Free The White Wolf's Son by Michael Moorcock Page A

mob cap. At least I would look normalwhen 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
    F ROM 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