Lycanphobe

Editor's Note

This story, Lycanphobe, was written by a friend of mine, who has since disappeared -- the same one who wrote Scales of Value (about Chrimson the red dragon) and others. I have edited the story for grammar and punctuation, changed a few expressions, rewrote a few places where the meaning was unclear on first reading, and added just a little bit of content of my own (hopefully true to the intent of the original author). I estimate that 90% of the words are unchanged from the version he sent me years ago, and 90% of the rest is merely altered in form, not in meaning, so it's 99% his story. Blame me for the other 1% of it.

It is not a short story meant to be read, laughed at, and forgotten. It is neither short nor funny. And it's intended to stay in your mind.

Here begins the story....

Author's Note

The nation of Laurella exists on a planet with a year precisely 1,000 days long. The planet's only moon runs through its complete set of phases in precisely fifty days, providing the planet with twenty lunar months each year. This exactness is part of the reason that the Laurellans believe their planet came about through conscious design rather than the blind forces of unguided nature.

By convention the Laurellans divide their lunar months into five 10-day weeks. Under their calendar, the moon is always its fullest in the middle of the night, in the middle of midweek. Yet it is from the first night of midweek to the last that the moon fills the sky with enough power to cause the lycanthropes to transform into their animal shapes. They are all predators at night; wolves, lions, tigers, and the like. And while the moon is up and the sky is dark they enjoy one sport above all others: the hunt.

Chapter 1

Even before I opened my eyes I knew that there was a fresh carcass nearby; I could tell by the smell. The antelope was wedged among the branches less than a half meter away, its hind quarters and most of its internal organs missing. Somewhere in the small walled forest where I had made the kill, I had cut its rumen sack out and left it laying. Sometime before nightfall I would have to clean it up.

The tree in which I lay was next to the sheer granite wall, six meters taller than the highest tree, that surrounded my forest. Through the open canopy, the most powerful stars were all that remained of the heavenly fires fighting the approaching light of day. Birds chirped their greeting to the dawn; against their songs a deep pounding cut a steady rhythm.

In my elven form, without any clothes on, it was much more difficult to get out of the tree than it had been to get in it. I vaguely recalled climbing up with half an antelope carcass in my mouth, but four legs with sharp claws and a lot more muscle made all the difference. Hanging from the lowest branch, I dropped the last three meters, then picked myself up and dusted myself off. Dried blood flaked off of the underside of my fingernails; I licked them clean before reaching the exit.

The smooth stone wall with its solid iron door was marred only by a hole the size of an elf's fist. Fresh scratches marked the stone near the hole.

"Jamison, I'm here," I shouted through the hole. The pounding at the door stopped.

I matched the claw marks to my own hand, though I knew it was not this hand that had made them. I did not remember making those marks, but that was no mystery, since I had, as usual, forgotten most of the previous night's events already.

A metallic echo filled the room as Jamison lifted the bars from the other side of the door. Then came a loud grunt and he threw his weight against the metal. It would do no good for me to help. I did not have the strength. When Jamison had the door open wide enough for me to squeeze through, he stepped aside.

Pointing to the marks on the wall I said, "I must have wanted out pretty badly."

"You did express some preference in that direction, yes. I trust you had a pleasant night anyway."

As I stepped out of the room, I smiled, "Quite. From what I remember it was one of the best hunts I have had in some time."

With a simple tug Jamison pulled the door shut. It had been designed that way, nearly impossible to open and very easy to close.

"I regret to tell you that Guards Commander Brukka is waiting for you in the garden," Jamison said.

The news stopped me in mid-stride and drove away my smile.

Jamison answered my unasked question, "I've heard nothing."

"Would you make the Commander comfortable, please? I want to dress before I meet him. Send word to the gate house; if anybody comes who may know why Brukka is here, send them directly to my room, avoiding the garden. I want to know why he's here before I talk to him."

I took my time and even showered before dressing, but nobody showed up. The time was uncomfortably near the boundary between discourtesy and rudeness when I finally went downstairs to meet my guest.

The Commander paced violently around a bench in the garden with massive human strides that I thought I could feel through the marble floor. He muttered to himself with his attention too firmly fixed on his thoughts to notice me, then his hands rose and crashed into each other. His armor and weapons clattered like a forest of poorly tuned wind chimes.

"I gather the news is not good," I said.

Brukka spun around and stared, flexing his fingers inside his thick mail gloves. "We had a murder last night. From the looks of the body and the tracks it was one of you."

I did not answer him right away. I wondered if my lack of a strong reaction would appear suspicious to the Commander, but I had already guessed why he was here. "You know that everybody in my organization will cooperate fully. I will, of course, need to know everything you know about this killing." I turned to Jamison and asked "Would you please get the Commander something to eat?"

Brukka growled, "I'm not hungry. After what I saw of that man I probably won't be able to eat until tomorrow. What about you, Leamar?" He worked the glove off his right hand and pointed it at me like a weapon.

"I ate last night."

"And what did you have? Or should I ask, who?"

"Buck antelope, Commander. Tell me about these tracks."

"They were from something between a person and a wolf."

"My night form is that of a tiger," I said. He knew that, of course, but he enjoyed thinking of me as guilty of some terrible crime. Because he was the commander of those Guards whose duty it was to investigate lycanthrope killings, his fantasies were never a small worry for me.

He stepped closer, making his height and bulk more obvious. "I want to see verification that every one of your people was confined last night. Not just those who take wolf form, but everybody."

"Don't you think we should first concentrate on finding the killer?"

Brukka always wore his smile a little sideways. "No, morph. I think this would be a very good time to discover how well your people live up to the Rules of Compromise."

"I don't think so," I said, stepping away from him. "This is a killing that we're investigating, and this is the first night of midweek. There may be more before the week is over."

"This is one lycanthrope involved in one killing. There may be others of your kind who just did not get lucky enough -- or too lucky -- last night to score a noticeable kill. I want to find out who they are before I have to clean up one of their victims."

"Excuse me, Commander," Jamison said. "I can testify that Leamar entered his chamber well before dusk, and I secured the lock myself."

The Commander looked as though he could tear Jamison apart for offering that information. "How much trust can I put in your testimony?"

I saw Jamison's fists clench and held up my hand to order him to remain calm. To the Commander I said, "As is our custom, I invited two of your very own troops here yesterday to inspect my chambers and witness my confinement. My kind is grateful to the people of Laurella for allowing us to live among them; for our part we do what we can to insure that we are not a danger to them."

"Save the speeches, Leamar. Obviously one of your kind is not doing enough."

"Obviously."

I turned to Jamison, but he spoke first. "I called for messengers as soon as Commander Brukka arrived. The others should arrive within half a bell. I've taken the registries from your safe and placed them in your office."

Brukka marched toward me, backing me up to the door and pressing me flat against it. Jamison tensed; I waved him off. Brukka slammed his open palm into the door next to my head and strained to keep his voice low. "I want this morph identified and locked up by sundown."

We locked eyes, then Brukka reached behind me, opened the door, and let me push it open as I stepped back away from him. As he marched out, he shouted over his shoulder, "I'll be sending some men over to help you out." The slam of the outer door shook the stone walls.

As the echo of the slammed door faded, Jamison placed a protective arm across my shoulder and said, "I wonder why he objects to limiting the search to werewolves?"

"You have a theory?"

"He wants us to fail, or he wants to delay our success."

"No. I don't think Brukka would sacrifice an innocent life, or a life he considers innocent, even if he thinks it would save more innocent lives. He wants propaganda. This killing is bound to make some people reconsider the Rules of Compromise, and he wants to give them even more to help them change their mind, and he wants to use us to find out information he needs on lycanthropes living outside of the Rules. We can still focus our work, concentrating on werewolves before other types, and he knows that."

The day was only a half bell old when the first volunteers arrived. Some came with lists of lycanthropes who had spent the night in nearby safehouses; others came with letters verifying the confinement of wealthier lycanthropes in private chambers. The volunteers compared the names on the lists to those on the cards from my office that identified the 2,819 lycanthropes known to live in the area of Laurella. Cards for those whose confinements could be verified were removed, leaving an ever shrinking list of suspects.

The lists from the safehouses contained some names that did not match any cards we had. Some were from outside the capital district, visiting Laurella on vacation or on business. A few were unregistered immigrants from lands where the people called us 'monsters' and governments sought our extinction. A table of scribes prepared and copied lists of these names to send to other record centers. They would do the same, sending us lists of lycanthropes who spent the night securely locked up far from the city so that we could remove them from our list.

In my study I had a large slate board which I used to write my notes as I did my research. A volunteer wrote the number of suspects remaining in numbers large enough to fill the entire board. The first number he wrote was the number of lycanthropes registered as living in the province of Laurella. There was no chance that the number would fall to a single suspect by evening. It would take a great deal of luck to create a sufficiently short list before midweek next month; this midweek promised to be long and bloody.

By fourth bell, records started to arrive from the safehouses nearest the killing. Jamison directed several volunteers to concentrate on those lists to identify registered lycanthropes from the area of the killing who were not confined. The number on the board dropped below 1,800.

Jamison arranged for a steady supply of food as the day wore on. Volunteers ate their supper while sitting at desks sorting cards and creating lists. The work slowed as cross checking longer lists took increasing amounts of time. By seventh bell, the volunteer wrote the first three digit number on the board.

When the rectangles of sunlight that had been crawling across the floor started to climb the east wall I stepped up on a table and shouted for attention. "Night time is near, my friends. For some of us it is time to retreat to safety. Don't yield to the temptation to do a little bit more. Such hesitation is like pointing a drawn bow at a friend. It is an open invitation to a tragic accident. Give your work to a volunteer who can stay into the night. I will see you here in the morning. For those of you who do not share our condition, we thank you for your efforts, your friendship, and your concern. We wish you luck."

I followed my own advice and left promptly, followed by Jamison and two Guards. As the bars fell into place on the door to my private forest, I prayed that the killing had been the result of a lycanthrope who had been careless and sought confinement too late last night, a lycanthrope who had learned his lesson and will report to a safehouse particularly early this evening.

Jamison told me immediately the next morning that Brukka was again waiting for me in the garden. I did not hesitate to meet him this time. We set a brisk pace through the corridors, while Jamison filled me in on the results of the night's work.

When Brukka saw me he cut off my greeting. "You may want to get dressed, morph. We are going for a ride."

"Another killing?"

"Killing? The word is murder. Your kind murdered two people last night, both in the same area. Two murders, and two different murderers. One was our wolf friend; he left evidence scattered around like he didn't care about getting caught, just as before. Near the other body we found nothing, but the wounds suggest that the claws were sharper than those of a wolf; a catlike creature made this kill."

"A copy cat."

Brukka looked as though he was about to spit fire. "I hope you're not trying to be funny."

"I'm not. I'm merely suggesting that somebody is taking advantage of there being a renegade lycanthrope. It has decided to do some killing of its own, hoping the werewolf gets the blame."

I moved over to a bench in the garden and sat; watching the Commander pace around was wearing me out. "We have less than three hundred names of lycanthropes whose confinement we have not yet verified."

"Three hundred!"

"So far. As we speak, twenty teams are out looking for the people on this list. We have already found, for example, that some did not report for confinement because they died recently. We expect to have our list down to less than two hundred by nightfall."

Brukka snarled.

"Commander, take any group of three thousand Laurellans selected at random and tell me how many you can verify the location of within twenty-two bells of a crime?"

"There's a world of difference between morphs and real people."

"Precisely, which accounts for our phenomenal success at verifying the location of almost 90 percent of us so quickly."

"Phenomenal success," Brukka echoed. He laughed a tense, nervous laugh. "Phenomenal success?" His laughter grew to a shout. "We can expect phenomenal success at finding another corpse or two before this time tomorrow, morph, and you haven't even started looking for this copycat."

"No," I answered. "That will certainly slow us down. Jamison, put some volunteers to work on this second search. It will be difficult; they will have to go through all of the different stacks of cards we've generated from the first search without getting them confused."

Jamison nodded.

"Now, Commander, it would make our job much easier if we could narrow our search. The evidence suggests that the first killer was a werewolf. If we could concentrate on those who take wolf form we could remove half of the remaining lycanthropes from our list of suspects right away."

Brukka gave one of his sideways smiles. "No chance of it morph. This 'copy cat' tells me that I was right to start looking more closely at who gets confined. I want to know who else is tempting fate by failing to report for confinement. Now, are you coming with me like that or are you going to dress first?"

"Your horse is being readied," Jamison informed me. "The distance and, I assume, your wish to return before dark would make it inadvisable to take a carriage."

I thanked Jamison on my way to my dressing room. When I got to the stables, I saw that Jamison had attached a sack of food to the saddle. He also carried, draped over one arm as if it was as light as a tunic, a chain mail shirt.

"I don't think I will be needing that," I told him.

His frown as he pressed his lips together was predictable. "There are protesters at the gates."

"I should give them what they want by dying of heat?" I argued, softening my words with a forced smile. I climbed onto my horse. "I'll be alright."

Brukka did not seem to share my sense of urgency and moved slowly to the gate. Almost the second we came into view, a protestor locked on the other side shouted, "There he is!" Though the protesters only numbered a few dozen, their unexpected surge toward the gate took the Guards by surprise. Within a couple of heartbeats the Guards made a coordinated counter-push, then set their spears against a second rush.

"Prepare to open the gate," Brukka commanded. Two Guards mounted waiting horses. As the gate opened, they lowered their lances and persuaded the protesters to clear the road.

"It's a shame," I said to Brukka, "that these soldiers have to be here rather than helping us with our search."

"It's a shame, Brukka answered. "that we have to have a search; which we wouldn't have if there were no lycanthropes in Laurella."

I barely saw the rock before it struck. Turning my head away from it in reflex allowed it only a glancing blow that left a painful bruise below my eye. A pair of Guards chased after my assailant, but the crowd refused to yield and the man vanished among the nearby trees.

"I'll meet you at the site of the first killing," I told Brukka, kicking my horse into a gallop that took me away from the crowd.

Chapter 2

I rode quickly, giving few a chance to recognize me and stopping for none that succeeded. It was not difficult to find the site of the first killing. I knew the general area and everybody in that area seemed to know exactly where the killings had occurred.

The first sign I had that I was getting near was another group of protestors. Their leader had climbed onto a stump to make her call for purging Laurella of lycanthropes. But there was also a counter-protest. A pair of Meelarian priests held hands with a small crowd forming a ring around the original protesters. Their heads bowed, they sang Meelar's prayer for peace and harmony. They did not compete with the speaker. Instead they sang softly, so low that one could hear their words only if one made the effort to listen.

The stream bed near the bridge contained five Guards standing around a perimeter. Within the perimeter was an elf wearing the traditional gold-trimmed white gown of a mage. She had brought with her nearly a dozen assistants, who scouted the ground near the killing and brought her everything that they found.

I identified myself to the sergeant in command of the Guards.

"Where is Commander Brukka? I thought he was coming with you."

"He has been detained. He'll be here shortly, I'm sure. In the meantime, would you honor me by telling me what you've discovered so far?"

He showed me where most of the body had been found and tracks in the sand that were definitely made by something between a man and a wolf. He then introduced me to the magician.

The mage hardly had the strength to smile.

"Any luck?" I asked.

"Some," she answered, closing her eyes and sitting back in the chair for a moment's rest. "We found some pieces of cloth that, we think, the werewolf was wearing when it transformed. They couldn't have come from our victim. The victim was elven, and magic says the strips belonged to a human male. However, if the killer planned to hunt, it could have easily worn somebody else's clothing to throw us off."

The mage tried to stand, but thought better of it and fell back into her chair. "There is other reason to believe that the cloth came from the killer. We brought over a tracker, a wolf hunter. He said that the tracks were made by a creature weighing about as much as a normal human. So few elves weigh that much that we can almost rule out an elven predator."

"Dwarf?"

"Perhaps; with their muscles they can reach nearly human weight in spite of their size."

"And the body?" I asked.

"They took what was left up to the Meelarian Temple at Granitetop. We don't know much, except that the wolf appeared to be hungry."

The widening of her eyes warned me to turn around. The protesters were marching down the hill at a determined pace, some of them shouting my name. The sergeant called his soldiers into formation to intercept them. The Meelarians led by the priests followed behind the protestors in two ordered rows, still singing their song.

"I think it would be better if you left," the sergeant said to me. He opened his mouth as if to say something more, then gave a sigh that expressed his sympathies more than any words. I climbed onto my horse and was away before the crowd reached the short line of soldiers. Only their curses chased after me. Still, they delivered a sting much more painful than that caused by the stone that had hit my cheek.

Meelar's Temple at Granitetop rose from one of the larger hills in the capital district. The space around it was cleared of trees, which gave it a stunning view of the rest of the province. The land around it was a forest of bitat trees, large enough for the elves to use as homes. Rising through the forest I could see an occasional building. Most had been constructed by humans who had migrated from the Gatian Empire, but elves were not averse to using such structures. Stone walls offered more security than open trees.

Elves had also built the temple on Granitetop. They did so in anticipation of needing a fort should invaders reach the capital. However, the military aspects of the temple's design had never been tested. Over time, nature advanced to conquer them. Thick vines, which could be easily climbed, scaled the outer walls, and the moat had become nothing but a brush-filled ditch.

At the now immobile gate, a tendor waited to greet each new visitor to the temple. The elf child wore a laurel wreath in her hair, indicating she was near to becoming a full Meelarian priestess. When that time came, she would leave to teach Meelar's ways to the citizens of some distant land. She called another tendor, this one an orcan child, to care for my horse, and a young human girl from the castle to inform High Minister Rysalla of my presence. A great deal had changed since I served as a tendor.

As was always the case with elves, it was impossible to tell the High Minister's age. She wore a sadness I seldom saw on an elven face. "I welcome you to Granitetop, Council Member Leamar. I wish you would visit when the atmosphere is not as clouded in sorrow as it is today. The Temple misses you, and we should talk some day of your flight from Temple service."

"I will," I promised, completing our private ritual. "For now, I wish to know what you've discovered about the killings."

She nodded slowly and turned to the door.

In the main temple, a priestess conducted an informal prayer for an end to the killings. Little light entered the room; windows allowed access to much more than light and were not favored in buildings designed as forts. The design of the room carried the priestess's words throughout the chamber, even when it was but a whisper. She addressed her sermon to one person in particular, to the anonymous killer, as though he were in the audience listening. She asked him to reveal himself to the church, where he would receive Meelar's protection while the officials worked to reestablish harmony between him and the town. The parishioners were urged to repeat the message to all that would listen, with hope that it would reach the killer.

The bulk of the church lay underground. A narrow, winding flight of stairs opened out into a huge chamber. The far wall contained an array of arrow slits, where defenders could fight at odds much in their favor no matter the number of attackers storming the castle above.

We passed through a door painted with a white teardrop, the sign of healing. I made an effort to keep my eyes on the door on the far end of the room as we walked through. In elven form the sights, smells, and sounds of illness and injury disgusted me, though I had long ago learned not to count being disgusted by something as proof of its being an illness or injury.

"Council Member Leamar!"

I turned toward the voice and saw a woman trying to rise from her bed. A bandage, soaked red on one side, surrounded her black and gray hair. "Council Member Leamar, is there any progress? Have they found them yet? Either of them?"

"Not yet. Not that I have heard."

She looked away. "I have a business to care for. I can't stay down here forever."

"What keeps you from your business?"

"They do," she said, pointing to the surface. "When I went to open my shop this morning they jumped me, kids mostly, throwing rocks and shouting 'Purge the monsters!' My neighbors drove them off and brought me here. But they can't watch over me day and night, me and the other lycanthropes that live around here."

"Rest," the High Minister said, stroking the patient's head as she might pet a dog. Rysalla stepped directly in front of the patient and looked deep into her eyes. "We are trying to learn the identity of those who did this to you. Your wound is serious, my friend. You should not be out of your bed."

The woman's eyes lost focus. She turned her head back in the direction of her bed, mumbled a nearly inaudible 'excuse me' and allowed a pair of orderlies to guide her back.

Rysalla led me through the back door.

The hallway passed private rooms for wealthier patients, quarantine chambers, operating rooms, and supply rooms. Rysalla pointed to a particularly heavy door as we passed. "We have other lycanthropes here who, like Allya, fear walking the streets of Laurella. We are offering them sanctuary."

"What will they do when night comes?"

"This temple has saferooms," Rysalla said. "We have converted some of those rooms originally built to house war prisoners and those who, during times of peace, still find it difficult to live in harmony with other citizens."

Our destination, the room holding the bodies, was the deepest room in the temple, far below the surface. As we descended, the air grew cold and damp. Water trickled from cracks in the walls and roof and down drainage channels cut in the floor.

"We have discovered that, contrary to popular myth, things rot much less quickly down here than they do nearer the surface. And we have found ways to reduce the rate of decay even further."

She leaned against a thick door; it opened with a crack. Stepping into the room felt like stepping into winter. Given the way I was dressed, I found it a welcome relief.

The remains of three bodies lay on slabs of stone along one wall. "In this temperature, things rot very slowly. We do not often keep this room as cold as it is now. It requires the energies of more than a few of our higher ministers."

"I am grateful," I said. "I am, indeed, very grateful. I know well the drain that this places on the Temple's resources."

The High Minister turned away and spoke softly, though her words carried well in the still room. "This is a most serious crime. Not because it is murder, but because it feeds such a strong prejudice. We stand on the edge of a very slippery slope, Leamar. The killings fuel a habit of hatred still burning in the hearts of many Laurellans. From this hatred comes violence such as that suffered by the lycanthropes you just saw. That violence, in turn, produces fear within the lycanthropes, and out of fear they hesitate to submit to confinement or do anything that would let others discover their nature. Unconfined, attempting to hide their secret, they are a danger to everybody.

"This hatred also teaches lycanthropes to hate themselves. People too easily adopt as their own the values of those with whom they share community. The best take their own lives; the worst become the criminals we heard about every midweek before the compromise. Under the curse of self-hatred they become, in a real sense, two entirely different creatures. By day they are the kind and trustworthy neighbors we pass on the street without a thought; by night they are brutal killers, monsters in truth, made that way only by the hatred of others around them.

"More killings bring more hatred, and the hatred breeds more killings. Unless we end these killings soon, we may find ourselves like the nations surrounding us, as we ourselves were only twenty years ago, seeking to purge ourselves of these 'monsters' instead of finding ways to live in harmony with them."

Her words opened a door to a dark corner of my mind where I stored my memories of the days when few questioned the futile attempt to exterminate lycanthropes. I could not count the number of nights I fled through a forest thick with the shouts of angry villagers, my nostrils burning from the smoke of their torches. I had killed, that is true. But when I was young I did not know any better. I had to learn everything on my own. With the atmosphere so thick with hostility, no sane being would dare step forward with advice on how a lycanthrope could enjoy the hunt without being a danger to others. And no sane lycanthrope would believe such an announcement; it was likely to be a trap created by those who wanted to lure us to our deaths.

A lump rose in my throat as I remembered my own father, before his death, and his fervent, one could almost say fanatical, crusade to kill all lycanthropes or drive them from Laurella. He never knew, as long as he lived, why his only son refused to return after leaving home, not even for brief visits. He never knew the hurt he inflicted on someone he claimed to love, and how empty those claims had sounded to me. His death had come as somewhat of a relief to me, removing the temptation to finally reveal my secret to him. Swallowing the lump, I followed Rysalla into the room, but my thoughts continued the train of thought she had begun.

Nearly a century ago we started to find meager acceptance in a small faction of the Church of Meelar, which taught that there is no natural superiority of one type of creature over another. Those who formed it were tired of the conflict between races and blamed that conflict for the losses their families suffered, not the other types of creatures that participated in that conflict. The enemy, they said, was the belief that each type of creature had a special knowledge of what was truly good, while other races who behaved in ways they found disgusting were sick or suffered from malformed minds. For this faction of Meelar's worshipers, no creature could sense true value, and morality was found in creating a harmony among the different and diverse senses of different types of creatures. Though the law required all to report those suspected of lycanthropy, these few hid and protected us. They built safe places for us and bound us to practices under which we could still hunt when the moon was full, though in restricted ways.

Many called this Meelarian sect a cult and persecuted its members as harshly as they did the lycanthropes. It took Meelar herself to end the persecution. Every Laurellan who was alive twenty years ago had a story of where they were and what they were doing when they first heard of Meelar's conversion. There were no ambiguous signs to interpret, no comets in the sky or disruption in the seasons. Meelar appeared before each of her high ministers in turn and said that, of all of her followers, those who had been working toward harmony among all the different races were her true devotees. She commanded all who served her to seek harmony between the common Laurellans and those they had learned to think of as 'monsters:' lycanthropes, vampires, dragons, trolls, ogres, and their kin.

Many proclaimed that this was a vile deception and continued to enforce Meelar's older commands, only to find that they could no longer wield her divine powers. Some felt abandoned by their deity and turned to other religions, giving power to Meelar's opponents. To draw the greatest number of those who could not accept Meelar's new doctine, the prophets of other deities shouted all the louder for the extermination of 'monsters.'

Ever since, people have argued about how Meelar united her followers and remained the dominant deity in Laurella. Many credited the exodus of 'monster'-hating Laurellans to lands populated by those who thought as they did, coupled with the immigration of 'monsters' seeking the harmony Meelar promised. Others argued that Meelar generated no revolution; she merely drew upon the elements that had already produced the Meelarian cult of tolerance.

The thought of being hunted once more drove a shiver through me.

"My apologies for the cold, but it is necessary to preserve the bodies," Rysalla said. "I am afraid I can tell you little. We have cast most of the magics that we can apply to something like this. The most important thing I can show you is an image of the creature who killed two of these three."

She motioned toward the back of the room, where water flowed down the stone wall. As she chanted, the water's surface smoothed, reflecting as well as any mirror. The image shifted to show a dark meadow, late at night.

"This is what the first victim saw," Rysalla explained.

The bridge near where the victim's body was discovered could be seen as a gray, ghostly structure in the light of the nearly full moon. The moon had just risen, and cast long shadows across the meadow.

Rysalla pointed and I could see movement where she indicated. The victim, however, did not seem to notice it. Whistling a popular dance tune, he started climbing the slope that would take him to the top of the bridge and over the stream.

A yelp from somewhere under the bridge startled him only slightly. I would have called the sound a bark, but not the ferocious roar of a large dog. It was, instead, a timid little bark followed by a long silence. I could understand somebody reacting more with curiosity than fear. He quit whistling and looked around the approach to the bridge. I could still see the wolf form near the stream only because Rysalla continued to point to it. The victim looked in the wrong place, more toward the stream than underneath the bridge; the wolf sat near the edge of the man's peripheral vision.

It barked, and the man turned to face it. In the shadows, all I could see clearly were the werewolf's white, sharp teeth and glowing eyes. The victim froze, staring at the creature, which stared back at him.

"Don't turn around," I said. "Keep looking at it, and back up slowly." I found myself saying these words even though I knew how this encounter would end.

The werewolf barked and lunged, causing the man to panic and turn in flight. He took only three or four steps before the wolf knocked him to the ground. When he turned around to fight, the werewolf bit into his throat. As it raised its head, it pulled strings of flesh, then the image faded into darkness as the elf's life dimmed and died.

Rysalla cleared her throat. "I am sorry about the . . . violence, Leamar. These are the best images we can get of the attacker's wereform."

She showed me the other two attacks as well. In the second werewolf attack, the victim was riding a horse. The werewolf's howl panicked the animal. It bucked its rider off, and the image in the water turned black.

"He hit his head on the cobblestones. We think that this knocked him unconscious and possibly killed him. The werewolf fed off the body but did not eat much."

She pointed to the body, which was missing flesh only around its neck and shoulder.

We did not see enough in the werecat attack to discover what kind of cat it was. It attacked from behind, apparently digging its teeth into the back of the victim's neck and killing her before she even realized what was happening.

Rysalla said she could tell me no more about the attacks. "The victims simply did not see what happened to them and we can only pry out of their minds what nature allowed in."

I was becoming anxious to leave the room; the comforting coolness I felt when I entered had me shivering and my teeth clattering. I was also anxious to return home. Though there was sufficient daylight remaining for the trip, I wanted time to report what I had learned, before my own transformation.

Chapter 3

As Rysalla and I climbed to the surface, we met Commander Brukka rushing down. He nearly lost his footing on the damp stairs as he stopped. "There you are. I've been chasing you across half the province." He turned to lead the way back up the stairs. "Come with me. I want to show you something of what your kind is responsible for."

"Unless you have some evidence that the High Minister did not already show me, I'm afraid I must return home."

"What?" Brukka shouted, turning and grabbing the rails on both sides of the stairs to block the passage. "I brought you here for a reason, morph."

The High Minister's eyes acquired the same cool grayness they held when she had convinced Allya to return to her cot. "Commander, you will let Council Member Leamar pass, and you will not hinder him as he returns home."

Brukka's own eyes lost focus as he stepped aside.

As I passed, I said, "Commander, I would welcome it if you would walk with me and tell me what you know of these killings."

"I know that the killer is a morph. What else do I need to know?"

"It would help to know which ... lycanthrope," I replied, pointedly refusing to use the word that was always spoken as an insult.

"It doesn't matter," Brukka said, almost in a whisper. "Any morph that is not already guilty of murder will be. Eventually, a dark night will find it unconfined."

The High Minister answered, "Commander, if I showed you a red stone that is round, would you then conclude that all red stones are round?"

"Save your lessons," Brukka grunted. He stepped wide to climb three steps at a stride and disappeared up the twisting stairwell. Rysalla and I slowed to allow the Commander to get well ahead of us.

My horse and a list of safehouses between Granitetop and home were waiting for me when I reached the surface. The trip home was uneventful. As I traveled, I could see the effect of the killings on the people. Elves moved out of their trees and into secure buildings. Occasionally, I passed a lamb or dog tied to a stake as an offering they hoped the werewolf would take instead of a person's life. Many glared as I rode past; the few welcome smiles did little to ease the pain brought me by the prevalent unfriendliness.

The only part of my home available for a private conversation was a room just off the kitchen. Since I was hungry, it suited me perfectly. Those directing the search crowded in with me; most refused the offer of a meal with good-natured complaints that Jamison had been feeding them all day. In telling what I had learned, I mentioned in passing that the werewolf barked at its first victim.

"Barked?" asked Reddard. He usually appeared to be sleeping during the meetings, but his eyes popped open and his chair fell forward onto all four legs with a thud. "Was it a real bark? Would you say it was closer to a yip or a heavy growl?"

"It was a normal, average bark. Why?"

"Adult wolves do not bark, nor do wolf pups. Barking is something wolves do as they pass from puppyhood to adulthood. It's about the same thing as a human child's voice breaking when he goes through puberty. Domesticated dogs bark because they are really wolves bred so that they never make it to adulthood. Stuck in perpetual adolescence so that they never reach the vicious mind set of an adult wolf, they bark constantly."

"So, you're saying we are dealing with an adolescent."

"I'm not sure. We all know that a lycanthrope's animal self is the same physical age as its humanoid self. The animal forms of elven lycanthropes are always said to be cub-like and puppy-like, even when the elf is centuries old. If this wolf barks, that not only shows that its humanoid form is one that can develop past puberty -- which supports the theory it's human or, at least, not elven -- it also suggests an age for the human we are seeking.

Jamison looked at me and said, "I'll go over the list of suspects and move the adolescents to the top."

I nodded.

Jamison continued, "At this time, I would like to remind you that it is nearly evening and you, and some of your guests, have made arrangements to be elsewhere at sundown."

"Quite right," I said, standing. I excused myself and allowed Jamison and two Guards to escort me to my walled forest for the night.

The night passed quickly. In my animal form I sometimes slept; an experience I never had as an elf. At dawn I found myself in front of a cave in my forest. As I opened my eyes I saw the last of my orange and black fur receding into my skin, my fingers lengthening and nails widening. For an instant, smells that I could never find in my daylight form remained in my nostrils.

Brukka did not come to deliver the news of that night's attacks. He sent some of its victims to tell the story, and to tell it to as many people as possible.

The three that came to the house were gnomes; two wore blood-stained bandages from the mauling they had taken the night before. They reported that the werewolf had followed a member of their warren coming home after dark. It attacked just as the latecomer opened the warren door. Somehow it made its way into the nursery, where it killed and started to eat an infant.

The children's screams alerted the adults. In their haste they trapped it in the nursery; then, recognizing what they had done, they charged in to drive it away. They had little silver, but enough to convince it to hunt elsewhere. It carried its prey with it back to the surface. In all, three children and one adult were dead and another dozen gnomes badly wounded.

News in Laurella usually traveled no faster than a man could walk or, in some cases, ride. However, the story of the attack spread through the scattered residents of Laurella like flashfire. From the roof of my house I watched the crowd of protesters outside the gate grow. I was close enough that I could recognize the effigy of a weretiger suspended by a rope from a long pole. Somebody set fire to it; the sound of the crowd cheering was much like the sound of the forest during a strong wind.

The Council sent two more squads to protect those who passed through the gates and a cavalry squad to patrol the yard.

Near midday a local Meelarian priest nudged a wagon into the crowd, then mounted a stool in back. He drew upon Meelar's powers to strengthen his voice. As the original protesters began shouting their answers to the arguments he gave, he responded with silence. Above the protestors' shouts I could barely hear him and those nearest him singing Meelar's song of peace and harmony.

Distracted as they were, the protestors hardly noticed the church messenger that approached the gate. I paid him little attention myself; the traffic coming and going from my estate had grown heavy. Seconds after he entered the house, a heavy bell chimed a summons for my presence. I arrived in my study to discover that Jamison had cleared my study of all workers.

"The High Minister of Granitetop bids you to come right away," the tendor said, still struggling to catch his breath.

"Did she say why?"

"With Meelar's guidance, we believe that we have found the killer."

I quickly looked at Jamison, who said, "I will prepare your horse." He left with his usual air of calmness, closing the door quietly behind him.

"Where is he?"

"We do not know. Meelar told one of our priests that if he delivered a public prayer for harmony at the Overview, the killer would probably hear it. Over two hundred people came, and one left a written message. He came from Gat because he had heard of our tolerance for his kind, but when he got here, he saw many people acting as unkindly toward lycanthropes as anybody in Gat. He doesn't know what to believe, but has heard your name and wants to talk to you."

"How do I find him?"

"He wrote that he will come to evening services at Granitetop today."

I had Jamison prepare my horse while I dressed for the trip. This time, when he held up the chain mail shirt, I yielded to his insistence and slipped it on. Jamison also held out a weapon: a magiked silver dagger with a wolfhead hilt made of gold and moonstones.

"Please, sir. There is some danger in meeting a lycanthrope who has killed, and your bare hands will not harm him."

"Why that weapon, Jamison?" I asked. "Any silver blade will do."

"No matter its history, sir, it was made to be used on lycanthropes. For what you need it for, none can do better."

For decades it had been the symbol of the Laurellan quest to rid the forest nation of all creatures such as myself. Nobody knew who the creator was; the weapon had been left as an anonymous gift to the Council with a brief note describing its powers. Among its powers, it carried a perpetually keen edge in spite of its soft metal. Like all such weapons it had a name. For decades people called it Wolvesbane, but in her conversion Meelar gave it a new name by which it is more commonly known: Lycanphobe.

Also, like many such weapons, only the person who created it could destroy it. Shortly before the Council adopted the Rules of Compromise, it sought to show its sincerity in seeking harmony with Laurella's lycanthropes by destroying the blade. All attempts failed, as its maker did not step forward to give them assistance. I suspected the possibility that the blade had been fashioned by my own father. If true, then other than life itself, his only enduring gift to me would be a weapon made to bring death to me and others of my kind -- an enduring legacy of hatred toward me that could never be erased.

Unable to destroy the weapon, the Council's best alternative was to turn the weapon over to a lycanthrope. Nobody was more surprised than I when they presented me with the honor and the burden. As I held it, I could feel the hatred for lycanthropes built into the dagger. I slid its sheath onto my belt and rode out with the tendor.

Chapter 4

The crowd standing at the temple gates hinted at a trouble which sent me galloping to the entrance. Inside, most of the pews lay about the floor, broken and showing the black scars of flame. Tapestries had been torn from their hangings and thrown into the flames or ignited where they had hung. There were no more flames, but the air still carried with a smell of wet smoke.

Rysalla moved calmly among the workers, her gentle mood infecting those who remained to help clean up the mess. "I am afraid that there are some people who are questioning our doctrine," she told me. "Some took offense to our opening speaker's criticism of the lust for revenge."

"Damn them!" I shouted, my words echoing off the distant walls.

"I have considered placing a request along those lines with the proper authorities, but then we would be doing exactly what we condemn, would we not?" the High Minister answered. I knew she was right; my anger dissolved into shame.

Through the narrow slits along the west wall I could see that the sun was no more than a bell and a half away from touching the horizon.

"We have, of course, reserved a saferoom for you," Rysalla said.

I continued to stare at the sun. "He doesn't want to kill, but he can't control his animal urges when he has transformed. He will wish to go someplace where there are no people."

"Meadowlark Park," Rysalla said.

I was already moving for the door. "I'm familiar with it."

Rysalla shouted after me, "Granite Gulch Safehouse is near the park."

I waved to signal that I had heard. The tendors working in the stables had just started unsaddling my horse when I entered. Within moments I was heading north.

I found the safehouse first, so I would not need to look for it later. Then I entered the park. It was natural woodlands, where the Council prohibited construction and even travel was regulated to well-marked trails. I suspected that our Gatian visitor would ignore this restriction; he could even see it as a reason to leave to the trail, expecting others who might become his prey would stay away. I headed my horse through the tangle of trees and vines.

It was rough, slow riding, but eventually I reached a wide meadow where mud, washed down from the mountains during the spring floods, was transforming a lake into swamp. The clearing extended partially up a slope on the upstream side, where an observer in the trees' shadows would have a commanding view. Near the edge of the pond I found just the thing to attract the attention of a hungry predator, a herd of deer gathered for a last bite and a quick drink before dark.

The shadows crossing the meadow were already long enough to make me nervous. I rode directly into the field, scattering the deer. As I rode to the swamp I shouted, turning frequently so that my voice carried in all directions. "My name is Leamar! I seek the child from the Gatian Empire!"

My shouting subdued the forest into complete silence. Even the crickets patiently waited for an answer.

I dismounted and tied my horse's reins tightly around a fallen log. She knew, perhaps by reading my mood, that something was not right, and struggled for her freedom. Her fight only pulled the knot tighter. She had been a good friend and loyal companion through many journeys, but with such short notice I could think of no better sacrifice to make. She watched me as I removed the saddle, though I could not bring myself to look at her eyes.

As I walked to the edge of the meadow I repeated my name and my quest. The forest answered me again with silence. With the safehouse just a short walk away, I could reach it well before dark, but I did not care to cut the timing too closely.

As I left, I took one last look at my horse. She was watching me, her eyes wide and full of fear.

"Where are you, damned wolf-boy?" I shouted so loudly I had to swallow against the pain it brought to my throat. I stopped and reconsidered leaving an animal that had served me so well. My mind raced through a list of harms the wolf-boy had already inflicted on the things I valued. The hate-mongers had been in retreat; the population as a whole was coming to view them with contempt. Each time there was a killing, their hatred flared anew. The sooner the killings ended, the less fuel there would be to feed the growth of the hate-mongers.

And I had the means to end the killings in my hand.

Finding Lycanphobe in my hand startled me; I could not remember drawing it. Nor could I remember the decision to change directions. I had intended to head directly to the safehouse, but I found myself walking briskly toward the southeast edge of the meadow.

"He's here, isn't he?" I asked the blade. It shook with power and need, begging me to release it. I looked straight up in the direction that it had been leading me. The sunlight thickened the shadows into a darkness too strong for me to see into. Movement alone told me that something was there.

I quickly sheathed the dagger. It screamed protests into my brain, but I refused to listen. "Boy, I am Leamar. You wanted to speak with me."

The shadows revealed nothing. Again, I found my hand resting on the hilt of the dagger, anxious to draw it. The need turned to anticipation and excitement as I pulled it from its sheath. I tried to throw the dagger aside, but it refused to leave my grasp.

When I looked up, I sensed that the shadow ahead was empty. Fear that I could come so close and still lose him gave me the determination to drop the blade and step away from it.

I dropped the saddle from my shoulder as well and, holding my hands out, yelled, "I'm unarmed. I only want to talk."

A human boy, almost large enough to be called a man, appeared from the brush. He stepped forward slowly, and jumped back a meter when he heard the distant snort of my horse.

"Are you Leamar?" he asked, his voice barely covering the distance that separated us. As I heard his words I understood; he spoke in the language of the Gatian Empire, and I had clamored for him in my native tongue.

My position, along with a constant immigration of lycanthropes from the Empire, had given me good reason to learn Gatian and frequent opportunity to practice it.

"Yes, I'm Leamar. What is your name?" I asked.

"Trell. Trell Smithson." His voice squeaked as he answered.

"Trell, it's near sundown. If you come with me, I can lead you to a safehouse. Nobody will hurt you there, and there will be no more killing."

He took a step back into the shadows. "What's a safehouse?"

"A place where our kind can spend the night, where we do not harm others and where we can 'hunt' in a fashion."

"Do they really accept lycanthropes here?"

"Those who agree to live according to the Rules of Compromise. The Rules are complex. Put simply, the Laurellans try to give us that which we crave: an opportunity to hunt. In return we agree to certain restrictions on what and where to hunt so that they remain safe."

"They want to kill me! I've heard them say it!"

"A few, those who are fixed on an old way of thinking, believe that compromise is a mistake. But they are few and not very powerful here. They would not dare harm you if you are with me. In the morning I will take you to the Temple. They will care for you, give you sanctuary, and teach you our ways. There, you can learn how to live in harmony with other Laurellans."

A scream from across the valley cut off his answer. A single horseman charged across the meadow, waving a sword high. I held my hand out towards Trell and said, "You're with me. You're safe."

Trell looked at me, then the rider coming across the valley, then vanished into the shadows. I snapped up my dagger and started to chase him. With my short legs, and burdened by my armor, I had no hope of matching the healthy human boy's speed.

I recognized the horseman before he was halfway across the clearing: Commander Brukka. He ignored my protests and rode into the brush after the boy, but he did not chase far. The brush was no place for a man on a fast horse, and Brukka had no idea where the boy had fled.

"What do you think you are doing?" I shouted as soon as Brukka stopped his horse.

"I could arrest you for withholding vital information concerning a known fugitive," he answered. "But right now, isn't it time for you to get out of here? I can question you in the morning when you are yourself again."

I looked toward the sun. I had lost some time, to be sure, but there was still plenty of daylight.

Noting my hesitation, Brukka said, "Remember, the law requires that all lycanthropes confine themselves twenty-five minutes before sunset. I assure you, the confinement you will find yourself in if you violate that rule is not nearly as comfortable as a safehouse."

He was ready to make good on his threat. When I looked toward my horse he smiled, pleased at the thought that I might take the time to retrieve her. I barely had time to walk the distance, and the thick forest would not have allowed me to make up any time by riding.

As I walked away, I saw three other Guards riding into the meadow. When they neared Brukka, he shouted directions, describing the pattern he wanted them to search. I continued to call out to the boy, hoping he would step out in front of me or follow me.

When I arrived, a red warning flag was already flying over the safehouse indicating that less than a quarter bell remained until sundown. Still, the area near the door held a small pack of lycanthropes who had come to spend the night, but who were not yet ready to enter their cages. Just beyond the edge of the safehouse yard, protestors gathered to shout taunts and abuses. Guards kept them from approaching any nearer. The lycanthropes appeared to ignore the threats; however, a person could not stand and face such hostility and not care. It was easy to imagine how a refugee would feel when he discovered that going to a safehouse required walking through the protesters, effectively announcing to them what he was.

A slate board to the side of the door held the attention of many lycanthropes. It held two names, winners of a lottery who would be allowed to spend the next night at Huntsman Ridge. The Council had paid to build walls around and through the park, dividing it into sections where a few selected lycanthropes could spend a night roaming over acres of forest. An elf feigned humility as others jibed him over his luck.

I heard a hiss, and then saw the lottery winner fall, clutching his side where the shaft of an arrow protruded. Everybody froze for an instant. The shot had come from some brush in a direction away from the main body of protestors. A shout followed it, "Purge the lycanthropes! Purge the monsters from Laurella!" Some protestors cheered.

When a couple reacted instead with disapproving shock, others shouted, "What do you think we are here for? To rid Laurella of lycanthropes!"

I grabbed the first lycanthrope who ran past me in pursuit of the attacker. Fortunately it was an elf, someone small enough for me to stop. I said to him, "There's no time. It's not worth the risk."

To the others I shouted, "Stay!"

They hesitated just long enough to decide that the would-be assassin was too far away; two of the Guards were already in pursuit.

"Everybody, let's go inside," I suggested. "There's nothing out here but trouble."

The lycanthropes filed through the door while the remaining Guards brought out a stretcher for the wounded elf. He was not dead; he was not even badly wounded. When they pulled the arrow out, I watched the protestors to see if the sound of his suffering would move them. It did; they answered with another round of cheers. Blood dripped from an arrowhead shining with the white tinge of newly forged silver. Carefully, we carried the elf into the first open cell.

A Guard, looking him over, announced, "He'll make it to nightfall." Unwillingly, the Guards and other lycanthropes left him alone in his cage to undergo his transformation. At nightfall, the change to his new form would mend his wound.

Chapter 5

With the emergency past, I wrote my name on the chalkboard inside the door. "I thought I recognized you," another guest commented. "What are you doing out here? Rumor has it that your estate contains one of the best private hunting grounds in Laurella."

"Trying to find a killer," I answered. I handed the silver-tipped arrow to a Guard, then pulled my dagger from its sheath. The lycanthropes seemed to sense the blade's power and need; they all withdrew a couple of paces.

"I need a safe place to put this for the night," I told the Guard.

She reached out for it, but I pulled it away. I did not wish to test the strength of her tolerance against the hate that the weapon could feed her.

The house manager stepped up quickly. "You may place the weapon in the safe. None shall get near that weapon, Council Member Leamar."

I thanked her and followed her into the safe room. Built into the back wall was an array of safes. She opened one and I placed my dagger inside. There was room as well for my mail and the rest of my clothes. Then I waited as the house manager closed and locked the safe's door. Baskets, most of which sat on open shelves, were available to the other lycanthropes -- those who came clothed or who had possessions they wanted kept during the night.

Some of the things the lycanthropes carried they kept with them. Their possessions included ropes, old and tattered shoes, sticks, balls, and even bales of straw.

A bell on the roof rang three times, paused, and rang again. From the rooftop a Guard shouted, "The sun's disk is on the horizon." Some of the lycanthropes shrugged in resignation, others smiled in anticipation, but all started off towards the pens that made up the bulk of the building.

I had worked with the architects and builders of the safehouses and knew the precise measurements of many of their features. On the main floor, each side of the hallway contained a row of pens ten paces long and five paces deep. Stone walls separated each pen from those beside it, and the hallway allowed enough space for a Guard to walk safely between the pens, out of reach of claws.

Most of the werelions belonged to a single pride; they climbed the stairs to the upper floor where the pens were larger. Two orcan brothers led the pride; and it was their natural instinct to keep all competitors away. Bachelor males sadly selected rooms in the basement chambers, accepting the smaller and darker pens as part of the price for avoiding the torture of smelling and hearing a lioness nearby.

Tigers are solitary animals; after mating, the female typically drives the male away and raises the cubs on her own. It had been a long time since I mated in my wereform, and though darkness had not even started I could sense that the group held one female weretiger who was in season. However, she had the attention of another, and my thoughts were too heavy to be interested in her.

The house manager tugged at my arm as I started to enter a pen, and motioned for the steps to the upper level. "We've got extra pens upstairs," she smiled. Accustomed as I was to my private hunting grounds, I felt claustrophobic just looking inside the common pens. Pangs of guilt from the thought of receiving special treatment were not strong enough to override my urge for more space. I accepted her offer.

The Guards closed and locked the pens, chatted briefly through the bars with their prisoners, and retreated from the hall. After the Guards left, people continued to banter up and down the halls as the darkness thickened. I did not feel much like talking; I paced, studying the solid stone floor and stone walls, bare except for narrow window slits that allowed fingers of light through.

I counted my steps, twenty paces from one side of the room to the other, five paces from the back wall to the gate.

One of the werelions reached outside his door and said, "Here, it gets a bit dull sitting around all night with nothing to do." He tossed a cloth sack filled with something, I could not tell what, toward my pen. It hit the bars and bounced back into the hall. I couldn't reach it.

"Don't worry about it. Trying to fetch it will give you something to occupy a little of your time while transformed."

In the darkness, voices deepened; questions asked in normal conversation brought answers of snarls and growls. I moved to a back corner and lay down; the stone was cold against my skin. Watching my hands, I noticed the fuzz thicken and darken. This was all I ever remembered of any transformation. In what seemed only an instant, though it must have been much longer judging from how much darker it had become, my hand was a fur-covered paw with thick pink pads and sharp curved claws. They scraped loudly on the stone as I stood up on all fours.

Enough of my elven mind remained to give me an urge to shout at the pleasure of being in my were-form; it came out as a growl. As one who lived almost every moment with the small, thin body characteristic of an elf, the power-filled body of a weretiger was pure joy. I ran for five strides and came all too quickly to the opposite wall. Turning, I ran back. I had, by then, explored every part of my room and found nothing in it of interest.

Sounds and smells from outside the building drifted in through the narrow windows. Standing on my hind legs, I could barely see outside. The smells that came in touched memories of a distant past. There were no antelope out there, but there were many things that smelled just as good; horses, cattle, people. In hunger I licked the stone, hoping to taste the fragrance that drifted into my cage, and found none.

Outside the iron gate there were other sounds and other smells. Their aroma carried the familiar flavor of food, but something in the smell told me that it was best to avoid these creatures.

While pacing near the bars, I noticed something on the floor outside. One of the smells, a good smell that made my mouth water, grew stronger when I was near it. I reached out my paw, but it was too far. I extended a claw and reached again, snagging it. It rocked a little but avoided my grasp. It was frustrating, this tempting little creature taunting me. I charged the gate and, just as I hit the bars, extended my claw again. I succeeded only in batting the miserable thing a little further away.

Then came new sounds, sounds suggesting something good about to happen. I made one last grab for the thing beyond the bars, failed, then stepped back against the corner of my cell. The new sounds were coming closer. Fellow lycanthropes caged off in the same direction of the noise grew louder themselves. The smell came to me faintly at first, the smell of fresh blood. My mouth watered. I retreated from the bars and crouched down against the side wall. Every muscle I had remained tight, but I was motionless. Except my tail. As hard as I tried, I could not keep my tail still. It flicked about like a bird.

I saw the first animal approach that little balled creature outside my bars that had been taunting me. Others came to join it. These creatures were small. It was hard to believe that from them came the smell that filled the air so deliciously. I did not move. There were more of these small animals than could fit around the taunting creature. I could see that they were eating it. I smiled; it deserved as much, but I was envious.

When the first of the tiny creatures entered my pen, I flexed my paws. My claws normally found purchase on a branch or soft dirt. When I lunged, the claws slipped and scraped on stone too hard for them, and I landed well short of the little animal. It turned, making for the bars. With a quick step I had it trapped underneath my paw. I thought. I had to check to make sure. As I peeked, it escaped and fled for the bars again. I swatted it back into my cage.

This little creature lacked much of the appeal of a swift antelope, but it was a pleasant plaything in its own way. When it quit playing, I put it in my mouth and bit down. The tiny bit of blood and flesh only whetted my appetite and I sought a new plaything. The little furry creatures abounded.

Shortly after the first light in the eastern sky announced the arrival of morning, the next transformation began. Like the last, I remembered it as quick and painless, though those who had witnessed transformations said that they appeared to be neither.

There were duties waiting for us; the occupant of each cell was required to clean it up. While I waited for the Guards to unlock my cell, I piled remnants of rat bodies in a corner near the door.

The Guards that released us were the same ones who had imprisoned us the night before, but their attitudes were different. A Guard came to my cell with a shovel, broom, and bucket of water; I reached for it, but he stepped around me.

The house manager spoke through the door. "I believe you know that Brukka was hunting that killer werewolf in the forest east of here last night."

"Yes."

"Two of his troops were badly mauled last night. One died this morning."

"I don't suppose one was Brukka himself?" I hissed. I hated myself for that comment the moment I made it. It sprang from a primitive habit; one I felt all too strongly in my animal form, but one I liked to think my elven form had grown out of.

Noticing the house manager's glare, I explained, "I could have brought the werewolf in last night. I was talking with him when Brukka charged in and scared him off. I think I could have brought him in with me."

"Brukka wants you at Granitetop Temple as soon as its safe for you to travel," the house manager said, then turned away. I followed a few paces behind, hesitating a little to help the other lycanthropes herd the surviving rats into their cage at the end of the hallway.

Finding myself beside the orcan werelion that had thrown me the meat ball, I suggested, "If you put a thick floor of dirt in there, and some big rocks and logs, you could make this a more comfortable place to spend the night."

The larger orc looked at me and shook his head as though he were addressing a school boy. "It's too hard to clean up."

"But the floor of the wilds is dirt."

"The wilds don't have so many predators in such a small place."

I folded my hands behind my back. "Perhaps if the council were to offer a prize to the one who solved this problem."

The other orc smiled. "I always thought you could put some logs and rocks inside, as long as they are too big to pick up and throw about. And, you know, the lumber mills produce piles of wood chips and sawdust that just rot."

I turned away as his brother began listing the problems with his solution.

From the safe room I retrieved Lycanphobe. The sight of the elf who had been wounded last night encouraged me to don my mail. The house manager said, "They brought your mare in last night. She's outside."

I picked up the saddle and silently left the building. Protesters, already gathered, booed and hissed our emergence. Enduring the the angry shouts in silence, my jaw clenched, I saddled the mare. The house manager said no farewells as I turned my horse south. The protestors cursed and waved clubs; I rested my hand on Lycanphobe's hilt. They stepped aside as I rode through.

Chapter 6

At Granitetop, the large number of Guards made the temple look much more like the fort it was intended to be. Instead of a tendor at the door, a sergeant welcomed me. He told me that the High Minister and Commander Brukka were both waiting for me in the High Minister's private chambers. Still, it was a church tendor who took away my horse.

The man standing guard outside the High Minister's room opened the door for me as I neared. Wanting to get in the first word against Brukka, I began shouting even before I reached the threshold. "Commander Brukka, I want to know, are you a fool or are you intentionally trying to prolong the killings?"

My attack succeeded in catching the Commander off guard. He had been circling the High Minister's sparse furnishings and stopped in mid-step when I entered. Rysalla sat in meditative prayer and did not even flinch as I entered. Taking advantage of Brukka's confused silence, I continued. "I can think of no other explanation for what you did last night. Either you knew that you would scare that werewolf off, in which case you are directly responsible for last night's killing; or you did not realize you would drive him away because you lack even a rudimentary ability to reason."

Brukka stepped near and towered high above me. "I don't like you, Leamar, but until I've got evidence to the contrary you are still an innocent citizen and that creature I saw with you is a murderer. Yes, I thought that I would probably drive him off; but I thought that was better than him killing you and chopping off your head to burn or bury and destroy in order to keep the prophets here from learning what you saw."

Either his righteous anger was genuine or he was a most talented actor, and I had no evidence to suggest that he had any acting skills. His indignation expressed better than his words that he thought he had acted to save my life, and that I owed him gratitude.

He stepped close and poked his glove into my chest. "But he did not carry your precious head away with him; I have it right here. The High Minister has agreed to draw the image out of your mind, and we have artists waiting to transfer that image to paper."

I made a formal bow to the High Minister. "My apologies for the disturbance. I will cooperate fully. But, first, I would like to send a message to Jamison at my estate."

Brukka growled, "We have no time for that."

"It is as important to catching this killer as your image extraction."

"It will be arranged." Rysalla said, standing.

Brukka shouted, "I forbid it."

"You will forbid nothing within these walls," Rysalla said. She stepped outside the door and called the first priest she saw.

"Leamar has a message he wants delivered to his estate," she told the priest. Then she nodded to me.

"Tell Jamison that we will soon have a picture of the killer, and that we are going to be searching this area for him. In fact, go to all the nearby safehouses and spread the word that we are looking for volunteers to help find this person. You don't mind some extra help, do you Brukka?"

"It's bad enough with one morph running about the forests near sunset."

"True," I nodded, turning toward Rysalla. "We will need to make sure that there are sufficient safe places for the lycanthropes that join the search."

To the priest, Rysalla said, "I will charge you with seeing to it that the lycanthrope searchers are dispersed widely enough so as not to overburden the local safehouses." With her nod she dismissed the priest.

We continued to a large, quiet room furnished with a large, comfortable chair in the center and benches on which sat a half dozen artists. A mirror on the far wall reflected the sunlight shining through the high, narrow windows. While I rested in the chair, Rysalla brought the image of the werewolf in its human form out of my mind and projected it onto the mirror. The hissing of artists' charcoal on paper told of the process of transferring the image to paper.

By the time the artists were finished and Rysalla allowed me to leave the room, a huge crowd had gathered in the temple above. A few of the wealthier volunteers carried poorly concealed silver weapons, and I heard them whisper promises that the killer would not live long were they to find him. However, the majority sat patiently and silently while Brukka and his soldiers showed them the drawings.

Against Brukka's protests, Rysalla gave me an opportunity to say a few words to the searchers. "This child you see in these drawings is a young Gatian human. He is not a thing; he is a person. He does not understand our language; as far as I know he only understands Gatian. Most importantly, he does not want to kill people and is trying to put himself into a position where he doesn't risk this kind of killing, only he doesn't know how. If he thinks he is being hunted, he will run and could hide until nightfall. If he perceives our concern and thinks he is safe, he could come forward and give himself over to us. Remember, our job here is to end the killings, not add to them."

Brukka organized the search. He sent specific people to specific regions, adding one Guard to each group and telling everybody to follow the Guard's orders. The result was a systematic sweep of the region, starting at Meadowlark Forest and moving outward.

I joined the last group of searchers. While giving instructions to the group, Brukka paused when he noticed me, but only long enough to scowl. "We have groups forming a line along this ridge and moving slowly into the valley. There are elven bitat trees scattered on these slopes, and there are clusters of trees one could call villages near the base. We sent people to these villages. If they find nothing there, they will work their way up the slopes. We hope that we can catch him between the ridge and the villages. But in case he moves out of the region we want a group on the other side of this ridge. That will be you. Corporal Turryl will be your leader. A wagon is waiting to carry you to your starting point."

At the gate, Rysalla shoved a piece of paper into my pocket. "It's a map showing where you can find the nearest safehouses."

"If Jamison brings any lycanthropes here, it will be too near dark for them to participate in the search today," I told Rysalla. "Please, see what you can do to house them tonight. They can help us tomorrow."

"Though, with luck, we will not be searching for this boy tomorrow," the High Minister said.

I sighed acceptance of the truth in her words, mounted my horse, and prepared to follow the wagon.

Other than the corporal, I was the only one with a horse. He made me the group's messenger. The pedestrians spread out, forming a wide line with the ridge on their right and a stream valley on their left. The whole area was heavily forested, cutting our visibility and simultaneously cutting our chances of finding any being that seriously wanted to hide from us. Each searcher was given a whistle-ball, a hole-filled wooden bulb at the end of a string. When twirled fast enough the wind rushing through the holes gave off a high-pitched whine that carried well in the forest.

The forest got the better of our plans for an organized search. I was to keep everybody in line, but the distances were too large. A few false alarms disturbed the order beyond any hope of repair. Frustrated, the corporal quit moving the searchers about and, instead, stationed them where he found the best views that the forest offered. There were few, and the teams still became widely scattered. I became the means by which the teams communicated with the corporal, and the one to bring food and refreshment.

We had no luck. Messengers from Brukka told us of dozens of sightings, too many for all to have been of the killer. Twice news came that he had been found; one report said he had been captured in a barn and the other that he had been killed while running across a meadow. Amid such contradictions we continued our search.

As day turned into evening the corporal had me call the searchers into larger groups so those with silver weapons and wolves' bane could protect those without. Then he excused me to find my way to the nearest safehouse.

On the trail, my horse bolted unexpectedly. There was none of the nervousness, snorting, or stomping, that warned a rider. She simply swerved left and, screaming and bucking, galloped into the trees, throwing me onto the trail. For several moments I concentrated only on breathing; I had landed on a root which made all but the shallowest pant painful.

With the sounds of my horse fading, I made an effort to stand. I felt certain I had escaped serious injury until a pain shot through my back. I made every effort not to move, but the pain continued. It felt like a huge, angry insect had sunk its mandibles into my flesh; that thought panicked me into trying to swipe it away. When my hand struck the cause of the pain it sent a new jolt through me that drove me to my knees.

Reaching behind me, I felt the fletching I feared to find. I rolled to face the direction the attack must have come from, only to see another arrow an instant before it lodged itself in my chest. Out of habit, I forced muscles to relax; I left my eyes open and made sure to land facing in the direction from which the arrows had come. The maneuver had saved me a couple of times when lycanthropes were hunted openly.

The assassin stepped onto the trail, still holding her bow with an arrow nocked and pointed at me. It was an elven woman, one I recognized as a searcher from my team. She had never given me any reason to notice her, not even cold stares or harsh words. She was just another volunteer doing her job.

Judging from the way her aim wavered, her skill with a bow was not great. The arrow seldom actually pointed at me, though it always pointing close enough to my direction to be dangerous.

Straight ahead of me was the root which had made the bruise in my side. By fixing my stare on it I kept her in my peripheral vision.

I let my breath out slowly.

"Serves you right, morph, after what your kind did to my son. How about a couple more to make sure you never rise again?"

As she drew the string back, I moved. Despite the pain, I reached for Lycanphobe and sat up. Her shot came first. By luck or by design it flew toward my legs, and I had already committed myself to moving my body instead. The arrow buried itself deep in my thigh.

I threw the dagger. Half prone, I could not get a good throw. But Lycanphobe was magiked to kill; the dagger struck her in the throat and went in deep. Shocked, she dropped her bow and gripped the blade, adding long cuts to her fingers and hands. She fell to her knees and, before I had pulled myself a half stride toward her, she collapsed.

It took a minute for me to reach her side. More blood had come from her neck than my daylight form had ever seen. She was dead.

Because of my armor, the arrows in my back and chest had not penetrated deeply. I grabbed the arrow in my chest and pulled quickly. It came out clean. The head had the sharp, solid shape useful for penetrating armor, not the wide flanges that would have cut more flesh coming out than it did going in. The arrow in my back was more difficult to reach. Pain, as I pulled it out, sent a wave of darkness over me.

When I next opened my eyes the sky was nearly dark. I could not see the moon as it cleared the horizon, but I could feel it. My transformation had begun. So quickly did I snatch the arrow from my leg it seemed more like reflex than a deliberate act. The pain drew me again into darkness.

Chapter 7

When I opened my eyes next the stars shone brightly above, though the moon was still too low to be seen directly. There was a most delicious smell in the air, a smell I had nearly forgotten in the passing years. My whole body ached with a sensation long absent, the pure joy of hunting the two-legged ones. Testing the air with a few deep breaths, I found the direction the smell was coming from, and immediately felt disappointment upon seeing that the prey had already been brought down. Cloth and metal hindered my attempt to move; I threw them off and approached the body.

The hole in her neck was inviting, but I sensed danger radiating from the blade that guarded her wound.

At first I resolved not to disturb the corpse. Then I reasoned that it would not be too wrong for me to lap up some blood that had flowed from the wound to pool on the trail. I drank slowly, savoring each drop, not minding the dirt I lapped up with the blood.

Soon, even the evil radiating from the blade did not repel me. I lapped the blood off the corpse's shoulder, then moved up to the neck. To keep from cutting my tongue I took the dagger in my hand/claw and pulled it from her neck. Like a tiger's claw, my hand had short, stubby fingers and long, sharp nails. Like a human's hand, the fifth claw bent at angles my cat sense said was strange. It allowed me to grab the dagger and pull it free.

In my grasp, the dagger held my attention much more strongly than the carcass did. I felt a sudden loathing for what I wanted to do -- for what I was. I found myself thinking that it should be my blood spilled on the trail, my body laying there. With Lycanphobe, I cut a long gash slowly, lengthwise, down the lower part of my left foreleg. For a while -- for a long while -- nothing happened. Then a small ridge of blood swelled up, ran along the grain of the fur, and dripped to the ground. It had a far different smell than the corpse's blood.

When the flow stopped, I made another cut. As my blood flowed out anew, a feeling grew, coming from Lycanphobe, telling me this was good.

But I did not want to die. I had lived over a century and had seen great changes. I sensed that things were better than they had been, and I felt a promise of things being better in the future. I remembered the fear-filled pain at thinking I should not be alive more clearly than I had in a long time; but I still knew it to be a distant memory poorly founded.

I set the dagger down; as I released the hilt, the smell of elf blood again overwhelmed me. I returned to lick the wound, then went on to chew the flesh. When I resolved that I was actually going to eat this corpse, I moved down toward the meatier rump region.

The air was filled with sights and sounds I had long forgotten; not all of them I liked. Other predators roamed the area. I removed my meal from the trail and took it into the shadows where I could eat peacefully. Then I went back for the dagger. As I returned to the carcass I made another small cut along the side of my paw. The sight of blood flowing from the wound again gave me a dangerous satisfaction. Fearing it, I jabbed the dagger into a tree trunk near enough to the carcass that I could see it, but far enough that I could not hear its call.

I heard the wolf long before I could smell it above the smell of the carcass. It moved strangely, and I vaguely sensed it was another creature who, like me, found the smell of an elf's blood particularly sweet -- a werewolf. I growled a warning for it to keep away from my meal. It did run, for a few paces, then stopped and yelped at me. The sound sparked an ambivalence. Against my sense that this predator was a threat, I also felt an urgent need to offer it protection.

It circled me, but kept its distance. Was it looking for an opening? It howled and barked as it moved, crushing branches and leaves under its feet. I had always found canines to be such brutish and clumsy creatures.

After a few paces it stopped. The focus in its eyes shifted from me to a tree between us. Only a pace away from where it stood the dagger jutted from the trunk of a tree. Competing drives prevented me from doing anything but watch and measure its actions. It took the knife, then backed up a step and pointed it at its own chest.

My feline instincts cared little about this, but another part of me forced me to spring on the wolf. I aimed a claw at the blade to push it away, but as an instrument of death the dagger was too well constructed. The werewolf pushed the blade into its own chest, into its heart, before I could reach it.

In the moon glow the wolf-boy lost his animal shape. His fur vanished under his skin, his teeth shrank, his muzzle retreated into a human's face. The musky and dangerous smell of a wolf faded into the sweet smell of a human boy. A dead human boy.

Yet I could find no interest in it, not as food. Over the whisper of the wind I heard the calls of the two-legged creatures. I knew their powers, knew I needed to leave as quickly as possible.

Morning arrived much sooner than I expected. When I woke in my day form I recognized my surroundings immediately. It was my old hunting grounds, Meadowlark Park.

I could not recall much about the final few bells of the night, though images of the first part filled my thoughts quickly enough. When I remembered the sight of the wolf-boy's body, my eyes stung with tears I did not try to fight. Shadowy memories of the elf woman and what I had done with her followed rapidly, filling me with nausea.

Then I looked around and saw a herd of deer at the edge of the swamp. While I was in my tiger form they had known of my presence, but they had known I had eaten and would not hunt again so soon. My elven form made them uncertain. As I stood, they bounded for the far end of the clearing.

A pain in my arm surprised me. I looked down to find two long cuts in my forearm from the elbow to the wrist, and another in the side of my hand, near the thumb. They were deep, and my movement sent fresh trickles of blood through cracks in the scab. Lycanphobe had been magiked so the wounds it delivered would last through a werecreature's transformation.

I went directly to Granitetop. Wagons, horses, and people in the yard before the temple had the appearance of a besieging army. I recognized three of the carriages in one group; they were my own. Jamison, with several people from the estate, was there. Many who stood around him were lycanthropes; I recognized others as people friendly with lycanthropes and devoted to the rules of compromise. He took a single step in my direction, then stopped.

Guards still occupied the temple. As I entered the yard they leveled cocked and loaded crossbows at me. The tips of their bolts were silver. I had expected that Brukka would know I was not confined last night; the soldiers confirmed my guess.

Brukka himself stood just inside the temple door, waiting with poorly feigned patience as I climbed the steps. When I heard a scuffle behind me I turned; lycanthropes and their friends from the field had followed me through the gates. Some of the Guards turned to point their crossbows at the crowd.

"I thought you would come here," Brukka said. "I assume you're going to ask for sanctuary."

I was tired; not tired in the sense of lacking sleep, but an emotional exhaustion from wrestling with thoughts during the long walk. I had no energy for mental sparring. "I wasn't planning to," I answered. "Why, should I?"

"It was a pretty bloody night last night. Three -- what do you like to call them? -- killings. We found about half of an elf woman near the body of a human boy."

"The boy is your werewolf," I answered. Listeners repeated my words in a growing ring through the crowd. "He killed himself. Or, to be more precise, Lycanphobe killed him."

A look of anguish twisted the High Minister's face as she stood near us; a look of pure grief and sadness. Brukka showed no sign of emotion, except for a brief lift of an eyebrow, a trace of a smile.

"As for the elf, I'm afraid I killed her -- in self defense," I continued. "You should have found my armor and clothing somewhere near the scene with three bloody holes and the arrows that made them."

"Did you eat her in self defense too?"

The crowd rumbled, but I remained silent.

Brukka allowed himself to speak a little louder. "And speaking about your sacred dagger, where is it?"

"I left it in Trell Smithson's body, the werewolf's body."

"The other killing last night was that of an elven child. It was dragged out of its bitat tree in the night by a tiger that stood on its hind legs, and the victim's mother with her hunting knife could not harm it to save her child."

I still said nothing.

"The copy cat," somebody shouted from the court yard.

"Not likely!" Brukka shouted, addressing the crowd. He stepped away from the door and held Lycanphobe high in the air, his knuckles white with the strength of his grip on the hilt. "We found this near the body where it fed!"

When his attention came back to me, his jaw was clenched tightly in a fierce grimace. "Damn you!" he shouted. He pounced at me, swinging the dagger in a wide arch.

Brukka, as a well-trained fighter, knew I would step aside, and quickly shifted his swing to where he thought I would be. His guess was nearly correct; the blade cut a long slice just below my ribs. But he had lunged with too much force -- too much anger. He lost his balance and rolled down the steps. Two Meelarian priests stepped up to me; the High Minister hurried toward Brukka, stopping as the Commander got back to his feet.

Brukka hissed angrily, "Get out of my way, Rysalla, I'll get to him through you if I must."

He raised the dagger again, prepared to charge. Jamison stepped up quickly and silently behind Brukka; every Guard could see him approach but did nothing to warn or protect their Commander. They had seen him strike at me. Jamison grabbed Brukka's wrist and, with a squeeze and a twist, forced the Commander's arm behind his back. Another, harder twist forced the Commander to drop the weapon. Then Jamison took a firm hold of Brukka's neck and made him look at the High Minister. Brukka grunted, the words barely audible, "And damn all trolls, too!" Jamison resisted the urge to squeeze harder.

Softly, Rysalla said, "There will be no more fighting on temple grounds."

Brukka's features grew soft. He repeated, "There will be no more fighting on temple grounds." However, Rysalla picked up Lycanphobe before telling Jamison to release the Commander.

With Brukka no longer a threat, the two priests took firm holds of my arms. I gave up standing and trusted them to lower me gently onto the steps. One of them called for a stretcher while they started inspecting my wound.

"Many of you will be tempted to blame the lycanthropes for this midweek's tragedies," Rysalla said in a voice that magic carried through the entire courtyard. "Yet I have seen little here that I can not charge to hatred itself. It was hatred that drove the boy Trell Smithson from his home. It was hatred that kept him away from those of us who would have taught him how to live in harmony with others. Hatred motivated the attack on Leamar last night and left him wounded in the forest, unable to reach a safehouse before sundown. If Leamar did kill that elven child, it was hatred that made it possible. Hatred was the killer this midweek, and it is hatred you should seek revenge against if it is revenge that you crave. But be warned, hatred has a great talent of disguising itself as a friend. It seduces you into thinking that its victims are your enemy and distracting you from seeing it for the monster it is."

"What of this copy cat?" Brukka shouted, his voice needing no magical help to fill the courtyard. "Is it a product of our hatred too? As long as we have lycanthropes in Laurella, we will have killers."

Rysalla took a step toward Brukka. "Yes, as long as there are lycanthropes in Laurella there will be occasional killings. And it is also true that as long as we have humans in Laurella there will be rapes. Would you have us end the crimes human males commit by purging Laurella of these foul creatures? True, humans are not the only creatures that rape, but lycanthropes are not the only creatures that kill. In fact, why stop there, Brukka? If we purge Laurella of all people we can end all crime forever -- except the crimes we commit while purging Laurella of all people."

"That's absurd."

"I'm pleased that you can understand at least that much."

She turned a slow circle, holding Lycanphobe high in both hands; one wrapped around the hilt, the other holding tightly to the blade. Magic must have been involved; she suffered no injury.

"The time for such hatreds is over. The Rules of Compromise forbid it!" she shouted.

Her hands started to glow. She brought the blade down hard against her knee. It snapped, filling the yard with a flash of light and clap of thunder that no lightning strike could match. Stunned silence followed, broken only by the clatter of the two halves of the dagger landing on the stone steps where the High Minister had dropped them. Seeing the pieces of the weapon on the ground, I realized who had made it.

Rysalla left them where they lay and approached me. Kneeling beside me she said, "I'm sorry. As I said earlier, people too easily adopt the values of those with whom they share community. Too many of us never examine the beliefs and attitudes our community has given us, and instead get self-satisfaction by carrying them to even further extremes. Changing the direction of our lives and our efforts after we had gone so far down the wrong road was difficult, but pride made it even harder still for many of us to admit that we were wrong. I am as responsible for Trell Smithson's death as any murderer, by an act I failed to perform decades ago, and I cannot express my sorrow."

She stood and said to the two priests who tended me, "Take him downstairs. I will look after him myself. Those wounds will not heal during transformation, so we have a wounded weretiger to care for the rest of this midweek."

The two priests obeyed.

On the temple steps, Brukka turned to the crowd. "We've got one more killer morph to find, maybe two, but we don't know what they look like yet. Anybody who wants to help find these killers, speak with Jamison here."

Nobody thought it unusual that Brukka picked up the pieces of Lycanphobe, or even that he tried to fit the two pieces together again before putting them in his pocket.

End

Editor's note:

Since the author never told me his name, this story is anonymous. You may consider me the "trustee" of the copyright on the preceeding story, until the original author claims it back. That might never occur, but it would please me greatly if it did. Please obtain permission before copying or printing this story -- most likely you'll get it without any hassle, unless you're trying to publish the story for a profit. That can also be arranged, but requires a more formal agreement.

Dirk Pellett

HTML version prepared 29 March 2003.