Read Online The Wizard by Gene Wolfe - Free Book Online

body. But they are parts of one whole. Can you write, Toug?" Toug shook his head. "You may learn someday. When you do, you'll find out that your hands speak just as your lips do now, and that the things they say are a little different. Still, you're one whole, lips and hands." "You're saying he talks like we do, but Mani doesn't." "Close enough." I raised my voice. "Gylf! Here boy!" Toug looked around and caught sight of a running animal far away. It grew smaller as it approached, until a panting Gylf threw himself down at my feet. "We were talking about you," I said. "When I go back to Skai, will you go with me?" Gylf nodded. "That's good. But maybe it won't be allowed. Or you may want to stay here awhile before you join me there. In either case, you'll belong to Toug. Is that understood?" Slowly, Gylf nodded again. "I want you to talk to him. I won't make you, but I ask it. Just to Toug. Will you speak?" There was a long silence. At last Gylf said, "Yep." "Thank you. Toug wonders how you change size. Will you tell him?" "Good dog." We waited, and at length he added, "Dog from Skai." Toug exclaimed, "You had him before you went there!" "I did. He was given to me by the Bodachan. Their reasons for making me such a gift were good but complicated, and we'll leave them for another time. Do you know the Wild Hunt?" Toug nodded. "It's when Hern the Hunter hunts up in the air, like a storm. I'm not sure it's real." "Hern's the Valfather. It's one of his names." Toug gulped. "I heard him when I was little. Thehis horse galloping across Skai, and his hounds." "Then how could you not be certain it is real?" "I thought maybe I dreamed it." "You're dreaming this," I told him; and although Toug considered the matter for a long while after he woke, there seemed to be no adequate answer to it. "I've talked about the Giants of Winter and Old Night. When I did, you must have thought them human-shaped, like the Angrborn. I think I told you about one wearing a glove, and if you hadn't thought them like us before, you'd surely have after that." Toug nodded. "Many are. Others are not. There's one with a hundred arms, and more than a few who have or take on the shapes of animals. Fenrir's the worst. You've got to understand that there's no big distinction among the kinds." Reluctantly, Toug nodded again. "Ones or two at a time wander away from their sunless kingdom to steal and kill. When they do, the Valfather hunts them down, sometimes alone, sometimes with his sons or men like me, or both. But always with his hounds, who course them and bring them to bay. You heard them, you said." Recalling how frightened he had been, Toug said nothing. "It sometimes happens that one of the bitches of that pack gives birth before her time. The exertions of the hunt are too great, and the pup is dropped. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. Once in a hundred years, maybe." "Isn't that thousands of years in Skai?" "Right. When a puppy is dropped like that, or lost some other way, it may fall or wander down into Mythgarthr. Then someone finds it, helpless and alone, hungry and cold. He can kill it then, if he wants to. He can leave it to starve. Or he can take it in as the Bodachan did. Feed it, and keep it alive. If he does, he'll have his reward eventually." "You mean when the Valfather comes to get it?" "You're pale. Would that be such a terrible thing?" Trembling, Toug nodded. "I guess you're right. But a wonderful thing, too. If he finds the hound he lost loved the man who saved it, do you think he'll hate that man? That's not his way." "I hope not," Toug said fervently. "It isn't. It's the sort of thing the giants do, not the sort of thing Overcyns do, and it's sure as heck not the sort of thing the Valfather does." When minutes had passed, Toug said timidly, "It's really beautiful here." "Beautiful and terrible. Have you noticed how bright the colors are?" Toug looked around, and it seemed that he looked with new eyes. "Yes," he said. "I hadn't paid