To Dave

Diana Wynne Jones

Diana, her family, friends and her readers

Ursula Jones

Cover

Title Page

Map

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Afterword

Also by Diana Wynne Jones

Copyright

About the Publisher

Porridge is my Aunt Beck’s answer to everything. The morning after my initiation proved to be such a complete failure, she gave me porridge with cream and honey – an unheard-of luxury in our little stone house – and I was almost too upset to enjoy it. I sat shivering and my teeth chattered, as much with misery as with cold, and pushed the stuff about with my spoon, until Aunt Beck wrapped me in a big fluffy plaid and told me sharply that it was not the end of the world.

“Or not yet,” she added. “And your pigtail is almost in the honey.”

This made me sit up a little. Yesterday I had washed my hair in cold spring water full of herbs – washed all over in it as well – and it was not an experience I wanted to repeat. I had gone without food too all day before that dreadful washing, with the result that I felt damp and chilly all over, and tender as a snail’s horns, when the time came for me to go down into the Place. And I hadn’t got any drier or warmer as the night went on.

The Place, you see, is like a deep trench in the ground lined with slabs of stone with more stone slabs atop of it covered with turf. You slide down a leafy ramp to get into it and Aunt Beck pulls another stone slab across the entrance to shut you in. Then you sit there in nothing but a linen petticoat waiting for something to happen – or, failing that, for morning. There is nothing to smell but stone and damp and distant turf, nothing to feel but cold – particularly underneath you as you sit – and nothing to see but darkness.

You are supposed to have visions, or at least to be visited by your guardian animal. All the women of my family have gone down into the Place when they were twelve years old and the moon was right, and most of them seem to have had the most interesting time. My mother saw a line of princes walking slowly past her, all silvery and pale and crowned with gold circlets. I remember her telling me before she died. Aunt Beck seems to have seen a whole menagerie of animals – all the lithe kind like snakes, lizards, greyhounds and running deer, which strikes me as typical – and, in addition, she says, all the charms and lore she had ever learned fell into place in her head, into a marvellous, sensible pattern. She has been a tremendously powerful magic-maker ever since.

Nothing like that happened to me. Nothing happened at all.

No, I tell a lie. I messed it up. And I didn’t dare tell Aunt Beck. I sat there and I sat there with my arms wrapped around my knees, trying to keep warm and trying not to notice the numb cold seeping up from the hard corners of my bones that I was sitting on, and trying above all not to be scared silly about what was going to happen. The worst and most frightening thing was being shut in underground. I didn’t dare move because I was sure I would find that the side had moved inwards and the stone roof had moved down. I just sat, shivering. A lot of the time I had my eyes squeezed shut, but some of the time I forced myself to open my eyes. I was afraid that the visions would come and I wouldn’t see them because my eyes were shut.

And you know how your eyes play tricks in the dark? After a long, long time, probably at least one eternity, I thought that there was a light coming into the Place from somewhere. And I thought, Bless my soul, it’s morning! Aunt Beck must have overslept and forgotten to come and let me out at dawn! This was because I seemed to have sat there for such hours that I was positive it must be nearly lunchtime by then. So I scrambled myself around in the faint light, scraping one elbow and bumping both knees, until I was facing the ramp. The faint light did, honestly, seem to be coming in round the edges of the stone slab Aunt Beck had heaved across at the top.

That was enough to put me into a true panic. I raced up that leafy slope on my hands and knees and tried to draw the slab aside. When it wouldn’t budge, I screamed at it to open and let me out! At once! And I heaved at it like a mad thing.

Rather to my surprise, it slid across quite easily then and I shot out of the Place like a rabbit. There I reared up on my knees more astonished than ever. It was bright moonlight. The full moon was riding high and small and almost golden, casting frosty whiteness on every clump of heather and every rock and making a silver cube of our small house just down the hill. I could see the mountains for miles in one direction and in the other the silver-dark line of the sea. It was so moon-quiet that I could actually hear the sea. It was making that small secret sound you hear inside a seashell. And it was as cold out there as if the whiteness on the heather was really the frost it looked like.

I gave a great shudder of cold and shame as I looked up at the moon again. From the height of it I could see it was the middle of the night still. I had only been inside the Place for three hours at the most. And I couldn’t possibly have seen the moon from inside. It was in the wrong part of the sky.

At this it came to me that the pale light I’d seen in there had really been the start of a vision. I had made an awful mistake and interrupted it. The idea so frightened me that I plunged back down inside and seized the stone slab and heaved mightily and pulled it across the opening anyhow, before I slid right back down to the stone floor and crouched there desperately.

“Oh, please come back!” I said to the vision. “I’ll be good. I won’t move an inch now.”

But nothing else happened. It seemed quite dark in the Place and much warmer now, out of the wind, but though I crouched there for hours with my eyes wide open I never saw another thing.

In the dawn, when I heard Aunt Beck drawing back the slab, I gave a great start of terror, because I was sure she would notice that the stone had been moved. But it was still half dark and I suppose it was the last thing she expected. Anyway, she did not seem to see anything unusual. Besides, she says I was fast asleep. She had to slide down beside me and shake my shoulder. But I heard her do that. I feel so deceitful. And such a failure.

“Well, Aileen,” she said as she helped me up the ramp – I was very stiff by then – “what happened to you?”

“Nothing!” I wailed and I burst into tears.

Aunt Beck always gets quite brisk when people cry. She hates having to show sympathy. She put a coat around me and marched me away downhill, saying, “Stop that noise now, Aileen. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that. Maybe it’s too soon for you. It happens. My grandmother – your great-grandmother Venna that is – had to go down into the Place three times before she saw anything and then it was only a wee scrap of a hedgehog.”

“But maybe I’m no good,” I blubbered. “Maybe the magic’s diluted in me because my father was a foreigner.”

“What blather,” said Aunt Beck. “Your father was a bard from Gallis and your mother chose him with great care. ‘Beck,’ she said to me, ‘this man has the true gift and I am determined to have a child from him with gifts even greater.’ Mind you, after he went the way of Prince Alasdair, this didn’t prevent her losing her head over the Priest of Kilcannon.”

And dying of it, I thought miserably. My mother died trying to bring a brother for me into the world. The baby died too and Aunt Beck, who is my mother’s younger sister, has had to bring me up since I was five years old.

“But never fear,” Aunt Beck went on. “I have noted all along that you have the makings of a great magic-worker. It will come. We’ll just have to try again at the next full moon.”

Saying which, she led me indoors to the sound of the cow mooing and the hens clucking in the next room, and sat me down in front of the porridge. I think much of my misery, as I sat and pushed rivers of cream into pools of honey, was at the thought of having to go through all that again.

“Eat it!” snapped Aunt Beck.

So I did, and it made me feel somewhat better – better enough anyway to trudge to my narrow little bed and fall asleep there until the sun had turned back down the sky in the early afternoon. I might have slept even longer, except that someone came knocking at Aunt Beck’s door.

“Open!” he said pompously. “Open in the name of the King!”

It turned out to be the Logran boy, very proud of the way his voice had broken all deep and manly. Only last week he was squeaking and roaring all over the place and people were laughing at him even more than usual. Aunt Beck opened the door and he came striding in, looking quite grand in a new uniform with the heavy pleats of the King’s plaid swinging over one shoulder.

People up at the castle may despise him and call him “The Ogre from Logra”, but I will say this for my distant cousin the King: he keeps the boy well provided for. He is always well-dressed and is as well-educated as I am – and I go up to the castle for lessons three days a week – and I think they train him in arms too. Anyway, he had a fine sword belted across his skinny hips over the combed-out sheepskin of his new jacket. I suspect he was prouder of that sword than he was even of his big new voice.

He came marching in in all his splendour and then stopped dead, staring and stammering. He had never been in our house before. First, he was obviously dismayed at how small the room was, with me propped up on one elbow in bed just beyond the cooking fire, and then he was astonished at Aunt Beck’s paintings. Aunt Beck is quite an artist. She says it is the chief gift of us people of Skarr. Our room is surrounded in paintings – there are portraits of me, of my poor dead mother and of any shepherd or fisherman who is rash enough to agree to sit still for her. My favourite is a lovely group of the castle children gathered squabbling and giggling on the steps up to the hall with the light all slantways over them in golden zigzags up the steps. But there are landscapes too, mountains, moors and sea, and several paintings of boats. Aunt Beck has even painted the screen that hides her bed to look like one of the walls, with shelves of jars and vials and a string of onions on it.

This boy – his name is a strange Logran one that sounds like Ogo, which accounts for his nickname – stared at all of it with his big smooth head thrust forward and his white spotty face wrinkled in astonishment. He had to stare hard at the screen before he could decide that this was a painting too. His ugly face flushed all pink then because he had thought it was a real wall at first.

“What’s the matter, Ogo?” said Aunt Beck. Like everyone else, she is a bit sarcastic with him.

“Th-these,” he stammered. “This is all so beautiful, so real. And—” he pointed to the group of children on the steps – “I am in this one.”

He was too, though I had never realised it before. He was the smallest one, being shoved off the bottom step by a bigger boy who was probably my cousin Ivar. Aunt Beck is very clever. She had done them all from quick charcoal sketches and none of them had ever known they were being painted.

A smug, gratified expression gathered in the creases of Aunt Beck’s lean face. She is not immune to praise, but she likes everyone to think she is strict and passionless. “Don’t forget to give your message,” she said. “What was it?”

“Oh yes.” Ogo stood to attention, with his head almost brushing the beams. He had grown a lot recently and was even taller than Aunt Beck. “I am to fetch both of you to the castle for dinner,” he said. “The King wishes to consult with you.”

“In that case,” said Aunt Beck, “will you take a mug of my beer and sit outside while Aileen gets herself dressed?”

Ogo shot a flustered look somewhere in the direction of the shelves over my head. He was very embarrassed at seeing me in bed wearing next to nothing and had been avoiding looking anywhere near me up to then. “If she’s ill,” he blustered, “she ought not to come.”

“You’re very considerate,” said Aunt Beck, “but she’s not ill – just a little tired – and we’ll both be ready directly. Outside with you now.” And she pushed a mug into his large pink hands and steered him out of the door again to the bench that catches the sun and the view of the sea. “Hurry up,” she said to me as she clapped the door shut behind him. “The blue dress and the best plaid and don’t forget to wash first. I’ll do your hair when you’re ready.”

I got up with a groan as Aunt Beck vanished behind the painted screen. I was stiff all over and still inclined to shiver. And Aunt Beck is so fussy about washing. I felt I had washed half to death yesterday and here she was expecting me to get wet all over again. But I didn’t dare disobey. I knew from bitter experience that she could always tell when I’d only wet the bowl and the face flannel. She never said she knew, but the hair-combing that followed was always punishing.

I dressed gloomily, wondering what King Kenig wanted now. He consults Aunt Beck once a week anyway, but he seldom bothers to include me. In fact, there’s quite a battle there because Aunt Beck nearly always takes me along as part of my education. Then my distant cousin King Kenig scowls and rakes at his beard, and snarls something about not needing the infantry, and Aunt Beck just gives him one of her diamond-hard smiles, very sweetly, and I usually have to stay, listening to the King asking about the omens for a raid on his neighbours or what to do about the crops this year.

The only interesting times are when Aunt Beck calls for the silver bowl to be filled and does a scrying for him. I like to watch that – not that I can ever see anything in the bowl, but I like to watch my aunt seeing. It gives you an exciting sort of shiver up your back when she says, in a strange, groaning voice, “I see fires up on the Peak of Storms and cattle stampeding.” She’s always right too. When she said that, the clans of Cormack raided from the next kingship, but thanks to Aunt Beck, our people were ready for them. I even got to see a bit of the fighting.

Anyway, as you will have gathered from this, Aunt Beck is a Wise Woman as well as a magic-worker, as all the women of our family are. The men born to us marry outside the family. This is how King Kenig comes to be a distant cousin. My great-great-grandmother’s brother married the sister of the then King and their son was King Kenig’s grandfather. At one time, our family was a large one, reputed to be the best Wise Women on the entire huge island of Skarr, but that was in the time of the Twelve Sisters of Kenneal. Now Aunt Beck and I are the only ones left. But Aunt Beck is still said to be the best there is.

She looked the part too, when she came out from behind the screen in her best dress and set about combing out my hair. My hair was still damp and there was a lot of tugging to get the stray bits of herb out of it.

It is a couple of miles to the castle, over the moor and down to the foreland, but it seemed longer because a mist came down and hid all the distances. I was tired. I trudged through the heather behind the other two, feeling small and untidy and a failure. Some of the time I was trying not to cry at the idea of having to spend another night in the Place in a month’s time.

Even if I did get initiated, then I knew with a dreadful certainty that I would never, ever be the equal of Aunt Beck. Oh, I had memorised the cantrips and procedures all right, and I knew all my herbs and weatherlore, but it takes more than that to be a proper magicwoman. I had only to look at my aunt’s tall, narrow figure striding elegantly ahead, with her plaid stylishly not quite wrapping her small, dark, neatly-plaited head, to know that. Aunt Beck’s best boots had red cork heels – they cost the earth because they came from Logra before the blockade – and never once did a splash of mud or spray of heather cling to those gleaming scarlet cubes.

My feet were muddy all over already. My hair is a messy pale brown and nothing seems to stop wisps of it separating from my pigtails. They flapped beside my face, fuzzy already. And I am short for my age. Even the younger children in the castle were taller than me now and I couldn’t see myself ever being tall or wise. I shall always be that little Aileen with the freckles and the buck teeth and no real gift at all, I thought sadly. Damn it, even Ogo looked more imposing than me.

Ogo had new shoes that laced up over his smart new trews to his knees. They must have taken a deal of leather to make because Ogo’s feet are enormous. They looked even bigger on the ends of his skinny, laced-up legs. I could see he was treading very carefully so as not to spoil them in the peat. I guessed he had promised the shoemaker to keep that pair good at least.

Poor Ogo. Everyone at the castle scolded him or jeered. He is a foreigner and different from the rest. As far as I knew, he had been left behind ten years ago when the magicmen of Logra cast the spells that made it impossible for anyone from Skarr – or Bernica, or Gallis for that matter – to cross the sea to Logra. Logra might be on the moon now for all that we can do to get to it.

We were at war with Logra then. We always are. All the same, there were quite a few families of Lograns on Skarr, traders and ambassadors, and priests and so forth, who all fled to boats on the night of the spellcasting. One or two others got left behind as well as Ogo: the mad old spinning-woman up in Kilcannon for one, and the man who claimed to be a scholar whom the Cormacks arrested as a spy, but Ogo was the only child. I believe he was five at the time. I suppose his relatives were traders or something who fled with the rest and simply forgot him. I think the worse of them for that. According to Ogo, some of them were magicmen, but that’s as maybe. If they were, they can’t have been half as good magic-workers as Aunt Beck. She never forgets anything. Ogo was lucky that King Kenig took him in.

Meanwhile, Aunt Beck went with her lovely swinging stride and Ogo marched like a pair of scissors beside her, down the hill to the river and across the stepping stones there, while I came galumphing after.

Dark shapes came out of the fog to us on the other side. “There they are now,” said my distant cousin Ivar. We had not seen him for the fog until then. “Ogo seems to have got it right for once. You can strike up now, fellows.”

“What is this?” demanded Aunt Beck, standing like a ramrod on the last stepping stone with brown water swirling below her red heels. But her voice was nearly drowned out by the sudden squeal and chant from the top of the bank as at least four pipers started on the ‘March of Chaldea’.

I was quite as astonished as my aunt. An honour of pipes was quite unheard of, at least since the days when we were the Twelve Sisters. But I could now see that there were six pipers up there – more than they had in the castle.

“I said, what is THIS?” my aunt yelled.

“Nothing, my dear cousin. Don’t be alarmed,” said Ivar. He came right to the bank and offered her his arm. “The King insisted on it for some reason. He said the ladies must be brought in with due honour.”

“Hmph,” said Aunt Beck. But she took his arm and stepped on up the bank. Ivar is a favourite of hers.

I felt better for seeing Ivar there too. He is dark and skinny, with a long neck with a big Adam’s apple in it. I consider him very handsome with his beaky, jagged profile, dark eyes and jutting cheekbones. And he makes good jokes too. Although he doesn’t know it yet, I have chosen him to be my husband when the time comes and, until then, I feel free to admire him greatly in secret. All the same, I wondered, as I scrambled up the bank, what had got into King Kenig, Ivar’s father, to escort us with pipers like this. I know the King believes in doing everything the old way, now that Logra is off our backs, but this was ridiculous!

In fact, I was quite glad of those pipers. There is something about a night with no sleep that weakens your legs. It is quite a steep climb up to the castle and without the steady, skirling beat ahead of me I would have made heavy going of it. Or I might not have got there at all. The fog was now so thick that it could have been easy to miss the way, for all I knew it so well.

As it was, I never saw the pipers clearly, just followed them until, under the wet black walls of the castle, they peeled smoothly away, all except one – Old Ian – who led us solemnly up the steps and through into the castle hall.

All was set for dinner there, everyone seated and the serving-people standing by the walls. There was a lot of yellow light from more candles than I could count. This surprised me greatly. King Kenig is even more fiercely economical than Aunt Beck – and she is a byword for it in the countryside. Old Ian led us solemnly up to the top table, piping the whole way, and stopped when we got there, halfway through the tune.

Ivar dug his elbow into Ogo and Ogo bowed to King Kenig sitting there. “I-I’ve brought the ladies to you, sire,” he said.

“Round by Kilcannon Head, I imagine. You certainly took your time,” the King said. “Get away to your place now.”

Ogo turned around with his face very white and the eyes and mouth in it set in straight lines. I have seen him look like that often, and often after the children have been jeering at him. Once or twice, I have seen him, wearing that same straight face, standing in a lonely part of the castle with tears rushing down his cheeks. As he disappeared to a distant table, I thought the King could have been kinder.

Aunt Beck thought so too. “There is a fog outside,” she said.

“Never mind. You’re here. Come up, come up,” said the King expansively. “Take a seat by me. Both of you.”

I was awed. I have eaten at the castle many times, but never at the top table. Ivar had to push me up the step and into a chair. There I sat and stared around. The hall from here looked small and deep and the tapestries on the walls looked terrible. King Kenig had ordered the wall paintings covered up with embroidery because he said that this was the old way. The trouble was that most of the ladies knew nothing about embroidery and had had to learn as they went along. Their mistakes were very evident in the bright candlelight.

But it was quite possible that Queen Mevenne had arranged it on purpose as a protest. There she sat, along from the empty chair beside the King, looking like a dark night of the soul. She is quite handsome and her hair is much browner than Aunt Beck’s, but she carries with her such an aura of darkness that you could swear she had raven hair and blue skin like a corpse’s. Aunt Beck says “Nonsense!” when I tell her this, but I notice she seldom talks to the Queen. The castle children whisper that Queen Mevenne is a witch and murmur of queer doings at the dark of the moon. Aunt Beck says “Nonsense!” to this too, but I am not so sure. It is one drawback to my thoughts of marrying Ivar, knowing I should have a mother-in-law like Mevenne.

Beyond, with another empty chair in between, sat Ivar’s elder brother Donal, heir to the throne, with candlelight shooting ruddy beams from his beard and his ranks of gold bracelets, and making a white flash of his teeth as he smiled at something his mother was saying. I do not like Donal either. He looks like a barbarian, but he is a very smooth and clever man indeed.

Beyond Donal and another empty chair was the old Dominie who taught us. His eyebrows were frowning out like crags …

I suppose I should have been wondering about all those empty chairs, but before I had begun to think about them properly, pipes sounded again with a dreadful sudden loudness and, to my astonishment, King Kenig stood up. Everyone naturally stood up with him. We all looked to the door at the back of the table where a procession came pacing through, following the pipers.

At first, all I noticed was a crowd of splendid robes. Then I saw that the foremost of them contained none other than the Priest of Kilcannon, very tall and thin and sour. His eyebrows rival the Dominie’s. My heart sank at the sight of him, as it always does. I always have a horrible moment when I think that this man might have been my stepfather, had my mother lived. He is the kind who bleaches everything with virtue. But I had never known the King stand to him before. For a moment, I wondered if King Kenig had taken up religion as part of his effort to bring back the old ways. Then I saw among the other robes one of red and gold and the elderly, tired man, kind but stately, who was wearing it. He was the only person there in a crown.

“High King Farlane,” Aunt Beck murmured beside me. “Ogo might just have warned us.”

But Ogo wouldn’t, I thought. He had expected us to know. Logra only has the one king, and no one ever could get it through Ogo’s mind that lesser kings like Kenig were any kind of king at all. When Ogo said “the King”, he had meant the High King over all Chaldea, naturally, and we had not understood him – even I hadn’t, and I had argued with Ogo about it often enough.

When the piping and the grating of chairs and benches had stopped, King Farlane was standing behind the special tall carved chair left empty for him.

“We are called here on a matter of justice,” he said. “This must be settled before we can go any further. We invoke the favours of all high gods and lesser spirits and thereby open this hearing. Will Kinnock, Priest of Kilcannon, please state his case?”

“I certainly will,” the Priest said grimly. “I accuse Donal, Prince of Conroy and Kilcannon, of robbery, arson and murder.”

“Denied,” Donal said calmly, and he turned his arm around to admire the bracelets on it, as if he were a little bored by the matter.

“Denied?” snarled the Priest. His black eyes glared from under his great tufts of black eyebrow. “Do you stand there and have the gall to deny that, two nights ago, you and your band of ruffians rode up to Kilcannon and set fire to my house?”

Quite a number of people gasped at this, including Ivar. He turned to Donal, glowing with surprise and delight. Ivar shows a regrettable tendency to admire his elder brother. And a childish one. After the first glow, Ivar’s face went dark and peevish. I heard him mutter, “Why didn’t you let me come too?”

“Answer me!” thundered the Priest. “Before I bring down the curse of the gods upon you!”

Donal continued to turn bracelets around on his arm. “Oh, I don’t deny that,” he said casually. “It’s the charge of robbery and murder I take exception to. Who died?”

“Do you deny you went off with all my sheep? Where are my goats and oxen, you bandit?” raved the Priest. He was shaking with anger so that his fine robe rippled.

“The animals?” said Donal. He shrugged – which made the Priest madder than ever. “We simply drove them off. You’ll find them wandering the hills somewhere if you care to go and look.”

“You – you – you—!” stuttered the Priest.

“I repeat,” Donal said, “who died?”

“A fair question,” King Farlane put in. “Was anyone killed?”

The Priest looked as if he had bitten on a peppercorn. “Why, no,” he admitted. “I was out with my novices rehearsing for the full moon.”

“Then there is no charge of murder to meet,” King Farlane pointed out. “And it seems that there was no robbery either. There is only the charge of burning not denied. Prince Donal, what reason had you for burning this man’s house?”

“Reason, sire?” Donal said blandly. “Why, I thought the Priest was inside it of course. It is a great disappointment to me to see the wretch strutting in here alive and snarling.”

I thought the Priest was going to dance with rage at this. If I had liked Donal more, I would have cheered.

“Sire,” said the Priest, “this barefaced wickedness—”

“I object,” said Donal, “to being accused of wickedness. What has religion got to do with right and wrong?”

“You snivelling sinner!” thundered the Priest. “Religion has everything to do with right and wrong! Let me tell you, Prince, your heathen ways will bring this fair island of Skarr to her knees if—”

“And what have my morals to do with politics?” snapped Donal. “What a man does is his own to do, and no concern of the gods or the kingdom.”

“This,” shouted the Priest, “is the speech of one who has wilfully taken evil to be his good. I denounce you before the High King, your father and all these witnesses!”

By this time, King Kenig – not to speak of most of us standing at the tables – was looking extremely uncomfortable and making little movements as if he wanted to intervene. But the High King stood there, turning his tired, kindly eyes from the Priest’s face to Donal’s, until the Priest raised both his bony arms and seemed to be going to call curses down on the castle.

“Enough,” King Farlane said. “Prince Donal, you are baiting this man. Priest, what damage has the fire done to your house?”

The Priest shuddered to a halt and took his arms down. “Not as much as this evil young man hoped,” he said slowly. “It is built of solid stone, roof and all. But the door and window frames, being wood, are mostly burnt.”

“And what of the inside?” the High King asked gravely.

“Luckily,” said the Priest, “the roof sprang a leak in the rain and most of it was wet inside. This godless animal threw a brand inside, but it simply charred the floor.”

“So what cost would you estimate for repairs?” the High King continued.

“Six ounces of gold,” the Priest said promptly. Everyone gasped. “Including the leaking roof,” he added.

King Farlane turned to Donal. “Pay him that amount, Prince.”

“I protest, sire,” said Donal. “He has gold enough off us in temple dues. A more grasping person—”

“Pay him,” repeated the King, “and the matter will be thereby settled for good.”

“Sire.” Donal bowed his head dulcetly and stripped off one of his many bracelets, which he handed to the person next to him at the table. As the bracelet went flashing from hand to hand towards the Priest, Donal said, pretending to be anxious, “Pray have it weighed, Priest. It may be nearer seven ounces.”

“No need,” said the High King. “The case is concluded.”

The Priest received the bracelet, glowering, and it seemed we could all sit down to eat then. But I doubt if the Priest enjoyed his dinner much. He looked sour enough to turn milk.

“Hm,” said Aunt Beck. “Hm.” She took a small rye loaf off a towering basket of them and pushed the basket on to me. “That was all very nicely staged, wasn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” I whispered. “Donal and the Priest hate one another, everyone knows that.”

“True, but there had to be a glaring reason, I guess, for the High King to come here,” my aunt observed. “There will be a private reason too. As we have been specially summoned, we may well discover what it is before long.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I have in mind,” my aunt mused, tearing her loaf apart and reaching for the butter, “two things. First, that our cousin Donal, while addicted to jewellery, seldom wears quite so many bracelets. That man can scarcely lift his arms. And second that I have never known our cousin the King trust Ogo with a message before. Planning lies behind both these things. You’ll see.”

Blow me down, she was right! We had scarcely finished a splendid dinner, entirely without porridge, to my great joy, and the two kings had scarcely risen and withdrawn to some private place, when Donal passed casually along behind our chairs. He was indeed holding his arms rather straight down by his sides. “Ivar,” he murmured to his brother, “you and Beck and Aileen follow me, will you?”

We followed, across the platform and out by one of the doors at the back of it. There Donal led us on a corkscrew path through private corridors I did not know, and finally up a curving flight of stairs to a heavy door.

“I have given out that Beck and Aileen have gone home,” he remarked over his shoulder as he rapped on the door.

“And why, pray?” murmured my aunt, not as if she expected an answer. I think she was just giving voice to her annoyance that Donal should so coolly organise her movements. Our family is used to coming and going as it pleases.

The door was opened by one of the robed attendants of the High King, who stood back and ushered us inside without a word. The room beyond was one I had never seen before with great windows that, but for the fog, would have given a wide view southwards over the sea. As it was, the fog was thinning and giving way to a red sunset, making the light quite confusing, since the room was lit with a tall lamp and many candles.

The High King was sitting with King Kenig on his right and Queen Mevenne on his left. Two more attendants stood in the background, but I scarcely looked at them. The other people in the room were the old Dominie and the Priest of Kilcannon. My heart began to thunder in my ears as I realised that great doings must be afoot, to cause Donal and the Priest to come together in the same small room.

Ivar was as astonished as I was. “What’s going on?” he demanded, making a hasty bow to the two kings.

“Please take a seat,” said the High King, “and we shall tell you.”

King Farlane was not a well man, I saw, as we sat on the low padded stools put ready in front of him. He was huddled in a royal plaid above his scarlet robes and someone had put a brazier near him for further warmth. But it was his face that showed his illness most. It was white, with a yellowish tinge, and the skin of it was very tight to the bones. What spare flesh there was had drawn into deep wrinkles of pain. But his tired eyes were not subdued by his disease. They gazed at us with a shrewdness and sanity which were almost startling.

“As you know,” he said to us – all of us, though I think he spoke chiefly to my aunt – “ten years ago, the magicians of Logra cast a spell on our islands of Chaldea so that no one from here, however hard they try, can get to Logra.” He nodded to the Priest, who was so grimly eager to speak that he was sidling in his seat.

“We have tried, gracious king,” the Priest burst out. “We have searched the whole of Skarr for some inkling of the spell. We have gone out – I myself have gone out in boats repeatedly – as far as the barrier in the sea, where the boats turn aside as though a current takes them, though there is nothing to be seen. And we have used every craft the gods grant us to break the spell. But we have found no way to break this spell.” He subsided, sort of shrinking into himself gloomily. “I have failed,” he said. “The gods are not pleased with me. I must fast and pray again.”

“There’s no need to reproach yourself,” King Farlane said.

Donal could obviously not resist muttering, “Och, man, leave your gods to punish you. If they are that angry, they can surely take away your next dinner for themselves.”

At this, our old Dominie gave Donal a mildly quelling look and turned his head questioningly to the High King. King Farlane nodded and the Dominie said, wagging his white eyebrows sadly, “I have had my failures too. It pains me, as a scholar, to say this, but I have now searched in every library on Skarr and journeyed to Bernica to search there too, without stumbling across a single hint of how this spell was constructed.”

Oh! I thought. This explained those lovely unexpected days when I had walked to the castle for my lessons to find all the other children rushing around the yard, shouting that old Dominie was on his travels again.

“On the other hand,” the Dominie continued, “the clue may lie all around us in the geography of our very islands.”

I sighed. The Dominie had a passion for geography. He was forever making us draw maps and explaining to us how the lie of the land influenced history: how this inlet made a perfect harbour and caused the town to grow, or how that lone mountain sheltered this valley and made it so fertile that wars were fought for it. Sure enough, he went on instructing everyone now.

“As you know,” he said, “our three islands form a crescent with Skarr to the north, Bernica due west and Gallis in the south, slanted south-eastwards, while Logra forms a very large wedge to the south-east. Now I have it in mind that the three Chaldean islands could be seen to form the sign for the dark of the moon, which also happens to be the sign for banishment. It would take no stretch of the imagination for the Lograns to see Logra as the full moon bearing the shield of banishment before it. The Lograns, as you know, went to war with us purely and simply because their gods told them it was their right to conquer Chaldea—”

This was too much for half the people there. They forgot the reverence that should be due to the High King and burst into protest. Donal contented himself with a sarcastic noise, but the Priest unshrank himself and snarled, “The Lograns will burn for their false beliefs!”

Aunt Beck, who was sitting in a demure and graceful attitude on her stool, which I wished I could emulate, with her red heels sweetly together and her bony, sensitive fingers clasped around her knees, tossed her small dark head and very nearly snorted. “There’s no gods to it,” she said. “It was human greed.”

And King Kenig said across her, “Gods, my left hambone, man! Our islands have gold and silver, tin and copper. Gallis has pearls and precious stone as well. What has Logra got? Only iron. And iron makes weapons to conquer the rest with.”

The Dominie stuck his lower lip out like a small child and his eyebrows bristled around at the rest of us. “When one talks of magic,” he said huffily, “the impossible is possible.”

“Indeed, yes,” the High King put in quickly. “Perhaps we should ask what Beck the Wise Woman has to say about the spell.”

He looked at my aunt, who bowed her head gracefully back. “Very little, I’m afraid, sire,” she said. “Bear in mind that I have had my sister’s child to care for and could not be going out in boats or ranging over Skarr. But I have scried and found no answer. I have put bonds on invisible spirits and sent them out all over Skarr.”

I watched Aunt Beck doing this. She claimed that all the islands swarmed with spirits, but I still found this hard to believe when I couldn’t see them, or hear what they reported when they came back.

“They could find nothing of the spell,” Aunt Beck said, “and nor could they find any way through to Logra. They all say it’s like a wall of glass in the sea between Logra and Chaldea. But they do tell me one thing that worries me. As you know, this world has four great guardians.” She looked to the Priest, who pinched his lips in and nodded grudgingly. “These guardians,” Aunt Beck said, “belong to North, South, East and West, but in the nature of things they each have one of our four islands to guard. Ours, as you know, in Skarr is of the North. Bernica is guarded by the West, Gallis by South. Logra should have East, but the spell has cut guardian off from guardian so completely that none of our three know if East even exists any more.”

“That’s not important,” King Kenig said curtly.

“I regard it as of the utmost importance,” Aunt Beck said.

“Well, it may be, it may be,” the King conceded. “But the main thing from a king’s point of view is that, while this magical blockade is in place, the Lograns can build ships and train armies in perfect peace. And, what is worse, they can send spies through to watch us, while we have no way of spying on them. This is why we’re all meeting here in such secrecy – fear of Logran spies.”

“It is indeed,” the High King agreed, “and of course we may not be seen to build ships or train soldiers because the Lograns hold a most valuable hostage in my son Alasdair. You are aware of that, are you?” he asked, turning to Ivar and me.

Maybe he thought we were too young to know, since I was three when Prince Alasdair was taken and Ivar was eight, but I cannot imagine how he thought we didn’t know. It was, even Aunt Beck grudgingly agrees, the most astounding piece of magic Logra ever did. She says it must have taken far more planning and clever timing than simply making the barricade.

About a year after the barricade was in place, Prince Alasdair – who must have been about Donal’s age then – was coming in from hunting with quite a crowd of courtiers, when, in the very courtyard of Castle Dromray, which is the High King’s seat here on Skarr, a tunnel somehow opened in space and soldiers came rushing in out of nowhere. They shot Prince Alasdair in the leg and then carried off every one of that hunting party, horses and all. People watched from the walls and windows of the castle, quite helpless. Long before they could get down to the courtyard, the tunnel was closed and everyone gone.

I know more about it than most because my father was one of that hunting party. I nodded. So did Ivar.

“And no news of Prince Alasdair ever after, I believe, sire,” Ivar said.

The High King lifted his head and gazed into the coals of the brazier a moment. “As to that,” he said, “we are not sure. No, indeed, we are not sure. Rumours, and rumours of rumours, continue to reach us. The last words were so definite that it seems to us and to all our advisors that there must be a crack or so in the wall between Chaldea and Logra.”

“And those words are, sire?” asked my aunt.

“That the spell can be breached and Prince Alasdair rescued,” the High King answered, “and that the answer can be found if a Wise Woman journeys from Skarr, through Bernica and Gallis, and enters Logra with a man from each island. This would seem to mean you, my lady Beck.”

“It does indeed,” my aunt replied drily. “And where are these words from, sire?”

“From a number of quarters,” said King Farlane. “As various as a fishing village at the east of Skarr, word from two of the five kings and queens in Bernica, and two priests and a hermit in Gallis.”

“Hm.” My aunt unwrapped her hands from her knees and put her chin in one. “The words always the same?” she asked.

“Almost exactly,” said the High King.

There was a moment of silence, in which I wondered what would become of me if Aunt Beck went off to Logra and never came back. The only good thing I could see was that no one would require me to go down to the Place then.

Then, as Aunt Beck drew in breath, almost certainly ready to say “Nonsense!”, the High King – whose gift, I was beginning to see, was to put his word in at the right moment – spoke again. He said, “Our plans are made, Wise Beck. You and your apprentice leave secretly this evening. We have a boat waiting for you over the hills in the pool of Illay, and our captain has our orders to sail for Bernica while we and our court journey back to Dromray, giving out that you are with us. This will deceive any spies.”

I have seldom seen my aunt discomposed, and never so discomposed as then. Her chin shot up out of her hand. “Go now?” she said. She looked from the sick king to the hearty, well one, King Kenig, and then to the Priest, the Dominie and Donal sitting admiring his bracelets again. There was almost panic in her face as she realised they were all in this together. She looked up at the expressionless men behind the High King’s chair. She even glanced at the Queen who, like Donal, was playing with a bracelet. “Aileen is too young to go,” she said. “She’s not even initiated yet.”

“She has heard our council,” the High King said gently. “If you like, we can take her to Dromray, but she must be closely confined there.”

I found my face jumping around from King Farlane to my aunt. It is awful when you sit there thinking the talk is all distant politics and then suddenly find it is going to change your whole life. I was on pins.

“I can’t go tonight,” my aunt said. “I have no clothes for the journey.”

The Queen spoke for the first time, smiling. “We thought of that,” she said. “We have clothes already packed for you and Aileen.”

Aunt Beck glanced from me to the Queen, but she still gave no indication of what she was going to do with me. Instead, she said politely, “Thank you, Mevenne. But I still can’t go. I have livestock to feed in my house – six hens, two pigs and the cow. I can’t let them die of neglect.”

“We thought of that too,” said King Kenig jovially. “My henwoman will take the hens and Ian the piper will see to the rest. Face it, Beck, you’re off to save all Chaldea, woman, even if it is at short notice.”

“So I see,” said my aunt. She took another unloving look around the various faces. “In that case,” she said, “Aileen goes with me.” I was so overwhelmed at this that I only heard it as if from a distance, Aunt Beck adding, “Who is to go with me? Who is the man from the island of Skarr?”

The High King replied, “Prince Ivar is that man, naturally.”

I was jolted from my rapt state by Ivar’s great hoarse cry of “Wha-at!”

“You have, like young Aileen, heard all our plans,” King Farlane pointed out.

“But,” said Ivar, “I only have to set foot in a boat and I get sick as a dog! You know I do!” he said accusingly to his mother. He leapt to his feet emotionally. Ivar never conceals his feelings. This is what I admire in him – although I must say at that moment I was less than admiring. His sword whirled as he jumped up and its scabbard hit me quite a thwack on the shoulder.

“Your sword,” Donal said, “is for the defence of the ladies, Ivar. This is your opportunity to behave like a gentleman for once.”

Donal is often unkind to his brother. I could see that he was pleased at Ivar’s dismay. This is one of the many things I dislike about Donal. But I could see that King Kenig was looking disgusted with his younger son, and the High King, from his carefully neutral expression, was wondering if Ivar were a coward.

I said, rather boldly, as I rubbed my shoulder, “I know we can rely on you, Ivar.”

Ivar shot me a dizzy sort of look. “I should have been warned,” he protested. “To be suddenly told that you’re going on a journey – it’s – it’s—!”

King Kenig said, “Don’t act the fool, Ivar. The High King has told us how spies from Logra can come and go. There’s nothing Logra would like better than to hear that a Prince of Kilcannon is setting out to rescue the High Prince. Utmost secrecy was necessary.”

Ivar shot a look at Donal as if to say why was he in on the secret then and turned to his mother again. “Very well, if I am to go and I am going to be sick, I shall need medicine and a servant to help me.”

“A remedy is prepared and packed for you,” Queen Mevenne said calmly. I saw Aunt Beck looking a bit sharp at that. Remedies of all kinds are her business to provide.

But, before she could say anything, Ivar’s father added, “And Ogo is to go with you as your servant. Now stop this silly noise.”

“Ogo!” Ivar exclaimed. “But he’s useless!”

“Nonetheless,” said King Kenig, “Ogo is a Logran and quite likely to be a spy. If you take him with you now without warning, he cannot pass the news on tonight and you will have him under your eye after.”

“Ogo would be as useless as a spy as he is at everything else!” Ivar protested. “Must I really?”

“Yes,” said his father. “We are taking no risks.”

Here King Farlane stood up, very slowly and weakly, and the rest of us of course had to stand up too. “It only remains,” he said, “for us to wish you success on your journey. Go now, in the hands of the gods and—” he looked particularly at Aunt Beck – “for the love of those gods, bring my son back with you if you can.”

Aunt Beck ducked him a small stiff curtsey and looked back at him just as particularly. So did I. The High King was trembling and strong feelings were trying to stay hidden behind the tight skin of his face. The feelings looked like hope to me – sick, wild hopes of seeing Prince Alasdair again – the kind of hopes that seldom get fulfilled. Aunt Beck saw them too. She had seemed ready to make one of her direst remarks, but instead she said, almost kindly, “I’ll do all I can, sire.”

After that, we left. One of the High King’s robed courtiers came with us to the door, where he passed Aunt Beck a purse. “For expenses,” he said.

“Thank you,” said my aunt. “I see by this that your king is in earnest.” High King Farlane was known to be quite sparing with his money. She turned to Ivar. “Run and fetch Ogo. Tell him just that you and he have to escort the Priest back to his fane.”

The Priest was coming with us, to my sorrow, as far as the hilltops where his religious establishment was. Donal went in front to show us the way to the small postern I had hardly ever seen used before. For a moment, I thought Donal was coming as well. But he was only making sure we found the four little donkeys waiting for us by the wall.

Aunt Beck clicked her tongue at the sight of them. “So much for secrecy. Who saddled these up?”

“I did,” Donal said. By the light of the lantern he carried, his teeth flashed rather smugly in his beard. “No chance of any gossip in the stables.”

“I was thinking rather,” Aunt Beck countered, “of the bags.” One donkey was loaded with four leather bags, very plump and shiny and expensive-looking bags. “Who packed these?”

“My mother did,” said Donal. “With her own fair hands.”

“Did she now?” said Aunt Beck. “Give her my thanks for the honour.”

Since no one could have sounded less grateful than my aunt, it was possibly just as well that Ivar came dashing up just then, and Ogo with him looking quite bewildered. They were to walk, as befitted an escort. The Priest mounted one of the donkeys and sat there looking quite ridiculous with his long legs nearly touching the ground on either side. Aunt Beck sat on the second. Ogo helped me up on to the third. I looked at what I could see of him – which was not much, what with the flickering lantern and the clouds scudding across the nearly full moon – and I thought that no one so puzzled-looking and so anxious to help as Ogo could possibly be a spy. Or could he?

“You don’t have to hold Aileen on to the donkey,” Ivar said to him. “Take the baggage donkey’s halter and bring it along.”

Donal raised the lantern, grinning again, as we all clopped off. “Goodbye, cousins,” he said to my aunt and me. “Have a good voyage, Ivar.” It was not quite jeering. Donal is too smooth-minded for that. But I thought, as we clopped down the rocky hillside, that the way he said it amounted to sending us off with a curse – or at least an ill-wishing.

The fog had gone, though my poor little donkey was quite wet with it. It must have been waiting for hours outside that door. All the donkeys were stiff and more than usually reluctant to move. Ivar and Ogo had to take a bridle in each hand and haul them out of the dip below the castle, and go on hauling until we were well set on the path zigzagging to the heights. There my donkey raised its big head and gave voice to its feeling in a huge mournful “Hee-haw!”

“Oh, hush!” I said to it. “Someone might hear.”

“It won’t matter,” said my aunt. In order not to trail her legs like the Priest, she had her knees bent up in front of her. It looked most uncomfortable and I could see it was making her breathless and cross. “It doesn’t matter who hears,” she said. “Everyone knows that the Priest must be on his way home.” And she called up to him ahead of her on the path, “I am surprised to see you lending yourself to this charade, Kinnock. Why did you?”

“I have my reasons,” the Priest called back. “Though I must say,” he added sourly, “I did not expect to have my house burnt over it.”

“What reasons?” said my aunt.

“The respect for the gods and for the priesthood is not what it should be,” he said across his shoulder. “My aim is to set that right.”

“You mean you think Alasdair is more god-fearing than his father?” my aunt asked. “If you think that, you’re doomed to disappointment two ways.”

“Gratitude,” retorted the Priest, “is not to be discounted.”

“Or counted on either,” snapped Aunt Beck.

They continued arguing with Aunt Beck getting crosser and more breathless at every sentence, but I have no idea what they said. I remember Aunt Beck accusing the Priest of trying to turn Skarr into Gallis, but that meant they had started to talk politics and I stopped listening. I was suddenly overwhelmed with a fear that I might not see Skarr again and I was busy trying to see as much of it as I could by the light of the repeatedly clouded moon.

The mountains were mere blackness overhead, though I could smell the heavy damp smell of them, and the sea was another blackness flecked with white over the other way. But I remember dwelling quite passionately on a large grey boulder beside the path when the moonlight glided over it, and almost as ardently on the grey, wintry-looking heather beneath the boulder. Where the path turned, I could look over my shoulder, across the bent figure of Ogo heaving the luggage donkey’s bridle, and see the castle below against the sea, ragged and rugged and dark. There were no lights showing. You’d have thought it was deserted. Of course the house where I lived with Aunt Beck was well out of sight, beyond the next rise of land, but I looked all the same.

It suddenly struck me that, if I never saw Skarr again, I would never again need to go down into the Place. You cannot imagine the joy and relief that gave me. Then I found myself not believing this. I knew Aunt Beck would somehow contrive that we gave everyone the slip. We could well be back home again by morning. I knew she was unwilling to go on this unlikely journey – unwilling enough that she might risk the displeasure of the High King himself. As the last and only Wise Woman in Chaldea, she had standing enough, I thought, to defy King Farlane. Would she dare? Would she?

I was still calculating this, with a mixture of excitement and hopelessness on both sides of the question, when we clattered into the deep road at the top of Kilcannon, where the stones of the fane lofted above the shoulder of hill to my right. I could feel them, like an itch or a fizz on my skin, and a tendency for the light here to seem dark blue to my eyes. The place makes me so uncomfortable that I hate going near it. Why the gods should require such uncomfortable magics always puzzled me.

A short while later, we were out to the flatter land beyond. There stood the Priest’s dark house, smelling of burning still, and around it the empty, moon-silvered pastures where Donal had driven all the cattle away. On the other side of the road was the long barnlike place where the novices lived. This was brightly-lit and – oh dear! – the most distinct sounds of roistering coming from inside. Evidently, the novices had not expected the Priest back until morning.

The Priest leapt down from his donkey and strode to the entrance. A sudden silence fell. Looking through the doorway around the Priest’s narrow, outraged body, I could see at least ten young men caught like statues in his glare. Most of them were guiltily trying to hide drinking cups behind their backs, though two were obviously too far gone to bother. One of those went on drinking. The other went on singing, and actually raised his cup in toast to the Priest.

“I see,” said the Priest, “that the demon drink needs exorcising here. All of you are to walk down to the coast with Wise Beck and see that she gets safely to her boat.”

Aunt Beck made a soft, irritated sound. I was right. She had been thinking of slipping off.

“What? Now?” one of the novices asked.

“Yes,” said the Priest. “Now.” He strode inside the dwelling and picked up a little barrel from the table, and calmly began pouring its contents on the floor. The scent of whisky gushed to my nostrils through the door, strong enough to make my eyes water. “Fresh air is a great exorcist,” he remarked. “Off you go. And,” he looked at us waiting outside, “I wish you a good journey, ladies.”

So we went down the rest of the way with twelve drunken novices. There was quite a strong wind blowing on this side of the mountains and, whatever the Priest said, it seemed to me to make them worse. They wove about, they staggered, they sang, they giggled and every ten yards or so one of them was sure to pitch forward into a gorse bush while the rest roared with laughter. Several of them had to leave the path to be sick.

“Gods,” Ivar kept saying. “This is all I need!”

And Aunt Beck asked them several times, “Are you sure you wouldn’t be better sitting down here for a rest? We’ll be quite all right on our own.”

“Oh no, lady,” they told her. “Can’t do that. Ordersh. Have to shee you shafely to your ship.”

Aunt Beck sighed. It was clear the Priest had promised the High King that we would be on that waiting boat. “Drat the man!” said Aunt Beck.

Surrounded by the hooting, galumphing, laughing crowd, we came at last down to where the rocks gave way to sand while the sinking moon showed us quite a large ship swaying up and down vigorously in the bay. Ivar moaned at the sight. Waiting for us among the wet smash and sheen of the breakers was a rowing boat, whose crew leapt out eagerly to meet us.

“Hurry now or we’ll miss this tide,” one of them said. “We thought you’d never be here in time.”

I slid off the donkey and patted it. I also patted the gorse bush by my side. It was in bloom – but when is gorse not? – and the caress of my fingers released the robust fragrance of it. It is a smell that always makes me think of home and Skarr. It seemed a shame to me that the youngest novice promptly staggered into that same bush and was sick on it.

“Here, lassie.” One of the sailors seized me and swung me into his arms. “Carry you through the water,” he explained when I uttered a furious squawk.

I let him. I became almost unbearably tired just then. It seemed to me that in leaving the soil of Skarr I left all my strength behind, but I expect that it was just that I’d had no sleep the night before. As I was carried through the crashing surf, tasting salt as I travelled, I had glimpses of Ivar and Ogo wading beside me, and a further glimpse of Aunt Beck, drawn up to her very tallest, facing the sailor who had offered to carry her too. I saw her glance at the waves, lift a heel and glance at that, and then shrug and give in. She rode to the boat sedately sitting across the sailor’s arms, heels together and both hands clasped demurely around his neck, as if the poor man were another donkey.

I scarcely remember rowing out to the big dark boat. I think I must have been asleep before they got there. When I woke, it was bright grey morning and I was lying on my face, on a narrow bench in a warm but smelly wooden cabin. I sprang up at once. I knew it was only a matter of forty sea miles to Bernica.

“Heavens!” I cried out. “I’ve missed the whole voyage!”

It turned out to be no such thing. When I dashed out into the swaying, creaking passage under the deck, Aunt Beck met me with the news that we had met contrary winds in the night. “The sailors tell me,” she said, “that the Logra barricade diverts the air and the sea too when the wind is in the north. We shall be a day or more yet on the way.” And she sent me back to do my hair properly.

Breakfast was in a little bad-smelling cubbyhole at the stern, where the sea kept smashing up against the one tiny window and the table slid up and down like a see-saw. No porridge, to my surprise. I wouldn’t have minded porridge. I was ravenous. I laid into oatcakes and honey just as if we were on dry land and the honeypot didn’t keep sliding away down the table whenever I needed it.

After a while, Aunt Beck wiped her fingers and passed the cloth to me. “Ten oatcakes is plenty, Aileen,” she told me. “This ship doesn’t carry food for a month. Go and see what has become of Ivar and Ogo.”

I went grudgingly. I wanted – apart from more oatcakes – to go on deck and see the sea. I found the boys in a fuggy little space across the gangway. Ivar was lying on the bed, moaning. Ogo sat beside him, looking anxious and loyal, holding a large bowl ready on his knees.

“Go away!” said Ivar. “I’m dying!”

Ogo said to me, “I don’t know what to do. He’s been like this all night.”

“Go and fetch Aunt Beck,” I said. “Get some breakfast. I’ll hold the bowl.”

Ogo passed me the bowl like a shot. I put it on the floor. It was disgusting.

“Don’t put it there!” Ivar howled as Ogo dashed from the room. “I need it! Now!” He did look ill. His face was like suet, all pale and shiny. I picked up the bowl again, but he wailed, “I’ve nothing left to be sick with! I’ll die!”

“No you won’t,” I said. “It’s not heroic. Where’s the medicine your mother packed for you?”

“In the bag you’re sitting on,” Ivar gasped. “But stupid Ogo doesn’t know which it is!”

“Well, I don’t suppose I do either,” I said, getting up and opening the bag, “and I’m not stupid. Why don’t you know?”

Ivar just buried his face in the lumpy little pillow and moaned. Luckily, Aunt Beck came in just then. “This is ridiculous,” she said, taking in the situation. “I thought Ogo was exaggerating. Move over, Aileen, and let me have a look in that bag.”

There were quite a number of jars and bottles in the bag, carefully packed among clothes. Aunt Beck took them all out and arranged them in a row on the floorboards. “Hm,” she said. “Which?” She picked up the glass bottles one by one and held them up against the light. She shook her head. She picked up the earthenware jars one by one, took the corks out and sniffed. Ivar reared up on one elbow and watched her anxiously. Aunt Beck shook her head again and, very carefully and deliberately, began pouring the contents away into the bowl.

“Hey!” said Ivar. “What are you doing?”

“I do not know,” Aunt Beck said, starting to empty the glass bottles into the bowl too, “what Mevenne was intending here, but I fear she is as bad at remedies as she is at embroideries. Aileen, take this bowl up on deck and empty it all into the sea. Be careful not to spill it on the way. It could set fire to the ship. Then come back for the bottles. They need to be thrown overboard too.”

“But what shall I do?” Ivar was wailing as I carried the bowl away as carefully and steadily as I could.

Aunt Beck snapped at him to behave himself and to take that filthy shirt off at once.

It took me quite a while to get that bowl poured away. I was two steps along the gangway when the ship pitched sideways, suddenly and violently. And, do what I could, the bowl swilled and slopped some of the stuff on the wooden floor. There was only the merest drop, but it made a truly horrible smell and started to smoke. Aunt Beck had not been joking about those medicines. I went the rest of the way more carefully than I had ever done anything in my life. I put the bowl down on each step of the wooden stair that went up to the deck and held it steady as I climbed after it. I crept with it out into the sudden brisk daylight on deck. There were ropes everywhere, sailors staring and a dazzle of choppy waves beyond. But I kept my eyes grimly on the nasty liquid in the bowl the whole way to the edge of the boat and carefully looked which way the wind was before I started to pour the stuff away. I didn’t want it blowing back in my face. It was a huge relief when I finally tipped the bowlful into the brownish, rearing waves.

The sea boiled white where the liquid went in. I had to wait for the ship to move past the whiteness before I could lie on my front and swill the bowl out. That made a lesser whiteness. I snatched my hand away and, I am afraid, lost the bowl, which dipped and sank almost at once. Oh well, I thought. Probably good riddance.

When I went back below, the spilt drop had stopped smoking, but there was a round charred place where it had been.

In the cabin, Ivar was now sitting up, his top half all gooseflesh without his shirt, staring at Aunt Beck. Aunt Beck had taken her ruby-ended pin out of her hair and was wagging it slowly in front of Ivar. “Watch the pin. Keep watching my pin,” she was saying, but broke off to pass me the bottles and jars all bundled up in Ivar’s shirt. “Overboard,” she said. “Shirt and all.”

“Hey!” said Ivar. “That’s a good shirt!” He stopped staring at Aunt Beck and scowled at me.

“Curses,” said Aunt Beck. “Have to begin again. Ivar, attend to this pin of mine.”

It took very little time to get rid of the bundle. When I got back this time, Ivar was staring at Aunt Beck, looking as if he had suddenly gone stupid. Aunt Beck was saying, “Say this after me now. I am a good sailor. I never get seasick. Go on – I am a good sailor …”

Ivar said obediently, “I am a good sailor. I never get seasick.”

“A very good sailor,” Aunt Beck prompted. “No weather affects me, ever.”

“Very good sailor,” Ivar repeated. “No weather affects me, ever.”

“Good.” Aunt Beck snapped her fingers in front of Ivar’s eyes, then sat back on her heels and stared at him closely. Ivar blinked and shifted and gazed around the small, dim cabin. “How are you now?” Aunt Beck asked, handing him a clean shirt.

Ivar looked at her as if he were not all that sure for a moment. Then he seemed to come to life. “Ow!” he said. “By the Guardians, I’m hungry!”

“Of course you are,” Aunt Beck agreed. “You’d better run along and get breakfast before Ogo eats all the oatcakes.”

“Gods of Chaldea!” Ivar leapt up. “I’ll kill him if he has!” Clutching his shirt to his front, he pounded away to the eating room. Aunt Beck climbed to her feet and pushed her ruby pin back into her hair, looking satisfied. Quite smug really.

I was going to follow Ivar, in case he did attack Ogo. You can never trust Ogo to defend himself properly. But Aunt Beck stopped me. “Not now,” she said. “We’ve work to do. I want to know what Mevenne packed in our bags.”

I sighed a little and followed her across the gangway. The bags were piled at one end of our cabin. Aunt Beck knelt down and unbuckled the top one. A strong smell came out. It was not exactly a bad smell, rather like camomile and honey-gone-bad, only not quite. It made me feel a little seasick. Aunt Beck bit off a curse and clapped the bag shut again.

“Up on deck with these,” she said to me. “You take those two, Aileen.”

I did as she said, but not easily. Those bags were good quality hide, and heavy. I thought Aunt Beck was going to throw them into the sea. But she stopped in the shelter of the rowing boat, where it was roped to the deck, and dumped the bags down there.

“Put yours here,” she said to me, kneeling down to open one, “and then we shall see. What have we here?” She pulled out a grand-looking linen gown and unfolded it carefully. There were brown twiggy bits of herb in every fold. “Hm,” she said, surveying and sniffing. Her face went very stiff. For a moment, she simply knelt there. Then she put her head up cheerfully and said to me, “Well, well. Mevenne was no doubt trying to keep moths away and has got it wrong as usual. Take each garment as I hand it to you and shake it out over the side. With the wind, mind. Make sure none of these unfortunate plants touch the ship or yourself either if you can avoid it.” And she bundled the gown into my arms.

It took me half an hour to shake all the herbs away. Aunt Beck passed me garment after fine garment, each still folded, each stuffed with herbs like a goose ready for roasting. Some of the woollen ones took no end of shaking because the twiggy bits stuck into the fabric and clung there. About halfway through, I remember asking, “Won’t this poison the sea, Aunt Beck?”

“No, not in the least,” Aunt Beck replied, lifting out underclothes. “There is nothing like salt water to cancel bad magics.”

“Even if it was unintentional?” I asked.

Aunt Beck smiled a grim little smile. “As to that,” she said and then said nothing more, but just passed me a bundle of underclothing.

By the end, we had a heap of loose clothing and four empty bags. Aunt Beck knelt on the heap, picking up shirts and sleeves, sniffing and shaking her head. “Still smells,” she said. “These are such fine cloth that it goes against the grain with me to throw them in the sea too. Kneel on them, Aileen, or they’ll blow away, and I’ll see what I can do.”

She went briskly away and came back shortly with a coil of clothesline and a basket of pegs. Goodness knows where she had got them from. Then we both became very busy slinging up the line around the deck and pegging out flapping garments all over the ship. Ivar and Ogo came up on deck to stare. The sailors became very irritable, ducking under clothing as they went about their work and sniffing the bad camomile scent angrily.

Eventually, the Captain came and accosted Aunt Beck, under a billowing plaid. “What are you doing here, woman? This is a fine time to have a washday!”

“I’m only doing what needs doing, Seamus Hamish,” Aunt Beck retorted, pegging up a wildly kicking pair of drawers. “This clothing is contaminated.”

“It surely is,” said the Captain. “Smells like the devil’s socks. Are you raising this wind to blow the smell away?”

Aunt Beck finished pegging the drawers and faced the Captain with her red heels planted well apart and her arms folded. “Seamus Hamish, I have never raised wind in all my born days. What would be the need on Skarr? What is the need here?”

Seamus Hamish folded his arms too. It was impressive because his arms were massive and covered with pictures. “Then it is the smell doing it.”

Whatever was doing it, there was no doubt that the wind was getting up. When I looked out from under the flapping clothing, I could see yellow-brown waves chopping up and down and spume flying from the tops of them. Aunt Beck actually had long black pieces of hair blowing from her neatly plaited head. “Nonsense!” she said, and turned away.

“I tell you it is!” boomed the Captain. “And turning the sky purple. Look, woman!” He pointed with a vast arm and, sure enough, the bits of sky I could see were a strange, hazy lilac colour.

Aunt Beck said, “Nonsense, man. The barrier is doing it.” She picked up one of the bags and began punching and pounding it to turn it inside out.

“I have never seen the sky this colour,” Seamus Hamish declared. “And you must take at least this plaid down. My steersman can’t see his road for it.”

“Aileen,” said Aunt Beck, “take the plaid and peg it somewhere else.”

I did as I was bid. The only other place I could find was a rope on the front of the ship. I got Ogo to help me because the wind was now so fierce that I couldn’t hold the plaid on my own. We left it flying out from the prow like a strange flag and went back to find Aunt Beck had turned all the bags inside out and was strapping them to the rowing boat to air. The ship’s cook was looming over her.

“And if you didn’t take my basin, who did?” he was saying.

Ogo and I exchanged guilty looks. Ogo had fetched the basin for Ivar and I had dropped it into the sea.

Aunt Beck shrugged. “None of my doing, man. The Prince of Kinross was unwell in the night. The bowl is now unfit to cook with.”

The cook turned and glared at Ivar, who was leaning against one of the masts with his hair blowing, looking very fit and rosy. He stared back at the cook in a most princely way. “My apologies,” he said loftily.

“Then I must mix my dough some other way, I suppose,” the cook said grumpily. And he went away muttering, “Always bad luck to sail with a witch. The curse of Lone on you all!”

Aunt Beck didn’t seem to hear, which was lucky. Nothing enrages her more than being called a witch. She simply got up and went below to tidy her hair.

“What is the curse of Lone?” Ogo asked me anxiously as we stood among the flapping garments. They were flapping more and more as the wind rose. The ship was pitching and waves were hissing against the deck.

I had never heard of the curse, but Ivar said, “Obvious. It means that you disappear like the Land of Lone did.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when there was a grinding and a jolting from underneath, followed by a crunching from somewhere up at the front. The ship tilted sideways and seemed to stop moving. Above the noise of several huge waves washing across the deck, I could hear Seamus Hamish screaming curses at the steersman and the steersman bawling back.

“You slithering, blind ass’s rear end! Look what you did!”

“How is a man to steer with that woman’s washing in his face? All I could see was her drawers flapping!”

“I wish you hadn’t said that about the curse,” I shouted at Ivar. “I think we’ve run into the barrier.”

“It was the cook made the curse, not me!” he yelled back. He was hanging on to the mast. Ogo and I clutched at the rowing boat. We all had seawater swilling around our ankles.

But we had not run into the barrier. When Aunt Beck shot back on deck, still pinning her plait up around her head, she said, “Ah, I thought as much from the colour of the sea. We’re into a piece of the lost land here.”

As the Dominie had so often told us, there was a line of reefs and rocks in the sea between Logra and Skarr that were all that remained of the Land of Lone after it broke up and sank in the earthquake. The Dominie had sailed out to see it for himself when he was young, and he said that there was ample proof that it had once been inhabited. He had found broken crockery and pieces of fine carving lodged among the rocks. Sailors told him that some of the longer skerries even had remains of buildings on them. Ogo was always very impressed by this.

“The Dominie told us all about it,” he said excitedly to Aunt Beck. “He found a carved comb and most of a fine vase. Can we go and look, do you think?”

“Oh, shut up! Who cares?” Ivar said.

“But I always wondered—” Ogo started again.

By this time, Seamus Hamish was bawling for us all to climb off on to the rocks to lighten the ship, so that he could get us afloat again and see what the damage was. The poor ship was grinding back and forth, back and forth, which sounded very dangerous, and sailors were already ducking under the clotheslines with boxes and bundles of cargo, to lower them carefully overboard. Some of them stopped and helped us down too. Ogo was so eager that he jumped down by himself in a great floundering leap.

“And the sea all around the lost land is always brown with its earth,” I heard him saying, while the cook was passing me down into someone’s big tattooed arms.

Ivar of course could not be outdone by Ogo. He leapt by himself too, and landed with a clatter and twisted his ankle and complained about it for the next hour. And Aunt Beck went down as she had come aboard, peacefully riding another sailor.

“There will be no damage,” she said to me as she was carried past me. “Can they not trust me to protect the ship I sail in?”

Her sailor dumped her up beyond the rocks in a very expressive ‘no comment’ way. I ambled along to where she was and found that the place we had run into was really quite a large island, sandy and rocky and desolate under the queer, hazy lilac sky. There was a bit of cliff ahead about as tall as Ogo and, above that, there seemed to be some trees.

“Can we explore?” Ogo was asking eagerly. “How long do we have?”

“I’ll see,” said Aunt Beck.

I looked back at the poor ship as Aunt Beck called over to the Captain. There it was, lying sideways and grinding, grinding, between two prongs of rock, and hung all over with coloured clothing. Very undignified. Seamus Hamish was busy getting the sails in, but he yelled back that we could have an hour. And he told the cook and another sailor to go with us.

“I shall stay here,” Ivar said. “My ankle really hurts.”

We left him sitting on a rock surrounded in yellow sea foam while we made for the cliffs. I was quite as eager as Ogo was. The Dominie had said that the earthquake had happened over a thousand years ago and, as far as I knew, I had never seen anywhere that old. Aunt Beck was, as always, demure and restrained, but she seemed to me to be springing up the cliff as eagerly as any of us. It was one of the easiest climbs I have ever made, although I must confess that my good dress suffered a little on the way.

Halfway up, Ogo said, “Hey! What’s this?” and picked up something that looked like a big broken saucepan lid. It seemed to be made of very old black leather. We all gathered on a crumbly ledge to examine it. You could still see that there had been patterns stamped on it.

Aunt Beck had just taken the thing to hold the patterns to the light, when Ivar came scrambling limpingly up beside us.

“Ogo,” he said. “You’re supposed to be my servant. You’re supposed to stay with me. You know I’ve hurt my ankle. What are you doing going off and picking up rubbishy old shields for?”

“It was a shield, I think,” Aunt Beck said, turning the thing around. She has beautifully-shaped, artistic fingers. I am always impressed when she handles things. “These patterns—” she began.

“Throw it away,” said Ivar.

“No, don’t,” said the cook. “I can sell it on Bernica. They like old things there.”

“These patterns,” Aunt Beck said loudly, “are the symbols of the Guardian of the North. Put it back where you found it, Ogo. It is something none of us should meddle with.”

She was probably right. I had last seen symbols like that embroidered on High King Farlane’s robe. Everyone watched, rather chastened, while Ogo carefully put the broken shield back on the ledge where he had found it. “I could have got a hundred silver for that,” the cook remarked as we all went on up the cliff.

The cook looked very glum at that and said nothing more until we arrived among the trees at the top. There it was as if the whole ground ran away from us. Tiny creatures – mice, rats, voles – sped and scuttled out of our way. I saw rabbits, squirrels, a weasel and even a beast like a small deer running from us among the trees. Small birds and large ones clapped out of the tops of the wood. None of the trees were tall. They were all bent and bowed in the sea wind, but I could see they were trees that were very rare on Skarr, like elders and hazels, and were just coming into leaf. Aunt Beck put up an elegant hand to old dusty catkins and then to the light green beginnings of elderflowers.

The other sailor said, “I wish I’d brought my crossbow! Fat pigeons. That deer.”

“Fine rabbits,” agreed the cook and Ivar said, “Let’s go back. There’s nothing here. My ankle hurts.”

“We shall go on,” Aunt Beck decreed. “I want to see how big this place is.”

“I want to know how all these animals got here,” I said.

“Well, you won’t find that out by walking about,” Ivar said. “My ankle—”

“The animals,” Aunt Beck said, “undoubtedly descend from creatures that fled from the earthquake. Ah, we’re getting somewhere.”

The trees gave way to big rocks and fluttering grass. I saw harebells there. We went around the largest boulder and saw the sea again beyond us, angrily crashing below on whole piles of rocks. In the distance you could actually see the barrier, like a band of white mist that stretched away in both directions as far as anyone could see. Nobody looked at it though, because there were the remains of buildings in front of us. The walls were not quite as high as my head and made of blocks of sandy-coloured stone. There were beautifully chiselled patterns on them.

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