Wolf Star Rise: The Claidi Journals Book 2, Tanith Lee [desktop ebook reader .txt] 📗

But now it all seems: Well I’m doing this for you. So the least you can do is keep up/cut a way through faster/not want to rest or to have a drink of water.

Or a pause for lunch.

I’d been thinking, at least he talks to me now like a normal person. Huh!

He’s strong after all. He kept tearing on, kicking and chopping stuff out of the way. Birds flew up screaming.

Finally, late in the afternoon, I said, ‘I can’t go any farther without a rest. I’m sorry.’

And he heaved a great sigh. ‘Oh all right, all right. In about ten minutes, once we get down to that wild fig tree.’

It doesn’t seem any harder without the path, anyway.

He’s gone to sleep, leaning on the fig tree.

We’ve been here three hours. Lost all the time we gained in the mad scramble.

When the Star comes over, even through all these leaves jagged pieces of light drop through.

I mean, I’d never have chosen to go this way, towards her Star.

Breaks in the tree-line. Looking into the forest below he showed me a lynx – a small, cat-like creature, tufted ears, very pretty and not friendly. Later on, as we were trying to find a way down, I saw another lynx – only it wasn’t. This one (it had a spotted coat, grey eyes gleaming in the jungle-dusk) was a jaguar.

I asked him, after we got down, and when we eventually made our ‘camp’ for the night, if the animals at the House, the lions and hippos, Jizania’s blue bird – if originally they came from here.

‘Possibly,’ he said.

He doesn’t say much at the moment. Even showing me the lynx was: ‘Look. There’s a lynx.’

He’s in his Nemian-phase. The non-charming one.

It’s when he’s in an Argul-phase … not that he’s like Argul, just looks like him, is efficient, leaderly, funny and helpful, like Argul – that’s when I really should be most wary.

I should be glad he’s being a pain, glad I don’t like him or feel close to him. At the moment.

We’re all the way down the cliff. It towers behind us, a dark green living wall. (The Rise is invisible.)

We march (stumble, hack, claw) a way onward.

Saw another of those strange old statues today, we passed quite near it. It seemed to be of a bear, like the one near Peshamba. Not really the same sort of bear, though. It was carved very shaggy and had huge teeth, with flowers growing between them, as if it were eating them. But I suppose they, or their bush, were really eating the statue, rotting it away.

He has been THE END all today.

I shouted at him, Why had he made us do this?

He shouted, Because he knew I couldn’t stand it at the Rise, kept on ‘whining’ I had to get back to my ‘people’ (the way he said it), these ‘barbarians’, and to my ‘barbarian chieftain love’.

I yelled that my BCL was worth ninety times ninety of any City-bred fool of a prince.

We both ended up suddenly laughing. Both apologized.

But it isn’t comfortable.

The worse thing is feeling we are never going to get anywhere.

I mean, we can’t see where we are or where we’re going, although there are sometimes breaks in the trees, glades where he takes a ‘reading’ from the sun or stars.

We saw a ruined building yesterday, near sunfall. Crimson and yellow parrots were flying round it; they have nests in the broken roofs. He said it was a temple. It had been here since the time of the waste.

A temple to what?

‘To God, in one of God’s many forms,’ he sweepingly replied. ‘I think this one was a parrot.’

We did look in at the great open front, but lots of the temple had fallen in, pulled down by creepers. A white monkey sat claw-combing his fur.

An abandoned overgrown village. We more or less fell right into it. A mat of moss and vines gave way – and we nearly dropped into a sunken house six feet below.

‘Damn,’ said he. ‘I remember her mentioning a village near the plateau. I hope this wasn’t it.’

‘You wanted to see the village again.’

‘I never saw the village. Don’t be absurd, Claidis. I thought they might help us get to the Star.’

We don’t talk now at night. He gets either very polite, or surly.

I expect I do, as well.

(Sometimes he forgets and calls me ‘Claidis’.)

Although we were in a clearing after dusk tonight, the Star didn’t go over. We haven’t seen it for a few evenings now. Are we off course?

‘Something is tracking us,’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Tracking us. As in hunting us.’

‘?!!’

He stopped and checked the rifle. I don’t like guns. I always think of the brutal House Guards when I see them. But the Hulta had some. Peshamba did.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘For God’s sake, Claidi, your eternal amazement about wild-life is ridiculous. Does it matter what it is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’

‘Well it might not be dange—’

‘It is. It’s something big, powerful and intent. A carnivore. Yes, all right. It’s probably a vrabburr – a real vrabburr. Even a pair. They’ll sometimes hunt together, a male and female.’

I felt sick.

He said, ‘Walk in front.’

‘I don’t know the way—’

‘Claidi! I’ll strangle you. Neither do I. Go in front.’

So I crept rapidly forward, or tried to, cutting vines and things out of the way as quietly as I could.

I hadn’t heard anything, suspected anything. He knows all this place and its beasts better than I do, of course.

As we went on, I was aware how much noise we made though.

And then we were on the edge of another clearing, a very wide one, with spires of pink flowers and swirls of humming-birds in sunlight.

Venn spoilt it. He said, ‘Stay dead still, Claidi, and listen. They – there are two – are right behind us. In the clearing there they’ll have the chance they want. There’s room for them to race and they’re fast. What you do is this. You