Читать книгу Diana Wynne Jones’s Fantastical Journeys Collection - Diana Wynne Jones - Страница 22

Logra people are taller than I was used to, and fairer, and they have a strange accent. A whole crowd of tall, skinny, ragged women were pulling at the balloon, shrieking. It took me a moment to gather that they were yelling, “It’s silk! It’s real silk! What a waste of good clothing!”

The men, who were equally ragged and even taller, were rocking at the boat where we sat, trying to tip us out, but the spell on the floater kept pulling us back upright and defeating them. Ivar had his sword drawn and was shouting, “Keep off! Keep back! First one to touch us gets his throat cut!” Green Greet was flapping and shrieking. Rees and Ogo both had their knives out and Plug-Ugly was rearing up, spitting. This made the people hesitate to touch us, but I knew it was only a matter of time before someone got brave enough to climb aboard. Then we would be swamped.

What fools we’ve been! I thought. None of us had made any kind of plans about what we would do once we got here. It was as if we all had thought that just getting to Logra would be enough.

Here, somebody seized hold of Aunt Beck where she sat in the front. I scrambled over, shouting, “Don’t you dare!” in a booming voice I didn’t know I had. The person let go hurriedly.

It wasn’t because of my voice.

Horsemen were galloping up, surrounding the crowd. They had swords out that were larger and wider than Ivar’s, and they were hitting people with the flat of them.

One of them called out in a loud, official voice, “Get back! Leave the prisoners to us!” They all wore some sort of uniform – soldiers, I supposed.

“Are we rescued?” Ivar said.

“I doubt it,” Rees said, but Ivar sheathed his sword anyway.

We were definitely prisoners. The soldiers wouldn’t speak to us, except to say, “None of you move.” Some of them cut the charred patchwork loose from the boat. Others brought up more horses – rather elderly, skinny horses that must have belonged to the ragged people, to judge by the yells of protest – and hitched a whole row of them to the boat. Then someone cracked a whip and we were towed off in a grim crowd of riders. We could only look at one another and shrug.

Haranded was barely a mile away. There were no walls. Houses just grew larger and more frequent around us and became crooked streets with shops to either side. I liked the houses, nervous though I was. They were all built of brick with red roofs, in hundreds of fancy patterns. People were busy rolling aside shutters over the shops, then pausing to stare at us. I was surprised to see it was still early in the morning for these people. I felt as if we had lived through most of a day already.

Presently, we came into a wide street leading uphill. It had statues on each side, mostly very big, of men and women in flowing robes.

“What a very boastful road,” I whispered to Ogo. “Who are all the statues?”

“Kings, queens, wizards – maybe some gods,” Ogo answered. “I think it was called Royal Avenue.”

He must have been right because the street led straight up to the white walls of the palace, where there was a big gate. More men in uniform were waiting for us there. The leader of the horsemen said to the one with gold on his coat, “The spies from the flying machine, sir.”

“Good,” said Gold-coat. And he said to one of his soldiers, “Go and tell the magistrate. He must be awake by now.”

The soldier said, “Yessir,” and went off through the gate at a run.

I realised, as we were towed through the gate into a square courtyard, that they must have been able to see us in the air for miles and had made ready for us.

The gate clanged shut behind us and more lowly-looking people hurried out to take the horses away. They wanted to take Green Greet away too, but Finn shouted, “No, no, this is the Guardian of the West! He stays with me!” while Green Greet flew shrieking into the air, alarming them all. They left him alone then, and he sat on Finn’s shoulder again. Plug-Ugly was invisible. I realised that he had vanished as soon as the horsemen arrived. And of course no one saw Blodred, hiding up Rees’s sleeve. So all ten of us were together as we were made to climb out of the boat and march into the great white building ahead.

Aunt Beck made quite a nuisance of herself. At first, she wouldn’t climb out of the boat and, when they tried pulling her, she shouted, “Take your hands off me! How dare you touch a Wise Woman of Skarr!”

Everyone hastily let go of her and Gold-coat said, “Madam, if you don’t get out by yourself, I shall personally carry you!”

While this was going on, I said despairingly to Rees, “What do we do now?”

Rees was looking quite unreasonably calm, to my mind. “Something will happen,” he said. “Just be patient.”

Meanwhile, Aunt Beck climbed out on to the flagstones with great dignity. Then we were marched off into the palace.

Logra people were certainly not early risers. By the time we had clattered through some very unimpressive wooden corridors and been herded into a bare wooden room, the magistrate was only just arriving, still struggling into his white official robes and yawning as he sat on the only chair in the place. He was a shaggy, stupid-looking man, as unimpressive as the room. About the only impressive thing there was a giant picture painted on the plaster wall of a bull with large blue wings. As the magistrate fussily settled himself, I pointed at it and asked Ogo, “Whatever is that?”

Gold-coat answered me, sounding shocked. “That is the image of the Great Guardian of Logra. Show respect, young woman.”

“I need to go to the toilet,” Aunt Beck announced.

“Show them where,” the magistrate said wearily. “Show them all.”

So we were led off again. Riannan, Aunt Beck and I were shown to a fairly well-appointed whitewashed place with a privy in it. I must say it was very welcome. I imagine the others felt the same. At any rate, Finn, Ivar, Ogo and Rees were herded back into the room looking a good deal more cheerful.

“Now,” the magistrate said, “can we begin, please?” He had been given a steaming cup of something while we were gone and he sipped at it, glowering at us over the top of it. “I must say you are a very motley lot of spies.”

“We are not spies,” Ivar said, glowering back.

“Then why are you here?” said the magistrate. “And you address me as Your Honour.”

Rees took hold of Ivar’s arm to shut him up. “Because,” he said, “er – Your Honour – I had the notion that the barrier could be crossed from the air and we wished to prove it. As you see, we did prove it.”

“A very inadequate story,” the magistrate said. “Of course you came to spy. What puzzles me is why there are seven of you from all over the place.”

Gold-coat said, pointing at Aunt Beck, “This one claims to be a Wise Woman of Skarr, Your Honour.”

The magistrate looked at Aunt Beck, with her hair half undone because of the winds. “Well, I’ve heard they’re all wild, mad females. She could be. It makes no difference to my decision. They’re all foreigners. Lock them all up until the Regent has time to deal with them.”

“Regent?” said Aunt Beck. “What Regent is this? I thought you had a king.”

“The Regent is the king’s brother, who rules because of the king’s illness,” the magistrate said. “And you address me as Your Honour.”

“Then you address me as Wisdom,” Aunt Beck said.

“No I don’t,” said the magistrate. “You’re a spy. Lock them all up.”

“But I’m a Prince of Skarr,” Ivar protested. “I shouldn’t be locked up.”

“Nor should my sister be,” Rees said. “She’s a starred singer of Gallis.”

“Address me as Your Honour!” the magistrate almost screamed.

“And I am a holy monk from Bernica,” Finn added. “To lock me up is ungodly.”

“Say Your Honour!” the magistrate yelled.

Ogo, rather hesitantly, stepped forward and said, “Your Honour, I am a citizen of Logra. I was born here and—”

The magistrate looked at him scornfully. “Oh yes? You come here wearing barbaric Skarr clothing and tell me that! You’re obviously one of the great tall savages they breed there.”

Ogo’s face was pink. He was, I saw, taller than anyone else in the room. He must have been growing madly lately. He started to speak again and the magistrate cut in with, “Now you’re going to bleat at me that you’re really a prince, like that boy there.” He pointed to Ivar.

Ivar said, “But I am!”

Ogo began, “Well—”

“Oh, take them away!” the magistrate howled. “Lock them up with the other prisoners until the Regent has time to deal with them.” He dumped his cup on the side of his chair and waved both arms with his hands flopping. The cup keeled over and crashed to the floor. “Now look what you’ve made me do!” he said.

I found it hard not to laugh, in spite of the trouble we were in. Riannan was laughing, with one hand over her mouth. But Ivar was seething. Ogo was breathing heavily and looked to be near tears. As the soldiers shoved us out of the room, Ivar took his feelings out on Ogo by saying, “Don’t worry. We all know you’re the Ogre from Logra.”

Rees expressed his feelings by saying, “What a very low grade of official. Can’t they afford anyone better? If that man was a priest in Gallis, he’d be serving in Synon.”

“Or in Gorse End,” Riannan agreed.

“Are those very low places?” I asked. “I do hope so.”

Aunt Beck startled me by saying, “He should be mucking out cattle.”

Gold-coat and the other soldiers made no objection to any of this. I had the feeling that they agreed with us, but the reason they said nothing may have been that we began going upstairs then, long wooden stairs. The soldiers panted and did not seem to enjoy this. We were all so used to walking up hills that we found the climb no trouble at all. We went down a corridor and then up some long stone stairs, and Rees talked all the way, describing Synon and then Gorse End, and exactly what miserable places they both were. I told him I was relieved to find there were parts of Gallis that were not idyllically beautiful.

“Oh yes,” he said, as we began on another stone flight, “there are parts of Gallis that no bard will visit, so they get worse all the time.”

By this time, we had climbed so many stairs that I was expecting us to be imprisoned in a high tower. I was quite surprised when we wheeled aside and clattered through a big anteroom that smelt rather deliciously of warm wood. Logra, I was beginning to see, was hotter than any country I had yet been in. It must by then have been mid-morning and the sun blazed in through a dozen tall windows.

Beyond the anteroom we marched into a dark corridor running left to right. There was a whole row of doors there, all locked and bolted. We were made to stop by the nearest door, which had more bolts to it than any of the others. While we were standing waiting for a soldier to draw all the bolts back, I could have sworn that someone came out through a bolted door far to the left and dodged hastily back on seeing us.

Then the door was flung open on a big well-lit space. The soldiers pushed us forward while Gold-coat called out, “Some friends to see you, Prince.”

We stood in a huddle, staring at a huge hall with a row of empty arches opposite to us, open to the sky, and at the small crowd of people scattered about in it. Prince Alasdair was the first one I saw. He was pale as a ghost, lying on a sofa near the middle of the hall. There were crusty, bloodstained bandages over his legs, one of them yellow with infection. It looked horrible. I knew he had been wounded, but not how badly.

He stared at us and so did the crowd of his followers. They were all wearing the hunting gear they had been captured in, very threadbare now, but quite clean. Everyone stared at each other for the long minute it took the soldiers to bolt the door outside, and then for the longer minute when they could be heard marching away.

Then everyone came to life.

“Finn, you old devil!” someone shouted. “You’ve brought us the green bird!” At which Green Greet took off from Finn’s shoulder and flew from man to man, uttering whooping squawks. Finn began to laugh.

Prince Alasdair fetched a cloth up from beside his couch and briskly rubbed his face with it. His head was for a moment hidden in a cloud of white powder. Then he threw down the cloth, carefully pulled his legs out from the horrible bandages and leapt to his feet. And there he strode towards us perfectly well, with his face a healthy colour, though I could see the carefully mended rip in his trews where he had been wounded.

“Beck!” he cried out. “Beck, by all the gods—!”

To my extreme astonishment, my aunt ran to meet him and they embraced like lovers, she saying, “Oh, Allie, I thought my heart was broken when they took you!” and Prince Alasdair simply saying, “My love, my love!”

Well, well! I thought. I had no idea Aunt Beck had been carrying a broken heart all this time. I hadn’t even known that she and Prince Alasdair knew one another. But there she was, not only restored to her usual self, but looking years younger, with her face all rosy and delighted and her hair still wild from the wind. It occurred to me that this was why Aunt Beck had not refused outright to go on this rescue mission – which I knew, when I thought about it, that she was quite capable of – and why she had kept going when we were landed in Bernica with no money. Well, well.

By this time, all the other prisoners had crowded around us, so I pulled myself together and made introductions. It was clear that Finn needed none. Ossen, the courtier who had shouted to Finn, very quickly drew him aside to a seat by the open archways, where he produced a stone bottle and a couple of big mugs. I fear that before the morning was out Finn was quite disgracefully drunk! I introduced Ivar instead. Someone said, “My cousin Mevenne’s son?” and Ivar was pulled aside to give news of the family almost at once.

I introduced Ogo next. I felt he deserved some attention. I explained how he had been left behind in Skarr. Prince Alasdair said, with his arm around Aunt Beck, “Have you told them you are a man of Logra, lad?”

Ogo said wryly, “I tried.”

“I’ll sort it out for you,” Alasdair promised. “Never fear.”

“And these,” I said, “are Rees and Riannan from the Pandy in Gallis. It was Rees’s invention that brought us here.”

“The Pandy?” said someone. A fine big man with a most noble beard pushed his way towards them. “Bran’s children?” He was wearing faded bardic blue. It dawned on me that he must be my father. I was overcome with shyness and decided to keep my mouth shut from then on.

Aunt Beck put a stop to the eager explanations about the balloon, and how Bran had started it by inventing the floating sledges, when she pointed at me. “She’s the one you should be asking after, Gareth. She’s your own daughter.”

“What, Aileen?” my father said, staring at me. “But she was a tiny child!”

“She’s had time to grow up,” said my aunt, “and become a Wise Woman.”

I could see my father could think of nothing to say. After a while, he said cautiously, “And your mother, Aileen?”

“Dead,” said Aunt Beck, and she shot a look at me to warn me to say nothing of the Priest of Kilcannon. As if I would have done. I was as tongue-tied as my father, but I supposed we would manage to talk to one another when everyone had finished telling of our adventures.

But there seemed to be no time for that. Prince Alasdair said, “Rory, you had better go now and get that fruit Lucia promised us. And say we need some wine too. You can tell her why.”

The man who nodded and went off was, I was sure, the same man I had glimpsed dodging back through the locked door earlier. This time he went to a different door, which opened quite as easily.

“They’re all unlocked,” my father said, seeing me staring, “except the one we came in by. We’re taking part in a farce here.”

“Which we’d better get on with,” Prince Alasdair said. “The Ministers will be here any minute now.” He went to his couch and climbed nimbly back into the dreadful bandages. One of the other prisoners brought him a large box of powder which Alasdair applied to his face with a bundle of feathers. In seconds, he was a pale, wounded invalid once more. “You new arrivals had better sit about looking gloomy, being upset at being taken prisoner, you know.”

None of us knew what to make of this, but we spread about the great room, doing our best to look miserable. Ivar, Riannan and Rees sat together on the floor, cross-legged and mournful. Aunt Beck went and sat next to Finn, where she eyed him until he guiltily hid his mug under the seat. Green Greet settled droopingly on the back of Finn’s chair. Ogo and I, with natural curiosity, went over to the archways to see what was beyond.

Nothing was beyond, except a terrace with a few chairs on it. There was a low fence at the edge of the terrace and, beyond that, a huge drop down to the courtyard where we had come in. From our height it looked as small as this page of paper. The place did make a perfect prison. A spacious, airy, perfect prison. Once all the doors were locked of course.

My father had come over there with us. He still seemed embarrassed. Ogo said to him, “I suppose you’re all secretly busy making ropes?”

My father laughed. “We could be. But what good would it do? We could get to the ground easily enough, one way or another, but we’d still be in Logra, behind the barrier.”

While he was speaking, there seemed to be a low, growing roar coming from the city beyond the courtyard. We saw the courtyard gates slam open and two horses galloped in and stopped as if they could go no further. Even from up here, I could see that the beasts were covered with foam. The men on their backs, who were both wearing some sort of flapping purple robes, flung themselves off the horses and staggered, obviously as tired as the horses. People ran from the gates and the buildings around, shouting excitedly. Meanwhile, the roar from the city grew and grew.

“I wonder what’s going on,” my father said. “Those look like—”

He was interrupted by a green whirr. Green Greet shot out of the archway right beside my ear and plunged out over the fence.

“—wizards,” my father finished, leaning over to watch Green Greet plummet until he was a tiny green blur, then spread his wings and sail this way and that around the courtyard. “Does he do that often?”

“No,” I said. “He’s rather a sober bird really.”

The tired wizards were being helped into the palace by an eager crowd now. When they were out of sight, my father turned back into the wide prison, saying, “Best get into our act, then.” And sighed.

And Green Greet was there again, soaring over the terrace on wide wings. “The barrier is down!” he screamed. “The barrier is down!”

“Perhaps,” Ogo suggested, “we ought to start making ropes now.”