restaurant near the station. Virtually all of the restaurants near the railway station in Krasnoyarsk are shady; businessmen of illegitimate trades haunt them, usually concerned one way or another with various kinds of trade in drugs and weapons, although sometimes concerned with even less decent ways of making money from another's misery. This restaurant was no different from any of the others; if anything, the criminal clientele was much higher class than is often found in such places: high enough not to have to dirty their own hands, although low enough that they still must meet in person those who do. It was a clean place, run well, and would no doubt have made a decent standing in a more respectable criminal neighborhood, as a place for politicians to have lunch.
In the back of this restaurant was a little room for special guests, and the thugs went directly for this room. It was not a large room, only big enough for one large table and a small bar, and there was only one person in it: a great, fat, white-faced man with dark circles under his eyes and a fearsome jawline. On the table in front of him was a stack of folders and papers, as well as a teacup, a little china pot of somewhat tacky design, marked kipitok in Cyrillic letters, and one of those fifty-gram shot glasses that are ubiquitous in Russia. The cup was full of tea but the glass was empty. The room was rather dark; the only source of light was a window, through which the early morning light was beginning to filter; but it was covered with light curtains.
"You are alone," the man at the table said.
"He escaped," one of the thugs said. "I do not know how."
"Unimportant," the man at the table said. "I am not the one Ivan will kill for it."
The thugs fidgeted.
The man at the table carefully lifted his teacup and looked into it reflectively for what could only have been a deliberately long moment. Then, taking the most delicate of sips, he said, "Ivan expected that it would not be easy to capture Him. Do you think the Wolf King the sort of Wolf who could be outmaneuvered by two idiots? You have played the role that was intended for you, by serving as an alarm. We now know that Aegidius has come to the Krai, and surely not alone. What is more, we know that He wishes us to know that He is here; otherwise we can very well expect that He would have made a more subtle entrance. You see that the Wolf King warns us. All of this," he said with a wave of the hand, "expected, all of it. Now you must let Ivan know, and quickly. A car is waiting for you. And if the Wolf King gets there before you do, you may count yourself among the dead."
So it was that the thugs set out north; and so it was that someone with keen hearing, who had been outside the window, set out north as well.
The events of the next several weeks are impossible to trace with any exactness, but I believe that, having made his way somehow to Moscow, Giles boarded a train at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station for a relatively leaisurely trip of at least two days to Krasnoyarsk; but as this leaves gaps, he may well have stopped at other places along the way. But at the Krasnoyark station a curious event makes it possible again to say something of his actions.
Giles had hardly stepped off the train when he was met by Ivan's thugs, two large and brutish-looking men, or, rather, Wolves, wearing rather nicer suits than almost everyone around them. A short discussion in Russian followed. It was simple and to the point: he was told that he would be coming with them, and he cheerfully agreed.
As they began to escort him through the station, however, Giles brushed past someone else, a businesswoman coming back from Novobirsk on a business trip, perhaps. She was, in any case, dressed in a stylish, albeit not very expensive, suit, and she was with a group of others, both male and female, also dressed in good but understated suits. It is difficult to say much about them because there was nothing extraordinary about them. They went their way and Giles and his escort went theirs, and that might have been the end of it.
A few seconds later, however, the entire station was startled by a blood-curdling scream rising high above the ordinary passenger noise. It was the woman Giles had brushed past; she was brushing at her suit and screaming about paukí. Her startled companions attempted to calm her down, but could not; she continued to scream about spiders. Then it began to spread, as those who had touched her also began to be in the grip of terror. With each person it was something different, but each one began to scream as well. Some began to run. Whoever touched them, whomever they touched, also began to experience the madness.
Soon, however, the commotion was spreading by other means than touch. Sanity is no security against panic. It was a very early hour, so the station was not as busy as it might have been, but there were plenty of people who were departing or arriving, greeting or bidding goodbye. As the screaming spread, most of these wholly sane people began to panic, convinced, as we all would be, that something terrible was happening. They began to push and to shove and ultimately to stampede out of the station.
In all the chaos, Giles had vanished away. There were injuries, mostly from the stampede, but no deaths, and the Russian government blamed events on terrorists from some obscure border area; hallucinatory gas was as specific as they would get -- hallucinatory gas, no lasting ill effects. But several of those who had been there and who were able to give more coherent reports claimed that in their hallucination had were herded this way and that by a terrible monster with shining eyes and the form of a wolf, and thus you and I know better.
The thugs, having lost their prey, made their way to a shady restaurant near the station. Virtually all of the restaurants near the railway station in Krasnoyarsk are shady; businessmen of illegitimate trades haunt them, usually concerned one way or another with various kinds of trade in drugs and weapons, although sometimes concerned with even less decent ways of making money from another's misery. This restaurant was no different from any of the others; if anything, the criminal clientele was much higher class than is often found in such places: high enough not to have to dirty their own hands, although low enough that they still must meet in person those who do. It was a clean place, run well, and would no doubt have made a decent standing in a more respectable criminal neighborhood, as a place for politicians to have lunch.
In the back of this restaurant was a little room for special guests, and the thugs went directly for this room. It was not a large room, only big enough for one large table and a small bar, and there was only one person in it: a great, fat, white-faced man with dark circles under his eyes and a fearsome jawline. On the table in front of him was a stack of folders and papers, as well as a teacup, a little china pot of somewhat tacky design, marked kipitok in Cyrillic letters, and one of those fifty-gram shot glasses that are ubiquitous in Russia. The cup was full of tea but the glass was empty. The room was rather dark; the only source of light was a window, through which the early morning light was beginning to filter; but it was covered with light curtains.
"You are alone," the man at the table said.
"He escaped," one of the thugs said. "I do not know how."
"Unimportant," the man at the table said. "I am not the one Ivan will kill for it."
The thugs fidgeted.
The man at the table carefully lifted his teacup and looked into it reflectively for what could only have been a deliberately long moment. Then, taking the most delicate of sips, he said, "Ivan expected that it would not be easy to capture Him. Do you think the Wolf King the sort of Wolf who could be outmaneuvered by two idiots? You have played the role that was intended for you, by serving as an alarm. We now know that Aegidius has come to the Krai, and surely not alone. What is more, we know that He wishes us to know that He is here; otherwise we can very well expect that He would have made a more subtle entrance. You see that the Wolf King warns us. All of this," he said with a wave of the hand, "expected, all of it. Now you must let Ivan know, and quickly. A car is waiting for you. And if the Wolf King gets there before you do, you may count yourself among the dead."
So it was that the thugs set out north; and so it was that someone with keen hearing, who had been outside the window, set out north as well.
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