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

told me in non-lying mode, is the most powerful of the four Towers that rule the City on Wide River.

But the food wasn’t up to much.

She only drinks her mud drink. I think it’s because she hasn’t got teeth, and doesn’t dare chip the fabulous pearl ones.

Candles burned on an iron candlebranch that was standing on the table, and was taller than I am.

Why am I talking about candles?

By then, she’d shown me the holy part of the Tower. Holy used to mean to do with God, but now, despite Nemian’s poetic spoutings that I liked so much, the Law the Wolf Tower makes is ‘holy’, and more holy than anything else.

The Law.

I don’t know how to start to tell you. It’s – it’s – I’d better calm down. Again, I’ll start again.

Once, all four Towers had a say in making the Law. Then there was a fight, or something, which the Wolf Tower won. So now the Wolf Tower does it, and everyone else obeys.

There are no servants, no maids. Only slaves. But the royal people who fill the City, and who the slaves serve, they too – are slaves. Slaves to the Law of the Wolf Tower. And so am I. I have been since I let Nemian escape from the House. Or even since I first thought I loved him.

It stinks.

The holy area, in which I now ‘live’, clusters around the main room, which they call the Room.

It isn’t – amazingly – very big, this Room.

But it’s black as dead burnt wood.

Huge lamps, too large for the Room, burn with pale, feverish fires.

Along the walls are shelves, and stacked there, like the books in the House library, are black boxes. And in the boxes, carefully filed and preserved by slaves of the Room, who suffer if they get it wrong, are cards with the names of every man, woman, child and infant in the City. There are even names of ones who’ve died – or, I hope, maybe run away. But they keep them anyway, with a red mark on the little card.

They enter new ones too. I saw this, the first night. She did it. Ironel.

The slaves brought a box, and another slave, from a house in the City that had had a baby, brought a card with the baby’s name. Ironel took the card, read it, smiled, and put it on top of the box. That was all. The slave has to number and file it correctly. And, as I said, if he or she doesn’t—

Bizarre enough.

But what actually catches one’s attention in the Room at once, are the Dice.

Ironel said they were dice.

I said (you see, my light’s not put out yet) (don’t know why not), ‘What are Dice, madam?’

She told me, and told me their use in the Law. Do you know about dice? I’m still a bit blank really. The Dice have eight sides. Every side is painted with a number, from one to eight, inclusive.

How to show you. Well – let me draw it.

They are this shape:

Like some cut diamonds – almost. There are only two of them.

They’re held up in silver-gilded sort of – things. Which remind me of egg-cups, only with pieces cut out, so most of the shape of the Dice is visible.

And the dice can move. They have to. They spin and turn over in many directions. This happens four times a day, at dawn, at noon, at sunset, at midnight.

What makes them spin like this I don’t understand. Some mechanism. But Ironel has to be there. And – once I’ve learnt – I have to be there. Instead of Ironel.

They call her the Wolf’s Paw.

That’s what I’ll be called.

Wolf’s Paw.

She reads the Dice when they come to rest, from the way in which all the numbered sides fall and face. And from that, looking in three books of ancient mathematics, which lie handy on a marble table in the Room, she can tell what the Law is saying must be done. And who must do it.

Although the Dice must often fall the same way – only two of them you see, and only eight sides each – apparently the day, and time of day always make a difference, or something to do with the maths – or what phase of the moon we’re in – can you follow this? I can’t.

So, I don’t understand the books, or the Dice.

Or the way she can tell who must do what.

But apparently one can work it out, in numbers. Every spin of the Dice shows something someone has to do. You then tie up the message the Dice give with sixteen City people (for the two lots of eight different sides.) And that happens four times a day.

So that’s – I can’t even work that out.

I’m hopeless with numbers – four times sixteen – that’s sixty-four people every day and night. (I worked it out on a different bit of paper.)

And whatever the Wolf’s Paw tells them the Law says they must do, these sixty-four, they MUST. Each day.

Ironel gave me examples.

Nemian married Moon Silk because a fall of the Dice told him he should. (How about her?)

And Nemian came after me and found me, and brought me back here, because another fall of the Dice said he had to. (And how about me?)

The point is, if you’re picked and you don’t obey, or you blow it, they imprison you under the City, in dank darkness, where the River seeps through. (She liked telling me about that, as well.)

Apart from mere horror, I can barely add up. Science is a mystery to me. How in the world’s name am I going to master these awful Dice, these dreadful books of numbers and moon phases?

I didn’t admit this. Just stood there, all cool.

Ironel let me see her make her judgement that sunset. It looked easy when she did it. But then she’s done it for over fifty years. The Dice whirl and end up sideways or