The Wolf Age by James Enge Page A

guards kept close watch on him at first, but eventually they grew used to seeing him there and they relaxed their vigil.
    It was necessary to sit by the doorway for a simple reason. Khretnurrliu was always just to the left or right of his field of vision. If he stayed by the door and refrained from looking into the cell, Khretnurrliu could not enter. It was a simple and reasonable solution to keep the ghost from entering and destroying them. Rokhlenu, when Morlock explained the matter to him, eventually agreed, although they didn't have many conversations after that. More often, Morlock saw him in low-voiced converse with Hrutnefdhu on the other side of the cell door.
    Morlock had long ago twisted his old bandages into a strangling cord, wrapping it around his wrist as if it were a bracelet. He didn't doubt he could use it effectively against the guards, or at least one of them, if he could somehow get into the corridor. Rokhlenu could take care of another. If they were quick enough, each might use a fallen guard's weapon on another guard. All that was possible, if they could get into the corridor.
    But what could they do against Khretnurrliu? That was the real question, and Morlock gnawed at it alone through the lonely days and hours, as Rokhlenu didn't seem interested in discussing it. Morlock knew little about trapping or combating ghosts, and what little he knew involved the Sight that was now lost to him.
    He had once seen the execution of a criminal in the Anhikh Komos. After expulsion from the city communion, the malefactor was beheaded and his limbs bound with a light thread to keep the ghost from roaming about, malefacting even after death. Morlock had pointed out to a local that the thread wasn't much of a bond, and the local had told him it wasn't meant to bind the dead body but the ghost. Perhaps that was what he could do about Khretnurrliu: bind the ghost with a rope of light thread.
    Morlock thought he could probably make a thread from his own hair, which was getting pretty long. He chose the grayer hairs on the grounds that they were more likely to baffle the grayish rotting ghost: like is always frustrated by like. He knotted a great length of the grayish hairs together over a number of days, working with his hands behind his back or under his legs so that the guards and Khretnurrliu could not see.
    He tested his first attempt and it broke on the first tug. That annoyed him, and it also raised the latent maker in his madness. He could make a better thread than that-and did, though it took many days and many wild hairs. In the end he had a long thin string of grayish twine that was fairly strong. He himself could break it, but he didn't think Khretnurrliu could, not with his muscles hanging off his bones in greenish strands.
    It was a trivial accomplishment, in a way, but it gave him a fierce satisfaction. He would have boasted about it to Rokhlenu, but of course that would give everything away. Anyway, Rokhlenu wasn't very communicative lately. He was very kind and very patient, reminding Morlock to eat and drink when he forgot (as he invariably did), but Morlock did not want kindness or patience in response to this heroic deed. He wanted awe or nothing. If he could explain to Rokhlenu how important the problem was, maybe he could spring the twine on him as a solution and get an appropriate response. But it would require distraction on the guards' part if he were to escape their attention, and he thought this unlikely. He looked up and glanced at them.
    He saw, with some surprise, that there were only two: one in the day shape, one in the night shape. The day-shape guard was not an archer-anyway, he didn't have a bow. They were both werewolves of very little bite; the wolf had only one tooth on a cord around his neck; and the man had only a cord with no teeth. The man was looking idly down the corridor; the wolf was asleep.
    Morlock was astonished, and more than a little offended. Didn't they know how dangerous