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

‘What’s a shrine?’

‘Don’t worry now. The women will dress you, and then we’ll go with them. We need their help, don’t we, so we have to join in, be gracious.’

I was only more bewildered by this explanation.

Anyway, he and the men had gone, and there were only these four or five large women intent on putting me into the feather-dress. I’d been clothed by force quite often in childhood. I knew it was safer not to resist.

My God (am I using that right? Think so – seems to be a sort of exclamation used in alarm or irritation), that dress. I think I looked like a gigantic white chicken. Also, it was hot, and it itched.

Having clad me, the women were leading me to the door, but I snatched up my bag when I saw one of them fumbling with it.

Supposing they could read? And read this? (Which was far fetched. They barely seemed able to talk.)

Outside the whole village had assembled with torches.

They were clapping their hands, and now started to sing. I think it was singing.

Frankly I wasn’t sure if I preferred this jolly festive side to them. I preferred the scowling stand-offish way they’d been earlier. Now they kept touching my arms and hair, or my back, and I hated it.

I shouted at Nemian, but he only waved. He was with the GFO, at the procession’s front. I say procession, since this is what it became.

We walked quite briskly out of the village, and up a stony track into the hills.

A few dogs ran after and the festive villagers threw stones at them until they turned back. Sweet people. No wonder the dogs were so dodgy and also cowed.

These hills are strange. The whole of the Waste is strange, of course, to me. But all the parts are bizarre in different ways. They all have a different character.

The hills … are like a place where something intense, perhaps heavy, had been, which now was blown away. They had a weird beauty in the moon-and-torchlight. Where the grass is thick, the hillsides seem covered with velvet, and then bare pieces strike through, harsh and hard. Also there are bits that are worn thin, translucent, and you seem to see through them, down into darkness.

It was all uphill.

The Gobbly Fat One, who was lord, had to keep having a breather, so then we all got one. They passed round a putrid drink. Luckily, when I shook my head, no one forced me to try it.

Inappropriately I recalled climbing all the stairs of the high tower at the House. Perhaps when we got to wherever we were going, the view would be worth the climb.

And it was.

Suddenly we were up on a broad flat table of land.

They all gave a glad bellow, and stamped and clapped and ‘sang’ again, and more drink went round, and I thought if they kept pushing it past and breathing it over me, I’d probably puke all over them, and serve them right.

But then they drew off, and I looked up.

A colossal sky was overhead, the biggest sky I’d ever seen. It was quite blue, with mottled wisps of cloud, but mostly encrusted by masses of diamond stars. In the midst of it, the moon was at its highest point, so white it burned, and held in a smoky, aquamarine ring.

Dizzy, I looked down. The hills had drawn back, and in front there was nothing but the moon-bleached flat of land which seemed to stop in mid-air.

I thought, I bet it drops off there, into a chasm.

This was correct.

Over to one side there were some caves, and the Feather Tribe villagers were scrambling into them with raucous yells.

You can guess, I wasn’t keen to follow, and no one insisted.

To take my mind off the itchy feather dress, I gazed up again at the stars.

I felt I could float right out of myself, and up to them, and in among the drifts of night there would be adventures beyond anything ever found below.

When I looked back this time, Nemian was there, gazing at me. ‘You have such a graceful neck,’ he said to me.

All the starry adventures faded. I was happy to be in this one.

‘Thank you.’

‘The stars are wonderful, aren’t they,’ he said. And then, ‘But I’d think your favourite time would be dusk.’ He hesitated and said, ‘Because of your mother.’

A lot of noise was coming from the caves, and down the slopes behind us, I could hear some (big?) animal scuffling, and who knew what sort of animal, out here. But all that was instantly rinsed off my mind.

‘My mother?’

‘Because,’ he said, ‘of her name. Twilight.’

I stood there. ‘I didn’t – know.’

He said, ‘But – didn’t you? I understand you lost her when you were young, but even so—’

I must pretend something. I was a princess of the House. Of course I knew my mother’s name. Or, why pretend?

I said, ‘No one told me. Who told you?’

‘The Princess Jizania told me.’

And not me? Had she forgotten to?

I said humbly, feeling numb with feeling, ‘It’s a good name.’

(Nemian was frowning, about to ask something. I braced myself.)

At that moment the Featherers began to erupt out of the caves. The torches jounced and splashed the dark with light.

Peculiar contraptions were being trundled along. I saw wheels and – wings. As the crowd swarmed round us, Nemian said, ‘Claidi, I really need to ask you about—’ But then we were being swarmed on along the flat table of stone.

‘Ask away,’ I shouted.

‘It’s all right,’ he shouted back. ‘It’ll have to wait. There’s this thing they do here. The chief told me. They fly.’

‘Oh, I see.’

Of course I didn’t. And besides, all this seemed irrelevant, after the sky, and my mother’s dusk-sky name.

When everyone bundled to a sort of halt, I idly watched about six of the Featherers being strapped into the wheeled and winged structures.

There was a kind of seat, and pedals to move the wheels. Their arms were fitted into the wings, which were