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

You can see, I hope, how I felt. Disloyal. I don’t want to rush from person to person, never knowing who I’m going to want next. Like some spoilt horrible little child.

The people in the House were always doing that. Now they were friends with X, then with Y, then with Z. And then they had an argument with Z and went back to X. Revolting.

I’m not like that. I hope I’m not. Nemian was the one I chose to be with. All right, he behaved badly, but then, I’m just Claidi. He got distracted from me. Not too difficult, I expect.

I have to be loyal to him. I chose him first. If I can’t trust my own feelings, my own self—

That was what I wanted, to be loyal. To prove to myself I’m not a shallow, silly, worthless little idiot.

So I did what I did.

The Hulta acted oddly to me. Not nasty, just fed up and a bit short. Only Teil said good-bye. Dagger came up and confronted me. She looked terribly fierce. ‘Why are you going with him?’ she demanded.

Tried to explain. The loyalty thing. Nemian. She snorted like a horse. She said, ‘You’re mad.’ And some other words I shouldn’t have been surprised she knew.

It doesn’t make sense, yet it does. Doesn’t it. Of course it does. Yes. I’ll be glad later, when we get to the city.

He was so definite, how much he needs me.

Argul doesn’t. (That ring, it wasn’t for me.) He’s got all the Hulta, loving him and loyal to him. He even knew his mother.

Nemian and I – I’ll do the best I can. Please God, even if you’re a CLOCK, help me to do the best I can.

The first part of the journey from Peshamba was fairly ordinary, except for the snow.

All the plains about the city were white, like book paper with nothing written there. I wondered if the flowers would survive. Probably somehow they do, for obviously snows have happened before. (In fact, the lake had gone solid, frozen, and they were sliding on it and ‘skating’.)

Nemian gave me a big fur cloak. He said it didn’t come from an animal, but that the Peshambans can make these garments, like pelts. It was warm.

We rode in a chariot again, one of three, but drawn by donkeys. They had red blankets and little bells.

Jingle jingle.

When I looked back, a blue haze floated over the city on the pale grey luminous sky, from all the smokes.

There was hot tea and mulled wine in flasks. But it got cold quickly and wasn’t so nice.

For several days we were in the plains.

Once we saw some large white things, like clouds, blowing slowly along. Nemian told me they were elephants. They grow thick woolly coats like sheep, in the cold, and have noses like tails. That sounds crazy, and maybe he made it up to amuse me. We weren’t near enough to see for sure.

At night there were tents put up. I had one to myself. Iron baskets had burning coals in for heat.

I sat and re-read this book, or bits of it.

I don’t seem quite the same person now as when I started it. That makes sense? Who the hell am I?

Finally, although it can’t have been that long, the weather started to alter, and so did the landscape. I could see enormous hills, mountains, appearing far to the left. It felt warmer almost at once.

The sky began to break open in cracks of blue. Then it was all blue with cracks of white.

There were grasses again, but very tall, higher in parts than the chariots. (The donkeys tended to eat their way through, chewing as they trotted.) There was a trackway, and then we reached a large village or small town.

Normally I’d have been interested, but I wasn’t very. I’m useless. On this extraordinary adventure, and wasting it all.

Let’s see. There were round-sided houses, and fields where they kept having to hack the grass back from the grain. Weird trees with boughs that hung right down to the ground, like tents, and huge black and pink birds rumbling about in them making quacking noises.

They had a stream, which rushed, and was white with foam.

Everyone else stopped in the village-town, and only Nemian and I got a boat with a boat-driver (apparently you don’t call them that, but what?) and we set off down the stream. Although we’d stayed a couple of nights in the town-village, Nemian didn’t go rushing off with everyone, although, again, he could speak their language. (They also take money for things, and he paid them.)

He’d started to tell me where we were going. Through marshes, he said. The people there are odd, but would provide the means to take us to the River.

I had this awful feeling, which had begun on the plains, and now was getting stronger and stronger. It was a sort of fear, and a sort of ache. Later on, Nemian, who had also begun talking to me regularly, said he’d felt ‘homesick’ for his city. And I realized then that I’m homesick. But not for any place.

I used to see him every day. Argul. You could always expect to see him. Riding along the wagons, checking stores, at the fire by night. (I didn’t often speak to him. Didn’t think he noticed me.) Or I’d seen him wrestling with his men, or playing cards – he could do very clever card tricks – magic tricks, too. Once, on the flower plains, he produced a sparrow out of Teil’s ear. Couldn’t work out how he did it – a real sparrow, which flew away. Or when they took turns singing, he’d sing. Not that well, actually. You always could see him, doing something. Or just there.

Just there.

(I’ve been trying to work out how long the journey has taken so far, from the House, to this house, overlooking the River. I’ve got muddled though. It seems to have gone on for ever.)

It