raw meat.”
“Do not be concerned,” I told her, lapsing into wolvish.
“One has encountered them before. They are Hrulgin. They are
meat-eaters. What you smell is the blood and meat of a deer.”
“One thinks that you are wrong. The smell is not that of deer. What
one smells is the blood and meat of man.”
“That is impossible.” I snorted.
“The Hrulgin are not man-eaters.
They live in peace with the Ulgos here in these mountains.”
“One’s nose is very good,” she told me pointedly.
“One would not confuse the smell of man-blood and meat with the smell
of a deer. These flesh-eating horses have been killing and eating men,
and they are hunting again.”
“Hunting? Hunting what?”
“One thinks that they are hunting you.”
I sent out a probing thought. The minds of the Hrulgin aren’t really
very much like the minds of horses. Horses eat grass, and about the
only time they’re aggressive is during the breeding season. The
Hrulgin look a great deal like horses–if you discount the claws and
fangs–but they don’t eat grass. I’d touched the minds of Hrulgin
before at various times when I’d been traveling in the mountains of
Ulgoland. I knew that they were hunters and fairly savage, but the
peace of UL had always put restraints on them before. The minds I
touched this time seemed to have shrugged off those restraints.
, The wolf was right. The Hrulgin were hunting me.
I’d been hunted before. A young lion stalked me for two days once
before I’d finally chased him off. There’s no real malice in the mind
of a hunting animal. He’s just looking for something to eat. What I
encountered this time, however, was a cruel hatred and, much worse, to
my way of looking at it, an absolute madness. These particular Hrulgin
were much more interested in the killing than they were in the eating.
I was in trouble here, “One suggests that you do something about your
shape,” the she-wolf advised. She dropped to her haunches, her long,
pink tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. In case you’ve never
noticed, that’s the way canines laugh.
“What is so funny?” I demanded of her.
“One finds the man-things amusing. The hunter puts all his thought on
the thing he hunts. If it is a rabbit he hunts, he will not turn aside
for a squirrel. These meat-eating horses are hunting a man–you.
Change your shape, and they will ignore you.”
I was actually embarrassed. Why hadn’t I thought of that? For all our
sophistication, the instinctive reaction that seizes you when you
realize that something wants to kill and eat you is sheer panic.
I formed the image in my mind and slipped myself into the shape of the
wolf.
“Much better,” my companion said approvingly.
“You are a handsome wolf. Your other shape is not so pleasing. Shall
we go?”
We angled up from the stream-bed and stopped at the edge of the trees
to watch the Hrulgin. The sudden disappearance of my scent confused
them, and it seemed also to infuriate them. The herd stallion reared,
screaming his rage, and he shredded the bark of an unoffending tree
with his claws while flecks of foam spattered out from his long, curved
fangs. Several of the mares followed my scent down the gorge, then
back, moving slowly and trying to sniff out the place where I’d turned
aside and slipped away.
“One suggests that we move along,” the she-wolf said.
“The flesh-eating horses will think that we have killed and eaten the
man-thing they were hunting. This will make them angry with us. They
may decide to stop hunting the man-thing and start hunting wolves.”
We stayed just back of the edge of the trees so that we could watch the
baffled Hrulgin near the edge of the mountain stream in case they
decided to start hunting wolves instead of men. After about a half
hour, we were far enough out in front of them that the chances that
they could catch up with us were very slim.
The change in the Hrulgin had me completely baffled. The peace of UL
had always been absolute before. What had driven the Hrulgin mad?
As it turned out, the Hrulgin weren’t the only monsters that had lost
their wits.
My automatic use of the word “monster” there isn’t an indication of
prejudice. It’s just a translation of an Ulgo word. The Ulgos even
refer to the Dryads as monsters. Ce’Nedra was somewhat offended by
that term, as I recall.
Anyway, I decided not to revert to my own form once we had evaded the
Hrulgin. Something very strange was going on here in Ulgoland. My
companion and I reached that peculiarly shaped mountain upon which
Prolgu stands, and we started up.
About halfway to the top, we encountered a pack of Algroths, and they
were just as crazy as the Hrulgin had been. Algroths are not among my
favorite creatures anyway. I’m not sure what the Gods were thinking of
when they created them. A blend of ape, goat, and reptile seems a bit
exotic to me. The Algroths were also hunting for people to kill and
eat.
Whether I liked him or not, I definitely needed to have words with the
Gorim.
The only problem was the fact that Prolgu was totally deserted. There
were some signs of a hasty departure, but the abandoning of the city
had happened some time back, so my companion and I couldn’t pick up any
hint of a scent that might have told us which way the Ulgos had gone.
We came across some mossy human bones, however, and I didn’t care for
the implications of that. Was it possible that the Ulgos had all been
killed?
Had UL changed his mind and abandoned them?
I didn’t really have time to sort it out. Evening had fallen over the
empty city, and my companion and I were still sniffing around in the
empty buildings when a sudden bellow shattered the silence, a bellow
that was coming from the sky. I went to the doorway of the building
we’d been searching and looked up.
The light wasn’t really very good, but it was good enough for me to see
that huge shape outlined against the evening sky.
It was the dragon, and her great wings were clawing at the sky and she
was belching clouds of sooty fire with every bellow.
Notice that I speak of her in the singular and the feminine. This is
no indication of any great perception on my part, since there was only
one dragon in the entire world, and she was female. The two males the
Gods had created had killed each other during the first mating season.
I had always felt rather sorry for her, but not this time. She, like
the Hrulgin and the Algroths, was intent on killing things, but she was
too stupid to be selective. She’d burn anything that moved.
Moreover, Torak had added a modification to the dragons when he and his
brothers were creating them. They were totally immune to anything I
might have been able to do to them with the Will and the Word.
“One would be more content if you would do something about that,”
the wolf told me.
“I am thinking about it,” I replied.
“Think faster. The bird is returning.”
Her faith in me was touching, but it didn’t help very much. I quickly
ran over the dragon’s characteristics in my mind. She was
invulnerable, she was stupid, and she was lonely. Those last two
clicked together in my mind. I loped to the edge of the city, focused
my will on a thicket a few miles south of the mountain, and set fire to
it.
The dragon screeched and swooped off toward my fire, belching out her
own flames as she went.
“One wonders why you did that.”
“Fire is a part of the mating ritual of her kind.”
“How remarkable. Most birds mate in the spring.”
“She is not exactly a bird. One thinks that we should leave these
mountains immediately. There are strange things taking place here that
one does not understand, and we have errands to attend to in the
lowlands.”
She sighed.
“It is always errands with you, isn’t it?”
“It is the nature of the man-things,” I told her.
“But you are not a man-thing right now.”
I couldn’t dispute her logic, but we left anyway, and we reached
Arendia two days later.
The tasks my Master had set for me involved certain Arends and some
Tolnedrans. At the time, I didn’t understand why the Master was so
interested in weddings. I understand now, of course. Certain people
needed to be born, and I was out there laying groundwork for all I was
worth.
I’d rather thought that the presence of my companion might complicate
things, but as it turned out, she was an advantage, since you