Law of the Wolf Tower: The Claidi Journals Book 1 by Tanith Lee (black authors fiction txt) 📕

‘No one comes here,’ he said.

‘But something might get in,’ I said, ‘from – out there.’

‘We’ he said reasonably, ‘are out there.’

We were.

And in the dark, for the moon was gone, there looked no different from the Garden.

The river ran, wide and muscular and dully shining, with tall reeds like iron railings. Rocks piled round us, a lot of them about the door, hiding it quite well, which was lucky since he’d broken it open.

(They’ll realize and go and mend the door. The Guards will keep a look-out until it’s safe.)

I stared back, and away along the river. I saw the fortressed high walls of the Garden, black on blue-black sky.

Never before had I been this side of them.

My companion had sat down. He said, easily, lightly, ‘Did you bring anything to eat, Claidi?’

Flustered, I produced the snacks Jizania suggested I filch from the Maids’ Hall kitchens, and set them before Nemian. He didn’t seem greatly impressed, but he ate them.

Then he lay back on the ground and I realized he was going to sleep again.

All this time, I’d thought perhaps going to sleep in front of us all in the Debating Hall had been an act, a sort of ploy to seem harmless. But now I think he really can just go to sleep at will, and he does.

He’s asleep now. I put out the candle because I was nervous of being spotted – from the walls – from the Waste. But it doesn’t look like the Waste here.

I watched him a while, but that seemed rude. He is very handsome. And – a stranger.

In the end I lit the candle again, what was left of it, and wrote this. I’m bewildered really. I don’t know where I am. Literally. Also, he looks wonderful, but I don’t know him at all. It’s all unknown. And the future. Even myself, now.

HELL?

Next day, I saw the Waste. That was simple enough. The sun rose in front of me, red-orange, hitting my eyes and the rocks behind me. The river burned red. Some birds were calling, in a harsh different way. Nemian was still sleeping, like an enchanted prince in one of the library books of the House.

Stiff and chilled, I got up, and walked towards the river, and in a little while I walked along beside it, until the land curved upward to the sun.

As I climbed this slope, I saw a shimmer on the air below the sun’s disc. And when I got to the hill’s top, I realized the shimmer to be other hills, far off. They were a parched whitish colour. To my right the river coiled away through the hillside and vanished – was gone. Just a steaminess left behind.

Between this area, and the far off, pale and dry-looking hills, was a huge and terrible nothing. I mean, obviously something was there. But the something was nothing. A stretch of land – or sand – or dust – with vague shadows in it; and tilted bits the sun was still catching, but no actual shapes. Like a tree, a shrub, certainly nothing like a building. Nothing I could recognize.

This seemed to go on for miles and miles, so much further than the Garden land about the House.

I looked back then, the way the exiles sometimes do in the paintings in the Black Marble Corridor.

Dawn bloomed honey and rose against the high walls I had left for ever. Birds were flying over them. It looked safe and gentle and beautiful. But it was a dream, and I’d woken up.

I looked out at the Waste again. I swallowed.

We ate the last of the snacks. There wasn’t much. Nemian had had most of it the night before.

He said, uncaringly, ‘We should have got further than this, but then, they won’t be eager to pursue us. They won’t bother, probably. Not out here.’ Then he added, ‘I’ll miss the balloon. But they wrecked it. Then again, I’d have needed ballooneers to get the thing going.’

‘Oh, yes?’ I said. I didn’t understand a word about the balloon.

‘I’m no engineer,’ said Nemian, seeming pleased he wasn’t. ‘That’s the trouble,’ he said, ‘always having everything done for you by your servants. We’ll be a fine pair. I hope you’ll be able to manage, Claidi.’

‘Oh, er – I’ll try.’

‘It isn’t going to be a bed of roses, on foot. And I suppose the only exercise you’ve ever had is dancing, or smacking your pet dog.’

My mouth fell open. This seems to happen a lot now. There are lots of things for it to happen over.

‘But I’ve worked all my life,’ I said flatly.

Nemian laughed. ‘At your poetry,’ he said, ‘at working out a riddle. Mmn.’

‘No,’ I yapped, ‘scrubbing floors, running errands, hand-washing linen, grinding face-powder, making—’

He was laughing. Glamorously, of course. His hair in the sun—

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Let’s pretend you have.’

We went down to the river to fill the flask I’d brought, with clean if rather murky unfiltered water, doubtless with hippo droppings in it.

My mind was rolling about over what he’d said. Apparently Nemian thought I’d been a REAL princess in the House. I was royal, so I’d lived like royalty.

All this while, the walls of the House and the Garden were only about half a mile away, and I became more and more nervous that Guards would march out and arrest us. But no one came. Of course, they wouldn’t. However near, we were in the Waste, Hell-on-earth, lost and unreachable.

In the end we set out, up the hill again. At the top, Nemian gazed and sighed. He flicked a look at me.

‘If you get tired, Claidi, I’m not going to carry you.’

This was upsetting. Who precisely had rescued him? But I kept quiet now. I was used to keeping quiet before my betters.

On the down slope he spoke again, and used that Waste word: ‘For God’s sake, I never should have had to put up with this.’

After that we marched in silence, Nemian a