Diana Wynne Jones’s Fantastical Journeys Collection

“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.”