Diana Wynne Jones’s Fantastical Journeys Collection. Diana Wynne Jones

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.”

      The man who nodded and went off was, I was sure, the same man I had glimpsed dodging back through the locked door earlier. This time he went to a different door, which opened quite as easily.

      “They’re all unlocked,” my father said, seeing me staring, “except the one we came in by. We’re taking part in a farce here.”

      “Which we’d better get on with,” Prince Alasdair said. “The Ministers will be here any minute now.” He went to his couch and climbed nimbly back into the dreadful bandages. One of the other prisoners brought him a large box of powder which Alasdair applied to his face with a bundle of feathers. In seconds, he was a pale, wounded invalid once more. “You new arrivals had better sit about looking gloomy, being upset at being taken prisoner, you know.”

      None of us knew what to make of this, but we spread about the great room, doing our best to look miserable. Ivar, Riannan and Rees sat together on the floor, cross-legged and mournful. Aunt Beck went and sat next to Finn, where she eyed him until he guiltily hid his mug under the seat. Green Greet settled droopingly on the back of Finn’s chair. Ogo and I, with natural curiosity, went over to the archways to see what was beyond.

      Nothing was beyond, except a terrace with a few chairs on it. There was a low fence at the edge of the terrace and, beyond that, a huge drop down to the courtyard where we had come in. From our height it looked as small as this page of paper. The place did make a perfect prison. A spacious, airy, perfect prison. Once all the doors were locked of course.

      My father had come over there with us. He still seemed embarrassed. Ogo said to him, “I suppose you’re all secretly busy making ropes?”

      My father laughed. “We could be. But what good would it do? We could get to the ground easily enough, one way or another, but we’d still be in Logra, behind the barrier.”

      While he was speaking, there seemed to be a low, growing roar coming from the city beyond the courtyard. We saw the courtyard gates slam open and two horses galloped in and stopped as if they could go no further. Even from up here, I could see that the beasts were covered with foam. The men on their backs, who were both wearing some sort of flapping purple robes, flung themselves off the horses and staggered, obviously as tired as the horses. People ran from the gates and the buildings around, shouting excitedly. Meanwhile, the roar from the city grew and grew.

      “I wonder what’s going on,” my father said. “Those look like—”

      He was interrupted by a green whirr. Green Greet shot out of the archway right beside my ear and plunged out over the fence.

      “—wizards,” my father finished, leaning over to watch Green Greet plummet until he was a tiny green blur, then spread his wings and sail this way and that around the courtyard. “Does he do that often?”

      “No,” I said. “He’s rather a sober bird really.”

      The tired wizards were being helped into the palace by an eager crowd now. When they were out of sight, my father turned back into the wide prison, saying, “Best get into our act, then.” And sighed.