The Crown of Dalemark (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  There was a black patch of danger centred on the camp under the rowan trees.

  Mitt ignored it obstinately and kept watching the roads. He saw the Undying moving on them too, unnoticed by ordinary people. They looked so much like ordinary people that Mitt wondered how he knew they were Undying. But he knew King Hern, coming down the King’s Way to build Kernsburgh, though King Hern looked like a gawky boy only about Mitt’s age, and he knew Manaliabrid, hurrying into exile with the Adon and a small boy who was the Adon’s son. The Adon turned out to be a short man, much more like Navis than Mitt expected, and Manaliabrid had a strong look of Noreth about her. Wend was with them, to Mitt’s surprise, looking much the same.

  Now he knew he was dreaming. So it did not surprise him that the green roads were winding away into the past. He lay and marvelled at the way they turned back and forth through history, up to the present, into the place where he lay in such danger, and then went winding and snaking on into the far future. The Undying went walking on, taking the roads through time, and history went with them, ignoring them, forgetting the Undying were making history. He watched the roads snake out again into the South, and battles, and other strange things. He would have enjoyed watching more, if the roads had not kept on winding back into the rowan trees and showing him Noreth was a danger.

  “No,” Mitt said to his dream. “She may be in danger, but she’s not a danger.”

  And the dream kept telling him, “Not Noreth. You.”

  “Ah, come on! She’s all right,” Mitt told the dream. “If there’s any danger, it’s those earls.”

  Then he woke into white mist with grey trees like shadows in it, feeling very irritable and rather frightened.

  Everyone else seemed annoyingly refreshed. When Wend asked Maewen, “Where to next, lady?” she answered cheerfully, “To get the Adon’s sword.”

  “Then we go towards Dropwater,” Wend said.

  When the road branched at the next waystone, they took the right-hand branch and found themselves almost at once in the stony bottom of a vast valley. It dwarfed everyone. Sweeps of hill rose on either side, barren and curved tight as a wind-filled sail. Mitt supposed he was put in mind of sails because the wind streamed in this valley, with a sour sort of whistling, as hard as he had ever known it at sea. Like wind at sea, it kept sweeping bands of misty rain across them, which made the barren hills look even more harsh and empty. They look stretched, Mitt thought, staring up at the bare yellowness, through little itching raindrops. A vision came to him of the One, immeasurably huge, taking the hard rocky edge of this land and pulling until it was so tight it would stretch no more. Rivers, rocks and creatures went tumbling and rolling as the One pulled—

  Mitt shivered and hunched into his jacket. He had a dim memory that he might have seen something like this in his dream. He put it, and the idea of danger, resolutely out of his mind. It did no good to get nervous fancies.

  It was a drear day’s ride and a cheerless camp that night, which could not have been more of a contrast to the camp under the rowan trees. The wind came from all directions. The flames of the fire blew out raggedly, making more smoke than warmth, and the smoke seemed to follow you about wherever you sat. Everyone, even Moril and Hestefan in the cart, rolled themselves in all the coats, cloaks and blankets they could muster, but nobody slept very well. The wind seemed to get in everywhere. Mitt was so cold that he got up almost before it was light. It had rained again, and everything he had was damp. Since it did not seem to matter how much colder or wetter he got, he went off to wash in the stream beyond the pile of boulders where the horses were. It was a cheerless little stream, clattering down through grey stones with a sound like teeth chattering.

  The sound of his going woke Maewen. She rolled up into the grey day, moaning. She had never been so cold or so damp in her life. The one good thing was that her stomach had stopped aching. As if the green roads cured you, she thought as she stumbled off to the latrine beyond the horses. She came back to find everyone else huddled in dead heaps. This was depressing. She went back to the boulders and started to attend to the horses.

  She was alone. The deep voice spoke to her at once. “I have considered,” it said. “Your way is now clear before you.”

  “Is it indeed?” said Maewen. “Welcome back. Where were you when I needed you to warn me about the other man with a knife?”

  At the stream Mitt discovered that it was possible to be colder. The water was icy. It must have been snowmelt from some high mountain out of sight from here. The bits of him he could bear to dip in turned blue. He washed in a hurry, with great splashings and snortings, and put his clothes back on quickly. The sun was up by then. It was no wonder he was cold, Mitt saw. The stream was in deep blue shadow. But there was misty yellow sunlight on the boulders. Shivering all over, Mitt went over there to get warm.

  He could hear Noreth talking on the other side of the rocks, and a deep voice answering her. So Hestefan or Wend was up. Mitt went cheerfully round the boulders.

  “You were in no danger. Help was at hand whether I warned you or not,” the deep voice said.

  Mitt stood, confounded. Noreth was brushing Navis’s mare and entirely on her own. He could see Wend, still asleep by the dead fire in the distance. Navis was the other hump. And Hestefan was just crawling out of the cart.

  She said the One spoke to her, Mitt thought. But I never really believed it till now. He backed quietly away behind the boulders so that Noreth would not think he was prying and stood in the sun there. But he could still hear both voices.

  Maewen said, “I’m not going down into the dales any more. I’m staying up on the green roads. Wend says I’m safe here.”

  “You are not safe here,” said the deep voice.

  There was a pause. “Why not?” came Noreth’s voice. She sounded quite calm. Mitt was not to know Maewen was shaking all over. He was thinking he had better back away some more, out of hearing, when the deep voice answered.

  “The Southern youth you call Mitt,” it said, “is the worst danger you have encountered yet. You must kill him before he destroys you.”

  After this Mitt could no more have moved than he could have flown.

  “But Mitt rescued me from the second murderer,” Maewen protested.

  “For his own ends,” said the voice. “And this Mitt will not be easy to kill while the man Navis is alive. Navis will defend Mitt for his own ends. For this reason I advise you to kill them both at the same time.”

  “You can’t mean this!” Maewen said.

  “After you have found the Adon’s sword, both of them are expendable,” said the voice. “Stab them as they sleep, the night before you reach Kernsburgh.”

  “Really?” said Maewen. “And what about Wend and Moril and Hestefan? Are they expendable too?”

  “I told you,” the voice replied imperturbably, “you will need the Singer boy to find you the crown. After that, he will be as much of a liability as the Southerners, and you may stab him as soon as you have an opportunity.”

  “You’re asking me –” said Maewen; she was trying not to giggle, even though it was not funny at all – “you’re asking me to arrive at Kernsburgh with nothing but a pile of corpses.”

  “You will be joined there by a sizeable army. Display the bodies as the bodies of traitors and explain that all traitors to the crown must suffer the same fate.”

  “Thanks a bunch!” said Maewen. “That’s quite a programme!”

  “Do as I say,” said the voice, and the deep notes of it made both Mitt and Maewen shudder, “or fail, and die yourself.”

  There was silence then. Mitt stood where he was until he heard vigorous horse-grooming noises from the other side of the boulders. Then he did his best to walk casually over to the camp. Nobody there seemed to notice that he was shaking all over. But they were all cold and all shivering.

  Breakfast was nasty. There was no decent bread. The outsides of all the cheeses had gone mouldy. Almost the only thing eatable was the
pickled cherries, and Mitt discovered that he hated them by now.

  They moved on up the stretched and windy valley, and neither Mitt nor Maewen spoke to anyone much that morning.

  Maewen’s thoughts were chaos. Was it the One who spoke to her? Or was it just a time-confused part of her own mind, reacting with violence to the violence she had met in Gardale? There was no doubt she had been in danger from someone. Or if it was the One, he was angry. Those he had singled out – Mitt and Moril had tried to steal the cup, and Navis had taken it. She had known during the song that Navis had done something awful. It might be because of the cup. But it did not really matter what spoke or why. It hurt. Maewen’s head was now full of nasty suspicions of Navis, Mitt and Moril. Right back at the beginning of this ride, she had seen that each of them had come to follow her for their own secret reasons, and Mitt and Navis had shown her some of those reasons in Gardale. It was Hildy who was important to them. That hurt.

  Oh, I want to go home! Maewen thought this so strongly that she almost said it aloud. In fact, she did utter a sort of noise, which caused Hestefan and his mule, who happened to be alongside her just then, both to turn and look at her. But no sooner had she almost said it than she saw she did not quite mean it. She wanted to find out what had happened to Noreth and to try to change history, even though she knew now that one of those three was going to do her some terrible harm. Correction. Mitt was going to do her some terrible harm. Navis was a cool customer, Moril was a deep one, and he had that cwidder, but Mitt was the one who did things. The knowledge made her throat ache, as if Mitt had tried to strangle her – and maybe he had, at the inn in Gardale.

  Mitt kept thinking, This is a laugh! The One was playing games with him. Or he had it in for Mitt, which was much more likely. Mitt wanted to ride away from the whole mess. It would be lovely to settle down on a farm, somewhere near enough the South to be like what he was used to, and leave the One to stew. But he needed his half of the golden statue for that, and Noreth was not likely to part with it now. Not now she knew Mitt had been told to kill her. Anyway, he had to stay with her until Kernsburgh. If Hildy was safe, Ynen was not, and Kialan might not manage to bring Ynen there after all. He would have laughed at the mess if he’d felt like laughing. Meanwhile, he had to warn Navis and Moril somehow. And talking of warnings, that dream had been a warning, hadn’t it just!

  Mitt came out of his thoughts to find he was warm – more than warm, almost too hot, for a wonder. He undid his jacket. There was light, white rain steaming over them, but he was too warm to care. This makes a change! he thought. It must be almost record heat for the North.

  They had come out of the stretched valley and were now following the green path across a high gorse-grown heath. The mountains had melted to white-purple distance, and the one behind, Mitt saw, peering through the misty bands of rain, did indeed have snow on the top of it.

  “Where is this? Why is it so hot?” he said. It was the first thing he had said since breakfast.

  Moril grinned at him. “Welcome back. It’s the Shield of Oreth.”

  “It is a large upland that opens towards the South,” Hestefan explained from beside Moril on the driving seat. Schoolmaster again, Maewen thought. The warmth was making her feel better. “We’ll be having the warm air from now until Kernsburgh. This used to be fine land. Even in the Adon’s day it was full of people.”

  Hang on! Maewen thought, coming properly out of her misery. If this was the Shield, she had looked out of the train at it. There had been farmlands and factories, trees and towns. But Hestefan could be right. Up among the gorse and heather on either side there were piles of stone in faint, broken squares, which could have been ruined houses.

  “Where did all the people go?” she asked.

  “Fled in the wars after the Adon died,” said Moril.

  “Who owns it now?” Navis asked, looking out over bracken and heather beyond the gorse bushes as if he would not mind owning some of it himself.

  As Hestefan went into a complicated account that suggested that Hannart or Dropwater might have a claim, but nobody wanted this land, anyway, Maewen frowned. She rather thought Navis would be owning some of it before long. The Duke of Kernsburgh owned the big brewery here in her day. Would she dare change history to the extent of cutting Navis out of it? Could she? No, of course not. That was a relief. But that did not apply to Mitt or Moril, who were not really in history at all.

  She looked sideways at Mitt. He was turning his head to watch a slightly bigger pile of stones with an old apple tree drooped over them. I could farm here, he thought. It would take a deal of hard work, but I reckon it would be peaceful.

  The rain blew away into the mountains, leaving a tearful sort of blue sky overhead. Everyone steamed in the heat. And the cart went along in its own cloud made of wreathing spirals of steam. Flies came out of the heather and circled the horses. They made the Countess-horse restive, but Mitt rode along with his chin down, hardly noticing. That dream was nagging at him. Farming had not been in it anywhere. Something was wrong.

  By this time they were seeing occasional small farms built of grey stone, with square fields around them scratched out of the heather. The Shield was not quite as derelict as Maewen had thought. The farms grew bigger and more frequent as they went on. By midday, when they stopped to eat, there was farmland all round, and walled lanes leading to distant farmhouses on both sides of the green road. There were even a few trees. They stopped to eat under a mighty old ash on a corner by a lane.

  Navis revelled in the heat. While the horses crowded into the shade with Maewen and Hestefan, Navis sat against the drystone wall in the sun and stretched both arms out. “This is more like it!” he said to Mitt.

  “It is and all,” Mitt agreed. “First time I’ve been warm since I came North. I’ll be back in a moment.” He picked up a couple of pickled onions – better than those cherries – and a handful of the manky cheese and set off up the lane. That dream was now mixing in his mind with what he had heard this morning, and he wanted to be alone to think. Something was badly wrong.

  He almost wondered whether he might not simply walk away. He came to another lane and turned into it because it was narrow and had no walls and he felt freer there. He climbed higher with it, until he was walking in the warm wind between low hedges with a field of grain on either side. Grey-green both fields were, like the sea over sand in dangerous shallows. The barley on the right surged in the wind, in green waves over silky white, as if it were the sea indeed. The wheat on the other side stood stiffer, and the wind rasped in it like sea over shingle. But the land smell was wrong for the sea, dusty and juicy.

  Great homesickness overtook Mitt. “Flaming Ammet!” he said. “Why did I ever leave the coast?”

  “You know you had no choice,” someone told him.

  MITT’S HEAD SNAPPED up. A tall golden man came walking along the lane towards him and bent his head in a solemn nod of greeting as Mitt looked. At this season Old Ammet had a face that was neither young nor old. He could have been the same age as Navis, except that the long golden hair blowing about his head and shoulders made him seem young.

  “Now it’s you,” Mitt said. “Why do you Undying keep pushing me about?”

  “It’s not our fault, Alhammitt,” Old Ammet answered. “The times are pushing us. And I should remind you that when you chose the wind’s road, you chose the green road too.”

  “I know, I know,” Mitt said. “Once I got on, there’s never been a moment I could have got off. But I keep having to choose all the same! And every time I choose and try to get right, things turn round on me and try to make me go the other way. The One told Noreth to kill me this morning – and Navis and Moril. You tell me what I’m supposed to do about that!”

  Old Ammet looked at him gravely, in a way that reminded Mitt of Wend all of a sudden, except that Old Ammet was blowing and rustling in the wind. “I am not here to tell you what to do.”

  “No,” Mitt said bitterly. “You Undying
never do give a straight answer. You just push.”

  “It is not my place,” said Ammet, “to question our Grand Father, whom they call the One. His law is that we do not tell his mortal family what to do. That is to make people into puppets.”

  “Then the One just broke his own law,” Mitt said.

  “I am here to tell you to think about that,” said Ammet.

  There was a silence full of the warm wind and the rustling and streaming of Ammet’s white-blond hair, while Mitt digested this. “I don’t get it,” he said at last. He found Old Ammet looking so kind that it made him feel terrible.

  “I should remind you that we gave you our names to say at need,” Old Ammet said.

  Mitt nodded. He felt his face screw up. There were indeed four names, the greater and lesser names of Old Ammet and Libby Beer, tucked away in the corner of Mitt’s mind. That part of his head always felt like a sore tooth, where you kept putting your tongue even though you knew it would hurt. “You mean, I could say your biggest name at her?”

  Ammet laughed. It felt as if the wind had turned to a warm gale. “That name is not to be used that lightly. It will be many a long year before you will need to say my Great Name. But you have three other names. I am here to tell you that if you use those names properly, the Shield of Oreth can be covered again with fields like these.”

  His hand spread to show Mitt the surging barley and the stiff rustling wheat. Mitt looked wistfully, thinking of that farm he might have. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said.

  “We would, Alhammitt,” Old Ammet agreed. He smiled at Mitt, rather sadly, over his shoulder among his flying hair, as he walked away round a turn in the lane.