Rokhlenu was a patient teacher, Morlock was a patient student, and they had as much time as they needed: they worked on languages whenever they were awake and the jailors weren't trying to provoke a fight between them.
Not infrequently the pale trustee would come and speak with them through the bars-mostly with Rokhlenu at first, but more and more with Morlock as he could speak and comprehend Sunspeech better. The trustee's name, it turned out, was Hrutnefdhu ("Skin-maker").
Morlock had thought long about the social differences he could see among the werewolves. All the guards, for instance, were clean shaven. All of the prisoners wore beards, except for Hrutnefdhu. Of the prisoners he had seen, all were naked, except for Hrutnefdhu …and himself.
After learning enough words, he finally managed to put a question to Rokhlenu one day: "Why are all the prisoners naked? Or are they?"
Rokhlenu's answer hinged on many words that Morlock didn't know, and he missed almost all of it. He got a sense that there was a status system involved, and that the less clothes you had the lower your status.
"Then," Morlock asked, "a loincloth like Hrutnefdhu's would be better than no clothes at all?"
"Yes," Rokhlenu agreed, with unusual curtness.
Morlock nodded. He took off what remained of his shirt and began to tear it into wide strips, knotting them together as he went. Rokhlenu said something to him that he didn't understand. He ignored it and finished the job. Then he held the cloth out to Rokhlenu. "Here. It's not much."
Rokhlenu struck the edge of one hand into the palm of another, a gesture of refusal. "No! I can change into a wolf at night. It may be a warm winter, but it's still winter. You need it more than I do."
Morlock continued to hold the cloth out.
Rokhlenu struck the edge of one hand into the palm of another and said again, "No. I thank you. No."
Morlock had to state an abstraction, and his language skills weren't ready for it. He said slowly, "There is you and me. There is them. They don't want this. So: here. Take it."
Rokhlenu looked at Morlock. He looked at the guards outside, who were watching keenly. He took the makeshift loincloth. "Thanks," he said, and wrapped it around himself with the ease of long practice.
Morlock then asked another question that had long been on his mind, "Why doesn't Hrutnefdhu have hair on his face?"
"He does," Rokhlenu replied, startled.
Some of the guards laughed. Morlock mulled it over, and then mimed shaving. That was what he was really concerned about. If there was some way for a prisoner to get the privilege of shaving, then he might acquire a razor and keep it. A straight edge of steel could be useful in so many ways.
The guards laughed again. Rokhlenu seemed surprised and a little embarrassed when he understood Morlock's question. He laboriously explained that Morlock's words implied that Hrutnefdhu had no fur on his face in the night shape, which was apparently an embarrassing blemish for werewolves and which Rokhlenu knew was not the case with Hrutnefdhu. He taught Morlock the vocabulary of shaving (khlut: razor, srend: oil, khlunv: shave) and then said, "But Hrutnefdhu doesn't shave. Someone shaved him good, long years ago."
The guards laughed again, even more uproariously.
There was some joke here that Morlock did not understand. He opened his hands and looked at Rokhlenu expectantly, hoping an explanation was coming.
Rokhlenu turned his head to one side: he understood that Morlock didn't understand. He mimed an action with his hands: a razor lopping something off. He said, "Hrutnefdhu is plepnup." He mimed again and repeated, "Plepnup." Morlock guessed that plepnup meant castrated. He turned his head to one side.
When Hrutnefdhu next appeared, Morlock's guess was confirmed. The guards had been much amused by his conversation with Rokhlenu, and they made Hrutnefdhu take his loincloth off and show his mutilated genitals to Morlock. The pale werewolf was deeply humiliated; his mottled face grew red with shame and powerless rage. Not just his testicles had been removed; his penis too had been savagely mutilated. He glared at Morlock as he stood naked at the barred cell door.
Morlock, for his part, was furious at the guards for humiliating the weak and timid trustee. He was sorry that something he'd said was the cause. He would have been hard pressed to explain that in one of his native languages, though. As the jailors finally allowed Hrutnefdhu to turn away, Morlock blurted, "There is them. There is you and me."
Rokhlenu looked at Morlock in surprise. He turned to Hrutnefdhu and said, "He's right. There is them. There is you and him and me."
"Plepnupov," hissed Hrutnefdhu. "Eh? You, me, him? All plepnupov. Eh?"
"If they had their way," said Rokhlenu. "So the Stone Tree can have them."
Hrutnefdhu turned and ran naked down the echoing hallway.
"That was bad," Rokhlenu said, turning away from the laughing guards, taking Morlock by the arm as he did so. "It was also good. You have a strange shame, Morlock."
"Oh?"
"Yes. To have no bite does not shame you. To get bite from the jailors, that shames you. To have no shirt does not shame you. To have a shirt while your friend is naked, that shames you. To stand with a plepnup and say youand-me does not shame you. To let aplepnup stand ashamed before you, that shames you."
"I suppose so."
"Yurr. You don't say much, do you? Are you more talkative when you know more words?"
"Not really."
"Now there is you and me and him against them."
"Against," Morlock said. (It was a new word.) "If that means what I think it means, it is a good word."
"Isn't it, my friend?" laughed Rokhlenu. "I thought you would like it. Us against them. I almost feel sorry for them, don't you?"
Morlock thought the matter over for a moment and then said, "No."
Chapter Eight: Eyeless Night
There came a night without a moon, an eyeless night, in the wolvish phrase. It must have been early in the month of Drums. Rokhlenu did not transform into a wolf but stayed in human form, shivering in the dark cell with Morlock.
"How do you stand it without fur?" Rokhlenu asked him finally.
"I don't sleep much," Morlock admitted. "A few hours a night. There's no point in it anyway."
"Isn't there? I like to sleep when I can. Dreams might be the only way I ever get out of this place."
"I don't dream."
"Everybody dreams, Morlock. Are you sure what the word means?"
"I don't dream since they put the spike in my head."
"What?" Rokhlenu asked.
So, with a little prompting and vocabulary assistance from Rokhlenu, Morlock told the tale of how he had been captured. He didn't mention why he had been using his Sight: that wasn't something he wanted the guards to hear, if they were listening, and ever since Hrutnefdhu's humiliation he tried to stay aware that they were always listening. But he said that he had used his Sight and narrated what happened after, as far as he could remember it.
"A ghost-sniffer," Rokhlenu said, when Morlock described the wolf who had detected his Sight. "They travel with the raiders, in case they run afoul of any magic-users, like you used to be, I guess. I understand they get their powers from sleeping with pigs during the dark of the moons. Of course, all the Sardhluun try that sometimes."
This was mere slander, for the ears of the ever-listening guards, who twitched angrily but did not intervene.
"How did you end up so deep in the north, though?" Rokhlenu asked. "And what happened to those people who were travelling with you? I remember that young man. Thund?"