Queen of the Wolves

by Tanith Lee

  Of course, maybe Argul’s gone.

  At least still no Jelly. Moulded by the Wolf Tower.

  We all have been, in an awful way.

  Did he really have something to give me? What? A bullet from the rifle probably.

  Tonight Argul and I ate together in a big cave-kitchen. What with everyone else sneezing and grumbling so loudly, kicking each other, and flicking greasy food about, we couldn’t have said much. Which was good, as we didn’t say much. He didn’t eat either, now I think of it.

  Coming out, I stood back to let him go ahead through the door, and he did the same for me, and for a fraction of an instant, through trying so hard not to touch, his arm flinched against mine. His felt like stone.

  ‘How long to the town now?’ I asked. Trying to sound adult, sensible.

  ‘Tomorrow. The next day.’

  ‘So soon.’

  He was gone.

  But he hasn’t been eating. Now I think, I’ve only seen him play with food. Is he still so angry and unhappy that he can’t eat? And does that mean there is a chance – because if he still feels all that, he must care?

  We have reached a river, and a shambles called Ice-Walk.

  Even the way I feel now, I have to try to describe this, because it is absolutely strange.

  We came uphill and then the land swept over. From high up where we were, you see – The North. There it is.

  The North is divided off by the straightest line of water, this river, which looks as though someone drew it there with a ruler.

  A wide river too, a mile or so across, but from up here one could see the further banks. They were marble white. With snow. Only this marble snow, then, stretching away and away, featureless, a desert of white.

  And on to it, constantly, a shimmering mist of new whiteness coming down, as new snow nearly endlessly fell.

  The sky the far side of the river is purple – as dark almost as night. But halfway over the river it’s mauve, fading back to grey-white on this side.

  Halfway over the river, too, the ice starts to form. From the high ground it looked like great dulled silver plates. These fused together as they neared the other side. Wedged up through the ice were crags of ice, very tall, they must be tall as hills? And curiously shaped, like complicated buildings with balconies and archways, spires, turrets—

  The crags are overall white too, but in places an amazing transparent peacock blue gleams out, or luminous green. Shafts of daylight seem trapped inside the ice-crags, shining as the sky doesn’t. But all the time, the light shifts, changes, and the colours, too.

  Little lights sparkle down on the ice as well. What could they be? Oh, it’s this Fair the girl told me about.

  He was already riding off along the track, towards the uninviting mess I’ve since learned is called Ice-Walk Town. It lies along the near side of the river.

  And so this is where he is going to allow me to speak to him, and then leave me for ever.

  ‘There’s a Fair on the ice,’ he said.

  ‘I know. Yes. Are you—’

  No answer.

  The unadorable town looked like lumps of bricks to me. Extra dirty smokes rose, clotting the whitish rain not-quite-ready-to-be-snow.

  The inn-room was empty, but for us. Everyone was always out at the Fair on the ice, said the inn-woman.

  A fire groaned away on the hearth, warming the chimney, and cheering the room only with smoke.

  ‘Argul, please can we find somewhere more private.’

  No answer.

  He had sat down on a bench against the wall, stretched out his long legs. His eyes were fixed on that other place he looks at, in order to avoid seeing me.

  ‘All right then. I’ve waited,’ I said, ‘I’ve had enough. Can I tell you now what happened? Yes?’

  No answer.

  I went and sat across the sort-of-table from him. (It was a plank on three stones.)

  ‘I’ll take it silence means yes, then.’

  Trembling. Panic and anger.

  But I couldn’t go on with this any longer.

  So, I spoke.

  Thinking back, I think I was pretty clear in what I said. After all, I’d said it to him in my head so often, gone over and over it, in proper order, leaving nothing out yet not exaggerating too much, I thought, or wandering off the point … No, I think I did it well, putting my case. Explaining all that had happened. Why I left, where I’d been, how I got back.

  Some of it does sound – how could it not – incredible.

  How long did I talk? Too long? My throat was hoarse when I finished – but that could have been the fire-smoke. (Once the woman came in and plonked a jug of something to drink between us, and lurched out again. Neither he nor I touched it.)

  In the end, I’d said everything I could. I had told the truth. I said, ‘And, as always, I love you.’ And then I sat there.

  He hadn’t moved. Didn’t look at me. Didn’t even become fidgety, didn’t sigh or turn to me, swear, or even say, ‘Claidi – now I see I had it all wrong’. None of that.

  And now too he did nothing either, and the minutes stretched, became centuries.

  I could hear a clock ticking over the fire. It didn’t really tell the time, having only the minute hand left, but that went round and round.

  Outside the window, was it darker?

  ‘Are you going to say anything, Argul?’

  He wasn’t.

  He just sat there.

  The fire lit his eyes and gilded his hair.

  ‘Argul?’

  I put out my hand and set it on his arm. He didn’t move. His arm felt like steel. He didn’t even trouble to shake me off.

  I removed my hand from his arm and rose.

  Humiliating tears were on my face.

  ‘Then Argul, you can go and put out your light – go and fry. If you’re so stupid – so damned stupid – then what’s the use?’ My voice was shrill, then too deep. ‘That’s it. You’re an okk, blind and an okk. Where I went wrong was thinking you were all right.’

  And I raised the jug of whatever it was, and I slung the contents all over him. And then I ran.

  I don’t remember where I ran, saw nothing. The town might have been invisible, and the people didn’t exist. I was all alone. I never even felt the cold.

  It was getting on to evening when I came back out of the nowhere I’d run off into.

  I managed to find my way here to the inn. Had to, because my stuff is here. No doubt I should have been surprised no one had stolen it, but he must have paid, because my bag was up in a room on the second wonky floor.

  Wind gusts blow, and the room swings one way, then another. It’s like being on the sea-ship again, the ship he doesn’t believe I ever was on.

  He wasn’t here when I got back. I knew he wouldn’t be. Now I hurt so much I can’t feel it, just numb.

  Impossible. I shall never see Argul again.

  The most stupid thing of all, I keep thinking how I threw the rotten beer, or whatever it was, over his hair and clothes. He deserved it. But I feel so bad about it, even now. His lovely hair, the cloak that wasn’t warm enough. It’s making me cry.

  WINTER RAVEN

  When someone knocked on the door of the seasick room, I ran to open it. I knew it wouldn’t be Argul. But even so—

  Flung open door.

  Door hit wall and nearly fell off.

  Outside—

  As I had known, not Argul.

  Face striped with tears, I drew the dagger from my belt. ‘What do you want?’

  She just stood there.

  Cool, she asked, ‘A little politeness?’

  ‘Prance off.’

  ‘My,’ she said. ‘I’ve dropped by at a bad time, I can see.’

  I hated her at once. And that gave me back some energy, if not much sense.

  ‘Look, if you want the bathroom, it’s along the hall.’

  ‘Do I seem to need a bathroom?’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘You,’ she
said. ‘I’m calling on you. You’re not a bathroom, are you? You do look rather damp.’

  Sarcastic horror.

  ‘This is sharp,’ I said, of the dagger.

  ‘So,’ said she, ‘am I.’

  She is.

  Whatever I think of her, she is, she is.

  Let me describe her, as I saw her there.

  A young woman, my age, I thought, about my height, too, really, though she seemed taller.

  She had very white skin, but a sort of dark whiteness. Eyes ink-black. Her very thick silky hair was chopped short just under her ears, and so black it looked like liquid. Strings of white beads looped in this hair, some ending in small gold discs. She had a necklace of heavier gold discs, set with round, polished pieces of amber. Her longish belted coat was black. Her boots were dyed strawberry red, and had silver bells on them.

  The two most astonishing things were 1) her cloak – a great swagger of a cloak that seemed sewn, on the outer side, with hundreds of black, black feathers, and 2) her good looks. She is beautiful. That’s the only word.

  Now she took a turn on the narrow landing in front of me. Showing herself off? Letting me know what I had to deal with? (She sounded, from all the jewellery, bells, beads, like a Hulta horse.)

  ‘Coming down, then?’ she said. ‘Claidi?’

  ‘You know my name.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We’ll come to that later.’

  ‘No, you’ll tell me now.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  Fortunately I didn’t try to attack her. Instinctively I knew she would be able to disarm me and probably snap my wrist at the same time. Which I now think is definitely true. She’s been trained to fight?

  But I said, ‘Don’t tell me, you’re from the Wolf Tower too?’

  ‘Me?’ She gave a snarl of laughter. ‘Most people, I’d make them sorry they said that. But you – well, you’ve been having a funny time of it, haven’t you, lately. What with unkind old Argul and all.’

  I swallowed. Then I slammed the door in her face.

  Of course she flung it wide open again, and this time it did come off its hinges.

  She strode into the room.

  ‘Look, Claidi, name for name. How’s that? I am called,’ she paused, understandably dramatic, ‘Winter Raven.’

  ‘That’s quaint.’

  ‘Thank you. I think it’s a good name. Meanwhile,’ she said, ‘my men are downstairs. And we have a friend of yours, all tied up.’

  ‘Argul—’

  ‘Come off it. That man called Jelly.’

  ‘You have Je—’

  ‘Jelly. Tied up in a bow.’

  In a kind of trance I picked up my bag – I was still wearing my coat – and followed her down the earthquaky stairs.

  It was true.

  The first thing I saw, in the inn’s mostly empty main room, was Jelly, curled into a really uncomfortable position, his knees up to his chin, and his hands behind his back, and all of him ringed by thick ropes.

  He could just turn his head, which he did, and gave me his same old crease of smile. Despite the swollen bruise of Argul’s punch, and how he was now placed, Jelly looked as he always had – awful. But unbothered.

  There were also six men standing round the hearth, drinking from mugs. They wore black, like the girl, but on the back of each cloak, had been outlined in gold the shape of a bird with curved beak and outspread wings. Ravens?

  Winter Raven. Raven. Something crackled through my mind.

  ‘This is Jelly, right?’ asked Winter Raven, of me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We were pretty sure, but he wouldn’t say. Despite what Ngarbo promised to do to him –’ an approving nod at one of the six round the fireplace. ‘We don’t usually cross to this side of the river,’ she added. ‘But under the circumstances we’ve had to. So. Your graff’s ready outside. Shall we go?’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘What?’ Impatient, she waited.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You don’t know? Thought you read about the Towers and all that junk, when you were at the Rise.’

  I said, ‘Raven Tower.’

  ‘Hey! Claidi! Wow.’

  ‘The Raven Tower was destroyed in the ancient wars between the Towers, in the City. That is what I read. Pig Tower and Tiger Tower and Wolf Tower survived. Raven Tower didn’t.’

  ‘As you see.’

  The inn-woman came in right then, and Winter Raven strode over to her and handed her a great wodge of those bluey-green money notes. The woman stood speechless with glee, and somehow everyone else, including me, walked out, with tied-up Jelly carried along in the middle.

  There was a boat to take us the first mile over the river, to where the ice starts.

  Outside the inn, Winter’s ‘men’ had loaded Jelly in a sort of box on runners, and attached it to his own horse, which also had a big bundle strapped on its back. That seemed rather unfair on the horse. As for Jelly, he was then dragged through the streets of Ice-Walk. People pointed at him in the box, and made fun. No one tried to intervene.

  I had already assumed I was a prisoner, as he was, though not tied up.

  The others walked. I led Graff. As usual he sang away to himself, snuffling peacefully. At one point she turned to me and said, ‘Don’t you just love them, graffs, they’re so easygoing.’

  ‘Divine.’

  She flashed me a look of scorn. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘when I think, I could really kill you.’

  ‘I thought you were probably going to anyway,’ I sulkily rejoined.

  The boat waited by the quay. We got on, with Graff, and the horse pulling Jelly.

  The boat was a sort of ferry. Lots of other passengers.

  She walked off through the crowd and left me, obviously thinking I wouldn’t simply jump off into the freezing water – where, according to that cave-girl, I’d be a ‘deada’ in seven seconds. Perhaps I should jump? I couldn’t face it. Oddly I now found myself standing next to Jelly in his box.

  As we were poled over the black varnished water, in under the canopy of purple sky, Jelly spoke.

  ‘They’ve strung you along since Panther’s Halt. Did you know?’

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘Mmn,’ said Jelly. ‘I should have given you what I had for you, before. Can’t reach it now.’

  My face was so cold it was best not to try to move my lips.

  Jelly said, thoughtfully, ‘You don’t know, do you? Shall I put you out of your misery? I must admit, it even had me – well, puzzled – until I came right up to you, on that hill.’

  Are my lashes freezing? Concentrate on lashes freezing.

  ‘Argul,’ said Jelly, regretfully, ‘wasn’t Argul.’

  ‘Oh who was he then?’ I screeched, scattering all the ice off my face.

  ‘No one. You should have figured it out. Didn’t you have experience of those sort of things? At Peshamba. Later at the Rise, in the jungle.’

  Now all of me seemed scattered. I fell apart.

  I found myself leaning over him, gripping him by the collar. The bruise on his chin had got worse. Now he was all bruise. ‘What?’

  ‘A mechanical doll,’ said Jelly. ‘Like the completely realistic Ustareth-doll which Ustareth left for Venn.’

  ‘* * * ?? !! …?’

  ‘Yes, madam. The ones who can make them, can make them most convincing. Have you forgotten – even Venn was fooled by the one he thought was his own mother? These dolls can even keep up a conversation, up to a point, providing it isn’t too complicated. They can react and say the right things. And they can learn off whole paragraphs to spout at you. Why do you think it kept telling you not to get close or touch it? It hadn’t any warmth. Made of metal with padding over, and stuff that looks like skin. If you’d only rushed up and kissed it –’ He shook his head.

  I let go his collar.

  He said, ‘See this bruise it gave me? I don’t usually get done over like that. But it moved f
aster than a real man could. And, well, a steel fist. Lucky I did manage to dodge a bit, or it could have been worse. It was trained to do that too, thump almost anyone who got in the way. It was your guide and guard.’

  Did I trust Jelly? Jelly – Believe him—

  Yes, oh yes.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. I added pathetically, ‘Why, Jelly?’

  ‘To get you along here. It was meant to get you all the way over the river, judging from what this lot have been saying, all the way to a town the other side. Not just to Ice-Walk. The cold, no doubt, affected its mechanisms. It broke down. So this Raven crowd, who’ve been watching it – and you – had to come over instead and fetch you.’

  ‘How – watching me?’

  ‘Spies. Even some way through the doll … till it stopped working.’

  That scene, which I would never – never will – forget. The way he sat across the inn table and never spoke. And even when I threw the beer over him – had he stirred? No. I’d thought it was his utter disgust at me, his self-control. But it had been because he was a doll. He hadn’t been Argul at all—

  ‘Jelly—’

  ‘Mmmmm.’

  ‘Jelly—’

  ‘—’

  ‘They can make things like that? I thought only Ustareth could do that. I mean, that real.’

  ‘Seems not. See that bundle on my horse? That’s where it is now.’

  ‘– the doll.’

  ‘The doll.’

  I stared at the horse. Then back at him.

  ‘Why do they want me so much?’

  ‘I have a suspicion.’

  ‘Will you share it?’

  Who is my true enemy – this Wolf Tower man, or her, Winter Raven, and hers. All of them, no doubt.

  But Argul. It wasn’t Argul – who hated me and wouldn’t hear me. Not him. Not.

  ‘This is getting a bit chatty, isn’t it?’

  Ngarbo, the black Raven, was standing over us, smiling crushingly.

  Jelly’s mouth closed up like something sewn together. He wouldn’t speak in front of them.

  He’s brave, though he’s horrible.

  And Ngarbo may be handsome, but he’s one of her people. None of them are worth anything. Even she isn’t.