First published in Great Britain by Macmillan London Ltd in 1975
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street,
London, SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1975
Map illustration © Sally Taylor 2016
Cover artwork © Manuel Šumberac
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Diana Wynne Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008170622
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008170639
Version: 2016-10-21
For Rachel
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map of North and South Dalemark
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
A Guide to Dalemark
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Books by Diana Wynne Jones
About the Publisher
“DO COME OUT of that dream, Moril,” Lenina said.
“Glad rags, Moril,” said Brid. “We’re nearly in Derent.”
Moril sighed reproachfully. He had not been in a dream, and he felt it was unfair of his mother to call it that. He had merely been gazing at the white road as it wandered northwards, thinking how glad he was to be going that way again, and how glad he would be to get out of the South. It was spring, and it was already far too hot. But that was not the worst of the South. The worst, to Moril’s mind, was the need to be careful. You dared not put a foot, or a word, out of place for fear of being clapped in jail. People were watching all the time to report what you said. It gave Moril the creeps. And it irked him that there were songs his father dared not sing in the South for fear of sounding seditious. They were the best songs, too, to Moril’s mind. They all came from the North. Moril himself had been born in the North, in the earldom of Hannart. And his favourite hero, the Adon, had once upon a time been Earl of Hannart.
“You’re dreaming again!” Lenina said sharply.
“No, I’m not,” said Moril. He left his perch behind the driving seat and climbed hastily into the covered back of the cart. His mother and his sister were already changed into their cheap tinsel-trimmed show dresses. Lenina, who was pale and blonde and still very beautiful, was in silver and pale gold. Brid, who was darker and browner, had a glimmering peacock dress. Lenina hung Moril’s suit above the rack of musical instruments, and Moril squeezed up to that end to change, very careful not to bang a cwidder or scrape the hand organ. Each instrument was shiny with use and gleaming with care. Each had its special place. Everything in the cart did. Clennen insisted on it. He said that life in a small cart would otherwise become impossible.
Once Moril was changed, he emerged from the cart as a very flamboyant figure, for his suit was the same peacock as Brid’s dress and his hair was red – a bright, wild red. He had inherited Lenina’s paleness. His face was white, with a few red freckles.
“You know, Mother,” Brid said, as she had said before every show since they left Holand, “I don’t think I like that colour on Moril.”
“It makes people notice him,” said Lenina, and went to take the reins while Clennen and Dagner changed in their turn.
Moril went to walk in the damp springing grass on the roadside, which was rough-soft under his toes, where he could have a good view of the cart that was his home. It was painted in a number of noticeable colours, principally pink and gold. Picked out in gold and sky blue along the sides were the words Clennen the Singer. Moril knew it was garish, but he loved this cart all the same. It moved softly, because it was well sprung and well oiled, and ran easily behind Olob, the glistening brown horse. Clennen always said he would not part with Olob for an earldom. Olob – his real name was Barangarolob, because Clennen loved long names – was harnessed in pink and scarlet, with a great deal of polished brass, and looked as magnificent as the rest of the turnout. Moril was just thinking that his mother and Brid on the driving seat looked like two queens – or perhaps a queen and a princess – when Clennen stuck his head out of the canvas at the back.
“Admiring us, are you?” he called cheerfully. Moril smiled and nodded. “It’s like life,” Clennen said. “You may wonder what goes on inside, but what matters is the look of it and the kind of performance we give. Remember that.” His head popped back inside again.
Moril went on smiling. His father was always giving them odd thoughts to remember. He would probably want this one repeated to him in a day or so. Moril thought about it – in the dreamy way in which he usually gave his attention to anything – and he could not see that their turnout was like life. Life was not pink and gold. At least, some of theirs was, he supposed, but that was only saying the cart was life.
He was still pondering when they came under some big trees covered with pale buds, and the canvas cover went down with a bit of a clatter, revealing Clennen and Dagner dressed in scarlet and ready for the show. Moril scampered back and climbed up with them. Clennen smiled jovially. Dagner, whose face was tight and pinched, as it always was before a show, pushed Moril’s cwidder into his hands and Moril into the right place without a word. He handed the big old cwidder to Clennen and the panhorn to Brid, and took up a pipe and a long, thin drum himself. By the time they were all settled, Olob was clopping smoothly into the main square of Derent.
“Ready,” said Clennen. “Two, three.” And they struck up.
Derent was not a big place. The number of people who came into the square in response to their opening song was not encouraging. There was a trickle of children and ten adults at the most. True, the people sitting outside the tavern turned their chairs round to get a better view, but Moril had a vague feeling, all the same, that they were wasting their talents on Derent. He said so to Brid, while Lenina was reaching past him to receive the hand organ from Dagner.
“All your feelings are vague!” Lenina said, overhearing. “Be quiet.”
Undaunted by the sparse crowd, Clennen began his usual patter. “Ladies and gentlemen, come and listen! I am Clennen the Singer, on my way from Holand to the North. I bring you news, views, songs and tales, things old and things new. Roll up, draw up chairs, come near and listen!” Clennen had a fine rolling voice, speaking or singing. It rumbled round the square. Eyes were drawn to him, for his presence matched his voice. He was a big man, and not a thin one, though the scarlet suit made his paunch look bigger than it really was. He had a good sharp curl of ginger beard, which made up for the bald patch at the back of his head – now hidden by his scarlet hat. But the main thing about him was his enormous, jovial, total good humour. It seemed to fetch people by magic or multiply those there out of thin air. Before his speech was over, there were forty or fifty people listening to it.
“So there!” Brid said to Moril.
Before the performance could start, however, someone pushed up to the cart, calling, “Have you got any news from Holand, Clennen?” So they had to wait. They were used to this. Moril thought of it as part of the performance – and it certainly seemed to be one of their duties – to bring news from one part of Dalemark to the others. In the South particularly, there were few other ways in which people could get to know what was happening in the next lordship, let alone the next earldom.
“Now, let’s see,” said Clennen. “There’s been a new earl invested for the South Dales – the old one’s grandson. And they tell me Hadd has fallen out with Henda again.” This surprised nobody. They were two very quarrelsome earls. “And I hear,” said Clennen, stressing the hear, to show that he was not trying to stir up trouble, “I hear the cause of it had something to do with a shipload of Northmen that came into harbour at Holand last month.” This caused confused and careful muttering. Nobody knew what to make of a ship from the North coming into Holand, or whether they were breaking the law to think of it at all. Clennen passed on to other news. “The Earl of Waywold is making new money – copper and goodness knows what else in it – worth nothing. You get more than two thousand to one gold. Now the price on the Porter – you’ve all heard of the Porter, I suppose?” Everyone had. The Porter was a notorious spy, much wanted by the earls of the South for passing illegal information and stirring up discontent. Not one of the earls had been able to catch him. “The price on the Porter’s head now being two thousand gold,” said Clennen, “it’s to be hoped that he’s not taken in Waywold, or you’ll have to collect your reward in a wagon.” This caused some cautious laughter. “And the storm last month carried off the lord’s roof in Bradbrook, not to speak of my tent,” said Clennen.
Lenina, by this time, had sorted out the strips of paper on which she had written messages from people in other places to friends and relatives in Derent. She began calling them out. “Is there someone called Coran here? I’ve a message from his uncle at Pennet.” A red-faced young man pushed forwards. He confessed, as if he were ashamed of it, that he could read, and was handed the paper. “Is there a Granny Ben here?”
“She’s sick, but I’ll tell her,” someone called.
So it went on. Lenina handed out messages to those who could read, and read them out to those who could not. More people hurried into the square, hearing there was news. Shortly there was a fair throng of people, all in great good humour, all telling one another the latest news from Holand.
Then Clennen called out: “Now I’m putting my hat on the ground here. If you want a song of us too, do us the favour of filling it with silver.” The scarlet hat spun neatly on to the cobblestones and waited, looking empty and expectant. Clennen waited too, with rather the same look. And after a second the red-faced Coran, grateful for his message, tossed a silver coin into it. Another followed, and another. Lenina, watching expertly, muttered to Brid that it looked like good takings.
After that the performance began in earnest. Moril did not have much time even for vague thinking. Though he did not do much of the singing, his job was to play treble to the low sweet notes of his father’s big cwidder, and he was kept fairly busy. His fingers grew hot and tingly, and he leant over and blew on them to cool them as he played. Clennen, as he had promised the crowd, gave them old favourites and new favourites – ballads, love songs, and comic songs – and some songs that were entirely new. Several of these were his own. Clennen was a great maker of songs. Brid and Dagner joined him for some of them, or played panhorn, drum and third cwidder, and Lenina played stolidly on the hand organ. She played well – since Clennen had taught her – but always rather mechanically, as if her mind were elsewhere. And Moril fingered away busily, his left hand sliding up and down the long, inlaid arm of his cwidder, his right thrumming on the strings until his fingertips glowed.
Every so often Clennen would pause and send a cheerfully reproachful look towards his hat. This usually caused a hand to come out from the crowd and drop a small, shamed coin in with the others. Then Clennen would beam round at everyone and go on again. When the hat was more than half full, he said: “Now I think the time has come for some of the songs out of our past. As you may know, the history of Dalemark is full of fine singers, but, to my mind, there have never been two to compare with the Adon and Osfameron. Neither has ever been equalled. But Osfameron was an ancestor of mine. I happen to be descended from him in a direct line, father to son. And it was said of Osfameron that he could charm the rocks from the mountains, the dead from their sleep and the gold from men’s purses.” Here a slight raising of Clennen’s sandy eyebrows in the direction of the hat called forth an apologetic penny and a ripple of laughter from everyone. “So, ladies and gentlemen,” said Clennen, “I shall now sing four songs by Osfameron.”
Moril sighed and leant his cwidder carefully against the side of the cart. The old songs only needed the big cwidder, so he could have a rest. In spite of this, he wished his father would not sing them. Moril much preferred the new, full-bodied music. The old required a fingering which made even the big mellow cwidder sound cracked and thin, and Clennen seemed to find it necessary to change his deep singing voice until it became thin, high and peculiar. As for the words – Moril listened to the first song and wondered what Osfameron had been on about.
“The Adon’s hall was open. Through it
Swallows darted. The soul flies through life.
Osfameron in his mind’s eye knew it.
The bird’s life is not the man’s life.”
But the crowd appreciated it. Moril heard someone say: “I do like to hear the old songs done in the right way.” And when they were over, there was a round of applause and a few more coins.
Then Dagner, with his face more tight and pinched than ever, took up his cwidder. Clennen said, “I now introduce my eldest son, Dastgandlen Handagner.” This was Dagner’s full name. Clennen loved long names. “He will sing you some of his own songs,” said Clennen, and waved Dagner forwards into the centre of the cart. Dagner, with a grimace of pure nervousness, bowed to the crowd and began to sing. Moril could never understand why this part was such a torment to Dagner. He knew his brother would have died rather than miss his part in the performance, yet he was never happy until it was over. Perhaps it was because Dagner had made the songs himself.
They were strange, moody little songs, with odd rhythms. Dagner made them even odder, by singing now loud, now soft, for no real reason, unless it was nerves. And they had a haunting something. The tunes stuck in your head and you hummed them when you thought you had long forgotten them. Moril listened and watched, and envied Dagner this gift of making songs. He would have given – well – his toes, anyway, to be able to compose anything.
“The colour in your head
The colour in your mind
Is dead
If you follow it blind,”
Dagner sang, and the crowd grew to like it. Dagner was not remarkable to look at – he was thin and sandy-haired, with a large Adam’s apple – and people expected his songs to be unremarkable too. But when he finished, there was applause and some more coins. Dagner flushed pale purple with pleasure and was almost at ease for the rest of the show.
There was not much more. The whole family sang a few more songs together and wound up with Jolly Holanders. They always finished with that in the South, and the audience always joined in. Then it was a matter of putting away the instruments and replying to the things people came up to say.
This was always rather a confused time. There were the usual number of people who seemed to know Clennen well; the usual giggly girls who wanted Dagner to tell them how he composed songs, a thing Dagner could never explain and always tried to do; the usual kind people who told Moril he was quite a musician for a youngster; and the usual gentlemen who drifted up to Lenina and Brid and tried to murmur sweet nothings to them. Clennen was always very quick to notice these gentlemen, particularly those who approached Brid. Poor Brid looked older than she was in her show clothes – she was really only just thirteen – and she did not know how to deal with murmuring gentlemen at all.
“Well, you see, my father taught me,” Moril explained.
“They come into my head like – er – ideas,” Dagner explained.
“It is Lenina, isn’t it?” murmured a gentleman at the head of the cart.
“It is,” said Lenina.
“I didn’t quite hear what you said,” Brid said rather desperately to another gentleman.
“I don’t go to Hannart. I had a little disagreement with the Earl,” said Clennen. He swung round and, with one comprehensive look, disposed of the man Brid could not hear and also the one who thought Lenina was herself. “But I’m going through Dropwater and beyond,” he continued, turning back to his friends.
Lenina had collected the money and was counting it. “Good,” she said. “We can stay at the inn here. I fancy a roof over my head.”
Moril and Brid fancied it too. It was the height of luxury. There would be feather beds, a proper bath and real food cooked indoors. Brid licked her lips and gave Moril a delighted grin. Moril smiled back in his milky, sleepy way.
“No. No time,” said Clennen, when at last he was free to be asked. “We have to press on. We’re picking up a passenger on the road.”
Lenina said nothing. It was not her way. While Brid, Moril and even Dagner protested, she simply picked up the reins and encouraged Olob to move.
“WHERE ARE WE picking up the passenger?” Brid enquired when they were three miles or so beyond Derent and her discontent had worn off somewhat. She was back in her everyday blue check and looked rather younger than she was.
“Couple of miles on. I’ll tell you where,” Clennen said to Dagner, who was driving.
“Going North, is he?” Dagner said.
“That’s right,” said Clennen.
Moril, in the ordinary rust-coloured clothes he preferred, and in which, to Brid’s mind, he looked a great deal nicer, trotted along beside the cart and hoped vaguely that the passenger would be agreeable. They had taken a woman last year who had driven him nearly crazy with boredom. She had known a hundred little boys, and they were all better than Moril in some way, and she had at least two long stories about each boy to prove it. They took someone most years, going North. Since North and South had begun their long disagreement, very little traffic went between. Those who had no horse – and to walk meant the risk of being taken up as a vagrant and clapped into jail – had to rely on such people as the licensed singers to take them as paying passengers.
The disagreement had begun so far in the past that not many people knew its cause: the North had one version, the South another. But it was certain that three kings of Dalemark had died, one after another, without leaving a proper heir to the throne. And almost every earl in the land had some kind of claim to be king. Even before the last king ruled from Hannart in the North, there had been quarrels and wars, and the country showed signs of breaking up into two. And when the Adon, who was the last king, died, his heirs were not to be found. Civil war began in earnest.
Since then the only rulers of Dalemark had been the earls, each in his own earldom, with the lords under them. No one now wanted a king. Keril, the present Earl of Hannart, said publicly that he had no claim to the throne. But the disagreement ran deeper than ever. The men of the North claimed that half the land was enslaved, and the earls of the South said the North was plotting against them. The year Brid was born, Keril, Earl of Hannart, had been proclaimed a public enemy by every earl and lord in the South. After that the only people who dared travel between were accredited traders and licensed singers, and they had to prove that their business was harmless or they might be arrested anywhere in the South.
Moril had met some of the traders and quite a few of the singers. Clennen did not speak highly of any of them, except perhaps the singer Hestefan, whom Moril had not met. But Moril had never heard any of them complain of having to take passengers. He thought they must all be very patient people.
“What about payment?” asked Lenina.
“You wait and see,” said Clennen, with a laugh.
“That’s all very well,” said Brid, returning to her discontent. “But why do we always have to take someone? Why can’t the stupid North make friends with the silly South?”
“You tell me,” said Clennen. And after Brid had stammered for a minute, he laughed and said, “Would you make friends with someone you knew would stab you in the back if he got the chance? Remember that. Mind you, there was a time when the South was as free a place as the North. Remember that too.”
This was a bold thing to say in the South. The last rebellion had been stamped out very harshly indeed, and the strict laws were still in force. You did not say anything that suggested you were discontented with the ways of the South. The countryside was known to be full of spies and informers, watching and listening to give warning of rebellious thoughts.
That was why, when Clennen spoke of North, South and freedom in the same breath, Moril saw Lenina look round the hedges to make sure no one was listening. He found himself doing the same.
But the hedges, though the leaves were already dusty, were still thin enough to see through. Nothing moved in them but birds. The only people they saw, for the next mile or so, were in the distance, planting vines on a hillside, until they came to where a road branched off to another vineyard. There, on the triangle made by the turning, a man was waiting. At his feet he had a huge round bottle half encased in a straw basket. He waved, and Dagner drew up. Olob turned his head and looked at the huge bottle with evident misgiving.
“Evening, Flind,” said Clennen. “Is that our payment there, by your feet?” The man nodded. He seemed disinclined to smile, though Clennen smiled broadly at him. “I hoped it was,” said Clennen. “Where’s the passenger?”
Flind jerked a thumb. The passenger, probably in an attempt to keep out of the sun, was sitting behind the bottle in its shadow. He looked very hot, very untidy, rather discontented and rather younger than Dagner.
“Help him into the cart,” Clennen said to Moril.
Moril did his best, but the passenger shook off his helping hand. “I can get in by myself,” he said, “I’m not a cripple.” He climbed in very nimbly and sat on the floor. The canvas cover was half up, and he seemed glad of its shade. Moril looked vaguely after him and hoped it was the heat that made him feel so disagreeable. He knew from bitter experience that someone around Dagner’s age could make life very unpleasant if he was steadily disagreeable for some hundreds of miles. This could be worse than the woman last year. He looked at Brid, who made her squeezed-lemon face back.
Clennen and Flind, meanwhile, were heaving the huge jar through the tailgate of the cart. It took a good deal of effort, and a lot of space once it was in. Olob almost laid his head backwards over his shoulders in an attempt to show his strong disapproval of it.
“Are you really taking our payment in wine?” said Lenina.
“Can you think of a better one?” said Clennen. “My dear girl, there’s only beer to drink in the North! Count your blessings. We’ll broach it this evening, shall we? Or would you rather wait until we’re going through Markind?”
“Oh – this evening,” said Lenina, smiling a little.
Clennen latched the tailgate, waved to Flind, and they went on. Olob made a very expressive business of getting the cart under way again. Brid was quite sorry for him, straining in front of all that extra weight, but everyone else knew that the cart was so well sprung and greased that Olob could hardly feel the difference. Dagner made no bones about flicking him with the whip.
“What a lazy horse!” exclaimed the passenger.
“They’re often the wisest ones,” said Clennen.
The passenger, realising he had been snubbed, put his chin on his knees and sighed gustily. Brid and Moril took turns at eyeing him through the gap in the tailgate. He was burlier than Dagner, though he was younger, and much the same height. But he was more remarkable-looking, because he was a queer combination of dark and fair. His hair was tawny-fair, and there was a lot of it, like a lion’s mane, only rather more untidy, and his eyes were a pale blue-green. But his eyebrows were thick and black and his skin very brown. His nose put them in mind of an eagle. He still had that fed-up look, which they decided must be due to more than the heat.
“Perhaps his grandfather’s dying, and they sent for him, and he doesn’t want to go,” Brid speculated. Moril was content to leave it vague. He simply hoped the passenger would not vent his annoyance on them.
A mile or so further on Clennen said: “We haven’t got your name, lad. There’s a lot in a name, I always think. What is it?”
“It’s Kialan,” said the passenger. “With a K.”
“Even with a K, it’s not half long enough for me,” said Clennen.
“Well, what do you expect me to say? It’s really my name!” the passenger protested.
“I like longer names,” Clennen explained. “Clennen’s too short for me too. Lenina – my wife’s name – is too short. But my children all have good spreading names, because I could choose them myself. The lad driving is Dastgandlen Handagner, my daughter is Cennoreth Manaliabrid, and the one with the red hair is Osfameron Tanamoril.”
Moril ground his teeth and waited for the passenger to laugh. But, in fact, he looked rather awed. “Oh,” he said. “Er, do you call them all that when you want to speak to them?”
“And the lazy-wise horse is Barangarolob,” Clennen added, perfectly seriously, as if he were simply anxious for Kialan to know. Dagner gave a little whinny of laughter, which might have come from Olob. Kialan looked piteous.
“Take no notice,” said Lenina. “They’re Dagner, Brid and Moril for short. And the horse is Olob.”
Kialan looked relieved. He gave another gusty sigh or so and took off his coat. He must have been hot in it, because it was a thick coat, of good cloth. Brid whispered that it must be his best one, but Moril had lost interest in Kialan by then and did not care. Kialan folded the coat – not as carefully as such a good garment deserved – and used it as a pillow while he pretended to go to sleep. Brid knew he was only pretending, because he started up every time any travellers passed them and looked through the opening of the cover to see who they were.
There was not much traffic on the road. Mostly it was slow wagons, which Olob trotted past without any difficulty, sending spurts of white grit from beneath the cartwheels, until Moril, trotting in the rear, seemed to have hair the same colour as Clennen’s. But there were a few horsemen, and these overtook Olob as easily as Olob overtook the wagons. Once, quite a group of riders came past, raising a whirl of white dust, and were scanned by Kialan with great interest. One of the group seemed equally interested in them. He craned round in his saddle as he passed to get a good look at the cart.
“Who was that fellow?” Clennen said to Lenina.
“I couldn’t say,” she answered.
“Funny,” said Clennen, “I seem to have seen him before.” But since the man was a perfectly neutral-looking person, neither dark nor fair and neither young nor old, Clennen could not place him and gave up the attempt.
Shortly after that, as the sun was getting low, Olob left the road of his own accord and jolted the cart among gorse bushes into a heathy meadow. He stopped near a stream.
“Olob thinks this’ll do,” Dagner said to Clennen. “Will it?”
“You don’t really let your horse choose where to stop!” Kialan exclaimed.
“He doesn’t often let us down,” said Clennen, surveying the meadow. “Yes, very nice. Horses have a gift for stopping, Kialan. Remember that.”
The fed-up look settled on Kialan’s face, and he watched, a little scornfully, while Dagner unharnessed Olob and led him off to drink. He watched Moril wiping the dust off the cart and Brid collecting firewood.
“Don’t offer to help, will you?” Brid muttered in his direction.
While Lenina was cooking supper, Clennen fetched the big cwidder down, polished it, tuned it carefully and beckoned Moril. Moril came reluctantly. He was rather in awe of the big cwidder. Its shining round belly was even more imposing than Clennen’s. The inlaid patterns on the front and arm, made of pearl and ivory and various coloured woods, puzzled him by their strangeness. And its voice when you played it was so surprisingly sweet and quite unlike that of the other cwidders. Clennen took such care of it that Moril still sometimes thought – as he had when he was little – that this cwidder was an extra, special part of Clennen, more important than his father’s arm or leg – something on the lines of a wooden soul.
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