Queen of the Wolves

  QUEEN OF THE WOLVES

  Tanith Lee

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  This New Book

  Hulta Welcome

  Midnight Dagger

  Down to Earth

  Forest with Panther

  The Tent

  Light or Dark?

  Across the Fire Hills by Graffapin

  Winter

  Winter Raven

  Chylomba

  An Evening with Enemies

  Excitement by Window

  Saying Goodbye

  The Tower

  My Mother

  ‘We’

  The Over-Marriage

  Out of the Cage

  A Human Face

  Website

  Also by Tanith Lee

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Almost from the beginning, and certainly by the end of Wolf Star Rise I’d known that at least one more Claidi book would have to follow. As soon as I could I came back to what was turning into quite a large and complicated adventure.

  This one – like all the others – got written in about three weeks. I write longhand – the pen nearly caught fire!

  Up in the air.

  Traditional

  THIS NEW BOOK

  The world is so far below, down there.

  Sometimes I feel this ship will never land there again.

  It’s the first time we’ve crossed land for nine days. Before that it was just water – the ocean, day after day and every night. And this is the first entry I’ve made in this new book, which is to be my new diary-journal-whatever.

  There’s a sunset starting now. The sky is a deep sky-blue, with biscuity-gold high clouds above, quite still. But a wind from the land has blown one different low large red cloud towards us, and now the cloud has wrapped right round the ship. We’ve been in the cloud for several minutes, since we sail-fly very slowly. It’s like being in a rose-red fog.

  When I was writing on the last page of the last book, I said I’d describe my journey in this Star – this sky-ship.

  Only, as I say, until now there wasn’t much to see. Only the water. Too high to make out anything definite, except, sometimes, in sunshine, altered colours in the sea like drifting dyes.

  Before the sea, there was just the top of the jungle.

  This coast, when we reached it, looked bare and bleak at first. Then there were forests – Yinyay says that’s what they are.

  As the light goes, the forests seem to be separating.

  A broad river flashed below in the last twilight gleam. And – how odd – I saw the small shadow of the Star, in which I am, pass over the river’s surface.

  The main thing is, I have to find Argul. Which means finding the Hulta.

  And then, once I’ve told him properly what happened, well I – we – have to think of some way to be safe. Because if the Wolf Tower sent kidnappers after me once, why not a second time? Or will they just think now I’m too much trouble, nor worth the effort, and leave me alone?

  Somehow, leaving the Rise, I never thought about this possibly on-going threat from the Wolf Tower.

  But I was very muddled, particularly about Venn.

  I’m still muddled about Venn.

  He’s Argul’s half-brother. I keep reminding myself of that. That’s why they look so alike, and that was why I sort of fell for Venn. Yes, I did fall for him. (Can say that now he’s miles away.)

  But there was absolutely nothing between us, beyond the polite good-bye kiss he gave me.

  I kept wondering today if we would miss signs of the Hulta, because we’re up so high. But when I spoke to Yinyay, she said the machines on the Star will spot the Hulta instantly.

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘You have told me a great deal about them,’ said Yinyay. ‘This information is fed into the ship, which, even now, is alert to seek and recognize them.’

  ‘Even from up here?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The Star-ship is incredible and can do so much – rising and landing, lighting itself at night, making food, judging a thousand and one things perfectly.

  And Yinyay herself, being mechanical, is sort of part of the ship – linked to the ship, the way Venn’s mother, Ustareth, made her to be. Though Yinyay looks like a silvery doll snake (quite a large one, standing on her tail taller than me) with a sweet face and voice, and though she does nice helpful funny things, like handing you a cup of tea held in her extended hair – Yinyay too is massively powerful. Reliable. So I believed her. If the Hulta are down there, the Star will ‘recognize’ them.

  Later she even said something about the Star’s having worked out the most likely places for the Hulta to be, right now, taking into consideration what had happened, how long I’d been gone, and their ways of travelling generally. Which means we stand an even better chance of tracking them down.

  So, nothing to worry about at all.

  Dinner just came, as always, out of a slot in the silver-pearly wall.

  It’s dark now, that red cloud left far behind.

  Through the cleared curved window-walls at the ‘front’ of the Star, I can watch all night, if I want, while sitting on a comfortable padded bench.

  Maybe I’ll see the tiny lights of settlements, towns or villages, down on the ground. Maybe I’ll see – the lights of the Hulta camp, the little fires and lamps, and the big central fire where they hold their councils, and maybe even (unseen by me at this distance) Argul will actually be standing there, their leader, tall and straight and bright with gold, his long black hair gleaming.

  I have found Argul! We are together again! Perhaps the very next thing I write here will be that. Why oh why don’t I think it will be?

  HULTA WELCOME

  It was the Star, of course, which found them. I wasn’t even watching at the time, but in the bathroom, soaking determinedly in a warm, scented bath. (Trying to calm down.)

  I shot out when Yinyay told me, didn’t wai
t for the warm air-jets to dry me properly, flung on clothes and ran into the main area with my hair wringing wet.

  ‘Where? Where???’

  This was three and a half days after my first entry in this book. It was afternoon, and below lay a sunny flatness, a plain, with occasional greenish puffs that must be woods, or the last of the forest.

  ‘Wherewherewhere—’

  ‘There.’

  I couldn’t see anything that made any sense. (It had also been mostly impossible for me to see anything identifiable, by night or day, even lights, unless there were hundreds of them together.) However, Yinyay now guided me, and then I saw a far-off splodge, like more woods only browner.

  ‘Is that—?’

  ‘That is.’

  The Star began to descend a little slantingly, towards the splodge.

  The splodge in turn began to excite and upset me so much I was shaking, and water-drops spun off my washed hair all over the room, so soon it looked as if rain had fallen.

  Yinyay extended her own tendrily hair, which can do lots of useful things, and soft drying waves of heat played over mine. But I couldn’t stay still.

  I ran about, from curved window to window. And then I ran away, thinking I ought to fetch something – what? – and then back again.

  All this while, the Star flew on and down and nearer to—

  The Hulta.

  I could see licks of colour in the brownness now, suggestions of movement – the roll of wheels and wagons, trot and pull of horses, running of dogs and children—

  Oh God. At last. But – I wasn’t ready—

  ‘How long have I got?’ I cried. ‘I mean, before we get close – land—’

  ‘Some twenty and one quarter minutes,’ said Yinyay, precisely.

  ‘Oh – no – that’s not long enough – I must – I have to—’

  What did I ‘have to’? Nothing. I had packed my bag, even this book, (and the last book) were in there, and about nine million ink pencils of various kinds. And anyway, nothing had been said about the Star’s rushing away the moment I stepped out. Yinyay had already told me the Star would simply land and wait, until I came back and told it what I wanted next.

  What would the Hulta think, when they saw the Star, a great spiky starry thing, bowling along the sky, by day, violently sparkling from the sun, a planet presumably come unfixed from outer space?

  Would the kids be scared? The well-trained, well-loved dogs start howling? Would Argul ride between his people and the Star, strong and wonderful and good, to protect them, with Blurn, his second-in-command, black and handsome, wild, brave and over-the-top, at his side?

  ‘Can’t we go any faster?’ I now blathered.

  ‘It’s best,’ said Yinyay, gently, ‘not to descend too quickly. The magnets are most efficient when at leisure.’

  The magnets are how the Star rises and descends. Have never understood this – and right then everything Yinyay said sounded ridiculous.

  But I just rushed away again and then rushed back again.

  And then I just kneeled on a bench, craning over the steely desk that has controls in it, and peered down and down at the splodge getting bigger, and becoming the Hulta.

  Suddenly, I could see it had become the Hulta. There they were. Tiny as fleas, but really there.

  Then I even made out some of the wagons I knew, from various marks. Like Badger’s wagon, which had a long patched tear in the leather top, where a bough once fell in a storm, and one of the women’s wagons too, which I’d once shared, and which was painted across with stripes.

  Obviously by now the Star had been seen in turn.

  Face upon face, small as grains of rice, staring up. Kids I could just see, pointing. Riders riding in to form a kind of ring around children and animals. An abrupt spark here, there, there – which were sun-catching knives being drawn, and bells and disks shaken on bridles as horses reared.

  Yes, I’d been stupid.

  ‘Yinyay, can we stop, please, I mean stop the Star.’

  Yinyay did something with her hair on the desks. We stopped.

  ‘I don’t want to go any closer like this. It’s scaring people and causing too much bother. In fact – Yinyay, sorry, but can we back right off?’

  We were lifting, ascending, retreating.

  The crowds of rice-grain faces were folding back into – a splodge.

  ‘Let’s come down – say, over there? Is that all right? Then I can go across to them on foot. Look, it’s downhill. It’ll only take me half an hour. And … I could do with a walk.’

  I tried to sound organized and efficient. I was cursing myself for my selfish idiocy, putting myself first, not thinking. Frightening my friends with this big, terrifying sky-object.

  In the confusion, I hadn’t had a chance to find Argul, there among all those toy wagons and toy humans. If I had, would he, too, have looked only like that? Like a tiny, moving toy?

  We landed, smooth as silk. Inside ten minutes I was walking downhill, through some rather odd trees with no leaves, but covered in something like green foam—

  Then I met the Hulta head-on.

  That is, I met twenty Hulta, seventeen men and three women, on horseback and with drawn weapons. The front four men had rifles, pointing ready at me. And the first of these men was Blurn.

  ‘Clll – aidii – oh yarollakkus,’ said Blurn, on a long, astonished, sighing-boom.

  I thought, I’ve never heard that before, yarollakkus. Probably rude. I didn’t ask.

  ‘Hi, Blurn,’ I said shyly. Feeling a total fool. Back five seconds, and already I’d caused all this fuss.

  Over their shoulders I could see the Hulta wagons downslope, in a defensive huddle.

  ‘What in – what are you doing here?’ said Blurn.

  ‘Blurn, I’m sorry, it was stupid to arrive like that. I was rattled and didn’t think. Sorry.’

  He gaped at me and I at him.

  ‘What do you mean what am I doing here?’

  ‘I mean what the hell are you doing here.’

  Something reached me then, at last.

  Something I had never felt from, or among, the Hulta, not even at the very start, although, at the very start, I hadn’t known I hadn’t. What I mean is, I had thought, when I first met the Hulta, they were murderer-bandits and insane. (None of which was true.) But I’d assumed they would therefore be dangerous. Half imagined they were, until I learned otherwise.

  Now – they were dangerous.

  I looked at them, and all at once I saw how it wasn’t any more simply that they’d been unnerved, expecting to have to fight and guard their people from a sky-borne alien threat. It wasn’t even astoundment at my abrupt return, or annoyance at my thoughtlessness.

  No. It was—

  It was dangerous, unliking, angry, hating hostility.

  ‘Blurn …’ I said, uncertainly.

  ‘All right. All right, Claidi. Hey,’ said Blurn, turning back to the others, ‘how about giving her and me a bit of room?’

  And then one of the men spoke.

  Most of the men there I didn’t know that well – I’d looked in vain for Ro or Mehmed. But this was Badger, whose wagon I had seen. Badger who I did know quite well.

  ‘Don’t trust the rotten little okkess,’ said Badger, giving me a look – what a look – and then turning in his saddle and spitting on the ground.

  I went cold as ice. It wasn’t from my wet hair.

  And, well, I knew what okkess meant. Not many women would want a friend to call them that.

  I just stood there.

  Blurn said, ‘I said, I’ll deal with it. Claidi? Walk over there with me, will you?’

  They sat their horses and watched as Blurn dismounted, and he and I walked aside along the slope. Some of them kept their rifles pointed at the place where the Star had landed. One of the women stared at me, and when I looked back, I saw it was Ashti, Blurn’s partner, who had always been so nice to me. Who had gone to the pool with me that morning of my wedding-da
y, the day when I was captured and carried off – and Ashti’s face was like a dark stone mask.

  Her face was worse than the name Badger had called me.

  I felt sick. But I didn’t know why I should.

  So I halted and turned and caught hold of Blurn’s arm. And he picked my hand off with dreadful quiet strength.

  He still wore his hair in all those scores of glorious braids. His eyes were like polished bullets.

  ‘Blurn, I don’t know why you’re acting like this.’ He just looked at me. ‘Why is everyone – like this? Is it because of the Star – the ship – I said I was sorry—’

  ‘That thing,’ he said, as if I’d mentioned some old wreck of a wagon I’d arrived in.

  I hesitated, swallowed. I said, ‘All right. Just take me to see Argul.’

  Then Blurn flung back his head and he laughed. He laughed like crazy, and the sky reeled.

  ‘Argul is not, at present, here.’

  ‘Then where?’

  Something seemed after all to break through his eyes. He said, ‘Claidi, are you really so tronking daft you don’t know what you did to him?’

  ‘What? – what I did—’

  ‘Left him. Like that. You couldn’t even tell him to his face, could you, that you were through? Did you think he’d attack you? He wouldn’t have gone near you. You’re stupid all right. Real stupid, Claidi.’

  I stopped looking at Blurn because that wasn’t helping. Looking at anything was a problem. The trees were all covered with this bubbling frothy stuff. And the Hulta were bursting with hatred. I shut my eyes and said, ‘Look, Blurn, I didn’t want to leave Argul. Some air balloons came over and some very big men in uniform, from the Wolf Tower City, grabbed me and dragged me off. I did my best but there was no one who could help. Didn’t Ashti tell you? She was there.’

  ‘Yeah. All the women told us. The balloons and how you all ran. Then they thought you’d got left behind.’

  ‘I had been. In a net. Then I was tied up in the balloon and up in the sky. I’ll tell you the rest later.’