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

Among the sacks they had a big stone statue. They were taking it somewhere, for some reason.

No one was robbed.

Argul gave them supplies, bread and dried oranges, rice and beer.

The Hulta do rob people. They came after Nemian and me and the Sheeper, and wanted money. (Although A said he couldn’t use it and gave it back. And they were following us to see if I was going to be sacrificed …) They do kill people. Unless they just frightened the Featherers off.

Dawn broke, and the travellers went away with their statue, which was of a huge bear. (Blurn said it was a bear.)

Under the pink sky, we all saw a wash of land sweeping up and up, and beyond, something was giving off fumes, pushing redness into the pink.

‘Gardens,’ said Mehmed. (Did I say, Mehmed’s really all right too?)

I’ve lost touch with Nemian. He hasn’t been anywhere near where I am.

‘The Rain Gardens?’ I inquired.

‘Yup.’

We stared at red melting in pink.

It’s unknown, to me, to Nemian, and to the Hulta.

Just like life. No one knows what’s round the next bend, over the next hill. It could be heaven-on-earth or death. We can only go on, and find out.

Nemian appeared at this moment. He rode up on his smart horse, and the bandit girl was on a horse beside him.

He shot me a loving smile.

I glared.

‘Ah – Claidi … how are you?’

‘I haven’t thought about it. How do I seem?’

‘Fantastic,’ enthused my absent-now-present-‘friend’. ‘We must talk,’ said Nemian.

‘Oh, talk.’

‘Save it,’ said Mehmed. ‘We have to get through there first.’

Just then soft rain began to fall. It was pale, yet it smelled sooty, like old fires.

Nemian’s hair was flattened. Dark gold. Something hurt in me, and worse when the bandit girl, whose name I don’t even know, handed him her scarf to wipe his face.

As they rode off, he sent back a stare that seemed full of yearning, as if it was me he wanted to be with. As I say, as he rode off.

I can’t trust Nemian either, and I never could.

So on over the next hill, round the next bend.

I decided to go back to the wagon to write this. All right, Argul’s wagon – but he’d be out there in the rain, planning, and if he turned up here I’d be off like a shot. And I’d only borrowed Sirree. A borrowed friend’s better than none. I could feel my face getting very long.

When I was outside again, Mehmed said vaguely, ‘Still wondering which half of us didn’t want to rescue you?’

My head jerked up. He grinned at my defiance.

‘You’re a bit slow, Claidibaari.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It was a joke, Claidi.’

I wanted to hit his dark face. Was too sensible to do so.

Mehmed said, ‘I told Blurn you’d believe it, take it to heart, get all miserable. We didn’t vote, Claidibaabaa. There wasn’t time, anyway. When Argul found out, he just picked four of us who weren’t doing anything, and we rode after you. He is leader, you duppy girl.’

NIGHTMARES BY DAY

Once you’re really soaked, probably it doesn’t matter being in the rain.

So that’s all right.

Everyone looks half drowned.

Even inside the wagons it doesn’t stay dry, because crawling in and out of them, the rain rubs off.

The rain is red.

That is, it looks red, and stains reddish.

Teil brought me a piece of treated leather to wrap this book in, to protect the pages. She said, wasn’t this a long letter. She thinks it’s a letter. Is it? Maybe. She also told me the bandits have a store of ink pencils, so if this one runs out, that will be handy.

I’m not in A’s wagon now. In this weather, I assume he’s using it. I share one with some of the girls. I may be beginning to follow some of the bandits’ language, too. They have two languages really, the one I speak, and this other one mixed in it.

At night, as the red rain drives on the roof, we suck sticks of treacle-candy, and they tell stories. I told one, as well. I made it up as I went along, but sort of pinched bits from my memory of House books. They seemed to like it, but theirs are better. I think theirs are true.

No one likes this place at all.

There are rocks and stones, some of them hundreds of man-heights high, as the bandits say. Either they’ve been shaped by the weather, or people carved them long ago. There are arches, walls, columns, towers with openings, and peculiar stairways, partly steps and partly slopes. It could almost be another ruin of some great city, not fallen but melted, like old candles.

On the horizon, on either side, to which the stone shapes stretch, about a mile or so away, are craters, out of which smokes sift and sometimes bubbles of crimson fire.

From some of these smoke-holes pillars of smoulder rise into the sky, which is always cloudy and tinged like a blush.

The smokes, the cindery heat and sudden flares of fire, seem to set the rain off overhead.

When it comes down, which it’s always doing, it’s like wet fire.

Why do they call this place Rain Gardens???

Last night one of the bandit girls, who’s only a kid really, about seven, but she’s just like a woman, striding about with a knife in her belt, and fierce as anything, told us a story of the Rain Gardens. She said the earth burst open, and fire rushed out and over, and smothered everything here. She said the ground we’re riding and walking over is made of powdered and then cemented human bones.

Word goes it’ll take seven or ten days to get through. We’ve been in for five so far. It’s a bad dream, this.

Eleventh day, and no sign of the end. Argul rode round again, chatting to everyone. He was very cool. Blurn sat his horse, looking proud to have Argul for a leader. Even the older men listen to what Argul says. His father was the