He took a step closer, and a third glassy flower rose from the ground to stand with the others.

The music was warmer now, as warm as a human breath in the icy air.

He stepped forward.

Now there was a crown of woodland tulips the color of glass, their faces toward him, singing a wordless song in a voice that he knew.

It was Aloê’s voice; he recognized it now.

He recognized something else. The tulips lying on the ground had been concealing something: a sac of darkish fluid set into the snow. In the sack were floating half-melted (or half-digested) ice insects.

They had been drawn by the music, as he had been drawn. They had gotten too close, as he was getting too close. And they had been swallowed by something, some mouth beneath the snow crust. He thought he could feel the surface shifting slightly underneath his snowshoes as he stood there amazed.

He thought of stepping backwards instead of forwards. He thought about it for a long time. But he didn’t do anything about it. The thought of stepping backward and losing the sound of Aloê’s voice was inexpressibly painful to him. But that was only part of it. His legs were not under his control. They were numb, almost, but not with cold. What if the sound was vibrating the strings of his nerves and overmastering his ability to move? Had he been stung by something, and was he feeling the effects of the venom? Was this binding magic of a kind his talismans did not protect him from?

He managed to not go forward. But the truth was, he could not go back.

He thought of drawing his stabbing spear. But as soon as the thought entered his mind, there grew up an impassable gulf between intention and execution. Nor could he speak, to call Tyrfing to his hand.

So he stood there, bathed in the voice of his beloved wife, expecting death.

A howl broke the spell—a long, ululating, meaty howl from a wolvish throat. The ice flowers rippled like water. Some turned away in the direction of the howl; others stayed, gazing at Morlock. But the music, and the magic, was broken.

“Tyrfing!” shouted Morlock.

The deadly crystalline blade flew around the hill to his outstretched hand. He stepped forward and swung the blade like a scythe, mowing down the ice flowers. They shattered like glass and their voices fell silent. The howling, too, had ceased.

Morlock felt something moving under the snow and waited for the flower beast’s mouth to appear. He was disappointed when it didn’t. He stepped forward and slashed through the stomach sac, letting its dark fluids and half-dissolved contents flow into the surrounding snow. The movement under the snow stopped.

Morlock took three long steps back and turned to face the howler.

It was Liyurriu. The left side of his face was smashed flat, like a clay figure that someone had dropped on the floor while it was still wet and then stepped on. There was a definite list to his four-legged stance. But Morlock knew those ape hands and feet.

“Stay where you are,” he said to the werewolf. “The weapon in my hand can sever your life from your body, however they are bound together.”

The werewolf promptly sat and proceeded to gnaw a tangle from its curling, hair-like fur.

The beloved voice of his sister fell unpleasantly on Morlock’s ear. “What in Chaos are you doing here, Morlock?” Nonetheless, he was glad she was here to act as interpreter. Deor and Kelat were at her side.

“Almost getting killed,” he said. “Watch out for singing flowers.”

“And why are you menacing the entity who, apparently, saved you with another kind of singing?”

“You know why.”

“What’s to be done, then?”

“I want Liyurriu here to tell us what he is and who sent him.”

“And if his answers don’t suit you . . . ?” began Ambrosia, with a dangerous tone in her voice.

But the werewolf was already ululating a long and, to Morlock’s untrained ear, rather repetitive reply. Ambrosia heard him through, sang a few howls herself, each one of which got a copious response from Liyurriu.

“First,” Ambrosia said at last in Wardic, “he says that he is sorry he didn’t trust you with the truth back in the airship.”

Morlock grunted. “I’m not interested in apologies.”

“He is. I’m giving you the barest summary.”

“Thanks.”

Ambrosia continued, “He is sent here, he says, by a lifemaker in the werewolf city. The maker—”

“What’s his name?”

Ambrosia uttered a kind of howl.

“That sounds just like his name,” Morlock said.

“No, no—they’re really quite different. Listen, I’ll sing it again more slowly—”

Morlock held up his free hand. “Never mind. We can go on thinking of him as Lurriulu—”

“Liyurriu.”

“—yes. I doubt that I’ll ever have the need to speak Werewolvish.”

“You never know, Morlock. Anyway, what would your Oldfather Tyr say to hear you dispraising the study of languages.”

“As a matter of fact,” Deor observed, “he was not fond of wolves.”

“So be it! Liyurriu was sent by this lifemaker to aid us. He’s worried about the end of the world, you see, as well he might be.”

“Eh. Wouldn’t a werewolf like it if the sun never rose?”

“I asked about that. Werewolves get cold, too, it seems. Also, no sunlight would be bad for the prey, he said.

“Us, in fact.”

“Yes. He admitted that, too, by the way. He’s being very candid, Morlock.”

“Understood.”

“He’ll help us if he can. If we tell him to go away, he’ll go away. If you wish to dismember him, feel free to do so; the body is only an avatar.”

“Eh. He may have a dozen more.”

“He said he has more, yes.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he could have let you die just now, and then come after us one by one on the road. I thought you were high-handed before, but your suspicions were reasonable, given what we knew then. Now we know more.”

“Another mouth to feed,” Kelat pointed out.

“Uh—Prince Uthar makes a good point—”

The werewolf sang.

“‘This avatar does not need food,’” Ambrosia translated. “Any other objections?”

Deor shook his head slowly. Morlock said, “No.” Kelat said nothing.

“Now we are five,” Ambrosia said happily. “It’ll be nice to have someone else to talk with. Let’s get going!”

Ambrosia came up with a novel method of varying the monotony of their companionship. There was no reason why they couldn’t establish two shelters every night rather than one, and they could vary the numbers in each shelter: two in one, three in the other, one in one, four in the other. They could roll dice or draw lots to decide how many shelters and who slept in each one. Conceivably they could even have five different shelters, although that might be putting undue stress on the seers who kept them alive each night.

It was amazing what only a night or two of these arbitrary separations did for their companionship. They talked more during the day. They resented each other less at night. Kelat already believed that Ambrosia was wiser than everyone else, but she was always outdoing herself in his estimation. He did not say anything about this, however, and his expression could not have betrayed him, as he wore his mask all the time now.

Until the third night of shelter switching, when the gods of chance or fate assigned Ambrosia and Kelat to the same two-person shelter. Morlock, in the other shelter, was seer for the night.

“Come, Prince Uthar,” she said briskly once they had eaten their meager meal. “Off with the mask and I’ll check your wound.”

“I’ve been taking care of it,” Kelat said sullenly.

“I’m not much of a healer, but I’m better than you are. You’ll concede that, I hope.”

“Yes.”

“Then: off with it.”

Kelat took his mask off, feeling more naked than if he’d taken off his breeches. She swiftly unbandaged his face and looked at his wound. “Good,” she said. “You have been taking care of it.”