My neighbor glanced at me. He was a portly, officious‑looking priest. I oughtn’t to stand around with my teeth in my mouth, he must be thinking. I gave him a weak smile. “Thatis Etelelccm Teheo abocia Rusar,” he intoned in a marked manner.
I grabbed at the first melody I recalled which had some general resemblance to the one he was using Mushing it up as much as I dared, I studied my book and commenced:
“A sailor told me before he died?
I don’t know whether the bastard lied?”
In the general counterpoint, not to mention the uproar below, it passed. The cleric took his eyes obi me. He continued with the canticle and I with “The Big Red Wheel.
I trust I may be forgiven for some of the other expedients I found necessary in the hour that followed. An hour, I guessed, was an unsuspicious time for a lay singer to stay. Meanwhile, by eye and ear, I’d followed roughly the progress of the hunt for me. The size and complexity of the cathedral worked in my favor for once; I could be anywhere. Unquestionably spells were being used in the search. But the wizard had little to go on except what Marmiadon could tell. And I had everything protective that Ginny, who’s one of the best witches in the Guild, was able to give me before I left. Tracing me, identifying me, would be no simple matter, even for those beings that the most potent of the adepts might raise.
Not that I could hold out long. If I didn’t scramble; soon I was dead, or worse. A part of me actually rejoiced at that. You see, the danger, the calling up of every resource I had to meet it, wiped away the despair at the core of hell which I had met in the crypts. I was alive, and it mattered, and I’d do my best to kill whatever stood between me and my loves!
After a while the main entrance was reopened, though watched by monks. I’d figured out a plan to get around them. After leaving the choir and disrobing, I turned wolf. The north corridor was again deserted, which was lucky for any Johnnies I might have encountered. Having doubtless posted a guard at every door, they were cooling their chase. It went on, but quietly, systematically, no longer disruptive of religious atmosphere. Lupine senses helped me avoid patrols while I looked for a window.
On the lower levels, these were in rooms that were occupied or whose doors were locked. I had to go to the sixth floor‑where the scent of wrongness was almost more than I could bear?before finding a window in the corridor wall. It took resolution, or desperation, to jump through. The pain as the glass broke and slashed me was as nothing to the pain when I hit the concrete beneath.
But I was Lyco. My injuries were not fatal or permanently crippling. The red rag of me stirred, grew together, and became whole. Sufficient of my blood was smeared around, unrecoverable, that I felt a bit weak and dizzy; but a meal would fix that.
The stars still glittered overhead. Vision was uncertain. And I doubted the outer gatekeepers had been told much, if anything. The hierarchy would be anxious to hush up this trouble as far as might be. I stripped off what remained of my clothes with my teeth, leaving the wereflash fairly well covered by my ruff, and trotted off to the same place where I’d entered. “Why, hullo, pooch,” said my young friend. “Where’d you come from?” I submitted to having my ears rumpled before I left.
In Siloam’s darkened downtown I committed a fresh crime, shoving through another window, this time in the rear of a grocery store. I could compensate the proprietor anonymously, later. Besides the several pounds of hamburger I found and ate, I needed transportation; and after humanizing I was more than penniless, I was naked. I phoned Barney. “Come and get me,” I said. “I’ll be wolf at one of these spots.” I gave him half a dozen possibilities, in case the pursuit of me spilled beyond cathedral boundaries.