The White Wolf's Son: The Albino Underground Read online

  Lord Renyard had a taste, it emerged, for abstraction. He reminded me a bit of my dad, who was always inclined to wander off the practical point into speculation. I began to lose the thread of the fox’s arguments and was glad whenever he paused to point out a spectacular view or describe some flora or fauna of the surrounding world.

  I was beginning to get tired and hungry by the time the tottering towers of the City in the Autumn Stars came in sight: a sprawl of tall tenements and chimneys, spires and domes. High overhead I could see pale, bright spots of faded color, rusty reds and dark yellows, which might indeed have been ancient stars. I wondered if I would find my other protector, Monsieur Zodiac, there in the city.

  Lord Renyard told me to be careful where I put my feet. “We shall be at my home soon, but the path can still be treacherous.” He pointed to the skyline of Mirenburg. “What you observe,” he explained, “is a mirror of the city you will find on the surface. Do not ask me how this phenomenon can be. I lack the intellect to explain it. But in a certain place the upper city and the lower city connect and allow us to move from one into the other. I think you will find that upper city more familiar. I cannot be sure, but it might even exist on the same plane as your own.”

  “In which case they’d have long-distance telephones,” I said. “And I’ll be able to get in touch with my parents.”

  He hesitated, doubtful. “Our Mirenburg—my Mirenburg— is not an especially progressive city, though she has lately accepted some modest manufacturing reforms.”

  As we descended towards the city walls, the silence of the huge caverns was broken by a rapid drumming sound. Looking around him, Lord Renyard drew me back into the shadow of a slab of granite. He put his paw to his muzzle, indicating to me that I shouldn’t talk. Far away across the ridge, under the dim light of the “autumn stars,” I saw two men on horseback. I couldn’t make out their features until they rode quite close. I would have called to them if I hadn’t remembered Lord Renyard’s instructions. When I saw their faces, I was glad I hadn’t It was the mysterious visitor and the other man from the dreams, the Puritan with the pale, gaunt head. Klosterheim. I suspected they were looking for me.

  Soon we had reached the high walls of Mirenburg. It was a cold, rather alarming place. I gripped the fox’s paw still tighter as he led me through unguarded gates, explaining where we were. “The larger, outer city we call, these days, the Shallow City. But my people inhabit the core of the place. The quarter known as the Deep City. The Shallow City is ruled by the Sebastocrater, descended from Byzantine knights. But I have little intercourse with them. They are very poorly educated, having forgotten their old wisdom and skills. They never leave the city and certainly never venture underground, as I do.”

  We walked through black, unlit streets and eventually came to a wide boulevard. A single globe of light, very dim at this distance, lit this area of the city. The globe was seated on top of a monolith of black marble, block upon gigantic block, ascending to cubes of basalt.

  “The palace of the lower city’s Sebastocrater,” Lord Renyard murmured. “No threat to us.”

  Many of the other buildings had the look of public offices or apartments of important officials. Only rarely did I see a yellow light in a window. The buildings were high and close together. I was reminded of New York, except that this city was weirdly silent, as if everything slept. The only time I’d been to New York, I’d been astonished at the noise of traffic and police sirens going all night.

  Lord Renyard seemed nervous, murmuring that this part of the city was not one he was familiar with. “Mine is the oldest quarter, what most these days call the Thieves’ Quarter.”

  “Thieves?”

  “I am not an entirely respectable person,” he murmured, as if embarrassed. “Though I strived to educate and civilize myself all my life, those amongst whom I am doomed to dwell still consider me a monster. Many are deeply conservative. Even their religion is of a very old-fashioned kind. Only in that district, where no decent citizen will enter, can I find any kind of rest.”

  This sounded rather melodramatic to me. Personally I found a talking fox cool. My guess was that he’d be on every TV chat show there was, if he moved to London. I meant to tell him this as soon as we arrived at his house. After all, if I could travel so easily to his world, he could as easily come to mine.

  The big buildings began to open out until we reached a wharf district on what was either a lake or a very wide river. The horizon turned a faint pink as the sun began to rise. Black water glittered. Overhead the stars grew dim. Lord Renyard led me down some watersteps, and then, amazingly, he led me up them again as the sun rose behind us and Mirenburg awoke and began to greet the morning. It was the same city we had just left, but utterly transformed!

  Cocks crowing, dogs barking, maids calling from window to window, hawkers beginning to cry their wares, bells ringing, the sounds of carts rolling over cobbles, the bustle of people everywhere. It was the people, however, who rather alarmed me, not because they were sinister in any way, because they were not. They were fresh-faced, round-headed for the most part and of a generally cheerful disposition. They were dressed like people out of another century. Spiral streets wound up towards the town center, where a vast castle tottered. The smells convinced me that I had almost certainly gone back in time.

  Now I really was beginning to worry. I blurted out my anxiety. “Lord Renyard, I don’t think you’re taking me back to my parents. I’m beginning to be concerned about them. I really do need to get home.”

  Lord Renyard paused. Ahead of us were lofty tenements which seemed to sway in a kind of dance. Even the chimney pots hopped and shuddered. “Visitors here sometimes know of ways of going back and forth across the multiverse.” He seemed almost sorrowful.

  I didn’t mean to start crying. Why had it taken so long for the reality to sink in? I had no idea what was happening. I was lost in time as well as space, and however kind Lord Renyard was, he had no easy way of helping me. It was some comfort to be held in his huge paw, to have his stammers and snuffles of sympathy, but it wasn’t enough.

  I pulled myself together. I was fairly certain Heir Lobkowitz and the others would guess where I was and would find me. I told myself I had every chance of returning home. The fox was greatly relieved when I stopped crying. “It’s not too far now, mademoiselle. And as soon as I am in my apartments I promise I will begin the search for those people who can help you.”

  Again I took his soft paw, and soon we were in the canyons of what he called the Deep City, where tall, dilapidated buildings creaked and swayed around us. Lord Renyard assured me it was in the nature of this part of Mirenburg to behave so and that only rarely did a building actually fall down. “It helps us keep our privacy, however. That and our reputation.” His wink included me in a conspiracy whose ramifications I could never hope to understand. To distract myself I changed the subject.

  “You said you are a thief, Lord Renyard. What do you steal?”

  His big red-furred ears flattened a little, as if with pride. “I am the Prince of the Thieves, as I told you. That is why you are so safe with me. I myself do not steal, but I command as rascally a gang of footpads, pickpockets and tobymen as you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

  “Tobymen?”

  “The toby is the highway, my dear. They are highway robbers. Knights of the road, as they’re sometimes termed.”

  “And murderers?”

  He was disapproving. “We don’t encourage murder.”

  Among the shadows of the tenements, I began to see shadows lurking. Sometimes I glimpsed a pale, ratlike face, and sometimes I detected a glinting eye in a basement area or heard a scuttling, a shuffling, a sniggering.

  Then, outside a tavern whose sign was so weather-stained and peeling I couldn’t easily make out its name, Lord Renyard stopped. “Here we are!” I spelled it. “R-A-S-P-A-Z-I-A-N’S.”

  Raspazian’s Tavern was a basement drinking den. The strong smells of alcohol a
nd tobacco roiled up towards us as we descended dirty steps to its door, which was immediately flung open, inviting us to step through.

  I heard a sound all around us, as if we had disturbed a colony of rats, but the interior, lit by oil lamps, had an unexpectedly pleasant atmosphere. At the tables groups of men and women dressed in patched and ragged finery, none of it very clean, saluted my friend with their tankards and weapons and called out respectfully.

  “Morning, Captain. Who’s the chicksa mort?”

  “Enough of that, you rogues.” Suddenly Lord Renyard adopted a haughty manner. I guessed that was how he kept his followers in order. I was glad to be under his protection at that moment. We stepped through the tavern to a door at the back, and up a flight of steps into a spacious room much cleaner than the one we left.

  Judging by the table and chairs, the room was used for dining. On the other side of this was another flight of stairs. Lord Renyard ushered me ahead and up into a comfortable apartment with two bedrooms. It was the quaintest set of rooms I’d ever seen. I had expected a prince of thieves to live in a palace, but these were the simple, comfortable apartments of a gentleman who enjoyed reading. There were bookshelves everywhere. There was even a shelf of small leather-bound volumes next to a spice rack.

  The smaller bedroom was for me, he said. There he let me clean up while he sent servants out to find clothes for me. Before long his maid brought me everything I needed, including a mob cap. At least I would look normal when I went out. While I was dressing, I smelled cooking food. At the table Lord Renyard now sat before a pile of various breads, butter and jam, which he offered me while his smiling black-haired maid brought him in a plate of undercooked chicken. Civilized and erudite as he was, the fox remained a fox.

  “I have already sent my men abroad, mademoiselle. They seek St. Odhran’s friends Herr Lobkowitz and Lieutenant Fromental, who have apparently been sighted and have visited here before. If anyone can discover your friends, my people will.”

  “What do you know about Klosterheim and Gaynor?” I asked.

  “Very little. They are here, too, by now, of course. They work with powerful allies these days, I gather. I have come up against Klosterheim in the past. Although I made a friend of your ancestor, I’m not entirely sure the friendship was beneficial.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, there were repercussions. It is not something I wish to speak about, dear mademoiselle.” He would not let himself be drawn out by me, and I couldn’t see much point in questioning him further. The important thing at the moment was to get in touch with my grandfather’s friends.

  We sat in the cosiness of this strange being’s apartment while my brain tried to absorb all that had happened to me in the past hours, and as Lord Renyard talked of where and how his men would be looking for my friends, I gradually fell asleep in my chair. I was only dimly aware of him picking me up in his awkward, delicate paws and putting me into a bed so comfortable it must have more than one feather mattress.

  I dreamed again. I was back in the strong embrace of the albino, his silks and samite swirling about him, his great, growling runeblade pulsing in his right hand. “I battle with a friend!” he declared. He began to laugh. “Come!”

  And in a storm of white we lighted on black crystalline rocks, where the great Lord Renyard, splendid in his ruffles and tailored silks, his beribboned dandy cane in his left paw, his quizzing glass to his right eye, bowed with great respect to us both. Then it was as if the albino had blown me like dandelion flax towards Lord Renyard, with his blessing and his strength.

  I looked back, and over my shoulder were the distant spires of Mu-Ooria, the black granite and crystalline landscapes of dreams and enduring illusions. I felt Lord Renyard’s paw around my shoulder. The albino was nowhere to be seen, but the great fox’s delicate perfume was unmistakable.

  Then I was dreaming of Tower House. My parents were wondering where I’d been, but their pleasure at finding me far outweighed their anxiety. Sometimes I felt I was telling them how protected I felt in the care of Lord Renyard, who sat at the kitchen table, a teacup held between two paws, looking at a brace of unplucked pheasants my mum and dad had given him. His nose was twitching and his teeth were slightly bared, as if he could not wait to begin devouring the succulent birds.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FROM THIS DREAM, I woke up. It was dark. A sliver of light came through my door. I tiptoed to it and opened it a crack. There was no one in the main room, but I heard voices coming from downstairs. Laughter, oaths, the clatter of crockery and pewter. And over it all the sharp, barking tones of Lord Renyard, speaking a language I had never heard before in my life.

  “Two pops and a galloper says she’s a pike off.”

  “Dids’t challenge the mish of yon dimber mort!”

  Out of sheer curiosity I did my best to hear as much as possible of the queer speech which everyone here used. It sounded a bit like English, a bit like Irish, perhaps, but I was lucky if I understood one word in ten. Nowadays, having read my ancestor’s book, in which he offered an account of a visit to Mirenburg around 1800 (cf. The City in the Autumn Stars), I know that what I overheard was called “the canting tongue,” a language which derived from Gypsy and was used, in one form or another, by thieves and vagabonds in England and other parts of Europe.

  When I went back to bed, however, I knew they had been talking about me. I had heard my name mentioned. I had a feeling Lord Renyard’s men and women were objecting to my presence, partially because they thought he had kidnapped me. I smiled at this until I realized it was quite possible. How could I have been subtly induced to move further and further from my home, where even now our local friends and acquaintances thought I must still be—unless I had been kidnapped? Could the fox be holding me for ransom and merely pretending to help me?

  No, I thought as I returned to the warmth and security of my feather bed. If he had entertained such a plan, Lord Renyard would have betrayed himself. If he had been lying to me, I would have caught something of his intention in his face. Yet it was still possible he could be persuaded to hold me captive or, worse, hand me over to the man who sought me and against whom I had already been warned. I was beginning to realize that I could not trust everything I heard or everyone who told me something. If I was to get back home, I would have to rely increasingly on my own instincts and judgment.

  I slept, with brief intervals of wakefulness, until early the next morning, when the light through my little window showed that it was dawn. I looked out onto crooked, cobbled streets, swaying tenements, a bustle of people and animals. Seen in this light, the buildings seemed hardly less organic than the people and beasts. The smell of coffee mingled with the smell of smoke from the city’s myriad chimneys. The sky behind those tall buildings grew first rust red and then yellow and then blue, until the sun was up in all its glory, shining off windows, milk cans, pitchers of pewter, buckets of zinc, and the steel of swords and daggers stuck in the belts of the men swaggering towards the eating houses and grog shops. If I had been on holiday, I would have been fascinated by all this variety and difference, but now I longed to see something familiar, to reassure me that I could soon be on my way home.

  Lord Renyard’s pretty maid knocked on my door to tell me the table was laid for breakfast. I washed, dressed in my new clothes, and stumbled out to sit down before an array of ham, cheese, dark bread, butter and jam. Not sure of their customs, I helped myself to bread and butter and made myself a ham and cheese sandwich. I was eating this when the maid brought in coffee and hot milk. A moment later Lord Renyard appeared. He looked a little dusty, as if he had been busy during the night. He explained that he’d had to issue orders to his men who were not all natural early birds. “But I have a habit of rising at dawn, though I’ll often sleep during the day. I put it down to my ancestry. And you, my dear, did you sleep soundly?”

  “Yes, thank you, Lord Renyard. But I did get a bit homesick during the night.”

&n
bsp; “Of course you did. Of course you did.” He patted my hand with a soft forepaw. “I expect news of your friends at any moment. My men have been everywhere in the Upper, Lower and Middle City. They have reports of the man Klosterheim, who pursues you, but nothing save rumors about any who pursue him. Strangers have all been sparing with their names, it appears.” Lord Renyard shared a cup of warm milk with me, wiping his muzzle with his napkin. “For the moment it would be wise for you to remain here until I get some substantial intelligence.”

  I was bound to agree. “Maybe I could borrow a book or something?” I begged. “Since you don’t have TV. I mean, I’d like to take my mind off things or I start worrying about my mum and dad.”

  Lord Renyard was sympathetic. He brightened, glad of something he could do for me. “I will introduce you to my library, though I fear it is primarily in the French language. Are you fluent?”

  “Not really. Maybe you’ve something in English?”

  “We’ll go there and we shall see,” he promised. He took a key from his waistcoat and moved slowly towards a room he had not yet shown me. Almost with reverence, he unlocked the door and opened it, walking to the far wall and drawing back a pair of curtains to allow a dim light to shine upon the orderly shelves of a large and impressive library. I loved the smell of old vellum and paper, the faintly glinting titles. I took some pencils and paper, intending to note down titles that interested me. Unfortunately, when I came to look at them more closely, they were all very old or, as Lord Renyard had warned, mostly in French or German. What weren’t in those languages were as often as not in Greek or Latin. I eventually found a translation by Henry Fielding of Gil Bias, but frankly it was a bit stuffy. I hadn’t by that time become a fan of Smollett and Fielding. The only old books I had read were John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and children’s versions of Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe.