Diana Wynne Jones’s Fantastical Journeys Collection

“Not really,” he said. “Just the colours. The towns are red and the fields are yellow and green. And there’s a smell coming up that I know.” He pulled his lips in hard against his teeth and I could see he was struggling not to cry. I knew better than to make him talk any more.

I considered the smell. Logra smelt of hay and spices and smoke. Gallis had smelled of heather and incense, Bernica of damp farmyards. I remembered, like biting on a sore tooth, the scents of Skarr – stone, lichen, gorse and bracken – and I felt like crying too for a moment.

Meanwhile, the others were arguing about how we were to recognise Haranded if we came to it.

“It must be a big city,” Rees said. “We can damp down the fire when we see it – no problem there.”

“It would be simpler to take the spell off the raft,” Riannan said.

“But we have to be sure where we are,” Rees insisted.

“Won’t there be large buildings?” Finn said.

“Yes, fine large ones. It’ll be where the king lives,” Ivar said. “But we just went over a place with a golden dome. Have we overshot?”

Here Ogo conquered his emotions and said, very definitely, “The king’s palace is on a hill in the middle of Haranded. It’s white. It has big towers with blue roofs.”

Everyone relaxed a little at this. Rees said, “Warn me when you see it. We don’t want to land on its roof.”

Nothing like that happened. We had time to eat our provisions, and Rees was beginning to watch our fuel anxiously and say he hoped we would have enough left to get us aloft again, when we began to discern the outline of a large city, over to our left and a good many miles off.

“We’re going to miss it,” Ivar said. “We’re miles to the south of it.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Plug-Ugly reared up beside me out of nowhere and threw himself hard against me. I went down with a wallop into the bottom of the boat. Winds hit us from all quarters as I fell. I lay on my back with Plug-Ugly crouching on my stomach and saw the fire streaming just above me, roaring. I would have been burnt but for Plug-Ugly. Next second, the fire was streaming another way. I had jumbled sights of everyone throwing themselves flat and the balloon above us blatting this way, then that way. I could feel us lurching and spinning. The fire roared and bellied around in a stream, and I watched, feeling it inevitable, the flames bite into the great silken patchwork and set it burning over our heads.

Rees howled out the words of a quenching spell. Riannan broke into song. The flames went out in gusts of beastly-smelling smoke, but the damage was done. With a third of the great balloon missing, we went down and sideways. I could feel us doing it. When I scrambled to my knees and looked over the side, I could see the ground rushing underneath us and ourselves no higher than a house. I was truly terrified.

But the winds had left us by then. We slowed, and slowed more, and went down until we skimmed hedges. I saw a horseman duck as we sailed over him. I saw the city that had seemed so far off now only a mile or so away. I saw Rees standing up, swinging the anchor on its rope, and Finn beside him, bleeding from one arm where Green Greet had frantically clung on to him.

“That field there,” Finn said. “No one will get hurt there.”

We missed the field. We came down in a road with a mighty grinding and a whoosh as the hot air left the silk and the burnt patchwork flopped down half across us.

Next moment we were surrounded by people. “Kill them!” they yelled. “Kill them! They put that damned barrier up!”

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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.