Queen of the Wolves

by Tanith Lee

  ‘And who is that?’

  Hell, another name to think up on the spur of the moment.

  ‘Pattoo,’ I uncleverly blurted, picking the name of a friend from my slave-maid days.

  ‘All this is most interesting,’ said Jelly. He strolled beside me. ‘I wonder if,’ he said, ‘on your travels about the town, and in the house of your mother’s cousin Pattoo – if you have come across a young woman by the name –’ he paused. An abrupt shouting and music burst all around.

  For a moment I had the feeling he had seen something which had startled him, broken off to check this something out – but then I realized.

  He was playing.

  He’s standing there, and he’s going to say Claidi. Or Claidis or Claidissa. Those name changes the Wolf Tower gave me.

  Cat and mouse. And I’m the mouse.

  I waited, gaping at the crowd all breaking apart in a dancing procession, with high-held torches and bottles and garlands of gold tinsel flowers.

  Waited, not really seeing anything, waited to hear him speak that name—

  Only he didn’t.

  I couldn’t bear another second. I turned to confront him, this – Jelly—

  He was gone.

  Vanished. He’d just slid away among the shadows of the garden as if on wheels.

  Idiotically I looked back at the festivity.

  And here came the bride.

  She was a goat.

  I frowned, but no, she was. How then did I know her to be the bride? Easy. She wore my own Hulta wedding-dress.

  The evil Jelly was gone, and now the crowd was pushing into and around me, so I gave up and was also carried along through the garden. And so I was next able to watch the wedding. If the bride was a surprise, the groom was more of a surprise.

  Like before, a chatty old woman soon came up and started to tell me what went on, in my own language, more or less. Is it worth recording? Yes, I suppose it is.

  The goat in (my) wedding-dress, was one of the black and green ones. They ‘married’ her to a panther. This was lighter in colour than the one which had spoken to me in the forest. You could, in the light, see the paw-print pattern in his coat.

  ‘Have no feary,’ said the old woman, ‘the panther do no harm to the goat. We train they panthers here to live with goats as family. And they goat people train their goaties same. See now, they making the friends.’

  This was a fact? The goat and the panther were standing leaning on each other, all relaxed. Now and then the panther rubbed its head, like a big cat, on the goat. The goat was so calm, it was grazing the grass.

  ‘In us valleys,’ said the old woman, ‘they panther do be guardy goaties herds. None so safe as they.’

  (I’m only jealous. I wish I could speak another language even as well as she was speaking mine.) (Then again though, she wasn’t really.)

  Desperate I rounded on her.

  ‘A woman called Zeera,’ I hissed, ‘or Ustareth – her house – do you know where it is?’

  She giggled at me. ‘Juppa yipto?’

  ‘You don’t really speak my language at all,’ I accused. ‘It’s just this sightseer stuff you’ve learned off by heart, isn’t it?’

  She beamed. She inquired, helpfully, ‘You like a goat?’

  As I hurried away from her I saw, across the red flap of the torches, lit as I had so often seen him, by fire, Argul, standing on the slope above.

  LIGHT OR DARK?

  Had he seen me?

  I didn’t think so. He was looking down at the bridal procession which was now swirling round again, weaving about every tree—

  Had he seen the dress on the goat? The dress that had been going to be mine on the day I should have married him?

  I remember saying, when I first met Argul – I was afraid of him. He was just so absolute. So entire, complete.

  And now, as the bouncing crowd pushed me back and forth, staring up at him on the lawn above, again I was afraid.

  I’d forgotten what he truly looks like.

  Under the shift of firelight, his dark skin one instant like bronze, and then like gold. His black hair that hangs to his waist. His face – his face.

  Another panther, with two or three goats – bridesgoats and Best Panther, perhaps – thumped into me. I was toppled back good-naturedly against a tree by the crowd.

  Then the crowd was past, rioting off through the garden towards the town, and I got my bearings – but I’d looked away one whole thin-as-a-splinter split second. And in that second, Argul had moved.

  I was in time to catch the flare of his brown cloak, crack of one golden inch of tassel-fringe, as he strode away into the trees above.

  All the time I’d spent, asking myself: When I find him, how am I going to approach him, what am I going to say to him – of course I was simply pelting up the garden, and now I was yelling his name.

  But there was still a lot of noise, not least from the wedding orchestra of squeaky trumpets and throaty drums.

  He hadn’t heard me, couldn’t have done.

  I ran.

  On the upper lawn, the trees divided to form an avenue. Again, I was just in time to see him striding along it.

  Rushing through the avenue. He is around the next turn before I get there. I mustn’t lose him. Mustn’t.

  At the turn, there is a hill. Argul is striding up the hill. How far ahead of me? Quite a lot. I stop and try yelling his name again.

  But the night seems full of distant calls and songs. To him, so far ahead of me now, my cry will sound only like one more of these.

  Argul, wait. Please wait. Stop for something – spot an interesting rare type of owl perched on a tree or a pole above – catch your cloak on a briar – hesitate because some memory has come into your mind – some memory of me—

  No good. I start running again.

  He is at the top of the hill – for a moment in silhouette against the bright-lit Tent dome. Look round, Argul, look back – here I am—

  He doesn’t. He’s going on over the hill, down the hill.

  Running up hill isn’t my favourite mode of travel. Have got a stitch. No breath to shout. Long knotty grass. Now I’ve stumbled, tripped. More or less fall over, scramble up, tear on, ignoring another prize-winning knee-bruise to add to my knee-and-elbow bruise collection—

  As I splurled over the hilltop, I had this nightmare feeling he would simply have disappeared. And he had. He had.

  I dropped on the slightly-less bruised knee.

  Try not to go mad. Think. What is down there? See, it’s obvious. A paved path goes down to those houses over there, and it’s quite well lit from the Tent lights, though they seem a little dimmer here. If he were walking on the path, I’d still see him.

  But first there is that single building, tucked in among those cypress trees. Darker there. It must be – that is the house, and he has gone into it.

  And exactly then, a lamp burns up yellow in one window which seems caught in the boughs of a cypress tree.

  I dived to my feet—

  ‘Felt like a bit of a run, did you?’

  – and nearly plummeted right off the hill.

  Now I was so unnerved, frenzied, no pretence seemed worth the effort.

  I whirled on him.

  It was Jelly.

  ‘Are you following me?’

  ‘Am I? Hmn.’

  ‘Get lost,’ I barked.

  ‘Tut tut. But where are you sprinting to in such a hurry? Tell me, madam, have you ever run professionally? My word, swift as a gazelle.’

  ‘What’s a gaz— look, Jelly, what do you want?’

  ‘Ah. So many things. A little cottage by a trout pool. A reasonable wine-cellar—’

  ‘Who do you think I am?’ I challenged.

  ‘You told me,’ he said. ‘Ustareth.’

  ‘You say you’re a stranger here,’ I said, ‘but they all seemed to know you.’

  ‘Word gets round.’

  ‘Which word?’

  ‘My name. Je
lly,’ he said, modestly.

  I wasn’t going to go down to the cypress house until Jelly was gone. Right now, I didn’t dare even look at the house except quickly, once. The light still burned. As if to be my beacon.

  ‘Wolf Tower,’ I said to Jelly. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ah?’ asked Jelly, rolling innocent pouchy razor-sharp eyes.

  No one else was around. The garden – park, really – was deserted here. And the Tent lights, as I said, were not so bright from this point.

  If it came to it, I didn’t think I could get the better of this man with a dagger.

  How to get rid of him?

  Now he bent down and down to me. (He must be nearly seven and a half feet tall.)

  ‘Tell me, madam, you are the Lady Claidis Star, aren’t you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Claidis Star. Who goes more often by the pet name of Claidissa. Or even … Claidi.’

  ‘My name’s Ust—’

  ‘Good night,’ said Jelly.

  I stood there, mouth open. There he went, off back down the hill, the way we had both come. (His walk, seen from a distance, is extraordinary. At every step he bends at the knees, and yet he covers vast amounts of ground, on his enormous feet, like a sort of power-driven spider.)

  I descended the other slope, very slowly and carefully now, keeping clear of trees, looking back again and again. I anticipated every moment he’d re-arrive: ‘Oh, before I go—’

  But he didn’t.

  Below, I hung around for ages. No one about. Yet I had this awful sense that Jelly, if he meant to, could still creep up on me, unseen, unheard.

  Roosting birds stirred nearby, had a little sing-song, and went back to sleep.

  I crept among the cypress trees.

  Somehow this was like her other house, (Ustareth’s) on the lake, when I was with Venn.

  And the light above me, that was like that other time with Venn, under that room of his in the gardens of the Rise, looking up at his lighted window in the dark, lost and friendless, knowing him to be my enemy.

  Argul isn’t my enemy. But – he thinks I am his.

  It took a while for me to get my courage together and knock on the carved door under the arch.

  I kept thinking it would have been far simpler to have galloped up to him screaming.

  Obviously I hadn’t knocked loudly enough. There was no answer.

  So I beat with both fists, boldly. The night seemed to shake, and oddly, nearby, one of those duller lights overhead went out, as if I’d damaged it by making a row.

  It was black now, or seemed to be, in the cypress grove.

  Still no one answered.

  Then I knocked and called. Then I went and stood under the lighted window. After all, again I yelled.

  The lamp was behind a filmy curtain. I couldn’t see what was in the room.

  Perhaps he’d left the lamp, forgotten. Gone to another room.

  I walked round the house, here and there having to go up steps or crawl over low walls with extra thorns. I shouted and called, using his name. I even threw a couple of small stones to rattle the glass window panes.

  Some while after, I sat under a bush.

  Then I tried to break into the house.

  But I’m useless at that sort of thing, and nothing would give, the only windows I could reach were locked. Didn’t want to smash them. I mean, Hi, Argul, here is the vile horror you think ran off with another man without even telling you, and now I’m back, and I’ve just broken your window, too.

  I did climb up a tree. After all, it was a shame not to add cuts and grazes to the bruises and thorn-scratches. I tried to crane over and bang on the lighted window. Couldn’t reach.

  I did a bit more calling and shouting, and right then, a band of six or seven young men came along the path towards the hill, and waved up at me delightedly. ‘Look, lads, it’s a foreign female mad person!’

  Colossal laughter and congratulations to me. (Please note, the words were carefully spoken in my language.)

  When they had at last gone on again, I did think at least their noise must have woken Argul – but it hadn’t.

  Then I thought, He isn’t sleeping. He has either seen or heard me. He knows it’s me, out here. And out here is where he means me to remain.

  Later, much later, a panther and goat trotted by together under my cypress tree. Friends for life.

  Argul, if a panther and a goat can be friends – surely you could at least listen to me, hear me out.

  But in my head, I heard a voice which answered, He is doing to you what he thinks you did to him. Misled and made a fool of him. Used and lied to him. Left him out in the cold.

  If he could unbelievably abandon the Hulta because of what he thought I’d done, then what do I matter to him now?

  He must hate and loathe me.

  By the yellow glow of the lamp (his lamp), I’ve written this.

  Another overhead light has gone out. They must be faulty here. Is there any connection between this and Ustareth’s Star-ship developing a fault and crash-landing?

  Shall I tear a page out of this book and write him a letter? Saying what?

  Maybe it’s all I can do. But it’s harder to see to write, even his lamp is burning low. I’ll have to wait until daybreak. I might as well stay up in this tree. It may be safer up here. If only from Jelly.

  Morning. The overhead lights all went out in one blink, and a grey pre-dawn turned the Tent top amethyst.

  In this eerie dusk, I rubbed my cricked neck and almost fell out of the tree.

  Below me, a young man was there at the front of the house. He led a horse, saddled up and ready for riding. A brown, satiny horse, strong as a tiger—

  The door opened. Argul came out into the cold first light that smelled of cypresses, birds and Tent.

  If they spoke, I didn’t hear the words. He just walked over to the horse, and mounted up, swinging into the saddle as if weightless, the way I’d seen him do so many times that now my heart seemed to dissolve. There was a carrying bag, too, fixed on behind the saddle.

  I’d only been building up my breath and throat. Now I shrieked at him.

  The other man’s head shot up all right, he nearly sprang out of his skin. But Argul didn’t even look my way.

  Though I heard him speak. To the man.

  ‘Noisy birds you get here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the other, stunned.

  Argul touched the horse lightly. He was riding away. Then he was racing away.

  I fell down the tree.

  Trying to run after Argul, my knees gave.

  ‘Morning,’ said the young man as I landed at his feet. ‘Legs not so strong as your lungs, eh?’

  I realized he was speaking in Hulta.

  Hulta phrases spun in my head.

  ‘Argul – where’s he going?’

  ‘You know Argul?’

  I nodded vigorously until my head seemed about to fly off.

  ‘Shame he didn’t realize it was you,’ said the young man. ‘He’s off north. Over the burning Fiery Hills.’

  ‘Horse—’ I burbled, in Hulta. Of all Hulta words, that word is anyway the first anyone ever learns.

  ‘Yes, Argul’s is a great horse.’

  ‘No – no – me – I want – horse –’

  ‘Can’t have it, luv,’ said the young man. ‘It’s Argul’s horse.’

  Shall I just kill him?

  No. Keep trying.

  (He saw me. He knew me. He doesn’t want me. I don’t care. Until I have convinced him of the truth – only then can I allow him to decide. It may still go against me. I’ll worry then. Die, then.)

  ‘For me – a – a new horse.’

  Had I said new? Thinking back, I think I said a fat horse. In Hulta, the words are similar.

  But at last this pest got my drift.

  ‘Oh; you won’t get a horse now. Sold out last cow-day.’ (I think he said cow-day.) ‘Tell you what, though, my dad can probably fix you up with a riding animal – n
ot a horse, but something.’

  ‘Anything.’ What else could I say? (Only actually, I may have said, not anything, but any gherkin.)

  ACROSS THE FIRE HILLS BY GRAFFAPIN

  This creature is not a horse. But the burning Fiery Hills do burn. They flame. Yet, to be fair, they are not on fire, as such. They look spectacular, particularly after sunset.

  The graffapin doesn’t look spectacular. It looks peculiar.

  It’s like a horse slightly. That is, the back is broad enough and the legs muscular enough so you can ride it. No real tail. The neck goes straight up – and up. I measured the neck, and it’s the length of my arm from shoulder to wrist. Then comes the head, which isn’t horse-like either. More sheeplike. Big dark eyes, with lashes. Two upstanding ears. All of it covered with dripping long blond fur – or pelt – or fleece – or hair.

  It smells insistently of damp hay, despite the grooming it had at Panther’s Halt.

  ‘Does it have a name?’ I’d uneasily asked.

  ‘Graff,’ said ‘Dad’ – that was all the name he had, that I heard.

  Graff cost very little, or rather, the coins I’d been given for my WD (now fashionable goat-wear) were worth more than I’d thought (so they hadn’t ripped me off).

  Supplies were thrown in, plus some food for the graffapin called Graff.

  I don’t even know if it’s a girl or a boy – and apparently that’s quite hard to discover.

  It mutters to itself as we trot along, low gurgles and snuffles. But it goes fast when you say Yof-yof.

  They warned me about the Hills.

  Oh, ever so funny, silly foreign woman who looks upset when they tell her the hills are on fire all the time.

  I didn’t see them until two days’ ride from the Tent and Panther’s Halt. Graff was galloping, because although I’d been told by ‘Dad’ that Argul would take the only decent road which I ‘couldn’t miss’, I was petrified of missing both road and Argul.

  So then, it was getting on for sunset, and I thought these upper slopes were just catching the westering sun. Couldn’t quite see how, as they faced me, therefore south.

  As the light ebbed, the hills got brighter. Then I had to admit what ‘Dad’ and his son had told me was presumably a fact.

  It was night by the time Graff and I rode up to them. And sure enough, there was the road, another badly-paved mess but still just about intact. On either side, fluttering and flickering, and lighting the lower sky like copper, the flames flashed and rippled.