The Wolf's Hour Part 10

"Stand the change. The sickness that's going to come over you." Wiktor released his chin. "Don't eat, then. It would be a waste of good food. You're finished, aren't you?"

"I don't know, sir," Mikhail admitted, and s.h.i.+vered as a chill pa.s.sed through his bones.

"I know. I've learned to recognize strong reeds and weak ones. A lot of weak reeds lie in our garden." Wiktor motioned outward, beyond the chamber, and Andrei suffered another spasm of coughing. "All of us are born weak," Wiktor told the boy. "We have to learn to be strong, or we perish. A simple fact of life and death."

Mikhail was tired. He thought of a mop he'd once watched Dimitri use to swab the carriage, and he felt the way that wet old mop had looked. He lay down again, on a pallet of gra.s.s and pine straw.

"Boy?" Wiktor asked. "Do you know anything about what's happening to you?"

"No sir." Mikhail closed his eyes and squeezed them tight. His face felt as if it were made of the candle wax he used to dip his finger in and watch harden.

"They never do," Wiktor said, mostly to himself. "Do you know anything about germs?" He was addressing the boy again.

"Germs, sir?"

"Germs. Bacteria. Virus. You know what those things are?" Again, he didn't wait for a response. "Look at this." Wiktor spat in his hand, and put the spittle-pooled palm in front of Mikhail's face. The boy looked at it obediently, saw nothing but spit. "It's in there," Wiktor said. "The pestilence and the miracle. It's right there, in my hand." He pulled his hand away, and Mikhail watched him lick the saliva back into his mouth. "I'm full of it," Wiktor said. "In my blood and my insides. My heart and lungs, my guts, my brain." He tapped his bald skull. "I'm infested with it," he said, and he stared forcefully at Mikhail. "Just as you are, right now."

Mikhail wasn't sure he understood what the man was talking about. He sat up again, his head pounding. Chills and fever played through his body, malicious partners in torment.

"It was in Renati's spit." Wiktor touched Mikhail's shoulder, where a bandage of leaves and some kind of brown herbal paste Renati had mixed was pressed to the inflamed, pus-edged wound. It was no more than a glancing touch, but the pain made Mikhail wince and draw a breath. "It's in you now, and it's either going to kill you or..." He paused and shrugged. "Teach you the truth."

"The truth?" Mikhail shook his head, puzzled and hazy in the brain. "About what?"

"Life," Wiktor said. His breath wafted into the boy's face, and it smelled of blood and raw meat. Mikhail saw flecks of something red in his beard, which also held bits of leaves and gra.s.s. "A life beyond dreams-or nightmares-depending on your point of view. Some might call it an affliction, a disease, a curse." He had sneered that last word. "I call it n.o.bility, and I would only live one other life, if I could be reborn: I would know the wolf's way from birth, and be ignorant of that beast called a human being. Do you understand what I'm saying, boy?"

One thought was paramount in Mikhail's mind. "I want to go home now," he said.

"My G.o.d, we've brought a simpleton into the pack!" Wiktor almost shouted. He stood up. "There is no home for you now but here, with us!" He nudged with his sandal an uneaten piece of meat that lay on the floor near the boy's pallet; it was rabbit flesh, and though Renati had pa.s.sed it over a flame a few times, it still oozed a little blood. "Don't eat!" Wiktor thundered. "In fact, I command you not to eat! The sooner you die, the sooner we can tear you to pieces and eat you!" That sent a s.h.i.+ver of pure terror through Mikhail, but his face, glistening with sweat, remained impa.s.sive. "So you leave this alone, do you hear me?" He kicked the piece of rabbit meat a few inches closer to Mikhail's side. "We want you to get weak and die!" The coughing of Andrei broke his tirade. Wiktor turned away from the boy to go across the chamber, and he knelt at Andrei's side and lifted the blanket. Mikhail heard the breath hiss between Wiktor's teeth, and Wiktor grunted and said, "My poor Andrei," in a quiet, subdued voice. Then, abruptly, Wiktor stood up, shot a dark glance at Mikhail, and stalked out of the chamber.

Mikhail lay very still, listening to the sound of Wiktor's sandals sc.r.a.pe on the stairs going up. The little fire popped and spat sparks, and Andrei's breathing was like a rumble of freight cars on a distant track. Mikhail s.h.i.+vered, full of frost, and stared at the b.l.o.o.d.y piece of rabbit meat.

I command you not to eat, Wiktor had said. Mikhail stared at the meat, and watched a fly buzz slowly around it. The fly landed on the meat and crawled happily over it, as if searching for a tender place from which to draw the first sip of juice. I command you not to eat.

Mikhail looked away. Andrei coughed raggedly, twitched, and then lay still again. What was wrong with him? Mikhail wondered. Why was he so sick? His gaze slid back to the rabbit flesh. He thought of wolf fangs, distended and dripping, and in his mind's eye he saw a big pile of bones licked clean and white as October snow. His stomach mewled like a kitten. He looked away from the meat again. It was so b.l.o.o.d.y, so... awful. Such a raw thing would never be found on the gilded plates of the Gallatinov dining table. When was he going home, and where were his mother and father? Oh, yes. Dead. All dead. Something gripped tight in his mind, like a fist around a secret, and he couldn't think about his parents or his sister anymore. He stared at the rabbit flesh, and his mouth watered.

One taste, he thought. Just one. Would it be so bad?

Mikhail reached out and touched the flesh. The fly, startled, buzzed around his head until he swatted it away. Mikhail drew his fingers back and looked at the faint smears of scarlet on the fingertips. He sniffed them. The odor of metal, a memory of his father oiling a silver sword. Then Mikhail licked his fingers, and tasted blood. It was not a bad taste, nor a particularly good one. It was faintly smoky, and a little bitter. But even so, it made his stomach growl louder and his mouth water more. If he died, the wolves-and Wiktor was one of them-would rip him to pieces. So he had to live; that was a simple truth. And if he wanted to live, he would have to force down the b.l.o.o.d.y meat. He waved the persistent fly away again and picked up the rabbit flesh. It felt slick and slightly oily between his fingers. Maybe there was a little bit of fur on it, too, but he didn't look too closely. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened his mouth. His stomach lurched, but it needed to be filled before it could be emptied. He pushed the flesh into his mouth and bit down.

Juices flooded over his tongue; they were sweet and gamy, a taste of wildness. Mikhail's head pounded and his spine ached, but his teeth worked as if they were the masters and everything else was servant to them. He tore hunks of flesh off and chewed them; it was a tough old rabbit, thickly muscled, and it didn't want to be swallowed without a struggle. Blood and juice trickled over his chin as he ate, and Mikhail Gallatinov-six days and a world away from the boy he used to be-tore the flesh between his teeth and swallowed it with famished relish. When he came to the bones, he sc.r.a.ped them clean and tried to crack them open to get at the marrow. One of the smaller bones burst apart, red marrow exposed. He thrust his tongue into the broken bone and dug out the congealed blood. He ate as if it were the grandest meal ever served on a gold plate.

Sometime later, the hollowed-out bones fell from his b.l.o.o.d.y fingers, and Mikhail sat on his haunches over the little pile and licked his lips.

It hit him with a frightening force: he'd liked the b.l.o.o.d.y meat. He'd liked it very much. And that was not all. He wanted more.

Andrei suffered another fit of coughing that ended on a strangled note. The body stirred, and Andrei called out weakly: "Wiktor? Wiktor?"

"He's gone," Mikhail said, but Andrei kept calling for Wiktor in a voice that rose and fell. There was terror in that voice, and an awful weariness, too. Mikhail crawled across the stones to Andrei's side. There was a bad smell over here, a sour and decayed odor. "Wiktor?" Andrei whispered, his face hidden in the folds of the cloaks, only his pale brown, sweat-damp hair showing. "Wiktor... please... help me."

Mikhail reached down and pulled the cloak away from Andrei's face.

Andrei was perhaps eighteen or nineteen years old, and his face-gleaming with sweat-was as gray as a well-used dishrag. He looked up at Mikhail with sunken brown eyes and gripped Mikhail's arm with skinny fingers. "Wiktor," Andrei whispered. He tried to lift his head, but his neck wasn't strong enough. "Wiktor... don't let me die."

"Wiktor's not here." Mikhail tried to pull away, but the fingers clenched tighter.

"Don't let me die. Don't let me die," the young man pleaded, his eyes gla.s.sy. He coughed once, softly, and Mikhail saw his thin, sallow chest lurch. The next cough was stronger, and the one after that made Andrei's body shake. Andrei's coughing turned into strangling, and Mikhail tried to work his arm loose but Andrei wouldn't let him go. There was a terrible rattling deep in Andrei's chest, a wet, thick, sliding noise. Andrei's mouth opened wide, and he coughed violently with tears streaming from his eyes.

Something oozed out of Andrei's mouth. Something long and white and wriggling.

Mikhail blinked, and felt the blood drain out of his face as he watched the worm writhe on the stones beside Andrei's head.

Andrei coughed once more, and there was a sound of a heavy ma.s.s breaking apart in his lungs. And then they flooded out of his mouth. The white worms tangled and entwined around each other, the first hundred or so clean and ghost white, but then the next ones dappled with crimson lung blood. Andrei s.h.i.+vered and retched, his eyes staring at the shock-frozen boy, but he couldn't open his mouth wide enough for all the worms to get out. They began to ooze through his nostrils as well, and Andrei strangled and choked as his body expelled its cargo. And still they surged out, now dark scarlet and sluggish, and as they spilled onto the stones Mikhail screamed and wrenched his arm loose, leaving bits of his skin under Andrei's fingernails. Mikhail tried to rise, stumbled over his own feet and fell backward to the floor, landing hard on the base of his spine. Andrei reached for him, trying to find his hand, and lifting up out of his bed of cloaks, with blood-black worms frothing from his mouth. Mikhail began to choke, too, and as he scuttled away across the stones he felt the rabbit meat rising; he swallowed it down again, thinking of wolf fangs tearing him to shreds. Andrei got to his knees, and then with a terrible lung-ripping cough he expelled a black knot of worms the size of a man's fist. They streamed from his mouth and down his chest, and were followed by dark ribbons of pure blood. Andrei fell onto his face. He was naked, his body already the yellowish-gray of a corpse. His wiry muscles jittered, his flesh rippling and seething under a sheen of sweat. Mikhail saw darkness spreading across Andrei's back: brown hairs, bursting from the pores. In a matter of seconds hairs covered Andrei's back and shoulders and were creeping down his b.u.t.tocks and thighs, darkening his arms, bursting from his hands and fingers. Andrei lifted his face, and Mikhail saw it caught in the change, blood still drooling over the lengthening jaw. His eyes had retreated further under a protruding brow, his scalp hair sleek and s.h.i.+ning, his throat banded with dark hair. Andrei s.h.i.+vered as his spine began to crack and contort, and he opened his fanged mouth to shriek-a hideous commingling of animal and human anguish.

A hand gripped Mikhail by the scruff of the neck and lifted him off the floor. Another hand-the fingers rough and purposeful-twisted his face away from the grisly spectacle. He was pressed into a shoulder, and he smelled the musky odor of deerskin. "Don't look." It was Renati's voice. "Don't look, little one," she said, and put her hand firmly against the back of his head.

He could still hear, and that was bad enough. The half-human, half-wolf shrieking went on, coupled with the noise of bones popping. Someone else entered the chamber, and Renati shouted, "Get out!" Whoever it was quickly retreated. The shrieking turned into a high, thin howling that made Mikhail's skin crawl and drove him to the edge of madness, and he squeezed his eyes shut as Renati gripped the back of his skull. Mikhail realized then that he had put his arms around her neck. The agonized howling echoed through the chamber.

And then there was a choking whine, like a machine losing power and dying down. A last few fits of raspy breathing, and silence.

Renati put Mikhail down. He kept his face averted as she walked to the corpse's side and knelt down. Nikita, the almond-eyed Mongol with coal-black hair, came into the chamber, glanced quickly at Mikhail and then at the woman. "Andrei's dead," he said, a statement of fact.

Renati nodded. "Where's Wiktor?"

"Gone hunting. For him." He jerked a thumb at Mikhail.

"Just as well, then." Renati reached down, scooped up a handful of b.l.o.o.d.y worms and tossed them on the fire. They writhed and crisped. "Wiktor didn't want to watch him die." Nikita came forward to stand beside Renati, and as they talked-something about a garden-Mikhail's curiosity pulled him across the chamber. He stood between Nikita and Renati and peered down at Andrei's corpse.

It was the carca.s.s of a wolf with brown fur and dark, sightless eyes. Its tongue lolled in a little pool of blood. Its right leg was the leg of a human being, and at the end of its wiry forelegs were two human hands, the fingers gripping at the stones of the floor as if trying to wrench them apart. Instead of horror, Mikhail felt a stab of pain in his heart. The fingers were pale and skinny, and they were the same fingers that only a few moments ago had been clutching his arm. The absolute power of death hit him with full force, somewhere between the chin and the crown of his head. But it was a blow that cleared his vision, and he saw at that instant that his mother, father, and sister were gone forever, and so were his days of dreaming on the end of a kite.

Renati looked at him and snapped, "Get back!" Mikhail obeyed, and only then did he realize he'd been standing on worms.

Nikita and Renati wrapped the carca.s.s in a deerskin cloak, lifted it between them, and took it away, into a part of the white palace where shadows reigned. Mikhail sat on his haunches next to the fire, his blood moving in his veins like ice-clogged rivers. He stared at Andrei's dark blood on the stone. Mikhail s.h.i.+vered and held his palms toward the fire glow. You're going to be sick soon, he remembered Wiktor saying. Very soon.

Mikhail couldn't get warm. He sat closer to the fire, but even its heat on his face didn't thaw his bones. There was a tickling in his chest, and he coughed, the noise as explosive as a gunshot between the damp stone walls.

2.

The days merged, one into the other, and in the chamber there was neither sunlight nor moonlight, just the fire's glow and spark as someone-Renati, Franco, Nikita, Pauli, Belyi, or Alekza-fed pine branches to the flames. Wiktor never tended the fire, as if it were understood such a menial task was beneath him. Mikhail felt heavy, and slept most of the time, but when he awakened there was usually a piece of barely cooked meat, berries, and a little water cupped in a hollowed stone beside him. He ate without question or hesitation, but the stone was too heavy to lift so he had to bend over it and lap the water up. Another thing he noticed: whoever was cooking the meat was gradually letting it remain bloodier. And it wasn't all flesh meat, either. Now and again it was something that was red and purplish, as if torn from a creature's innards. Mikhail at first refused to touch those grisly tidbits, but nothing new was placed beside him until he ate what was there, and soon he learned not to let anything-no matter how raw or horrid-sit there too long or the flies would come. He also learned that throwing up was futile; no one cleaned it up after him.

Once he awakened, s.h.i.+vering cold on the outside and burning beneath the skin, to a chorus of wolf howls somewhere in the distance. They terrified him at first. He had a few seconds of mad panic when he wanted to get up and claw his way out of the chamber, run through the woods and back to where his parents lay dead so he might find a gun and blow his brains out; but then the panic pa.s.sed like a shade, and he sat listening to what he heard as music, the notes soaring up into the sky and entwining around each other like summer-pa.s.sioned vines. He thought even that for a short time he could understand the language of that howling-a strange sensation, as if he'd suddenly learned to think in bits and pieces of Chinese. It was a language of mingled joy and yearning, like the sigh of someone who stands in a field of yellow flowers with the blue sky limitless in all directions and holds a broken string where a kite used to be. It was the language of wanting to live forever, and knowing that life was a cruel beauty. The howling brought tears to Mikhail's eyes and made him feel small, a fleck of dust floating on a wind current over a land of cliffs and chasms.

Once he awakened and found the maw of a blond-furred wolf over his face, the ice-blue eyes steady and piercing as they stared at him. He lay very still, his heart pounding, as the wolf began to sniff his body. He smelled the wolf, too; a musky, sweet scent of rain-washed hair and breath that held the memory of fresh blood. He s.h.i.+vered, lying as if bound, as the blond wolf sniffed slowly over his chest and throat. Then, with a shake of its skull, the wolf opened its mouth and dropped eleven uncrushed blackberries onto the stones beside Mikhail's head. The wolf retreated to the edge of the firelight, sat on its haunches, and watched as Mikhail ate the berries and lapped at the hollow, water-filled rock.

A dull, throbbing pain began to build and spread through his bones. Moving-even breathing-became an exercise in agony. And still the pain built, hour after hour, day after day, and someone cleaned him when he voided and someone else folded the deerskin cloaks around him like an infant. He s.h.i.+vered with cold, and the s.h.i.+vering fired the pain that raced through his nerves and made him moan and weep. Through the hazy twilight, he heard voices. Franco's: "Too small, I tell you. The small ones don't live. Renati, did you want a child so badly?" And Renati, angered: "I don't ask a fool for his opinions. You keep to yourself and leave us alone!" Then the voice of Wiktor, slow and precise: "His color's bad. Do you think he has worms? Feed him something and see if he'll take it." A piece of b.l.o.o.d.y meat was pressed to Mikhail's lips; Mikhail, adrift in a sea of pain, thought, Don't eat. I command you not to eat, and he felt defiance ratchet his jaws open. Fresh agony seared him, made the tears stream down his cheeks, but he accepted the food and gripped it with his teeth lest it be s.n.a.t.c.hed away. Nikita's voice drifted to him, and in it was a hint of admiration: "He's stronger than he looks. Watch out he doesn't snap your fingers off!"

Mikhail ate whatever was given to him. His tongue began to crave the blood and fluids, and he could tell what he was eating-rabbit, deer, wild boar, or squirrel, sometimes even the fleshy musk of a rat-and if it was a fresh kill or dead for hours. His mind ceased to revolt from the thought of consuming blood-drenched meat; he ate because he was hungry, and because there was nothing else. Sometimes he was fed only berries or some kind of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, but it all went down without complaint.

His vision blurred, everything going gray around the edges. His eyeb.a.l.l.s pounded with pain, and even the low firelight tortured them. Then, and he wasn't sure exactly when it was because time was twisted, the darkness closed in and he was blind.

The pain never left him; it increased to a new level, and his muscles stiffened and cracked like the boards of a house about to burst apart from inner pressure. He couldn't get his mouth open enough to eat flesh, and soon he was aware of fingers pus.h.i.+ng into his mouth meat that had already been chewed. A freezing-cold hand touched his forehead, and even the light pressure on his skin made him gasp. "I want you to live." It was Renati's voice, whispering in his ear. "I want you to fight death, do you hear me? I want you to fight to hold on. If you live through this, little one, you'll know wonders."

"How is he?" Franco's voice, and in it a measure of true concern. "He's gotten thinner."

"He's not a skeleton yet," she replied testily, and then Mikhail heard her voice soften. "He's going to live. I know he is. He's a fighter, Franco; look how he grits his teeth. Yes. He's going to live."

"He has a long path to travel," Franco said. "The worst is ahead."

"I know." She was silent for a long while, and Mikhail felt her fingers gently combing his sweat-damp hair. "How many have there been who didn't live as long as him? I'd need ten hands to count them all. But look at him, Franco! Look how he strains and fights!"

"That's not fighting," Franco observed. "I think he's about to s.h.i.+t."

"Well, his insides are still working! That's a good sign! It's when they stop and they swell up that you know they're going to die! No, this one's got iron in his soul, Franco. I can tell these things."

"I hope you can," he said. "And I hope you're right about him." He took a few steps, then spoke again. "If he dies... it's not on your hands. It's just... nature's way. You understand that?"

Renati made a m.u.f.fled sound of agreement. Then, sometime later, as Renati stroked his hair and ran her fingers over his forehead, Mikhail heard her sing a whispered song: a Russian lullaby, about the bluebird searching for a home and finding rest when the springtime sun melted winter's ice. She sang the tune in a sweet, lilting voice, a whisper meant only for him. He remembered someone else singing such a song to him, but it seemed so long ago. His mother. Yes. His mother, who lay sleeping in a meadow. Renati sang on, and for a few moments Mikhail listened and felt no pain.

A skip of time, a darkness of days. Agony. Agony. Mikhail had never known such agony, and if ever in his young life he might have thought he'd know such torment, he would have crushed himself into a corner and screamed for G.o.d's hand to grasp him. He thought he felt his teeth move in his jaws, grinding together in raw, bleeding sockets. He felt broken at the joints, a living rag doll pierced with needles. His pulse was a drumbeat for the d.a.m.ned, and Mikhail tried to open his mouth to scream but his jaw muscles tensed and sc.r.a.ped like barbed wire. Agony building, ebbing, building again to a new crescendo. He was one moment a furnace and the next a house of ice. He was aware of his body jerking, contorting, bending itself into a new shape. His bones arched and twisted, as if they were the consistency of sugar sticks. He had no control over these contortions; his body had become a strange machine, seemingly intent on self-destruction. Blind, unable to speak or scream, hardly able to draw a breath for the anguish in his lungs and his pounding heart, Mikhail felt his spine begin to warp. His muscles went mad; they shot his torso upright, threw his arms backward, twisted his neck, and squeezed his face as if caught between iron clamps. He slammed down on his back as his muscles relaxed, then was lifted upright again as they drew tight as sun-dried leather. At the center of the maelstrom of pain, the core of Mikhail Gallatinov fought against losing the will to live. As his body thrashed and his muscles stretched he thought of the Rubber Man, and that when this was over he might join the circus and be the greatest Rubber Man who'd ever been. And then the pain bit into him again, seized him by the guts, and shook him. Mikhail felt his backbone swell and lengthen with a shriek of shocked nerves. Voices floated to him from the land of ghosts: "Hold him! Hold him! He'll break his neck!"

"... burning up with fever..."

"Never last through it... too weak..."

"Open his mouth! He'll bite through his tongue!"

The voices moved away in a whirl of noise. Mikhail felt but was powerless to stop his body's contortions, his knees rising toward his chest as he lay on his side. His spine was the center of the agony, his skull a boiling kettle. His knees touched his chin and jammed tight. His teeth gritted together, and in his brain he heard a wailing like the rising of a storm wind, tearing at the foundations of all that had been before. The storm wind rose to a roar, a sound that blanked out all but itself, and its force doubled and tripled. Mikhail saw himself, in his mind's eye, running across the field of yellow flowers as black banners of clouds hurtled toward the Gallatinov house. Mikhail stopped, turned, shouted, "Mother! Father! Alizia!" but there was no answer from the house, and the clouds were hungry. Mikhail turned and ran on, his heart hammering; he heard a crash, looked back, and saw the house flying into fragments before the wind. And then the clouds were coming after him, about to engulf him. He ran, but he couldn't run fast enough. Faster. Faster. The storm roaring on his heels. Faster. His heart, pounding. A banshee scream in his ears. Faster...

And a change exploded out of him. Dark hairs burst from his hands and arms. He felt his spine contort, bowing his shoulders. His hands-no longer hands-touched the earth. He ran faster, his body whipsawing, and he began to rip from his clothes. The storm clouds took them, and spewed them to heaven. Mikhail kicked his shoes away, his toes spiraling earth and flowers behind him. The storm reached for him, but he was running on all fours now, racing from the past into the future. Rain swept over him: cold, cleansing rain, and he lifted his face toward the sky and-awakened.

Dark upon dark. His eyelids, sealed by tears. He worked them open, and a faint glimmer of crimson sneaked in. The little fire was still burning, and the chamber smelled strongly of pine ashes. Mikhail got to his haunches, every movement an exercise in pain. His muscles still throbbed, as if they'd been stretched taut and re-formed. His brain, his back, his tailbone all ached. He tried to stand, but his spine shrieked. He craved fresh air, the scent of the wind through the forest; it was a physical hunger in him, and it drove him on. He crawled, naked, across the rough stones, away from the fire.

Several times he tried to stand up, but his bones weren't ready for it. He crawled on hands and knees to the stairway and ascended them like an animal. At the top he crawled along a moss-draped corridor, and gave a pile of deer skeletons only a pa.s.sing glance. Soon he saw light ahead: a ruddy light, the light of either dawn or dusk. It came through the gla.s.sless windows and painted the walls and ceiling, and where it touched, the moss had not leeched. Mikhail smelled fresh air, but the scent made something in his brain click and whir like the wheels of a pocket watch. It was no longer the pungent, flowery aroma of late spring. It carried a different smell, a dry aroma with a chill center: fire at war with frost. It was the smell of dying summer.

Time had pa.s.sed. That much was clear to him. He sat, stunned by his senses, and his hand drifted to his left shoulder. The fingers found ridges of pink flesh, and a few flakes of scabs drifted from the skin and settled to the floor. His knees were hurting him now, and it seemed important to him that he stand up before he went any farther. He tried. If bones had nerves, they were aflame. He could almost hear his muscles bending, like the squeaking hinges of old doors long unopened. Sweat was on his face, chest, and shoulders, but he didn't give up, nor did he cry out. His skeleton felt unfamiliar. Whose bones were these, lodged like broken splinters in his flesh? Stand up, he told himself. Stand up and walk... like a man.

He stood.

The first step was like a baby's: halting, uncertain. The second wasn't much better. But the third and fourth told him he still knew how to walk, and he went through the corridor into a high-ceilinged room where sunlight turned the rafters orange and pigeons softly cooed overhead.

Something moved, over in the shadows on the floor to Mikhail's right. He heard the noise of leaves crunching. Two bodies lay there, entwined and slowly heaving. Where one began and the other stopped was difficult to tell. Mikhail blinked the last of sleep's mist from his eyes. One of the figures on the floor moaned-a female's moan-and Mikhail saw human skin banded with animal hair that rose and rippled, then disappeared again into the damp flesh.

A pair of ice-blue eyes stared fixedly at him from the gloom. Alekza grasped a shoulder on which pale brown hairs rose and fell like river tides. Franco's head turned, and he saw the boy standing there at the crossing of sun and shadow.

"My G.o.d!" Franco whispered, in a shocked voice. "He's made it through!" Franco pulled away from Alekza, with a moist parting sound, and sprang to his feet. "Wiktor!" he shouted. "Renati!" His shouts echoed through the corridors and chambers of the white palace."Someone! Come quick!"

Mikhail stared at Alekza's nude body. She made no movement to cover herself. A light sheen of moisture glowed on her flesh. "Wiktor! Renati!" Franco kept shouting. "He's alive! He's alive!"

3.

"Follow me," Wiktor said, on a morning in late September, and Mikhail walked in his shadow. They left the chambers of sunlight behind, and went down into a place in the white palace where the air was chill. Mikhail wore the deerskin robe that Renati had made for him, and he drew it tighter around his shoulders as he and Wiktor continued into the depths. Mikhail had realized over the past few weeks that his eyes quickly grew accustomed to darkness, and in the daylight he seemed to be able to see with razor clarity, even able to count the red leaves in an oak tree at a distance of a hundred yards. Still, Wiktor had something he wanted the boy to see, down here in the dark, and he paused to light a torch of boar fat and rags in the embers of a small fire he'd previously arranged. The torch flickered, and the smell of the burning fat made Mikhail's mouth water.

They descended into an area where the murals of robed and hooded monks on the walls still held their colors. A narrow pa.s.sageway led through an arch, past open iron gates and into a huge chamber. Mikhail looked up, but couldn't see the ceiling. Wiktor said, "This is it. Stand where you are." Mikhail did, and Wiktor began to walk around the room. The torchlight revealed stone shelves packed with thick, leatherbound books: hundreds of them. No, more than hundreds, Mikhail thought. The books filled every available s.p.a.ce and were piled up in stacks on the floor.

"This," Wiktor said quietly, "is what the monks who lived here a hundred years ago labored on: copying and storing ma.n.u.scripts. There are three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine volumes in here." He said it with pride, as if discussing favored children. "Theology, history, architecture, engineering, mathematics, languages, philosophy... all here." He made a sweeping gesture with his torch. He smiled slightly. "The monks, as you can see, didn't have much of a social life. Show me your hands."

"My... hands?"

"Yes. You know. Those two things on the ends of your arms. Show them to me."

Mikhail lifted his hands toward the torchlight.

Wiktor studied them. He grunted and nodded. "You have the hands of a scholar," he said. "You've lived a privileged life, haven't you?"

Mikhail shrugged, not understanding.

"You've been well taken care of," Wiktor went on. "Born into an aristocratic family." He'd already seen the clothes Mikhail's mother, father, and sister had worn; they were of high quality. Good torch rags, now. He held up one of his own slender-fingered hands and turned it in the light. "I was a professor at the University of Kiev, a long time ago," he said. There was no wistfulness in his voice, only memory. "I taught languages: German, English, and French." A hard glint pa.s.sed over his eyes. "I learned in three different tongues how to beg for money to feed my wife and son. Russia does not put a premium on the human mind."

Wiktor walked on, s.h.i.+ning the torch at the books. "Unless, of course, you can devise a more economical method of killing," he added. "But I imagine all governments are more or less the same: all greedy, all shortsighted. It's the curse of man to have a mind and not have the sense to use it." He paused to gently remove a volume from a shelf. The back cover was gone, and the sheepskin pages hung from the spine. "Plato's Republic," Wiktor said. "In Russian, thank G.o.d. I don't know Greek." He sniffed at the binding as if inhaling a luxuriant perfume, then returned the book to its place. The chronicles of Julius Caesar, the theories of Copernicus, Dante's Inferno, the travels of Marco Polo... all around us, the doors to three thousand worlds." He moved the torch in a delicate circle and lifted a finger to his lips. "Shhhh," he whispered. "Be very quiet, and you can hear the sounds of keys turning, down here in the dark."

Mikhail listened. He heard a tentative scratching noise-not a key in a lock, but a rat somewhere in the huge chamber.

"Ah, well." Wiktor shrugged and continued his inspection of the books. "They belong to me now." Again, that hint of a smile. "I can honestly say I have the largest library of any lycanthrope in the world."

"Your wife and son," Mikhail said. "Where are they?"

"Dead. And dead." Wiktor stopped to break cobwebs away from a few volumes. "Both of them starved to death, after I lost my position. It was a political situation, you see. My ideas made someone angry. We were wanderers for a while. Beggars, too." He stared at the torchlight, and Mikhail saw his amber eyes glint with fire. "I was not a very good beggar," he said quietly. "After they died, I struck out on my own. I decided to get out of Russia, perhaps go to England. They have educated men in England. I took a road that led me through these woods... and a wolf bit me. His name was Gustav; he was my teacher." He moved the torch so its light fell on Mikhail. "My son had dark hair, like yours. He was older, though. Eleven years old. He was a very fine boy." The torch s.h.i.+fted, and Wiktor followed it around the chamber. "You've come a long way, Mikhail. But you have a long way yet to go. You've heard tales of wolfmen, yes? Every child is scared to bed at least once by such stories."

"Yes, sir," Mikhail answered. His father had told him and Alizia tales of cursed men who became wolves and tore lambs to pieces.

"They're lies," Wiktor said. "The full moon has nothing to do with it. Nor does night. We can go through the change whenever we please... but learning to control it takes time and patience. You have the first; you'll learn the second. Some of us change selectively. Do you know what that means?"

"No, sir."

"We can control which part changes first. The hands into claws, for instance. Or the facial bones and the teeth. The task is mastery of the mind and body, Mikhail. It is abhorrent for a wolf-or a man-to lose control over himself. As I say, this is something you'll have to learn. And it's not a simple task, by any means; it'll take years before you master it, if ever."

Mikhail felt split; he was listening with one half of his mind to what Wiktor was saying, but the other half listened to the rat scratching in the darkness.