by Tanith Lee
And she knows, doesn’t she, I can call one of my stone servants(!) and instantly see and hear what she and Argul say to each other. If I’m as Powerful as she says, even she can’t stop me.
Therefore I won’t. I will never ever do any of that unless I have to.
The sun set perfectly, framed in the artistic gap in the mountains. (She said the mountains were here from the start, so maybe God arranged the view.)
I was sitting by the pool by then. And Yinyay had again come back. Winter and Ngarbo were strutting about the wild-flower lawns, eating apples from Her orchard (this was all a holiday to them?), pure Raven Tower stuck-up sightseers. Even disapproving – Winter: ‘It’s quite small for a palace, don’t you think?’
Dengwi sat under a magnolia tree, silent. Venn too had gone inside without a word.
Now and then Dengwi and I glanced at each other.
We didn’t mutter, What is she saying to them? How are they dealing with it?
From Yinyay down in the orchards, Thu’s barks sometimes trumpeted back to us. Swallows were darting over the sky.
‘It’s all a bit village-y really, isn’t it, Claid?’ said Winter.
‘Not like Chylomba.’
‘God, no,’ said Winter. Then, ‘I suppose I’ll have to meet her too. She was Mother’s best friend, after all. Only good manners.’ She’d know all about those.
Ngarbo looked at my face, and drew Winter off again. Soon they were doing some sort of dance under the apple trees below, stared at by sheep.
The sunset got redder, and everything was red, and a red stone statue came gliding out of the palace.
Was the statue one of mine – or hers? Mine. Now I knew – I knew.
It didn’t speak but its eyes opened – and – I heard what it said. That is, I heard it in my head. (Am I becoming telepathic then, as she’s expected me to all along?)
Another shock. It’s all shocks.
I walked over to Dengwi. ‘She wants us to go in.’
Dengwi didn’t say, How do you know? She stood up, and together we walked up the marble step on to the terrace. Only Ngarbo in the orchard saw us. Somehow he kept Winter dancing with her back to us so she didn’t, until it was too late. He’s all right, Ngarbo.
The swallows, who can fly all night on the summery up-draughts, were passing like scores of dark blue bows and arrows, across the wide open windows of Ustareth’s Hall. Now and then one or two flew inside, and for a moment gripped the pillar-tops with their claws, before making off again. They don’t really have legs – just wings and claws. In the sky so much, they don’t need legs, so they’ve gradually lost them.
When I go from this place, me, this Powerful One who can also fly, let me remember always the swallows, and not lose my ability to walk with my feet on the ground.
Venn came slamming out as we got to the doorway. He did this though the doorway was wide and doorless.
There was a storm in his white face.
Seeing Dengwi and me, he stopped. He said, ‘Claidi, I’m sorry – I can’t, now.’ Whatever that meant. Then he came up to Dengwi and stood there staring into her face. She put her hands up to his shoulders and he kissed her on the mouth. Then he left us, strode away, down the marble spaces of the palace.
I wasn’t, by now, amazed at the kiss. It had been very obvious, from how I’d seen them before, they weren’t enemies, or even just-friends any more.
But Dengwi said, ‘He told me, he could never forgive her. He hasn’t. He never will.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She didn’t think he would, either.’
‘It’s as if his anger at her is all that holds him together – let go of it, he’ll break apart.’ But she spoke calmly. She said, ‘For now.’
Then we crossed the threshold.
I’d expected Argul to be there, but he wasn’t. Only Ustareth was.
I had this sudden uneasy memory of what Argul told me, how she’d called everyone in to see her, one by one, when she was ‘dying’.
She certainly looked drained, older than at lunch time. But she stood and waited for us.
Then she said, ‘It’s done. How I’ve dreaded it. But it’s over. They’re yours now, my sons, no longer mine. Yours.’
That was all – all. After it she turned to Dengwi, and Ustareth said, ‘Tell Claidi what you know. Tell her now.’
And then – she just went away
I stood there in the fading light, and the arrivals and departures of the swallows.
‘Tell me what?. What now?’
Dengwi looked at me. She said, ‘She seems to know everything. Does she know this – the right moment to tell you—’
‘If you don’t, I may pick up that marble vase over there and—’
‘All right. Here it is then. That night of the lions, when you escaped with Nemian – Jizania told me that night. When you came back to the House, I wanted to tell you – but, as I say, I wanted to choose the right moment. Then Jizania again – announcing to everyone Lorio was my father. Perhaps he was. I’ll never know. But it stopped me anyway, stopped me speaking to you as I meant. Now – well, does Lorio even matter now? We matter.’
I looked at her, and I was almost frightened – only it wasn’t fear—
‘Claidi,’ she said, ‘my mother was a slave.’
‘Mine too,’ I said, because she paused. ‘Not that I know who she was.’
Dengwi nodded. ‘I know you don’t. But I did know my mother a while. She said she’d had two children, but by different fathers. I came from the “special” father (Lorio?) but the other kid’s father was a slave like mum.’
‘I remember you spoke to me once about your sister. You said she’d been whipped and almost died.’
‘Sorry, Claidi. I was lying then. I wanted to make you really fight against being whipped, because I thought you had a chance – and I was right. No, at that time I believed my sister had never been old enough to be whipped. Mum had said she died soon after she was born. But then, when I was with Jizania that night, before the rebellion – she told me my mother was the one who’d been lying. My mother was forced to lie – to say her first baby died. Jizania knew for sure, because she was the one who forced Mum to do it. And why? Jizania had wanted that child to take the place of another one, a royal one. Twilight’s child by Fengrey.’
I, the Powerful One, stood as I always do in the end, mouth dropped open.
I couldn’t even ask. Dengwi said it anyway.
‘My mother’s other child, the one born the year before I was – was you. We’re sisters. Half-sisters. Is that enough?’
That then is why Ustareth wanted to bring Dengwi here, make her go through all the tests too, see if, like me, she has this Power. And U ‘holds great hopes’ for Dengwi.
Well, so do I. Probably not the same ones.
I’m shy of her, though. Really shy. She too?
No wonder she wanted to wait to tell me.
Jizania – oh that meddling Old Woman.
(I know from Dengwi, too, why Jizania hates Jade Leaf. Seems the ever-faithful love-match of Twilight and Fengrey – wasn’t, quite. Jade Leaf is his other daughter – and not by Twilight, of course, but that other princess called Shimra, Twilight’s great friend! Oh, it’s typical.)
We walked about in the darkening dusk Hall. It’s very grand, the Hall. When Winter sees it, she’ll approve.
D and I didn’t say much. A tiny bit about her – our – mother – but she scarcely remembers her – and it sounds so awful and wickedly sad – so we left that really for another time. And then we murmured things like, The swallows are extraordinary, aren’t they?
Eventually, ‘You don’t mind about Venn?’ she said.
‘You and him? Oh, no.’
I knew, Dengwi, I knew even before the two of you quite did, spying on you, not meaning to—
‘Perhaps,’ she said generously, ‘he sees something of you in me.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘he just really likes you and has fallen for you – and needs you
, especially now. You like him?
She smiled. ‘Mmm. I do.’
From a window, we saw Ngarbo and Winter furiously rowing on the lawn. Enjoying doing it very much. Will Winter feel she has to pretend she’s jealous of Dengwi now?
But, ‘Oh look – Ngarbo’s kissing her,’ said Dengwi as we craned from the window. ‘Probably the only way,’ I suggested, ‘to shut her up.’
All this love, these kisses, making up – something in the air?
Only not for everyone. Not for Ustareth. Venn. Argul?
But D and I are giggling as we spy openly through the window on N and W. For a minute we’re – sisters. Feel that. Start back scared. We’ll have to learn this one.
And Venn and Argul meanwhile, She has graciously given them to us (like in the Hulta marriage ceremony, where the Old Man and Old Woman marry the groom to the bride, the bride to the groom.) They’re Ours.
We must keep them safe.
Supper appeared on a table in a wide room. Lamps had been lit, the usual Ustareth light that comes on its own and doesn’t flicker. We wandered in and out, picking at the food.
Outside the windows, one of the volcanoes had a little light-show that did flicker quite a bit, but not for long.
There’s an astRolabe in this room. I remember the other one, with Venn. I know how to spell it now.
Venn appeared, took me aside. He apologized to me for saying he was still after me, when we were all on the way here, and then apologized for not being after me any more.
‘Changing partners,’ I said. I thought of how I’d been over Nemian, and then found Argul. I’m not going to think at all about when I was with Venn at the Rise and felt so close to him. And I’m not jealous of Dengwi. That was just something stupid, fleeting. I like the way they are. (I only wish Venn and Argul could get to know each other – but I can sense, well, I can see that’s not going to happen.)
Anyway, after all this, Venn didn’t know what else to say to me, so I rescued him by mentioning Dengwi – and then he found everything to say, stopping him was much harder.
Ustareth didn’t come to eat. Nor did Argul. I’d put on the diamond ring again. I’d put on a really good dress he likes that Yinyay made me ages ago.
I got nervous, and in the end I went out on to the terrace, and there he was, coming up through the orchard. So, I went down to meet him.
My friend, if you’re still reading this, let me say I’m sorry, too, for not being able to tell you, after all this, what Venn and Ustareth said to each other, or what Argul and Ustareth said. I wouldn’t spy on them, and neither of them has told me anything, really, beyond what’s obvious. So I don’t know. I hope you’ll understand. Please do.
‘Beautiful evening,’ said Argul.
‘Yes.’
I took his arm, and we walked in the orchard, between the trees and the woolly boulders of resting sheep, under the stars.
‘I’m going back, Claidi,’ he said, ‘to my – to our people, to the Hulta. I know what I said, but that’s changed. Will you mind that, going back? I know they gave you a rough time when they believed all that Wolf Tower rubbish about you – we’ll put them right. They should know the mistake they made about you. You’re nodding.’
‘Yes, I don’t mind if we go back.’
‘Good. I may not be needed as leader now, even so I’ll get something to do. Hulta don’t waste things or people. Is that all right as well?’
After I’d told him again it was, he said, ‘This is because of her, really. She wouldn’t risk going back, and I haven’t. She could have taken the chance. I can, and I’m going to. What did she think we’d do to her?’
Later, he said, ‘I’ve forgiven her. That’s a strange way of putting it – her way. I believe what she told me about why she left us. It’s like her. The kind part is, by telling me, she’s given me back the mother I had, the one who was wonderful, and that I didn’t lose when she died, not completely, but totally lost when all this came up, and I knew she’d lied to us all, to my father, and to me. You think, was it all a He then? But no, it wasn’t. And I’ve got Zeera back again, in my past. But. I don’t know this one, now. This one is Ustareth. She looks like my mother could look, acts like her. But she’s nothing to do with me.’
And later again, when I’d told him about Dengwi and me, he said Dengwi must come to our wedding. ‘Yes, Claidi, because we’ll get married again, in Hulta style. You in a green and white dress riding your bride-horse. We’ll do it right, the way it should have been.’ (Can you get married to the same person twice? Well I don’t see why not.) He says he saw at once the likeness between Dengwi and me. ‘More in the way you do certain things, your expressions.’ Can this be true?
Argul and I went back down the slope to Yinyay, and even later than that, I took out Dagger’s gift to me, her Hulta dagger, and laid it across the pretty Peshamban marriage certificate, like a promise.
WOLF WING
Next morning, Jade Leaf came to the door of Yinyay.
There she was.
‘Well,’ she said, screwing up her face at me. For a minute, you could see, she was back in the old jolly days when she could scream at and beat me and have me whipped to death. Then it all came home to her, poor thing, how nothing was like that any more. And – that she was afraid of me. She wilted. ‘Uss – Ustareth s-says … will you please come up to the house, please.’
She’s the maid – the slave.
I’m the Lady.
She means nothing any more.
We went up to the house.
Ustareth was sitting in her own library, which is small but packed with books and objects.
‘Before you leave, and I know, of course, you’re all leaving – if I hadn’t Winter has graciously told me – I wanted to speak to you one more time. No, not to everyone else. Only you, Claidi.’
I braced myself for one further test. But in a way, it was difficult to be stand-offish. I’d seen all through her for a little while, she’d let me. And now I could see how she blossomed when I was there. She likes me, likes being with me. Of course I know why. I – and Dengwi – are the closest she can get now, to her sons. (Which may explain why she paired them off as she did, Dengwi with Venn, Winter safely with Ngarbo. Or did Ustareth only see, watching us all so intently, signs of attachment I missed?)
However, the fact she likes me can’t make me hate her, can it. I almost wish—
‘Perhaps you’ll invite us back,’ I lamely said.
‘Claidi, at any time, any one of you is welcome here. Oh, even Winter, perhaps. But particularly you, you and Argul. I don’t think Venn will ever come here again.’
She looked – not distressed – just – grave.
‘That isn’t what I want to tell you,’ she said. ‘There are three things.’
‘The magical number in stories.’
‘Perhaps the scientific number. First, I think you’ll use your own Power sensibly. When he takes you back among the Hulta’ (she knows, she knows everything always) ‘then be very careful. Not that they’ll harm you, only they may fear what you can do. What you are. Even your Tower-ship is going to trouble them.’
I nodded. Argul and I had already discussed making Yin pocket-size, at least to start with. How odd though, it seems she didn’t know that—
‘And also be careful elsewhere, Claidi. There are other scientific marvels scattered about, not mine – old weird and wonderful things that you, and your Power, may wake up as you did the statues in the Grove.’
‘We saw an Eye-gate,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Things like that. Always take care. Although you can protect yourself from any attack, so far my son can’t do so through Power alone. And your people can’t, either.’ (She speaks as if I’ll be Queen of the Hulta, but the Hulta don’t have Queens – their Magician, then. Yes, I’d thought of that already. Being to the Hulta a New Ustareth—)
‘Secondly, Claidi, another surprise, I’m afraid. Perhaps unwelcome.’
‘Which is?
’
‘You are not a slave, but purely of a royal line.’
‘WHAT?’ I jumped up. ‘But Dengwi—’
She raised her gentle, powerful hand. I sat, and listened.
‘Think of what happened at the House,’ Ustareth said. ‘The slaves and servants threw down their masters. They let some of the masters stay. Although work there is now shared, at times the masters get much the worst of it. When the sewage needs treating, who do you suppose gets that task? The Free Slaves? No, it will be the fallen princes, like Flindel and Kerp. Why else did so many of the royalty choose to leave?
‘And all this, Claidi, has happened before. Long ago. Even before the time of the Towers. There was a day when all the masters were overthrown in every place, and made into slaves. While the servant-slaves of that time became the princes and princesses. The positions were merely reversed. And from that slave-race-made-master, come the royal Towers, from that slave race come the Princess Ironel, and Jizania, and I come from it, too. Dengwi, whose father is a prince, therefore had for her father a slave. Her mother, and yours – the real slave – was of the real and original blood-royal. And so, Claidi, I fear you’re truly a princess, since both your parents were slaves. And perhaps you’ll become a Queen.’
So there I was again, gaping. I, the Powerful Princess, I who would be a Queen.
Is it true? Maybe. Maybe …
Oh, well.
‘Last of all, the third magical thing I have to tell you.’
‘Must you?’
She laughed. Then I did too.
She said, ‘This third thing you may like. All through this business, they’ve tried, one way and another, to take away your name. Yes, you were given Winter’s intended name, the name of Twilight’s daughter – Claidis. But then the name, for you, got changed to Claidi. And Claidi is a name in its own right. It comes from an ancient language, ancient as when the Towers were first fighting in the City, a language used for natural things – the land, the animals – and for magic – a language used by those who had psychic Power. Isn’t that strange?’