Queen of the Wolves, Page 2

  ‘No thanks. We know the rest. A friend you see, of your best mate from the Tower – he told us.’

  I tried to hold on. ‘I don’t have mates from the Tower. Who was it?’

  ‘Look, girl,’ said Blurn, ‘in a minute they’re going to come over and skin you. Get in your flash star-thing and go away.’

  I’m hardly brilliant, but even I could see something had seemed to happen which hadn’t. But I was shocked – so shocked even the panic wasn’t boiling up in me yet. I sounded nearly calm as I said, ‘At least tell me where Argul is.’

  ‘Could be anywhere. After you dumped him, he left the Hulta in my charge and went off by himself. That was months ago, Claidi. None of us have seen him since then.’

  Calm went. ‘But didn’t you try to stop him?’ I screamed.

  ‘You couldn’t stop Argul, when he’d really decided. Besides, Hulta law says if a leader doesn’t want to lead any more, he gives it up. So I’m leader now, which I never wanted. He was my friend.’

  Away along the slope Ashti called suddenly in a clear stone voice, ‘Do you want me to see to her, Blurn?’

  He turned and shook his head at her. To me he said, ‘I tell you, Claidi, I was surprised at you. Going off with that okk Nemian again, after the way he was last time.’

  I nearly jumped out of my body into one of the weird trees. I spluttered. I cried, ‘Nemian – I wouldn’t touch Nemian with a six-man-height-length flag-pole for goodness sake – Is this what you think? I ran off and left Argul on our wedding-day because I wanted to? Wanted to be with Nemian in the Wolf Tower? Are you mad?’

  ‘Are you?’ he said.

  I shivered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you must be. Look, I know, so there’s no point you lying. You see, this dupp from the Tower turned up soon after you went. He swanned in with his little escort, and told us the lot. He said you were done with us. And if we didn’t believe him, look in your diary-book, which you’d carelessly left in the rush to get back to Nem. And yes, I’ve read your book. You’d written it out plain enough. On and on about how you really wanted Nemian, couldn’t stop thinking of him, and Argul was all right, you’d put up with him. Second best. And then you just couldn’t help it, you sent this love–letter to Nemian—’

  ‘I NEVER sent any—’

  ‘And they got you word he’d send someone along. And how you wanted to go to that pool because you knew the balloon could get down to you there easily, none of us around to get in the way. Pity you left the diary, eh? Or we’d never have completely believed a story like that.’

  ‘I didn’t leave my diary behind. It went with me. So what diary are you talking about?’

  ‘The book you were always scribbling in.’

  ‘What you found wasn’t that – wasn’t mine. I can show you my diary. They must somehow have made one like it. Dropped it in the right place to be found.’

  ‘It was in your writing. Even I knew it. And Argul certainly did.’

  Argul – I had to do something – but I was shaking so hard suddenly that all that came out was stammering.

  I was trying to tell him that the Towers, the Rise, could do incredible things – make copies probably of hand-writing, diaries that would seem to be the original diary … And it sounded lame. Absurd. I knew he didn’t believe me.

  Blurn folded his arms. It was like gazing at a bolted door. He said, ‘Where’s the ring Argul gave you?’

  I stood there and said nothing. I knew I couldn’t explain to him why I had taken the ring off. He wouldn’t believe that either. Anything I said, he wouldn’t believe, even if I said the sky was blue.

  I felt as I’d sometimes done when I was quite little, in the House. Utterly hopelessly powerless. At the mercy of rules I didn’t understand and people who didn’t ever want to bother to understand me. It was like that. And worse, because Blurn had been my friend, and Argul’s friend, and Blurn hated me. And I couldn’t find any more words.

  ‘I’ve had enough of you, girl,’ he said then. ‘If that star-ship junk isn’t going to give us bother, get back in it and clear off.’

  He turned. He strode along the slope, making as he went a sweeping signal to the others.

  I watched them go, without a single backward glance at me. And there I was alone, under those disgusting frothy trees.

  MIDNIGHT DAGGER

  Someone else has read my diary. Like Venn did. Funny really – since this time, it wasn’t MY diary at all.

  I have been trying and trying for hours, crouched here in the closed-off area of the ship, to put it all together.

  The Wolf Tower grabbed me so they could punish me, then they were double-crossed by someone else, who captured me instead. Either way, it was against my will. I was shipped (by a real sea-ship) to the Rise, and stuck there, till Venn helped me reach this Star and come back here.

  Blurn and the Hulta, though – and that means Ashti, Teil, Toy – all of them – think this: I left willingly to go by balloon back to Nemian, that utter creep, and live in his City with him.

  And someone – the Wolf Tower – or that other unknown lot who took me away from the Wolf Tower’s men and sent me to the Rise – left a diary so like mine it convinced even Argul. Argul has never read my diary. But he often saw it. Saw me writing in it. Knows my writing. And this fake diary is written in my writing – or so near, they didn’t see any difference.

  And the fake diary says I loved Nemian. Wrote to Nemian and told him so. And he arranged for me to be with him.

  Next thing, I appear again, in the Star, which I suppose the Hulta think is also from the City.

  And Argul—

  Argul thinks I am with Nemian, who I love.

  Oh no.

  They all hate me. And – it’s all because of a lie.

  This is like the Rise, when Venn believed their lies about me – the lies of the Tower, or someone who signed themselves ‘We’.

  Also it’s much worse. Because these people were my friends. They were the first and only family I ever had.

  Am I guilty in some peculiar way? Is it … because I fell – not for Nemian – but for Venn?

  No. Rubbish.

  I didn’t fall for him that hard.

  Why does the Wolf Tower, or whoever it is, want everyone to think I’ve done these idiotic and horrible things? Just to pay me out?

  Where is Argul?

  I’d actually fallen asleep, curled up on the bed-couch by the wall. Was having a nasty dream about something, I forget what, but it left a bad feeling all through me.

  ‘… What?’

  ‘Someone is here, Claidi.’

  Yinyay’s sweet face floated over me on her mechanical serpent-like body, in the Star’s dimmed lamps. Was it midnight? Felt like it.

  ‘Who? Aren’t they—’

  ‘Armed,’ remarked Yinyay mildly. As if it didn’t mean anything much. ‘She was requested to lay down her weapon, and has done so. She will do you no harm. She’s been told, the ship protects you.’

  Of course upset, but puzzled, I got up, and wandered out into the main chamber. No one there.

  The opening stood wide in the ship’s side. I looked through and down the ramp, and out at the night plain.

  ‘Dagger.’

  ‘ ’Lo, Claidi,’ said Dagger.

  She stood there, grimly planted and gazing up at me.

  She was just eight when I went – was taken – away. Halfway towards nine now, I supposed. But she was always like someone much older. Older than me, definitely.

  ‘Er, Dagger. Er, what…?’

  ‘I’m not coming into that machine,’ said Dagger. ‘Will you come out? I won’t hurt you. I gave that snake-thing my Hulta word.’

  ‘Oh – yes.’

  Yinyay was there at once. She slipped a coat around my shoulders. She can be (occasionally, oddly) motherly. (But then, I’ve always thought Ustareth designed Yinyay to care for Venn, when he was quite young, in case he had found the Star then, gone travelling in it.)
>
  ‘Thanks …’

  On the ground. The night was chilly, I was glad of the coat.

  Dagger herself wore a jacket and long waistcoat and a cloak.

  ‘What is that thing in there?’ she asked. ‘Is it a snake?’

  ‘No – a sort of mechanical doll – like at Peshamba.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like that.’

  ‘No.’

  Dagger said, ‘Don’t you want to know why I came up here? No one else would. And if they knew I had, they’d say I was a right dope.’

  Surprised, I realized Dagger wasn’t swearing in her usual vivid manner.

  She had been with me, like Ashti, Toy and Teil, by the pool, on my wedding day. My un-wedding day.

  ‘Then, why did you?’ I asked humbly.

  ‘I want to ask you, Claidi, if it’s true.’

  ‘Which bit?’

  She scowled, but said, ‘Did you dump Argul and run off to that twit Nemian?’

  ‘What do you think, Dagger?’

  ‘Well, it looks as if you did.’

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it. Well I didn’t.’ Something in me flared up all at once and I began to rant on and on, all the things I might have shouted at Blurn. How I would never have left, and if I had, I’d have done it differently – didn’t any of them remember me at all? Did they really think I was that foul?

  I said I loved Argul and only wanted Argul. I told the story of what had happened, the abduction, balloon, ship, the jungles, in rather more detail than I’d been able to offer Blurn. I didn’t say much about Venn. Just that I hadn’t at first been able to escape from the Rise, and that as soon as I could, I’d come back.

  Dagger stood there, frowning. I could make this out by the faint Star-light (from the ship) and the broader starlight of the sky.

  ‘You mean you were just stuck there, in this palace place, and all that time, and you didn’t try to get away or do anything?’

  ‘It was impossible, Dagger. Really it was. I couldn’t see where to go – I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like you,’ she said, damningly.

  ‘Well it was me. I’m telling you. And the other stuff about running off to Nemian wasn’t me. Wasn’t. Isn’t.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dagger. She stared into the night.

  ‘Look, Dagger, if you don’t believe me, then just go away.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Because this is bad enough without – yes?’

  ‘I believe you. Sounds all wrong and mad, but then you running off like that ’cos you wanted to was madder and wronger.’

  I felt sick now with relief. Couldn’t speak.

  Away through the distances of the night, sliced over and over by the thin stems of the froth trees, veiled by their almost transparent foliage, I could make out the glow of the great Hulta camp-fire, maybe a half mile off.

  ‘Is there any chance anyone else might believe you?’ Dagger asked my yearning unspoken question. ‘No chance, Claidi. They can’t see it somehow. Don’t know why not. Argul going away like he did probably put them off you.’

  ‘Why did he, Dagger? Why couldn’t he see, if you can—’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She shrugged.

  She meant, I think, he’s grown-up and so not quite so clever as he was. And for the first time I guessed Dagger’s adult wisdom comes from her being a kid.

  That’s why she’s made allowances for me, too. My age.

  I’m grateful.

  We walked off a little way, and sat down on a smoothish stone in the dark.

  ‘Here,’ said Dagger.

  I thought she was going to stab me after all. Then I saw it was her other dagger she’d taken out, the one she’d given me as a wedding gift. It had been really shined up, and it still was.

  ‘Wanted you to have that,’ she said. ‘I gave it you before, so it’s still yours.’

  ‘Oh Dagger – thanks!’

  ‘I’d have brought your horse, your Sirree. But someone would have seen and stopped me. Anyhow, I don’t think Sirree’d want to go in that Star contraption.’

  ‘No.’

  I held the dagger Dagger had given me. Weapons don’t often appeal to me. But this one – was like a slice of old friendship, high-polished. I felt I’d never let it go.

  ‘Listen, Claidi-baa,’ said Dagger, ‘If you ever need a horse – try the towns north-east. You get good ones there. Some of the Hulta horses come from there, when we need new stock.’

  ‘Uh – thanks, Dagger.’

  ‘And,’ she said, casual, kicking her legs on the side of the stone, ‘you might just find him, there.’

  ‘Do you mean Argul?’

  ‘Yep. Could be. Hulta trade there a bit. We’re going west right now. But he might have gone that way. East, north. There’s a place. It’s called Panther’s Halt.’ I waited, speechless. ‘Y’see, his mum had a house there.’

  ‘Zeera,’ I breathed.

  Zeera, Argul’s mother, who had once been Ustareth, the mother of Venn.

  They hate the Tower City. They don’t know that she originally came from there. That lovely Zeera, who they liked such a lot, was a woman born in the Wolf Tower.

  And now really wasn’t the time to tell Dagger.

  ‘So you think Argul might have gone north-east to – Panther’s Halt. Was he—’ I faltered. I said, in a whisper, ‘How was he?’

  ‘Sore,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘But to stop being leader—’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That was bad. ’Specially since you say everything was a put-up job.’

  ‘Oh, Dagger, thank God you believe me.’

  ‘Well, you’re not always so bright, but you’re not a hundred per cent crazy.’

  I hugged her. She let me a moment. Then pulled away. She picked up her own knife from where she had left it on the ground. ‘Well, I guess it’s so-long for now.’

  We shook hands.

  As I walked back to the Star, I heard a faint music from the Hulta camp. A dance, drums and pipes and clapping. Maybe to show the Star they weren’t afraid of it, were carefree, being so tough and well-able to fight. Or to show me once and for ever that now I was an outsider of the Hulta Family.

  I knew, didn’t I, that something was wrong, all the time I was getting here. I don’t know how I knew.

  But now I shall find Argul. I shall convince Argul. One day, I’ll bring him back to them and make them see the truth.

  Do you believe me? I mean it. Stay with me, please, my unknown friend that I talk to, that perhaps one day will read these, my real diaries, and trust me not to be lying. Stay with me.

  I ran up the ramp of the Star.

  ‘Yinyay! Can we find a town called Panther’s Halt?’

  DOWN TO EARTH

  Five days now, gliding so-slowly through the sky, heading north-east.

  Lots of water below, lakes, I think, and rivers, then marshland, very green. Then – another of those awful deserts. From up here, like a cement floor littered with grey rubble, but the larger mounds must be hills, mountains perhaps.

  Once we were a bit lower and herds of things were running, disturbed maybe by the Star. But I couldn’t make out what they were.

  The sun came up to the right and sank on the left. Now it rises more in front of us as the Star veers east.

  No doubt about this ship being able to locate Panther’s Halt. It can find almost anywhere, virtually anything.

  I did ask if it could simply trace – Argul. Apparently not, unless he wore a Tag the ship was set to recognize. (Like the Tag the Wolf Tower had got someone to put in my first diary, unknown to me, by which they traced me to the pool and were able to nab me.)

  So I’m glad the Star can’t find him without some gadget, or by skilful guess-work. It means some things can be concealed from the frightening frightful science-magic of the Towers, and people like Ironel Novendot, and Ustareth-Zeera.

  (All those years with the Hulta, when U-Zeera used her abilities only to help them.
And lied, or hid the astonishing other things she could do – make jungles, breed monsters, make a doll that was her own double – was she really by then tired of her science, as Venn said he thought she was?)

  A large flock of big black croaking birds flew by earlier. They’re ravens. I’ve seen birds like these in Peshamba, and here and there.

  Yinyay says these ones come from the north.

  There was a Raven Tower once, in the City, but apparently, in the historic wars between the Towers (Wolf Tower, Boar Tower, Tiger Tower), the Raven Tower was destroyed.

  Might as well stop writing.

  Nothing much to say.

  All I can think of, all I want to write is – What am I going to say to him when we meet? How can I prove to him I didn’t do what he thinks? Is he going to believe me? Or – is he going to act the same as Blurn?

  It was late morning when it happened. I was sitting in the main area, looking at some more pictures of people from the Towers and aristocratic Houses etc, having nothing better to do. This time the pictures showed in a little panel in one of the metal desks.

  Suddenly I lost the picture, which had been of a tall man, with what looked like a rhinoceros on a lead. Then the lights bloomed all over the desk, and the other desks, very decorative it was.

  ‘Oh, look, Yinyay.’

  I don’t think I was all that startled. I mean, the whole of the Star is a mystery to me. Should have realized anything like this could only mean trouble.

  Yinyay swayed from desk to desk. Then she activated her hatch and abruptly slid down through the floor to the even-stranger areas in the lower part of the ship, where no one else is allowed.

  Presently she came up again and went into one of the cupboards in the second room.

  By then, all the viewing window-walls had cleared. We’d decided to blank them out earlier, because the east-rising sun was so bright. Now, staring out, I saw that we were much lower. Lower than we’d been at any time, except when we landed for the Hulta.

  And then I saw we were landing.

  Which was peculiar, because this didn’t seem to be the most absolutely best place for it.

  We were over another forest of some kind, thick and tangled. And now the upper branches were brushing against the ship. And now they were thrashing the window-walls, and showers of leaves and pine-needles were spraying up. Hundreds of birds erupted all around us!