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

Hulta leader before him, and his mother was also very powerful. She was a herbalist and, they say, even skilled with chemicals. A magician.

‘Did you see that charm he wears round his neck?’ asked Teil. ‘His mother gave him that.’

I thought he was lucky to have known his mother. If that seems selfish, it is. I wish, how I wish, I’d known mine.

Then Teil said, ‘She died when he was a child.’ As if she’d read my mind, and was putting me right.

Today, from a rise, we could see where this ends, some miles off still. But the new region doesn’t look very promising.

Peshamba is this way. Somewhere south.

What’s first is apparently covered with some sort of vegetation. It looks thick and murky.

From books, I know lava and sulphur will nourish the soil once they’ve settled, and this vegetable area must be the result.

Everything tastes of soot and frequently smells of eggs that have gone off.

Sirree is damp, and streaked with red, no matter how I rub and groom her.

In the middle of last night we heard a weird sound.

It was a sort of booming scream.

The bandit girls and I pelted out of the wagon with our hair on end. Everyone else was doing the same. All the usually quiet dogs were barking and yapping and the horses trampling at their pickets.

It went on and on – then stopped.

We were all saying What is it? What is it? And children were crying with fear. It was like a nightmare that had woken up with us all.

About two miles off to the left, a particularly vivid volcanic crater then started puffing up wine-red streams.

People began to say to each other, the noise had come from a lava vent. The gasses build up there and can make strange sounds, before the lava bursts out.

We hung around in the rain for ages, afraid the dire noise would start again. But it didn’t.

Thought I would never sleep. But I did.

By the way, I haven’t seen Nemian for days and nights. If I still suspected the bandits as much as I did, and perhaps still should, I’d think they had, as they say in the Hulta, Put out his light.

One of the girls though told me he keeps to a wagon, with the family of the girl he’s taken up with.

He wouldn’t like the wet, I suppose. And I’m sure they fuss over him. ‘Ooh, can we get you another cushion, Nemian? Another slice of cake?’

Sometimes, when I think of it, I feel white-hot anger. And bitter, too. Oddly, I don’t think of him all that much. Am I the shallow one?

The land was like cracked paving, huge slabs, and behind us lay the wet red smoke, and before us lay a shadow.

Nemian rode through the last rain, until his horse, blonde and sleek, was walking by Sirree through the damp hot weirdness.

‘Hallo, Claidi.’

‘Hi.’

‘You look and sound like a true bandit lady.’

I didn’t reply.

Nemian said, ‘What must you think of me?’

‘Would you like a written answer? But it might cover several pages.’

‘Perhaps not. It’s admirable the way you’ve fitted in here. A princess among thieves.’

‘I’m not a princess,’ I said.

Now he didn’t speak.

Down and up the line of horses, wagons, mules and so on, rolled a rumble of wheels, calls, curses and clatter, this now-familiar music.

‘On the Princess Claidi thing, Jizania lied,’ I said. Though I wasn’t sure I believed it.

‘She would never do that,’ said he.

‘Wouldn’t she? She was going to have to. Otherwise they’d know she let you escape.’

‘I see. That’s observant. Clever. You are, aren’t you, Claidi? Claidi, you’re a jewel.’

‘Yum,’ I said.

I wouldn’t look at him.

If I looked, I’d see. I’d lose my lofty tone. I’d start thinking he was really something all over again.

‘Claidi, you’ve fitted in, and so have I, here. I’m also good at that. It’s the way to get by. To survive. Don’t judge me, Claidi. When we get to the next city, we must talk. I need to tell you things.’

‘Fine.’

Ahead, someone called out. We were coming to the vegetation. The shadow.

‘Claidi,’ said Nemian, low and strong, his voice magically throbbing, ‘I need you. Please, remember that.’

He was gone.

And we’d reached the—

The—?

Thinking later, I wondered if it’s called Rain Gardens for this part. It is a kind of … garden. A wood, an orchard, of a sort.

Meadows of a sort came first. They had dark moss, and clumps of things that were ‘flowering’ – whippy dark leaves, pods like grey-pinkish bells. And mushrooms, striped black and yellow – they looked as poisonous as wasps.

In the ‘meadows’ there were ‘trees’. The ‘trees’ became thicker and drew together and we rode into the garden-orchard-wood.

Well, the trees had trunks, veined and gnarled, and roped over with ivies and creeper. But you could see through these trunks, they were semi-transparent – like enormous stems. And in the branches, where the creepers and ivies weren’t, were blade-like leaves, a pale luminous green. And fruits.

Actually, the fruits were the oddest of all. The House Garden grew all kinds of fruit and vegetables in special plots and glass-houses. I’d never seen anything like this.

They were most like carrots, but carrots that had gone mad, twisting and turning, some of them curled up almost in a circle.

In those stories I’d now and then read in the library at the House (hiding behind book stacks, generally found and beaten), any travellers who find unusually strange fruit, always eat it, and get ill. None of the bandits touched the fruit. Even the children didn’t.

They must have known not to.

So neither did I. So neither can I offer an educational insight into what the fruits tasted like, or their effect.

The other bad side to all this is, of course, that this is exactly the kind of bad place the Waste is supposed to be filled with, according to the House. They’d been right.

And the trees dripped. Another sort of rain. Some sticky juice or resin. It didn’t seem dangerous, didn’t burn or sting,