Tanith Lee - Claidi Journals 01 (18 page)

Ironel also showed me a courtyard in which, in four grey stone vases, grew the brilliant red flowers with juicy leaves. One of which Nemian handed Jizania in the House Debating Hall.

Meanwhile, downstairs, in the Wolf Tower, Nemian would be blissfully alone with his wife. Moon Silk.

Ironel kept going back to that.

But she slipped up there. In the end, I got used to it.

Lets face it, too, he was a rotten husband. Married one month, and the moment he had the chance, off with a Hulta girl. He’d led me on because he had to. But there was no excuse for
that
.

We were by then seated in Ironel’s apartment in the Tower, in another far-too-large room that echoed.

Outside was a view of where the River grew hugely wide again, and the opposite bank wasn’t to be seen.

The Wolf Tower isn’t very warm. They don’t have the heating system the House had. Just fireplaces and baskets of coals (braziers), both of which smoke.

Anyway, I must now write down what Ironel Novendot told me. This book is the story of my life, and she—or the Law of the Tower—made it all happen. Yes, the
Law
.

But I think I’ll have to explain about that separately. Its a story in itself, the Wolf Tower Law. I’ve only become a tiny desperate bit of it.

==========

The Law (and as I say, I’ll go back to the Law) decreed that Herman had to find a girl to take over a particular duty in the City. Probably the most necessary duty. And that was because Ironel, who until now had seen to this duty, was at last too old for it—or she said she was.

And here Law is LAW. Is Absolute. No one goes against it.

So Nemian, just married and all, set off in the hot-air balloon, of which the City has a fleet, although they seldom use them.

Some things then went wrong with the balloon, and there was a chance he wouldn’t make it. Then he did make it, only to be shot down by the guns of the very place—the House—he’d been traveling to. He told them he was on a quest, and he was.
I
was the quest. He was on a quest to find me. This makes me sound of great importance, and I was. I am.

Because, you see, Jizania Tiger, in her youth, over a hundred years ago, had also left this City and had gone to live in the House. (No one says why. Honestly, I should just think she’d have preferred to.) I don’t know how the House is related to this City, but obviously it was then.

When she left, she promised—made a vow by the Law— to present to the Wolf Tower, when required, a girl of royal blood from the House. A girl suitable to take on Ironel’s duty when Ironel gave it up.

If Jizania eventually forgot this vow, I don’t know. Very likely. It was a damn silly, nasty thing to have to remember.

But Nemian gave her the red flower, the Immortal, which was the token by which she’d know the time had come.

I suppose, as in certain stories I’ve read, maybe it was meant to be her own daughter, or granddaughter, she’d have to supply.

Did Jizania perhaps even tell Nemian that I was… that I
was
her granddaughter, her daughter’s child.?

You see, Jizania lied to Nemian, and she lied to me. And she knew and doubtless told him, he’d better lie to me too. Even when he started to have doubts I was the princess-girl Jizania had assured him I was. By then I was all he could get. I
d
i
d
come from the House. I have the House accent—which Ironel would recognize. Perhaps I’d do. And I was daft enough to believe him, to stay with him.

He did nearly lose me, that once, in Peshamba. But when he knew he might, he rushed to me and pleaded to try to get me back. He really was desperate and afraid that night. When he said his life wouldn’t be worth anything without me, that
wasn’t
a lie at all.

I said, the Law is the LAW. If he’d come back empty-handed, he’d have lost his tide, his money, his wife. They’d have flung him in some cellar and left him there.

That’s what the Law is like. You don’t ever go against it.

Maybe he could just have run off in the wild, never come back. But he wanted to, was “homesick.” Or… well, he probably wanted Moon Silk.

That I’d be reluctant to come with him was obvious. That is, if I’d known what they wanted me for. He wasn’t surprised Jizania hadn’t warned me or told me everything. Or that he had to pretend.

That’s all bad enough. But there’s this other thing. Jizania was determined to send me off with Nemian, to keep her vow. So did she lie to me as well about my mother being royal? She couldn’t say both my parents were royalty—I’d have seen the House wouldn’t exile a prince and a princess. But the story of a princess falling in love with her servant rang true.

Of course, Ironel knew my name, or the full name Jizania told me was mine. Claidissa Star. Jizania must also have promised the Law she’d give this name to the chosen child. But then, you see, she could just have made sure some child of around the right age, any old child,
did
get this name. And that just happened to be me. So my name doesn’t prove a thing.

And she’d seen I was nuts on Nemian. So I’d go on with the lie in any case, making him believe I was a princess and
worthy
of him.

I mean, do I strike you as princess material?

Heaven knows who I really am, or who I really was…

 

Because now, I belong here, to the Tower. To the Law. To this place of stones, where their statues make even animals ugly.

And for this I gave up Argul. I made him think I didn’t care. And that ring he dropped—oh, it was for me. Of course it was. He was for me, and I was for him. And anyway, even if he was just being kind, I could have been out there, in the world, in the Waste-that-isn’t. Free. I could cry or laugh until I was sick. But instead, I’ll go on writing. There’s more to say. If you can stand it.

THE LAW: KEEPING

In the evening, I dined with Ironel.

Her apartment is sprawling. The size of the Travelers’ Rest. Maybe not quite.

The Wolf Tower, as Nemian told me in nonlying mode, is the most powerful of the four Towers that rule the City on Wide River.

But the food wasn’t up to much.

She only drinks her mud drink. I think its because she doesn’t have teeth and doesn’t dare chip the fabulous pearl ones.

Candles burned on an iron candelabra that was standing on the table and was taller than I am.

Why am I talking about candles?

By then, she’d shown me the holy part of the Tower. Holy used to mean to do with God, but now, despite Nemian’s poetic spoutings that I liked so much, the Law the Wolf Tower makes is “holy,” and more holy than anything else.

The Law.

I don’t know how to start to tell you. It’s—it’s—I’d better calm down. Again, I’ll start again.

Once, all four Towers had a say in making the Law. Then there was a fight, or something, which the Wolf Tower won. So now the Wolf Tower does it, and everyone else obeys.

There are no servants, no maids. Only slaves. But the royal people who fill the City, and whom the slaves serve, they too are slaves. Slaves to the Law of the Wolf Tower. And so am I. I have been since I let Nemian escape from the House. Or even since I first thought I loved him.

It
stinks
.

==========

The holy area, in which I now “live,” clusters around the main room, which they call the Room.

It isn’t—amazingly—very big, this Room.

But it’s black as dead burnt wood.

Huge lamps, too large for the Room, burn with pale, feverish fires.

Along the walls are shelves, and stacked there, like the books in the House library, are black boxes. And in the boxes, carefully filed and preserved by slaves of the Room, who suffer if they get it wrong, are cards with the names of every man, woman, child, and infant in the City. There are even names of ones who’ve died—or, I hope, maybe run away. But they keep them anyway, with a red mark on the little card.

They enter new ones too. I saw this, the first night.
She did
it. Ironel.

The slaves brought a box, and another slave, from a house in the City that had had a baby, brought a card with the baby’s name. Ironel took the card, read it,
smiled
, and put it on top of the box. That was all. The slave has to number and file it correctly. And, as I said, if he or she doesn’t…

Bizarre enough.

But what actually catches ones attention in the Room at once, are the Dice.

Ironel said they were dice.

I asked (you see, my lights not put out yet, though I don’t know why not), “What are Dice, madam?” She told me, and told me their use in the Law. Do you know about dice? I’m still a bit blank really. The Dice have eight sides. Every side is painted with a number, from one to eight, inclusive.

How to show you. Well, let me draw it.

They are this shape:

Like some cut diamonds, almost. There are only two of them.

They’re held up in silver-gilded sort of things. They re-mind me of egg cups, only with pieces cut out, so most of the shape of the Dice is visible.

And the Dice can move. They have to. They spin and turn over in many directions. This happens four times a day—at dawn, noon, sunset, and midnight.

What makes them spin like this I don’t understand. Some mechanism. But Ironel has to be there.

And—once I’ve learned—
I
have to be there. Instead of Ironel.

They call her the Wolf’s Paw.

That’s what I’ll be called.

Wolf’s Paw.

She
reads
the Dice when they come to rest, from the way in which all the numbered sides fall and face.

And from that, looking in three books of ancient mathematics, which lie handy on a marble table in the Room, she can tell what the Law is saying must be done. And who must do it.

Although the Dice must often fall the same way—only two of them, you see, and only eight sides each—apparently the day and time of day always make a difference, or something to do with the math—or what phase of the moon were in. Can you follow this? I can’t.

So, I don’t understand the books, or the Dice.

Or the way she can tell who must do what.

But apparently one
can
work it out in numbers. Every spin of the Dice shows something someone has to do. You then tie up the message the Dice give with sixteen City people (for the two lots of eight different sides). And that happens four times a day.

So that’s… I can’t even work
that
out.

I’m hopeless with numbers—four times sixteen, that’s sixty-four people every day and night. (I worked it out on a different bit of paper.)

And whatever the Wolf’s Paw tells them, the Law says they must do, these sixty-four, they MUST. Each day.

Ironel gave me examples.

Nemian married Moon Silk because a fall of the Dice told him he should. (How about her?) And Nemian came after me and found me and brought me back here because another fall of the Dice said he had to. (And how about m
e
?)

The point is, if you re picked and you don’t obey, or you blow it, they imprison you under the City, in dank darkness, where the River seeps through. (She liked telling me about that, as well.) Apart from mere horror, I can barely add it up. Science is a mystery to me. How in the world’s name am I going to master these awful Dice, these dreadful books of numbers and moon phases?

I didn’t admit this. Just stood there, all cool.

Ironel let me see her make her judgment that sunset. It looked easy when she did it. But then she’s done it for over fifty years. The Dice whirl and end up sideways or upright. She goes over and looks at them.

Then she walks to the books. She makes a big thing about the books—keeps telling me there are only these three in the City, and how precious they are. (She showed me, in them, the hundreds of columns of numbers and my head went around like the Dice.)

She ran her ringer down the columns, flipped pages, clicked her tongue on her pearls.

Then she spoke the Law, and the slaves wrote down each order. After this, messengers (slaves) of the Wolf Tower carry the orders to the lucky persons concerned.

The messages of the Law were frightful, though.

Some man (number 903, I think) had to leave his house and go and live on the street as “best he could.” (Incredible.) And number 5,334, a little girl, was to be made to wear the disguise of a snail, complete with shell.

I forget the others. They weren’t so bad. No, one was. I don’t even want to write it.

But I will write it. I don’t remember the number, or who. But they had to dive into the River and swim up and down. They might rest on islands, or the banks, for a few minutes when “exhausted.” Their relatives might bring them food and “comforts.”

There was no indication when this punishment would end, if it ever would. It wasn’t called a punishment.

And this—
this
—is the
Law
.

They live here, and some people can go their whole lives without the Dice ever summoning up their numbers and names, so they need never do anything but enjoy themselves. Or they might be told to do something rather stupid, but not unnice, like going and buying a new shirt.

Or they might be told they must have a baby before a year has passed.

Or that they must stand naked on a wall. Or go into the desert and fight a lion.

And I’m going to have to find this out from the Dice. And then I’m going to have to tell them. I’m going to be Wolfs Paw, to be
her
.

She said that I’d grow old here.

If I don’t learn, God knows what they’ll do to me. And I wont be able to.

But I don’t
want
to be able to. I don’t want to hurt people, make fools of them, blight their lives like this, and smiling as I do it, as
she
does.

==========

My rooms are large. There’s a bathroom, a bedroom, and a living room. Brocades and furs and fireplaces and lamps.

One wall with dresses thick with gold and jewels. I hate them.

Five slaves to wait on me.

When I take her place, I’ll have more. I’ll have everything I “want.” Except I must always be available for when the Dice mechanically turn, to read the books and interpret the Law. And give it.