The Islands of Chaldea. Diana Wynne Jones

Farlane turned to Donal. “Pay him that amount, Prince.”

      “I protest, sire,” said Donal. “He has gold enough off us in temple dues. A more grasping person—”

      “Pay him,” repeated the King, “and the matter will be thereby settled for good.”

      “Sire.” Donal bowed his head dulcetly and stripped off one of his many bracelets, which he handed to the person next to him at the table. As the bracelet went flashing from hand to hand towards the Priest, Donal said, pretending to be anxious, “Pray have it weighed, Priest. It may be nearer seven ounces.”

      “No need,” said the High King. “The case is concluded.”

      The Priest received the bracelet, glowering, and it seemed we could all sit down to eat then. But I doubt if the Priest enjoyed his dinner much. He looked sour enough to turn milk.

      “Hm,” said Aunt Beck. “Hm.” She took a small rye loaf off a towering basket of them and pushed the basket on to me. “That was all very nicely staged, wasn’t it?”

      “What do you mean?” I whispered. “Donal and the Priest hate one another, everyone knows that.”

      “True, but there had to be a glaring reason, I guess, for the High King to come here,” my aunt observed. “There will be a private reason too. As we have been specially summoned, we may well discover what it is before long.”

      “Are you sure?” I asked.

      “I have in mind,” my aunt mused, tearing her loaf apart and reaching for the butter, “two things. First, that our cousin Donal, while addicted to jewellery, seldom wears quite so many bracelets. That man can scarcely lift his arms. And second that I have never known our cousin the King trust Ogo with a message before. Planning lies behind both these things. You’ll see.”

      Blow me down, she was right! We had scarcely finished a splendid dinner, entirely without porridge, to my great joy, and the two kings had scarcely risen and withdrawn to some private place, when Donal passed casually along behind our chairs. He was indeed holding his arms rather straight down by his sides. “Ivar,” he murmured to his brother, “you and Beck and Aileen follow me, will you?”

      We followed, across the platform and out by one of the doors at the back of it. There Donal led us on a corkscrew path through private corridors I did not know, and finally up a curving flight of stairs to a heavy door.

      “I have given out that Beck and Aileen have gone home,” he remarked over his shoulder as he rapped on the door.

      “And why, pray?” murmured my aunt, not as if she expected an answer. I think she was just giving voice to her annoyance that Donal should so coolly organise her movements. Our family is used to coming and going as it pleases.

      The door was opened by one of the robed attendants of the High King, who stood back and ushered us inside without a word. The room beyond was one I had never seen before with great windows that, but for the fog, would have given a wide view southwards over the sea. As it was, the fog was thinning and giving way to a red sunset, making the light quite confusing, since the room was lit with a tall lamp and many candles.

      The High King was sitting with King Kenig on his right and Queen Mevenne on his left. Two more attendants stood in the background, but I scarcely looked at them. The other people in the room were the old Dominie and the Priest of Kilcannon. My heart began to thunder in my ears as I realised that great doings must be afoot, to cause Donal and the Priest to come together in the same small room.

      

      Ivar was as astonished as I was. “What’s going on?” he demanded, making a hasty bow to the two kings.

      “Please take a seat,” said the High King, “and we shall tell you.”

      King Farlane was not a well man, I saw, as we sat on the low padded stools put ready in front of him. He was huddled in a royal plaid above his scarlet robes and someone had put a brazier near him for further warmth. But it was his face that showed his illness most. It was white, with a yellowish tinge, and the skin of it was very tight to the bones. What spare flesh there was had drawn into deep wrinkles of pain. But his tired eyes were not subdued by his disease. They gazed at us with a shrewdness and sanity which were almost startling.

      “As you know,” he said to us – all of us, though I think he spoke chiefly to my aunt – “ten years ago, the magicians of Logra cast a spell on our islands of Chaldea so that no one from here, however hard they try, can get to Logra.” He nodded to the Priest, who was so grimly eager to speak that he was sidling in his seat.

      “We have tried, gracious king,” the Priest burst out. “We have searched the whole of Skarr for some inkling of the spell. We have gone out – I myself have gone out in boats repeatedly – as far as the barrier in the sea, where the boats turn aside as though a current takes them, though there is nothing to be seen. And we have used every craft the gods grant us to break the spell. But we have found no way to break this spell.” He subsided, sort of shrinking into himself gloomily. “I have failed,” he said. “The gods are not pleased with me. I must fast and pray again.”

      “There’s no need to reproach yourself,” King Farlane said.

      Donal could obviously not resist muttering, “Och, man, leave your gods to punish you. If they are that angry, they can surely take away your next dinner for themselves.”

      At this, our old Dominie gave Donal a mildly quelling look and turned his head questioningly to the High King. King Farlane nodded and the Dominie said, wagging his white eyebrows sadly, “I have had my failures too. It pains me, as a scholar, to say this, but I have now searched in every library on Skarr and journeyed to Bernica to search there too, without stumbling across a single hint of how this spell was constructed.”

      Oh! I thought. This explained those lovely unexpected days when I had walked to the castle for my lessons to find all the other children rushing around the yard, shouting that old Dominie was on his travels again.

      “On the other hand,” the Dominie continued, “the clue may lie all around us in the geography of our very islands.”

      I sighed. The Dominie had a passion for geography. He was forever making us draw maps and explaining to us how the lie of the land influenced history: how this inlet made a perfect harbour and caused the town to grow, or how that lone mountain sheltered this valley and made it so fertile that wars were fought for it. Sure enough, he went on instructing everyone now.

      “As you know,” he said, “our three islands form a crescent with Skarr to the north, Bernica due west and Gallis in the south, slanted south-eastwards, while Logra forms a very large wedge to the south-east. Now I have it in mind that the three Chaldean islands could be seen to form the sign for the dark of the moon, which also happens to be the sign for banishment. It would take no stretch of the imagination for the Lograns to see Logra as the full moon bearing the shield of banishment before it. The Lograns, as you know, went to war with us purely and simply because their gods told them it was their right to conquer Chaldea—”

      This was too much for half the people there. They forgot the reverence that should be due to the High King and burst into protest. Donal contented himself with a sarcastic noise, but the Priest unshrank himself and snarled, “The Lograns will burn for their false beliefs!”

      Aunt Beck, who was sitting in a demure and graceful attitude on her stool, which I wished I could emulate, with her red heels sweetly together and her bony, sensitive fingers clasped around her knees, tossed her small dark head and very nearly snorted. “There’s no gods to it,” she said. “It was human greed.”

      And King Kenig said across her, “Gods, my left hambone, man! Our islands have gold and silver, tin and copper. Gallis has pearls and