Tanith Lee - Claidi Journals 01 (8 page)

I stole a look at him. Wonderful.

“Oh, yes,” I said, as firmly as I could.

We walked into the garden.

The trees grouped around the pools, and the moon shone in each scoop of water as we went by.

He found a smooth stone where the white poppies grew, giving off a ghostly musk in the moon-watered dark.

“You see,” he said, “I never expected the balloon to be shot down. Most of the places I passed over were so primitive they didn’t have the means. I thought anywhere that was sophisticated would also have balloons itself. Perhaps be used to travelers. But then all those guns went off, and I thought I was going to be killed.” He looked across the garden, bleakly. “It shook me up. And then—quite a reception your people gave me.”

“You didn’t seem…” I hesitated, “upset at all.”

“Oh come on, Claidi. That was an act. All noble and dashing. I was at my wits’ end.”

“So you lay down on the floor in front of everyone and went to sleep.” He frowned and cast me one slanting look.

“Actually, I passed out. I’d had a thump on the head getting into the tree. Rather than just fall over flat, I did it that way, noble and dashing again, and v
e
ry careless. An act, as I said.” I was amazed. I felt strange. I cant describe it. I’m not sure I’d want to. I admired him, too. And… I felt guilty. Those times on the journey when he’d simply gone to sleep—had he been feeling ill.? And he hadn’t trusted me or was too proud to show it?

“Anyway,” he now said, “I owe you my life.” (The words I’d wanted before.) “I wont forget that, Claidi.

I have an important position in my own city. You’re going to have wonderful experiences there. You’ll live in a luxury beyond anything in that House. And you’ll be respected and honored.” All this sounded so bizarre, I couldn’t take it in. Me? I didn’t really care anyway. Just wanted him to go on talking.

So then he told me things about his city. I was impressed.

Apparently it far outshines the ruin we’d glimpsed. A mighty river runs through, a mile or more wide, so in places you can’t see across from one bank to the other. The water is pure as glass. The buildings rise to vast heights and are so tall they have sort of clockwork cages in them, they call lifters, which carry people from the ground floor to the top story.

He said they’d let off fireworks in celebration to welcome him home and to greet me. I’ve heard of fireworks but have never seen them. He said they’re the colors of a rainbow, shot with gold and silver stars.

He said the city is governed from four great towers. The most powerful tower is the Tower of the Wolf.

And he was born in this tower.

Then I remembered something he’d said in the Debating Hall, about being on a search or quest.

I asked him what that was. Nemian laughed. “Oh, I was just making it sound grand. I was only traveling.” I asked him where the red flowers grew, like the one he’d given to Jizania Tiger.

“In my city,” he said. “We call them Immortals. After you pick them, they can live for months, even without water. You see, Claidi, even here the Waste isn’t all a desert. And there are places where everything’s… like your Garden. Only far better. Cooped up in that House, you must have found it very dull. You must have been very bored.”

“It was all rules and senseless Rituals,” I muttered.

“I can guess. Rules should n
e
v
e
r be boring,” he oddly replied.

Then he leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips.

I was so stunned, it meant almost nothing as it happened. So I have to keep recalling it, reliving it, that kiss. Trying to feel its staggering importance.

In a funny way it makes me think of when I scalded myself once as a child. For some moments I didn’t feel a thing.

I’m still waiting to feel this. I know when I do, it will be colossal, sweeping through me like the pain of the scald, only not pain at all.

After he’d kissed me, we went on talking as if nothing at all had happened.

He knows so
muck
But then, I know
nothing
.

My head’s bursting now with sketches of other places in the Waste—towns, cities, places where they use hot-air balloons for flight.

A couple of times, people had passed, more or less unnoticed by me. But then some sheep came wandering by, and after them some couples, saying to us shyly, “Brur’naa-baa,” which apparently (for Nemian) means something like “Are we disturbing you?” And since they seemed awkward, and its their garden, we got up and walked back to the guesthouse.

When I’d climbed up the ladder (no lifters here) to my narrow bed, piled with woolen blankets and scented by sheep, I was frozen.

Since I couldn’t sleep at all, I’ve sat and written this down, and now I think that may be dawn, that light low in the window—or is it?

==========

Coming into the guesthouse was a crowd of men, mostly young. They were dressed in a rather fantastic way—skin trousers, tunics, boots, jackets with gilded buttons and tassels, and whirling cloaks. They had a lot of weapons, knives, and bows, and a couple of rifles.

The Sheepers were baaing and bowing.

Candlelight pranced on wild tanned faces.

I wondered if Nemian knew about this, and if it was going to be useful.

But really, they looked—the newcomers—like accounts I’d heard mumbled in tales in the House.

Wandering bands of bandits from the Waste, criminals who’d stab you as soon as say hello.

I crept back up the ladder and huddled into bed.

Of course, the House told lies about the Waste. The Waste isn’t like anything I was told—or not all of it.

Or not all of what I’ve seen so far.

==========

Was it the bandits? What were they doing? Murdering everyone and about to set fire to the guesthouse?

I scrambled up and got dressed, but just then one of the Sheeper women came in, bleated, and handed me some milk and a piece of bread.

You can imagine I wanted to ask her what was going on, but I couldn’t speak the baa-language, and pointing anxiously at the floor and straining my eyebrows up and down only seemed to make her think I thought there were mice in the room. She hurried about looking under the wool rugs, found nothing, and bleating reassuringly, went out all smiles.

Presumably, as she’d brought the breakfast and was smiling, nothing too awful was taking place.

I ate. Then I washed my hair in what was left of last nights washing-water. I did it for something to do, really. The day was already hot, and I was soon almost dry. Someone knocked.

It was one of the Shepherd’s men. He put a small chunk of wood into my hand. I bleat-thanked him and stood there stupidly. Then he pointed at the wood, and I saw something had been scratched on it. The Sheepers didn’t have paper. Their writing seemed to have something to do with the patterns they make with the beads and things on the sheep…

Anyway, the scratches read: “Go with him. Bring everything you want. Were leaving at once.” I gulped. “From Nemian.?” I asked.

“N’baa miaan’baa,” said the man. Or something like that. But nodding.

There wasn’t much now to pack in the sack. This book, of course; the ink pencil I write with; the flask, even though I hadn’t had a chance to refill it. A few bits and pieces.

I was scared. I had to face it now—the Waste still frightens me. Although apparently full of towns and tribes and settlements and even “sophisticated” cities, there were all those deserts and poisonous areas in between.

No time for qualms. I climbed down the ladder after the Sheeper.

In the main indoor room, where usually we’d eaten breakfast, the loud noise was going full tilt. Men were roaring and laughing, and someone was singing, and plates were smashing or just being used very roughly. Through a doorless doorway I caught a rush of tan cloak, flaming with gold fringes.

We went along the gallery, through a side door, and down an outside wooden stair.

In the dirt-floored side yard, a chariot had been hitched up with a team of four sheep with painted horns.

Nemian stood in the chariot with the driver. He made a brisk, princely movement with one arm, hurrying me to come over and get in.

“Nemian, I didn’t fill—”

“Shut up, Claidi.”

Nice.

Oh well. This was obviously not the time for a chat. If he wasn’t the gentlemanly joy he’d been last night, we were probably in danger right now.

We left the yard slowly, riot making much sound. I don’t think the rowdy bandits would have heard us anyway.

I could hear
them
.

Bash
went something, and
slam
went something else, and gales of happy laughter, and someone crying more or less in the language Nemian and I spoke, “You kill it properly, Blurn. Don’t try to eat it alive.” Oh…
God
, I thought.

Outside the yard, the whip cracked, and the sheep—thank Whoever—kicked up their shod hooves. We went at quite a lick down the main track and not long after were let swiftly out by the gate of Chariot Town, at the feet of the pale hills.

Pattoo used to say, solemnly, “If you run away from trouble, it always follows.” Rather my impression, too. Though that never stopped me trying.

It’s certainly what happened that morning.

After the first bolt up the rattling hill slope, the going got very steep. We had to slow down.

But looking back from quite a high spot, you could see some of the town and the gate, and nothing was going on there.

Nemian and the chariot driver had baa’d a bit. Now Nemian said to me, “You realize why we left?”

“They were dangerous, the men who arrived.”

“According to the Sheepers, that’s putting it mildly,” said Nemian. “They’re all mad, those wandering people. Theirs is a hell of a life.” He smiled. “Tempting, really. To live by skill and courage. One long adventure. But pretty foul too. No comforts. And they can’t afford any politenesses.” Neither had he, I thought. Which summed it up: In constant danger lay constant rudeness. What an extremely petty thought.

It’s just… Well, I’ve had enough of people treating me like rubbish. I’d innocently thought that would change. And last night…

Last night was apparently last night.

The sheep trotted for a while where the ground leveled, then clambered, the chariot lurching, on the steeper parts.

I couldn’t be bothered to explain now how I’d had no chance to fill the water flask. I suppose I could have used the hair-wash-water, all soapy, with hairs in it. Hmm.

“Don’t sulk, Claidi,” said Nemian. “Did you like it there so much: How silky your hair looks today.”

“Where are we going to now?” I asked with thin dignity.

“The Sheeper will see us on to a hill village up here. We’ll have to find our own way from there. There may be a cart or something we can barter for.”

I knew about barter, the exchanging of one thing for another, although in the House it never happened.

Buying
things didn’t either, but I’d heard of that too, and Nemian had mentioned (last night) that his city on the wide river used coins, money.

The Sheepers hadn’t seemed to want any returns. They just seemed friendly. I hoped that would keep them safe with the bandit band.

The hills were opening out all around us now and weren’t as ugly as I’d anticipated. Very little grew on them, however—an occasional bush with whitish fluff, a type of short pale grass. In the closer distance, they looked soft, like pillows.

We pulled up after about an hour, and the sheep chomped the grass. Nemian and the Sheeper shared some beer, but I didn’t fancy it.

I was looking back down the hills when I heard—we all heard—a beating
clocking
sound, ringing from the hills’ backs.

Suddenly, over a slope to the left, precisely where we didn’t expect them, five men appeared, less than a quarter of a mile off.

I managed an especially unsuitable idiot question.

“What are
those
!”

“Horses,” said Nemian. “And the others,
on
the horses, are the mad knife-men from the town.” I noted no one was trying to start the sheep and chariot. Then I realized we’d never get away, for the bandits had seen us. I saw their white grins flash, as all the buckles and bangles and buttons and
knives
were doing. They smacked the horses’ sides lightly, and these new beasts came racing at us, like a wind or a fire.

(I’d never seen a horse before that. In the House the chariots were drawn by—you guessed it—slaves.

The horses are rather beautiful, aren’t they,? If you know horses. The long heads and the hair flowing back, just as the bandits’ long hair flowed back.)

In about ten seconds, so it seemed, there they were on the hillside with us, all reds and tans, and metal-and-tooth flash.

“Couldn’t let you go,” said one, “without saying hi.”

They laughed. They had an accent—intense, guttural, and somehow extra-threatening.

Their politeness was unsettling not because it wasn’t real, but because, as Nemian had said, they couldn’t afford politeness.

Nemian, now, said nothing.

The Sheeper didn’t seem talkative either.

The horses were polished as any floor.

One of the bandits swung off his horse. He walked over on long legs.

“Not from these parts?”

Nemian said, “No.”

“South? Peshamba?”

Nemian said, “Yes, were heading for Peshamba.”

The bandit leaned on the side of our chariot, companionable. From inside his shirt, he drew a small glassy thing—some sort of charm.? He gazed down at it in silence, as if all alone. How odd. Another bandit, still mounted, craned over as if to see. This other one gave a sudden whoop (which made me jump). He drew out his (ghastly) knife and flipped it in the air, catching it gently in his
teeth
.

The bandit leaning on the chariot took no notice. He closed the charm in his fist and put it away. Then he looked straight into my eyes.