The Islands of Chaldea
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Beyond, with another empty chair in between, sat Ivar’s elder brother Donal, heir to the throne, with candlelight shooting ruddy beams from his beard and his ranks of gold bracelets, and making a white flash of his teeth as he smiled at something his mother was saying. I do not like Donal either. He looks like a barbarian, but he is a very smooth and clever man indeed.
Beyond Donal and another empty chair was the old Dominie who taught us. His eyebrows were frowning out like crags …
I suppose I should have been wondering about all those empty chairs, but before I had begun to think about them properly, pipes sounded again with a dreadful sudden loudness and, to my astonishment, King Kenig stood up. Everyone naturally stood up with him. We all looked to the door at the back of the table where a procession came pacing through, following the pipers.
At first, all I noticed was a crowd of splendid robes. Then I saw that the foremost of them contained none other than the Priest of Kilcannon, very tall and thin and sour. His eyebrows rival the Dominie’s. My heart sank at the sight of him, as it always does. I always have a horrible moment when I think that this man might have been my stepfather, had my mother lived. He is the kind who bleaches everything with virtue. But I had never known the King stand to him before. For a moment, I wondered if King Kenig had taken up religion as part of his effort to bring back the old ways. Then I saw among the other robes one of red and gold and the elderly, tired man, kind but stately, who was wearing it. He was the only person there in a crown.
“High King Farlane,” Aunt Beck murmured beside me. “Ogo might just have warned us.”
But Ogo wouldn’t, I thought. He had expected us to know. Logra only has the one king, and no one ever could get it through Ogo’s mind that lesser kings like Kenig were any kind of king at all. When Ogo said “the King”, he had meant the High King over all Chaldea, naturally, and we had not understood him – even I hadn’t, and I had argued with Ogo about it often enough.
When the piping and the grating of chairs and benches had stopped, King Farlane was standing behind the special tall carved chair left empty for him.
“We are called here on a matter of justice,” he said. “This must be settled before we can go any further. We invoke the favours of all high gods and lesser spirits and thereby open this hearing. Will Kinnock, Priest of Kilcannon, please state his case?”
“I certainly will,” the Priest said grimly. “I accuse Donal, Prince of Conroy and Kilcannon, of robbery, arson and murder.”
“Denied,” Donal said calmly, and he turned his arm around to admire the bracelets on it, as if he were a little bored by the matter.
“Denied?” snarled the Priest. His black eyes glared from under his great tufts of black eyebrow. “Do you stand there and have the gall to deny that, two nights ago, you and your band of ruffians rode up to Kilcannon and set fire to my house?”
Quite a number of people gasped at this, including Ivar. He turned to Donal, glowing with surprise and delight. Ivar shows a regrettable tendency to admire his elder brother. And a childish one. After the first glow, Ivar’s face went dark and peevish. I heard him mutter, “Why didn’t you let me come too?”
“Answer me!” thundered the Priest. “Before I bring down the curse of the gods upon you!”
Donal continued to turn bracelets around on his arm. “Oh, I don’t deny that,” he said casually. “It’s the charge of robbery and murder I take exception to. Who died?”
“Do you deny you went off with all my sheep? Where are my goats and oxen, you bandit?” raved the Priest. He was shaking with anger so that his fine robe rippled.
“The animals?” said Donal. He shrugged – which made the Priest madder than ever. “We simply drove them off. You’ll find them wandering the hills somewhere if you care to go and look.”
“You – you – you—!” stuttered the Priest.
“I repeat,” Donal said, “who died?”
“A fair question,” King Farlane put in. “Was anyone killed?”
The Priest looked as if he had bitten on a peppercorn. “Why, no,” he admitted. “I was out with my novices rehearsing for the full moon.”
“Then there is no charge of murder to meet,” King Farlane pointed out. “And it seems that there was no robbery either. There is only the charge of burning not denied. Prince Donal, what reason had you for burning this man’s house?”
“Reason, sire?” Donal said blandly. “Why, I thought the Priest was inside it of course. It is a great disappointment to me to see the wretch strutting in here alive and snarling.”
I thought the Priest was going to dance with rage at this. If I had liked Donal more, I would have cheered.
“Sire,” said the Priest, “this barefaced wickedness—”
“I object,” said Donal, “to being accused of wickedness. What has religion got to do with right and wrong?”
“You snivelling sinner!” thundered the Priest. “Religion has everything to do with right and wrong! Let me tell you, Prince, your heathen ways will bring this fair island of Skarr to her knees if—”
“And what have my morals to do with politics?” snapped Donal. “What a man does is his own to do, and no concern of the gods or the kingdom.”
“This,” shouted the Priest, “is the speech of one who has wilfully taken evil to be his good. I denounce you before the High King, your father and all these witnesses!”
By this time, King Kenig – not to speak of most of us standing at the tables – was looking extremely uncomfortable and making little movements as if he wanted to intervene. But the High King stood there, turning his tired, kindly eyes from the Priest’s face to Donal’s, until the Priest raised both his bony arms and seemed to be going to call curses down on the castle.
“Enough,” King Farlane said. “Prince Donal, you are baiting this man. Priest, what damage has the fire done to your house?”
The Priest shuddered to a halt and took his arms down. “Not as much as this evil young man hoped,” he said slowly. “It is built of solid stone, roof and all. But the door and window frames, being wood, are mostly burnt.”
“And what of the inside?” the High King asked gravely.
“Luckily,” said the Priest, “the roof sprang a leak in the rain and most of it was wet inside. This godless animal threw a brand inside, but it simply charred the floor.”
“So what cost would you estimate for repairs?” the High King continued.
“Six ounces of gold,” the Priest said promptly. Everyone gasped. “Including the leaking roof,” he added.
King 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 precious stone as well. What has Logra got? Only iron. And iron makes weapons to conquer the rest with.”
The Dominie stuck his lower lip out like a small child and his eyebrows bristled around at the rest of us. “When one talks of magic,” he said huffily, “the impossible is possible.”
“Indeed, yes,” the High King put in quickly. “Perhaps we should ask what Beck the Wise Woman has to say about the spell.”
He looked at my aunt, who bowed her head gracefully back. “Very little, I’m afraid, sire,” she said. “Bear in mind that I have had my sister’s child to care for and could not be going out in boats or ranging over Skarr. But I have scried and found no answer. I have put bonds on invisible spirits and sent them out all over Skarr.”
I watched Aunt Beck doing this. She claimed that all the islands swarmed with spirits, but I still found this hard to believe when I couldn’t see them, or hear what they reported when they came back.
“They could find nothing of the spell,” Aunt Beck said, “and nor could they find any way through to Logra. They all say it’s like a wall of glass in the sea between Logra and Chaldea. But they do tell me one thing that worries me. As you know, this world has four great guardians.” She looked to the Priest, who pinched his lips in and nodded grudgingly. “These guardians,” Aunt Beck said, “belong to North, South, East and West, but in the nature of things they each have one of our four islands to guard. Ours, as you know, in Skarr is of the North. Bernica is guarded by the West, Gallis by South. Logra should have East, but the spell has cut guardian off from guardian so completely that none of our three know if East even exists any more.”
“That’s not important,” King Kenig said curtly.
“I regard it as of the utmost importance,” Aunt Beck said.
“Well, it may be, it may be,” the King conceded. “But the main thing from a king’s point of view is that, while this magical blockade is in place, the Lograns can build ships and train armies in perfect peace. And, what is worse, they can send spies through to watch us, while we have no way of spying on them. This is why we’re all meeting here in such secrecy – fear of Logran spies.”
“It is indeed,” the High King agreed, “and of course we may not be seen to build ships or train soldiers because the Lograns hold a most valuable hostage in my son Alasdair. You are aware of that, are you?” he asked, turning to Ivar and me.
Maybe he thought we were too young to know, since I was three when Prince Alasdair was taken and Ivar was eight, but I cannot imagine how he thought we didn’t know. It was, even Aunt Beck grudgingly agrees, the most astounding piece of magic Logra ever did. She says it must have taken far more planning and clever timing than simply making the barricade.
About a year after the barricade was in place, Prince Alasdair – who must have been about Donal’s age then – was coming in from hunting with quite a crowd of courtiers, when, in the very courtyard of Castle Dromray, which is the High King’s seat here on Skarr, a tunnel somehow opened in space and soldiers came rushing in out of nowhere. They shot Prince Alasdair in the leg and then carried off every one of that hunting party, horses and all. People watched from the walls and windows of the castle, quite helpless. Long before they could get down to the courtyard, the tunnel was closed and everyone gone.
I know more about it than most because my father was one of that hunting party. I nodded. So did Ivar.
“And no news of Prince Alasdair ever after, I believe, sire,” Ivar said.
The High King lifted his head and gazed into the coals of the brazier a moment. “As to that,” he said, “we are not sure. No, indeed, we are not sure. Rumours, and rumours of rumours, continue to reach us. The last words were so definite that it seems to us and to all our advisors that there must be a crack or so in the wall between Chaldea and Logra.”
“And those words are, sire?” asked my aunt.
“That the spell can be breached and Prince Alasdair rescued,” the High King answered, “and that the answer can be found if a Wise Woman journeys from Skarr, through Bernica and Gallis, and enters Logra with a man from each island. This would seem to mean you, my lady Beck.”
“It does indeed,” my aunt replied drily. “And where are these words from, sire?”
“From a number of quarters,” said King Farlane. “As various as a fishing village at the east of Skarr, word from two of the five kings and queens in Bernica, and two priests and a hermit in Gallis.”
“Hm.” My aunt unwrapped her hands from her knees and put her chin in one. “The words always the same?” she asked.
“Almost exactly,” said the High King.
There was a moment of silence, in which I wondered what would become of me if Aunt Beck went off to Logra and never came back. The only good thing I could see was that no one would require me to go down to the Place then.
Then, as Aunt Beck drew in breath, almost certainly ready to say “Nonsense!”, the High King – whose gift, I was beginning to see, was to put his word in at the right moment – spoke again. He said, “Our plans are made, Wise Beck. You and your apprentice leave secretly this evening. We have a boat waiting for you over the hills in the pool of Illay, and our captain has our orders to sail for Bernica while we and our court journey back to Dromray, giving out that you are with us. This will deceive any spies.”
I have seldom seen my aunt discomposed, and never so discomposed as then. Her chin shot up out of her hand. “Go now?” she said. She looked from the sick king to the hearty, well one, King Kenig, and then to the Priest, the Dominie and Donal sitting admiring his bracelets again. There was almost panic in her face as she realised they were all in this together. She looked up at the expressionless men behind the High King’s chair. She even glanced at the Queen who, like Donal, was playing with a bracelet. “Aileen is too young to go,” she said. “She’s not even initiated yet.”
“She has heard our council,” the High King said gently. “If you like, we can take her to Dromray, but she must be closely confined there.”
I found my face jumping around from King Farlane to my aunt. It is awful when you sit there thinking the talk is all distant politics and then suddenly find it is going to change your whole life. I was on pins.
“I can’t go tonight,” my aunt said. “I have no clothes for the journey.”
The Queen spoke for the first time, smiling. “We thought of that,” she said. “We have clothes already packed for you and Aileen.”
Aunt Beck glanced from me to the Queen, but she still gave no indication of what she was going to do with me. Instead, she said politely, “Thank you, Mevenne. But I still can’t go. I have livestock to feed in my house – six hens, two pigs and the cow. I can’t let them die of neglect.”
“We thought of that too,” said King Kenig jovially. “My henwoman will take the hens and Ian the piper will see to the rest. Face it, Beck, you’re off to save all Chaldea, woman, even if it is at short notice.”
“So I see,” said my aunt. She took another unloving look around the various faces. “In that case,” she said, “Aileen goes with me.” I was so overwhelmed at this that I only heard it as if from a distance, Aunt Beck adding, “Who is to go with me? Who is the man from the island of Skarr?”
The High King replied, “Prince Ivar is that man, naturally.”
I was jolted from my rapt state by Ivar’s great hoarse cry of “Wha-at!”
“You have, like young Aileen, heard all our plans,” King Farlane pointed out.
“But,” said Ivar, “I only have to set foot in a boat and I get sick as a dog! You know I do!” he said accusingly to his mother. He leapt to his feet emotionally. Ivar never conceals his feelings. This is what I admire in him – although I must say at that moment I was less than admiring. His sword whirled as he jumped up and its scabbard hit me quite a thwack on the shoulder.
“Your sword,” Donal said, “is for the defence of the ladies, Ivar. This is your opportunity to behave like a gentleman for once.”
Donal is often unkind to his brother. I could see that he was pleased at Ivar’s dismay. This is one of the many things I dislike about Donal. But I could see that King Kenig was looking disgusted with his younger son, and the High King, from his carefully neutral expression, was wondering if Ivar were a coward.
I said, rather boldly, as I rubbed my shoulder, “I know we can rely on you, Ivar.”
Ivar shot me a dizzy sort of look. “I should have been warned,” he protested. “To be suddenly told that you’re going on a journey – it’s – it’s—!”
King Kenig said, “Don’t act the fool, Ivar. The High King has told us how spies from Logra can come and go. There’s nothing Logra would like better than to hear that a Prince of Kilcannon is setting out to rescue the High Prince. Utmost secrecy was necessary.”
Ivar shot a look at Donal as if to say why was he in on the secret then and turned to his mother again. “Very well, if I am to go and I am going to be sick, I shall need medicine and a servant to help me.”
“A remedy is prepared and packed for you,” Queen Mevenne said calmly. I saw Aunt Beck looking a bit sharp at that. Remedies of all kinds are her business to provide.
But, before she could say anything, Ivar’s father added, “And Ogo is to go with you as your servant. Now stop this silly noise.”
“Ogo!” Ivar exclaimed. “But he’s useless!”