Tanith Lee - Claidi Journals 01 (12 page)

Once you’re really soaked, it probably doesn’t matter being in the rain.

So that’s all right.

Everyone looks half drowned.

Even inside the wagons it doesn’t stay dry, because crawling in and out of them, the rain rubs off.

The rain is red.

That is, it looks red and stains reddish.

Teil brought me a piece of treated leather to wrap this book in, to protect the pages. She said, wasn’t this a long letter. She thinks its a letter. Is it? Maybe. She also told me the bandits have a store of ink pencils, so if this one runs out, that will be handy.

I’m not in As wagon now. In this weather, I assume he’s using it. I share one with some of the girls. I may be beginning to follow some of the bandits’ language, too. They have two languages, really—the one I speak and this other one mixed in it.

At night, as the red rain drives on the roof, we suck sticks of treacle candy, and they tell stories. I told one, as well. I made it up as I went along but sort of pinched bits from my memory of House books.

They seemed to like it, but theirs are better. I think theirs are true.

No one likes this place at all.

There are rocks and stones, some of them hundreds of
manheights
high, as the bandits say. Either they’ve been shaped by the weather or people carved them long ago. There are arches, walls, columns, towers with openings, and peculiar stairways, partly steps and partly slopes. It could almost be another ruin of some great city, not fallen but
melted
, like old candles.

On the horizon, on either side to which the stone shapes stretch, about a mile or so away, are craters, out of which sifts smoke and sometimes bubbles of crimson fire.

From some of these smoke holes, pillars of smolder rise into the sky, which is always cloudy and tinged like a blush.

The smoke, the cindery heat, and sudden flares of fire seem to set the rain off overhead.

When it comes down, which its always doing, its like
wet
fire.

Why do they call this place the Rain
Gardens
???

Last night one of the bandit girls, who’s only a kid really, about seven—but she’s just like a woman, striding about with a knife in her belt, and fierce as anything—told us a story of the Rain Gardens. She said the earth burst open, and fire rushed out and over, and smothered everything here. She said the ground we re riding and walking over is made of powdered and then cemented human bones.

Word goes it’ll take seven or ten days to get through. We’ve been in for five so far. It’s a bad dream, this.

==========

Eleventh day and no sign of the end. Argul rode around again, chatting to everyone. He was very cool.

Blurn sat on his horse, looking proud to have Argul for a leader. Even the older men listen to what Argul says. His father was the Hulta leader before him, and his mother was also very powerful. She was an herbalist and, they say, even skilled with chemicals. A magician.

“Did you see that charm he wears around 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.

==========

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 sulfur 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 I have gone bad.

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

==========

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 asking, 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 that the noise had come from a lava vent. The gases 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?

==========

Nemian rode through the last rain until his horse, blond and sleek, was walking by Sirree through the damp, hot weird-ness.

“Hello, 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 adjusted 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 adjusted, and so have I, here. I’m also good at that. Its 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 Herman, 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 semitransparent, like enormous stems. And in the branches, where the creepers and ivies weren’t, were bladelike leaves, a pale luminous green. And fruits.

Actually, the fruits were the oddest of all. The House Garden grew all kinds of fruits 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 travelers 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. Nor 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, but it was soon all over everything, including clothes and hair. I felt as if I’d fallen into jam.

The tree-things rose up and up. Some were as tall as towers, tall as the trees in the Garden. It was dark, the overcast smoky sky mostly shut out.

The Hulta wagons seemed to move more quietly. The vegetation muffled sound, but also very little noise was being made. No calls or swearing. No kids running about. When the horses shook their bridles, which have bells and coins on them, the tinkling sounded flat, but also I saw riders putting out their hands to stop the bells jingling.

I said, Nemian had ridden off. I clucked to Sirree, and we went up the line of wagons, and Ro and Mehmed were there, riding along.

“It goes on for miles,” said Ro.

I hadn’t asked. Everyone was probably asking everyone: How long does this bit last?

“Like it?” Mehmed asked me.

“Not a lot.”

“Gives me the creeps,” said Ro. “Like that forest over north, remember, Mehm?”

“The one with panthers?” inquired Mehmed.

“Yeah, and those trees that lean over and grab you and wind you up in stuff so you can’t move, and then slowly digest you over months.”

“Oh,” said Mehmed.

They looked greenish. But we all probably did from the green-black shadows.

A carrot fruit fell off a tree and landed on the ground, where it burst in a repulsive way.

We were looking at this, when another shower of carrots came down, all bursting. And then the vegetable wood was
shaking
.

Long dull thuds seemed to come up from the ground, out of the air.

“An earthquake,” Ro decided.

The branches overhead also shook furiously. Creepers snapped and uncoiled, falling like ropes. The air was full of wiry stems and leaves and horrible bursting fruit.

There was already shouting, but now there were yells, shrieks.

Through the depths of the wood came a terrifying crackling
rusk
It was like a wind blowing, but a wind that was solid.

“Something’s coming!” yelled Mehmed.

It was. People were calling in panic, “Where is it?” And “Over there! It’s there!” or “No, that way—” And then one voice cried out in a ragged howl, “No—up there! It’s
above
!” And so we all looked up, and from high up in the trees, the face of a
demon
looked back at us.

My heart stopped, or it felt like it.

That face—

It was yellowish, a mask, with large black eyes and pointed tusks. It had a mane of darkness that somehow flashed with golden fires—

And from the mouth there burst an impossible ear-shattering thunder that was a
scream
.

The horses reared. Sirree reared. I don’t know why I didn’t fall off. Ro did. Dogs howled. Then somehow, silence.

Dogs flattened on their bellies. Horses shivered. The rest of us turned to stone. Staring, beyond terror almost. (And a glimpse of Argul, I only recalled after, somehow up at the front, confronting the menace, between all of us and it.)

While the thing in the trees stared
d
own at
us
.

It was like the bear statue, only not. It had long arms, incredibly long, hanging now loosely over the limb of the tree where it squatted. Its claws were the length of my arm, or so they looked. I think it was altogether about twice the height of a man.

It was covered in fur, black fur, streaked with what looked like rust. But also the fur was full of creepers and ivy, like the trees, and with other growths—savage flowers, funguses. And there were smaller things living in the fur and the growths— mice, maybe, snakes—all weaving in and out, so tiny eyes sparkled and were gone, and sinuous little bodies moved like fish in a pool.

Around its head, its insane face, whirled this golden crown that spun. For the crown was several enormous flies, golden and green, constant companions to the demon bear-thing, must be, for it took no notice of them, as it took no notice of all the creatures living on it.

It was a
world
.

That awful face stared down. You know, it was a wise face, too, but not wise in any way I’d ever understand or want to.

The jaws stretched, and again out came that appalling ear-splitting roar-scream.

None of us now made a sound.

The beast hung over us, still, yet also in endless total motion from the movement of its companion life.

But then it grew bored with us. It raised one long, long arm, dripping with hair and leaves and mice; and the great gold flies, each the size, I’d say, of one of Ro’s huge feet, whirled in a joyful dance. And smoke poured from its fur— dust, I think, from the lava pits.

The beast plucked a handful of the fruits and put them in its mouth.

Then flinging up both arms now, in clouds of leaves and smoke, it sprang high, high across the boughs, caught some distant tree limb, and swung away into the shadow of the wood.

No one moved or spoke for about an hour.

“An ape,” said Ro.

“Bear,” Mehmed.

“Ape, stupid. Bears don’t swing through the trees.”

I began to hear whispering and then some loud joking all around. Argul was talking to some men and women, glancing our way a lot, no doubt to see what M and R were doing.