The Islands of Chaldea. Diana Wynne Jones
mind. You’re here. Come up, come up,” said the King expansively. “Take a seat by me. Both of you.”
I was awed. I have eaten at the castle many times, but never at the top table. Ivar had to push me up the step and into a chair. There I sat and stared around. The hall from here looked small and deep and the tapestries on the walls looked terrible. King Kenig had ordered the wall paintings covered up with embroidery because he said that this was the old way. The trouble was that most of the ladies knew nothing about embroidery and had had to learn as they went along. Their mistakes were very evident in the bright candlelight.
But it was quite possible that Queen Mevenne had arranged it on purpose as a protest. There she sat, along from the empty chair beside the King, looking like a dark night of the soul. She is quite handsome and her hair is much browner than Aunt Beck’s, but she carries with her such an aura of darkness that you could swear she had raven hair and blue skin like a corpse’s. Aunt Beck says “Nonsense!” when I tell her this, but I notice she seldom talks to the Queen. The castle children whisper that Queen Mevenne is a witch and murmur of queer doings at the dark of the moon. Aunt Beck says “Nonsense!” to this too, but I am not so sure. It is one drawback to my thoughts of marrying Ivar, knowing I should have a mother-in-law like Mevenne.
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