The Crown of Dalemark (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “I hope they don’t make a mistake and score with someone’s severed head instead of the ball,” Navis murmured. “How long does it usually take, and how many deaths result?”

  “I don’t know,” Moril confessed. “Brid doesn’t do it.”

  It seemed to take hours. Hours of yelling, battling and thwacking, of giant surges and furious counter-attacks. Long before it was over, Maewen was hiding her eyes. The sight of all this fighting, after someone had twice tried to kill her, was just too much. She wanted to leave. But as she had sensibly told Moril, they dared not leave.

  Moril was not happy either. “It reminds me of Flennpass,” he said.

  Mitt, on the other hand, had discovered that it was easy to pick Biffa out in the fray, and he was yelling with the rest. “Come on, Biffa! Hit him! Ammet, that girl’s strong. Go to it, Biffa! Go it!”

  And eventually the ball went into someone’s goal area in a tumble of grey bodies and a great deal of shouting.

  Shortly after that Hildy and Biffa joined them on the steps. They were both dangling blue hoods and were very flushed. The hoods were padded all over, particularly across the nose, and they must have been boiling hot in them.

  “Well?” said Navis. “Did you win?”

  Hildy’s chin lifted haughtily. “Of course. You must have seen.”

  “I saw murder, mayhem and confusion,” Navis retorted. “Are either of you seriously maimed?”

  “Of course not – not with Biffa as our surnam,” Hildy said.

  “It was great!” said Mitt. “Don’t mind him. Hildy, Ynen sends you his love.”

  Hildy glanced at Mitt as if it were very tiresome to have to answer. “Thanks,” she said, and turned back to her father. The look settled on Mitt’s face again. It was not so much hurt as mortally wounded, Maewen thought. She wished someone had maimed Hildy.

  “Father,” Hildy said, “I’ve come to a decision. I intend to be a really good law-woman and—”

  “An excellent intention,” said Navis. “Is this recent? Did it come upon you during the grittling?”

  Hildy stamped her foot. Maewen hardly blamed her. Navis could be maddening. “Oh, I wish you wouldn’t be so – so unserious all the time! You always try to stop me doing things by making me look silly!”

  “Let us get this clear, Hildy,” Navis said, almost angrily. “I have never, ever wanted to prevent you being a lawyer. I am not trying to stop you now.”

  “Yes, you are!” Hildy cried out. “If what you told me goes wrong, then we’d be on the run and I’d never get back here. I’d have to sacrifice what I want to politics, just like I have done all my life! I’m not going to. I refuse to come with you. I’m staying here!” She spun round and marched away down the steps, angrily swinging her blue hood.

  Navis watched until she was lost in the surging, mingling crowd. His eyes were narrowed. He looked vicious and wretched.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Biffa said, looming shyly over him.

  Navis jumped and looked up at her. “Didn’t anything I said get through to her?” he asked Biffa.

  “Not really,” Biffa admitted. “But it got through to me. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know she ought to be away from here, somewhere where no earls will think to look, and I thought— Anyway, if I asked her to come home to our mill with me for the summer, I know she’d come, and no one would expect that, because we’re poor. But – but the trouble is I only have the hire for one horse.”

  Navis’s face relaxed. “May the One bless you, my child!” he said. “That would solve the summer. But I was talking about an autumn campaign, if you remember. Can you think of a way to stop her coming back here?”

  Biffa shyly twisted her hood. “That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you, sir. We get the autumn storms real terribly in from the Marshes, over in Ansdale. Sometimes you can’t get down to the valleys until weeks after Harvest. I was over a month late getting here last autumn. That’s how I came to know Hildy. We were both latecomers, as well as on scholarships. But Hildy came a month after me, and she won’t know.”

  “Aha!” said Navis. “This is deep cunning, my dear!” Biffa went very pink and shot a flustered smile at Mitt, then at Maewen and Moril. “Well, if you think you can keep my thankless daughter safe,” Navis went on, briskly undoing his money belt, “here is the hire of a horse for her and money for her keep. Is this enough?”

  Biffa looked at the pile of gold coins he pushed into her hand, and her eyes went large. “It would do me a year, sir – or two, if I went steady. I’ll give it Hildy now, not to be tempted. That’s the third thing I wanted to tell you: we ought to go now, in among everyone else, so that when those Hannart people look round for Hildy, she’s gone. Wouldn’t you say so, sir?”

  “Absolutely right,” said Navis. “Biffa, you are an extremely intelligent young woman.”

  Biffa went an even brighter pink. “Yes, I know,” she said. “But me being so big, people never think of me as clever. I trade on it quite a lot.” Everyone laughed. It was too much for Biffa. She turned and ran.

  “Quite a character,” Navis said.

  “Do you trust her?” Mitt said.

  “I think it’s all right,” Moril said. “She sort of worships Hildy – you know the way girls do.”

  “But all that money!” Mitt muttered as they joined the shuffling mass of people trying to get through the garden and out of the school gate. “I wouldn’t trust myself with that lot. And she said she traded on her size.”

  It was a nerve-racking time. They shuffled and stopped and shuffled again, and the garden lawn got trampled under many feet. They were too far from the gate to tell if the cup had been missed, or if the many hold-ups were because Hannart hearthmen were waiting at the gate for Hildy or Maewen. And that gate was the only way out.

  “I think it’s merely the confusion of so many departures,” Navis said. He was completely cool. He seemed to be one of those people who just got cooler the more danger there was.

  As they shuffled nearer the gate, it began to look as if Navis was right. The opening was crammed with parents and pupils and younger brothers and sisters, all with luggage and lunch baskets. Pupils kept forgetting things and shoving back into the school to find them. Many families had hired porters to carry the pupils’ trunks, so the way was constantly being blocked by men with handcarts, shouting, “Porter for Serieth Gunsson!” as they came in and, “Por-ter! Mind your backs!” as they shoved their way out again.

  After a while Moril said quietly, “Biffa and Hildy are in the crowd behind us.”

  Maewen wished she was taller. It took her five minutes of twisting and standing on tiptoe to see the two girls. Both carried bulging bags. Very sensibly they had mixed themselves up with a family of tall men who were fetching home a boy pupil even taller than Biffa and were talking busily with them as if they belonged.

  “A relief,” Navis said, after he had turned casually and seen them too. “So young Biffa is honest then.”

  They reached the gate at long last. People were just shoving their way through without being stopped but without any order either. The man with bad teeth was standing to one side. He stopped Navis.

  “Excuse me, sir.” Everyone waited for the worst. “Excuse me, one of your party left a cwidder with me.”

  Moril shoved his way through, while the rest of them tried hard not to look as relieved as they felt. The man turned and fetched the cwidder out of his cubbyhole beside the gate.

  “Here you are. One cwidder, safe and sound. Is it you the Adon’s waiting for?” He pointed sideways through the opening.

  There, beyond a confusion of carriages and carts, the Hannart horsemen stood in a huddle. Kialan was in the midst of them, looking bored and impatient.

  Moril took it in without a blink. “No. It’s my sister. She’s always late.”

  “No, lad, she’s out there,” the man said.

  They could all see Brid as he spoke, on a horse beside Kialan.

  “Well,
it’s not me. I don’t live in Hannart,” Moril said. “I expect they’re waiting for Hildrida Navissdaughter. Isn’t that so?” he asked Navis.

  “My daughter,” Navis said, looking quite at ease, “is even more inclined to be late than your sister.”

  The man laughed a mouthful of bad teeth. “Women!” he said, handing Moril the cwidder.

  They went out through the gate. Mitt and Maewen felt weak at the risk of it all, but Navis and Moril wandered nonchalantly along the line of horses and Navis gave Moril a leg up to ride double with him until they came to the cart. As he arrived on top of the mare, Moril gave Kialan a friendly wave. Kialan waved back. They saw him scan the three horses and try not to look puzzled.

  Moril giggled. “Expecting Hildrida to be with us and all set to pretend he didn’t see,” he said as Mitt and Maewen mounted. “Now he can’t think what’s going on. Good. It distracted him beautifully.”

  Mitt batted aside the Countess-horse’s biting mouth. “What do you mean?”

  Navis set a sedate pace round the walls towards the main part of Gardale Valley. It was sensible, although Maewen could see the cup flopping heavily in Navis’s pocket and the sight made her want to gallop. “Moril means,” he said, “that while he was waving to Kialan, Hildy and Biffa came out and almost instantly cadged a lift in a carriage. If that carriage takes them into town and they hire horses at those stables in the first street, they could be away almost as soon as we are.”

  “And Kialan can’t tell Keril,” said Moril. “Keril’s rather good at getting things out of people.”

  “I believe you,” said Mitt.

  As their three horses rounded the corner of the school walls, Maewen had a good view of a man in Hannart livery pushing his way out through the gate and running towards Kialan, shaking his head. Before they were quite out of sight, Kialan was giving a genuine display of someone annoyed and baffled and at the end of his patience. As the walls hid them, the Hannart horsemen were turning to ride off the other way.

  Miraculously, nobody at all seemed to have noticed the cup was missing.

  PART FOUR

  Sword and Crown

  WEARINESS HIT MAEWEN as soon as they were well away from the school. The Gardale Valley was as beautiful as she remembered from her visit with Aunt Liss, and much the same except there were far fewer houses. They took narrow lanes where wild roses grew in the hedges, miles of them, that blurred in her mind. She was so tired she almost missed seeing Hestefan’s cart and would have ridden straight past if the others had not stopped.

  The cart was parked on a triangle where three lanes met. The mule was hitched to an oak tree almost the same colour as the cart and dozing on its feet. Moril jumped off the mare and went racing anxiously over, with the cwidder bumping on his back. He looked over the tailgate and came back. “It’s all right. He’s asleep inside.” The relief in his face was mixed with worry. “I don’t think he’s well.”

  “He’s not a young man,” Navis said. “And I’m sure he was injured, or shocked at least, when your cart overturned.”

  “Let him sleep,” Mitt suggested. “They say sleep cures.”

  Moril unhitched the mule, which was not anxious to move, and drove the cart behind the horses. Hestefan did not stir. The miles went by slower still. Moril was white with worry.

  “And no wonder,” Navis murmured to Mitt. “What becomes of him if Hestefan dies?”

  “There’s that brother of his,” Mitt said stoutly. “He’s fond of the old lolly, that’s all. Worry about Hildy instead. And I’ll tell you about Kialan now.”

  The two of them talked in low voices. Maewen continued to ride in a daze, long, long lanes through the valley, a long, long haul up a slanting track into the hills beyond. After what seemed an age, her horse humped itself on to level green turf at the head of the track, and there was the waystone casting a huge hollow shadow in the evening light. Wend’s shadow was even bigger as he stood up to meet them.

  Seeing him, Maewen relaxed from a watch she had not realised she was keeping. Safe at last! she thought. Wend was Undying. He had the power to keep her safe. Most of her weariness dropped away. She realised it had been a smokescreen her mind had put up to disguise how terrified she had been that someone would jump out from behind a hedge and try to kill her again. She was so glad to see Wend that she leant down from her horse and wrung his hand.

  Wend was surprised, but she could tell he was very flattered too. His face looked like that of a normal human person who was glad to see friends again. “There’s a good camp in a mile or so,” he said.

  It was a very good camp. It was a green lawn-like place set back from the road, spread beside a pool from a cascading stream. There were rocks to sit on and a small wood of rowans and silver birches leaning over the place. “Protection,” Wend said, patting a graceful silver trunk.

  “Libby Beer?” Mitt asked.

  Wend looked at him. “You know her?” he asked sharply.

  “You might say so,” Mitt said. “We’ve met once or twice.”

  Wend stared at him gravely for a moment, as if he were reappraising something. Then he turned away, looking puzzled.

  The fresh, safe feeling in the camp revived everyone. They all bustled about, seeing to the horses and making a fire. When Hestefan crawled out of the cart, rubbing his eyes and saying he didn’t know what had come over him, he was greeted with jokes and laughter from everyone. There did not seem to be much wrong with Hestefan. He helped Wend fill Wend’s hat with wild strawberries as energetically as Mitt and Moril were hunting mushrooms further upstream. Among them they provided quite a feast.

  Maewen kept looking at Mitt, wondering if he was still feeling bad about Hildy. She simply could not tell. The fact was, Mitt had no idea himself. At times, while Navis was giving Wend and Hestefan the story of all they had missed in Gardale, he thought that if only someone would give him definite proof that Hildy and Biffa were safely on the way to Ansdale, he could forget Hildy entirely – almost with relief. Trouble with me, he thought, watching Wend’s straight, fair face turning to Noreth in alarm, I’m like a stupid dog that asks to be kicked.

  “Twice?” said Wend. “Lady, I must ask you not to go down from the green roads again. The paths can keep you safe.”

  “But did you get the cup?” Hestefan asked.

  “Navis did,” Moril said. He was still sore about it.

  “Please show us,” Hestefan said politely to Navis.

  Maewen forgot Mitt. This was going to be alarming. Nervously she watched Navis feel in his pocket and pull out the bundle of silk handkerchief. It was twilight by then and greenish. As the handkerchief fell aside, the firelight made mild dancing gleams on the silver of the cup. Navis bowed to Maewen from his seat on a boulder. “Your cup, Noreth,” he said, handing it to Mitt to pass over to her.

  Mitt was not expecting Navis to hand him the cup. He came out of his thoughts with a jump and fumbled. The handkerchief unrolled. For an instant the green light and the flicker of the fire just vanished, overwhelmed in blue fizzling light. “Ouch!” said Mitt. While everyone blinked and saw yellow dazzle, he hastily rewrapped the cup and passed it to Maewen. “Careful. There’s a strong hex on it.”

  Maewen took the bundle. This was worse than the ring. They were all expecting her to unwrap it and take hold of it and she was probably going to be electrocuted. But, she told herself, swallowing hard, if I had been electrocuted, Wend would have mentioned it in the palace. Here goes. Pulling away the handkerchief, she said, “Look, everyone. This is the Adon’s cup.” She took firm hold of the lopsided silver bowl of it and held it out.

  To her huge relief, nothing fizzed. Everyone’s dim faces were turned to the cup. After a moment or so Maewen realised they were looking at the way her hands looked dark against it, darker than natural. The cup seemed to have grown brighter. Yes. It had. It was filling with a spreading gentle blue glow, shining like a blue lamp in the near-dark, making her hands look blood-red against it. It was so beautiful,
and so welcome, that her eyes filled with tears.

  Several people let breath out noisily. “It is the cup,” Wend said. “It knows you as it knew the Adon.”

  Well, thank the One! Maewen thought as she wrapped the thing up again.

  Under the friendly rustling of the rowans and birches, they all slept well. But towards dawn, around the time when the pouring of the stream began to sound less soothing and more like a noise, and people began to turn and shift because the grass was flat and the bones of the earth came through, Mitt had a strange dream. There was danger in it, and wonder, and the two were mixed up confusingly.

  It began with him looking down on the camp from above. He saw the silver cup glowing and another, yellower glow nearby. After a while he knew the yellow glow was from the golden statue. It was very important. Mitt looked at it and thought, Noreth won’t need it so much now. I can have my share. But that was not why it was important. Mitt puzzled over this, until his attention was distracted by finding he could see the green roads winding away from the camp. While he was looking at them, he dreamt he was back in the camp, lying under his blanket, dreaming he was looking at the green roads.

  He dreamt and looked at the roads with interest. They went in all directions, snaking among the mountains, linking place to place. He could see them all, right down past Dropwater to Kernsburgh and beyond that, into the North Dales and on into the South. Yes, there had been green roads that led through the South, but they were not kept up any longer. Things moved over them, keeping them hidden, dangerous things. But they had been meant to cover all Dalemark.

  Mitt dreamt that he would have been happier about seeing it all if the roads had not kept coming back to him, lying under the rowan trees and in danger. Since the idea of danger made him impatient, he turned his attention out again, to the roads, grey under late yellow moonlight, and took a look at the people travelling on them. Quite a few people were up early or travelling through the night. Hildy was one. She and Biffa were riding, a long way over towards that smoking mountain, nearly into Ansdale already. Kialan was riding too, well on the way to Hannart. This meant danger. That troubled Mitt, so he looked North, where the young Singer who was Moril’s brother was up early and hastening towards Adenmouth. Beyond, and coming towards Dagner, there were more riders. These meant danger too.