Queen of the Wolves

by Tanith Lee

  Even when I was kidnapped, the ring did nothing. Its power was locked up by the setting, and I had no way to let it out – even if I’d known what it was.

  Then though, when I was at the Rise, even when I was on my way there in the jungles she made, the ring sort of began to wake up.

  Locked in the cage of its setting, it couldn’t work properly, or do anything I really needed.

  But all those mechanisms of hers at the Rise, set it off all over the place.

  In the library, though, the ring was able to do things like opening a door, or making the library machines bring me a book. I think her power was very strong in that room. Or maybe, the ring was just beginning to get used to me.

  Later in the jungle, when I was with Venn, the topaz didn’t work – it had given one slight show of power, rather as a candle might flare up just before it goes out. After that it was spent. The diamond didn’t seem to do anything either. When we were attacked by vrabburrs – but then, they were attacking Venn, not me, and I didn’t know what I could do – and anyway, we were rescued.

  When I came back, I took off the diamond. I didn’t trust it. Perhaps if I’d kept it on, tried to – well, talk to it, practice with it – it might have got stronger. Or not.

  What it really needed was a powerful direct charge from another of Ustareth’s machines designed to do exactly that. Something that would get it to work, despite the Hulta setting, full-strength again.

  The Raven ‘god’ of the Raven Tower did that. That is where all of them re-charge their power-jewellery, if they think it’s getting weak. It isn’t a god. It’s a – well, a sort of – what? All I can think of is, if the fire gets low, you throw on another log. The raven-god is like throwing another log into the fire.

  Only, Argul says, now the fire will last in the ring. Last for ever. At least, so long as I keep wearing it. It was her own ring, you see. The best she ever made.

  He’d been told by Ironel the re-charging raven was here. Which was why he wanted us to get to the Tower, and stay in the Tower until we found it, or they showed it to us. Argul didn’t know, Ironel hadn’t, where they kept the wretched thing. Of course they’d put it out of harm’s way, up in the air!

  Eventually they might, Argul said, have given me the power of the ring – if I was a good girl and showed I was repulsively loyal to them. After all I was against the Wolf Tower, and Raven Tower is Wolf Tower’s number one enemy.

  (Does it go to show that, by trying to be against one bad thing, you can end up as disgusting yourself?)

  ‘Why,’ I said, ‘did they ever risk letting us into Hall Four, where the raven was?’

  Argul shrugged. ‘The interesting thing, to me anyway, is that Zeera – Ustareth – my mother, left the ring for my wife. She told me, when I was a child. She said, when I found the woman I wanted, this was the ring she must have.’

  ‘Your wife was meant to be Twilight’s daughter, Winter,’ I muttered, scowling.

  ‘Whoever it was, Claidi, that power was meant for her, not me.’

  But Ustareth-Zeera had left something for Argul, too.

  I think I’ve covered the rings, so I’ll say about that now. When we first met, Argul and I, he’d looked at a glassy object hung on a string around his neck. Later he’d told me it was a kind of scientific charm his mother gave him, to show him if the woman he wanted was right for him, and he for her. (And, as I learned in the RT, that should have been Winter Raven he was gazing at right then.)

  Which I shall ignore. For he and I – are meant to be together.

  ‘Ironel,’ he now said, ‘took this out of some box, and gave it to me. It somehow sticks to the glassy stuff.’

  He had taken off the charm by then, there in the cave. Handed it to me. In the centre of the glassy bulb was now a dark blue gem. A sapphire, I think. When I touched it, it didn’t move.

  ‘Ironel gave you this?’

  ‘It’s the missing piece – only I never knew anything was missing.’

  Ustareth had left the sapphire with her mother, Ironel, to give to Argul if – wait for it – he ever had the brains and spirit – and sheer rash craziness? – to wander into the Wolf Tower.

  ‘Another endurance and brains test,’ I said.

  ‘Seems so. I passed, anyway. Ironel gave me the jewel, told me to attach it. Then told me what it could do.’

  ‘Is it the same as the diamond?’

  ‘No. I said, the main power was for whoever I wanted to marry. For you. This has more limited powers. Like most of the jewels in the Raven Tower. But it did let me fly, and open a few windows.’

  ‘So that’s how—’

  How he got away from the Raven Guards – twice. Climbed up the wall of the Guest House, up the Raven Tower itself. He didn’t climb. He flew.

  When they shoved him into a tray to go up to Hall Four, he acted as appalled as I was. As in everything else, he’d never let them know a thing, until it was too late for them.

  But this explains more than that. It explains how he got to Panther’s Halt in time to meet me – he bought his horse there, because after that he didn’t want any spies to notice what he could really do.

  And how he kept sneaking up on me, unseen, unheard – to fool them, but it freaked me out too. Of course, when he was unwatched, he’d risk a short flight for speed. (Disguised as Jelly, they would only watch him at first when he was with me.)

  ‘I wasn’t that good at it,’ he said, ‘a couple of times I sailed off the ground. When I saw you.’

  I gawped. ‘That’s why you seemed seven feet tall. But the jewels are easy – they just do what you say – even what you think to them.’

  ‘Yours does,’ he said. ‘Yours is special. Or Claidi, just possibly, you’re special.’

  I sat and frowned.

  He said, ‘I don’t know. But it seems to me, it’s the person involved as much as the jewel. The Raven Tower think that, you know, girl. Why they want you.’

  When I didn’t reply, he didn’t go on.

  And I think I won’t, here.

  I did say, ‘These spies everywhere. You mean men from the Towers.’

  ‘I mean almost anything, Claidi. Like the doll-man who looked rather like me—’

  ‘He was your double—’

  ‘Oh come on—’

  I said firmly, ‘You mean there were more of those?’

  ‘There might have been. Ironel said Ustareth had a scientific formula for making them with likenesses like that. So any man, woman or child – even an animal – might have been something working for the Raven Tower.’

  I thought. I said, ‘Even ravens?’

  ‘Why not. The northlands are full of them. Not all real birds? If you don’t know – how can you know?’

  Spies … ravens which aren’t ravens. People who aren’t – people.

  I was afraid of the Wolf Tower once. But this Raven Tower—

  At least, because of the diamond, now they can’t see or hear or find us. But how far does their filthy controlling web extend? I have so many memories of looking up into some sky – and seeing huge circling black birds …

  Let me put down the last of the answers, all I have.

  IRONEL/USTARETH-ZEERA/TWILIGHT

  Whether it was fair to expect him to, or not, Argul had got to meet Ironel. (He almost met her before. Perhaps she’d been hoping he would, that time he got me away from the Wolf Tower City.)

  I think Ironel is just one of those women who like men better than other females. Nemian she seemed to like. Argul she seems to have liked a lot. Her own daughters – well, she never mentioned them to me. Ustareth, at least, I think Ironel respected. But mainly, Ironel likes playing games.

  Argul says, once he’d got into the Wolf Tower, she whisked them away upriver, to some out-City estate of hers. A looming house of pale grey walls, leaning right over a lake – as if, he said, it wanted to throw up in it.

  Here it was she told him all his own history, and everything she knows about Ustareth, and the Rise. An
d me. Then she gave him the sapphire and told him about that.

  ‘I felt sorry for her. I knew she was dangerous, Claidi. But what has she got? Nothing. Ustareth made her those false teeth – the pearl ones she can’t eat anything with.’ Argul looked into the fire. ‘She wears them because they were Ustareth’s present. But are they a present – or an unkind joke?’

  ‘Both?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ironel hadn’t helped Ustareth during Ustareth’s unpleasant marriage to Narsident. When Ustareth was sent off to create the jungles at the Rise, mother and daughter hadn’t even written. And they can send flying letters out of machines in walls, so distance was hardly a problem.

  Then, when U came back, got with the Hulta and became Zeera, had Argul – then she started to visit people.

  ‘Ironel?’ I asked.

  ‘Ironel, and Twilight Star whom she admired for her rebellion over Fengrey.’

  ‘Didn’t the Hulta notice – was Ustareth often away?’

  ‘Never for long,’ said Argul. ‘She used to go off sometimes, she said to get herbs, find minerals. Never more than a day and a night. But she could do it, Claidi. She could cross a whole country in a few hours. She could fly. None of us ever knew that.’

  We sat and thought of this. Ustareth-Zeera whirling along the sky, to the Wolf Tower, the Raven Tower. Friend to both?

  ‘I know about the plan to breed Top Child, preferably a daughter,’ said Argul. ‘A ruling female, like in a wolf pack.’

  ‘Men and women are equal,’ I said. ‘Wolves have kings, too. Why this thing about women?’

  ‘Perhaps my mother,’ he paused, ‘didn’t agree with you about the equal part.’

  Ust – Zeera – she was Argul’s mother.

  He had never said all that much about her. He didn’t now. But he kept looking away. Into the fire, the shadows. At the thick curtain of white snow falling outside, as if the sky could never make enough.

  Ustareth told Ironel all her plan, and Ironel was all for it. But Ustareth didn’t trust Ironel entirely. She never revealed to Ironel that Twilight’s true daughter, so much part of the plan, wasn’t the girl left behind in the House.

  Ironel knows plenty. (The Wolf Tower has its own machines and tricks. More than I’d ever come across.) But in some areas she’s been fooled as thoroughly as I have.

  Twilight and Ustareth kept Twilight’s secret. After all, they didn’t mean T’s real daughter to end up Wolf’s Paw. No. She had to be free to marry one of Ustareth’s sons, and so produce a Wolf Queen.

  ‘You’ve wrecked their plans,’ said Argul.

  ‘I hope so. Unless—’

  He said, ‘If and when, Claidi, no child of ours is going to have to put up with that.’

  ‘They went to so much trouble, though, to try to put you off me. Snatching me away, giving you a fake diary to convince you I was – scum—’

  ‘It’s possible,’ he now said, ‘Ironel was behind that part. She may have thought you’d be more suitably mated to Venarion – what do you call him – Venn. That was naturally before she met me,’ he added, not at all modestly, grinning.

  Who can be quite sure of anything the Towers do? Only sure it’s a game, and how they like to play—

  Look at how the Ravens had snatched Hedee Poran, and later Yaz and Hrald – why? To find out about the Rise, I think, and how Ustareth’s jungles were doing, even how Venn was. H and Y were doubtless able to tell a lot about me, as well. But also – what a game.

  Argul said, ‘The joke is, marrying me, because I’m Ustareth’s son, makes you Tower blood. Though to Ironel you’re Tower blood already – she thinks you’re Twilight’s girl. While to Twilight you’re just another First Class Rebel she wants for her cause.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you find, the Hulta didn’t say much to you – about Ust – about Zeera?’

  ‘No, they didn’t. I thought because I was an outsider.’

  ‘The Hulta loved her. Put her on a pedestal. And they were afraid of her. And was I? I don’t know. She could be wonderful. She knew the name of every plant and animal and planet. She could crack shells and tiny creatures, a million years old, out of the rocks. She could heal almost any illness. Except her own. No, she wasn’t perfect.’

  ‘Argul…’

  ‘It’s all right. I thought so much of her. Still think like that. But she was wrapped up in what she wanted to do. She was a kind of glamorous stranger. After all, she’s played her game with me too. Even after she died – she’s still been playing with us. All these tests she left – telling one person this part of the puzzle, that person another part – letting – making us run round to find things, find each other – and if we didn’t, like poor damn Venn – miss them and miss out altogether.’

  We watched the fire, shadows, snow.

  ‘The Hulta made me leader very young, I was fifteen,’ he said. ‘Guess why? Not because I was the leader’s son, or fantastically worthy. Because she was my mother. That was her power, even after she was dead.’

  After a long while, I said, ‘You do believe Venn wasn’t so important to me? That Nemian wasn’t ever, really.’

  ‘It wouldn’t even matter,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m yours. You’re mine. Whatever we did, that can’t change.’

  ‘Yes.’ I sighed.

  And what else matters, I thought, but that?

  The ring makes as much light as I want, so I can see to write. (I can’t sleep. So I’ve sat here writing. Argul is asleep. He looks very young. Older too. Strange.)

  One major thing I must note here. Despite the stuff I’d heard from Yaz and Hrald, about Wolf Tower Law starting up again in the City, Argul says he saw absolutely no sign of it. And when he mentioned the Law to Ironel, she’d leered and said, ‘The Law is in the waste-paper bin of life.’ (!)

  Right after I wrote that, this ring mended my skirt, which I tore kicking off into flight. I was looking at the tear, wishing I could sew it or something. And there was a sort of tugging, and the ring pulled my hand down over the tear. Which – did itself up. Miraculous. Only thing is, once I fly off in the morning, it’ll probably rip again.

  If I’ve wrecked their plans – how is it I have the power ring like a reward?

  I’m so confused when I try to think it out. I mean, is it just that Ustareth thought whoever got this ring would do what she wanted? Ustareth is dead.

  I keep thinking though about Twilight, all alive. What is she doing? Plotting? Ironel was so nervous of Twilight and the RT she didn’t tell me half the truth in her letter, in case they saw it. She lied about Argul too, to keep him out of their clutches until he was ready for them.

  Tomorrow, he and I can fly-sky-run away. But are we then going to be on the run for the rest of our lives?

  ‘Argul, I’m going back to the Tower.’

  ‘You’re – where?’

  ‘The Raven Tower. I don’t need you to come with me.’

  ‘Wait a minute—’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t. It’s – I’d rather handle this alone.’

  ‘Claidi—’

  ‘Argul. Nothing can happen to me. Remember the ring?’

  We stood in the cave mouth. The snow had stopped falling. Snow had become instead the whole world under the black granite sky.

  ‘Look, Claidi—’

  ‘Once before, at the Wolf Tower, you trusted me to do something alone. Please, do that again now. I did succeed.’

  ‘All right then.’ He let me go.

  ‘Will you be safe?’ I then asked. ‘I mean, without the ring—’

  ‘Yes, Claidi. I’ll just about be able to manage.’

  I turned. Glancing down the precipice, I gulped. Idiot. You can fly.

  I flew.

  A HUMAN FACE

  And then there was a dawn … It was as if never before had the sun come up, and now it did.

  Strands of lavender cloud drift away – the dark has parted like an opened door.

  The wide sky is rose-peach and g
lassy lemon-gold – and every mountain, every one of the little, down-there humps of the Ups, stroked over with this eatable light.

  Oh, what it is to fly! Running through the air. Better, so much better even than riding in the Star with Yinyay – I heard myself laughing from sheer joy.

  Then, high above, I spotted a tiny dark blot that didn’t move. Thought it a cloud, realized it wasn’t. It was Hall Four, its dark tiled floor barely showing in the sky.

  And below – the Raven Tower.

  A white raven now. The snow had completely covered it at last, and frozen solid.

  I swooped lower. The ring does everything the moment I think of it.

  The Tower might have been deserted. Not a lamp, not a single visible sentry. None of the narrow windows showed up through the icy crust of snow. But then, circling the head of the raven, I found that one great red window I’d seen before from the Road, burning like a ruby.

  I knew it was her window. Who else, but one of those four fearful women, (Jizania, Ironel, Ustareth, Twilight) would make for herself a window like that?

  The thing with the ring – perhaps the strangest thing of all – is how I’m used to it, to what it can do. (It had even made me warm, as I felt the snow-chill outside the cave.)

  I remember when Argul first gave it me, and I said, ‘It feels like it’s part of my hand.’ Its power, now it works, is like that too. Why? I don’t know. It’s as if Ustareth made it for me. In a way she did – After all, her second son and I were made for each other. By something. By God? If that isn’t too much of a cheek to say it.

  Anyway, as I landed on the outer sill, I knew even Argul’s charm with the sapphire could open windows. And besides, the ceiling of Hall Four had opened for my ring. So this fire-ruby window would open too.

  And it did.

  The chamber inside was all smoky twilight colours, it was the lamps and fire which made it glow red.