Law of the Wolf Tower: The Claidi Journals Book 1, Tanith Lee [pocket ebook reader .TXT] 📗

middle of the town is a bigger garden, green in parts, with some trees. Water wells up from the ground into a string of pools. The waters clean. (Except for what the sheep do in it, of course.)

When not employed, the sheep simply wander about the town. Everyone pats them, or gets out of their way, and even if they eat the washing, they’re allowed to. They also stroll in and out of everyone’s houses, and sometimes leave sheep pats, but these are used for kindling on the fires. (So are useful.)

People groom their sheep carefully, and plait ribbons and beads in their wool. Sometimes they paint their horns.

The sheep are shod. Otherwise they provide wool, milk and cheese. (Which is quite good, once you get used to it. I think I have.)

The Chariot Towners can talk to the sheep (?), and apparently the sheep can talk to them (?) (all baaing). They do seem to understand each other with no trouble.

The guest-house, where we’ve been staying, is hung with sheep-brasses. And at night they light candles in the skulls of famous old sheep which died peaceful natural deaths. All the houses own such skulls. They’re heirlooms.

The sheep graze the lawns, that’s why they’re so neat, the lawns not the sheep.

The lord here is called the Shepherd.

Look, I’ve gone on and on about sheep.

You catch that, here.

I’ve written everything up now to date.

We’ve been in the town five days.

Nemian talked to me today. I don’t always see him, except at breakfast and/or supper. (Mounds of cheeses, milk-soups, salads, gritty bread. Beer. (Which gives me hiccups, to add to the bad impression I make.)) Then he chats in baaas to the locals.

He said, when speaking to me, I was being ‘astonishingly patient’. Some choice.

Nemian is out all day, with the Sheepers. He mentioned other travellers come and go here, and soon we should be able to hitch a ride to somewhere else, perhaps where there are balloons and ballooneers. So home. (To wherever his home is.) The Sheepers like him. Of course.

Desolate.

That sounds yukky. Just like some swooning princess of the House. Ooh, I’m sooo desolate—

But I am.

I wander about and try to talk to some of the women milking sheep or making sheep-cheese or grooming sheep, or their kids. But we can’t understand each other. I find I must simply amble past, and give a quick cheery bleat, which they seem to take as a well-mannered and pleasant Hallo.

Nemian looks amazing again. We’re able to wash our hair and have baths here, though the water is rather cold (one heated bucket to three not.) He’s dazzled them.

He did say the sheep are fierce and can fight lions. (Do they kick them with their shoes?)

Yes, we too have talked about the sheep.

Depressing.

Have now been here eight days, also depressing.

Depressed.

I’m fed up with me. How can I be depressed. I’m OUT IN THE WASTE. With NEMIAN. Almost.

Depressed.

My God – I know what that means, sort of – and shouldn’t perhaps use it like that (?)

Daisy and Dengwi used to accuse me of being prissy, because I wouldn’t swear.

But the royalty at the house used to swear, and I hated them, so I didn’t want to do anything they did and which I could avoid doing.

(If Nemian swears, it doesn’t seem so awful, I have to confess.)

And God is a kind of supreme supernatural figure. Not human. I don’t really understand. But I’ve caught the phrase from him, as I’ve caught this habit of talking about the sheep …

Anyway. Nemian took me aside this evening. And it was sensational. We actually had a conversation, and for hours.

It began with supper. The rough wood tables are outside on a trip-you-up terrace of piled stones. The air was clear and fresh and the sky got dark very slowly.

Everyone baa’d away. I sat there resignedly, only nodding with a quick smiling bleat when anyone greeted me: ‘Claaa-di-baa!’

When it got to the serious beer-drinking stage, Nemian rose and said to me, ‘Shall we go for a walk, Claidi? It’s a fine night.’

One or two of the Sheepers grinned and looked away. And I felt myself blush, which was infuriating. So I said, blankly, ‘Oh, I’m a bit tired. I think I’ll just go in—’ wishing I’d shut up.

‘Let me persuade you,’ said Nemian, very gracious. ‘We can go up to the water pools. It’s cool there. We have to talk, don’t we?’

‘All right,’ I charmingly snapped, got up, and stalked away up the terrace towards the big garden further along the track. Let Nemian catch up with me, for a change.

He didn’t bother, of course. So then I had to pretend I’d got a stone in my shoe. It could have been true, my shoes are wearing out fast.

He sauntered up and asked me, all concern, ‘A stone?’

‘Oh, I’ve shaken it out now.’

‘Look,’ said Nemian, ‘there’s the moon.’

We looked. And there it was. Since the storm it hadn’t properly been visible. Now it looked clean and white, a half round, like half a china clock-face, but without hands or numbers.

‘Poor Claidi,’ said Nemian. ‘Are you very angry with me? I’ve been selfish, haven’t I?’

I had to remind myself here that although he is a prince, he thinks I’m a princess, at least a lady.

‘Everyone’s selfish,’ I said. ‘We have to be. How else can you get by.’

‘My God, that’s a judgement,’ said Nemian. ‘But you could be right. Can you forgive me, then, since you never expected anything much from me in the first place?’

I stole a look at him. Wonderful.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said, as firmly as I could.

We walked into the garden.

The trees grouped around the pools, and the moon shone in each scoop of water, as we went by.

He found a smooth stone, where the white poppies grew, giving off a ghostly musk in the moon-watered dark.

‘You see,’ he said, ‘I never expected the balloon to be shot down. Most of the places I passed over were so