Cart and Cwidder (The Dalemark Quartet 1) - Page 25

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Brid said cautiously, “who are you exactly?”

“My father’s the Earl of Hannart,” said Kialan. “And if you want to dump me out and drive off, I won’t blame you.”

Moril looked round for Tholian’s mansion again. To his relief, it was now hidden by a bend in the road. He was glad. He felt as if this piece of news had put them suddenly in great danger. He was limp with terror, although he knew that they must have been in exactly the same danger from the moment Kialan joined them. Any earl of the South—not only Tholian—would have been overjoyed to get his hands on Kialan. His father was their chief enemy. Anyone found helping Kialan was bound to be savagely punished. Moril thought back, terrified, to Kialan walking through towns so as not to seem to belong to them, sharing the cart in full view of travelers on the road, and even being introduced to Ganner as one of them. And if that was Tholian he had seen in Markind, Moril could hardly bear to think what a risk it had been. Clennen could not have known who Kialan was. He would never have done it for the son of someone he had quarreled with. But it looked as if Lenina had known.

“I should have known you were from the North,” Brid said ruefully, “when you said your name was spelled with a K. They don’t use K’s in the South, do they? I wondered why Mother told Ganner your name was Collen.”

Kialan chuckled slightly. “Your mother’s a cool one, isn’t she?”

“I suppose she is. But look here—” said Brid. “What were you and your brother doing in the South? Didn’t you know what would happen?”

“It was an accident,” said Kialan. “Do you remember that storm at the end of April?”

“Yes. We nearly lost the big tent. Remember, Moril?” asked Brid. Moril nodded.

“Well, we nearly got drowned,” said Kialan. “We’d been to our aunt on Tulfer Island, and the storm hit us on the way home. We were blown all over the place, and the boat was sitting half under water with sea pouring in, and I don’t think the captain knew where we were any more than I did. He said we’d have to get to the nearest haven before we sank. And we did. And it turned out to be Holand. And there were all the earls of the South, smacking their lips at us. To tell you the truth,” Kialan said, “I didn’t even feel frightened at first. I was so glad to be on land again.”

“We were near Holand then,” said Brid. “But we never heard—oh, yes, Father gave it out as news, didn’t he? Is that how Father came into it?”

“Don’t you think he was bound to be in on it?” asked Kialan. “He didn’t tell me much, but I’m sure he arranged it all. I know the people who helped me escape seemed to spend all the time waiting for messages from the Porter to know what to do next.”

“What? Father?” Moril said, puzzled.

“Yes. Your father,” said Kialan. “You don’t mean to tell me you didn’t know he was the Porter?”

“He was not!” Brid said angrily. “The Porter’s a spy with a price on his head.”

“Yes, of course, in the South,” said Kialan. “They were mad to catch him here, because he was the main agent for the North. You must have known! He brought all the important messages and most of the refugees. They must have come in this cart. And he organized people here against the earls—I know that, because Konian told me. Konian sent a message to your father for help, during the trial, but it didn’t get to him quick enough.”

There was a somber pause. Olob clopped patiently upward, zigzagging with the road across the steep hillside, while Brid and Moril tried to take in what Kialan had said. “I thought,” Moril said, “that your father had quarreled with ours?”

“So did I,” said Kialan. “But I think that was a pretense. I found out last year—I wish people told me things!—because my father vanished and I needed him for something. And Konian told me to shut up, because he’d gone to meet Clennen the Singer like he always did, but no one was supposed to know. I think they arranged what to do next then.”

“I refuse to believe that my father was a common spy!” said Brid. “Why didn’t he tell me? He ought to have told me! It’s so sneaky, somehow!”

“Don’t shout!” Moril said, with an anxious look round at Tholian’s mansion, which had come into view again, lower down and farther off.

Kialan laughed outright. “But he wasn’t sneaky! That was the splendid thing about him! I couldn’t believe he really was the Porter at first. I saw this fat man with a great big voice, who spent all his time trying to impress people, and I thought there’d been an awful mistake. Then I saw him go into towns, in this shocking bright cart, in a scarlet suit just to make sure people didn’t miss him, and sing his head off, and call out at the top of his voice that the price on the Porter’s head was two thousand in gold. It was incredible! Then he and your mother would call out messages and hand out notes, right in front of everyone, and I knew half of them were illegal. But no one would believe it, because it was all done so openly. Nobody thought he was anything more than a very good singer. And I really think Clennen thought that was the best joke about it.”

Moril blinked a little at this view of his father. But Kialan had hit Clennen off in a way. Clennen had treated their shows as a rather serious joke. If he was really

the Porter all along, then that would be why. “I suppose that’s where Dagner went wrong,” he said sadly. “Trying to be secret.”

“Dagner was awfully stupid to think he could carry on where Father left off, anyway,” said Brid.

“He didn’t,” said Kialan. “Dagner wasn’t trying to do that for a moment. But Clennen asked him to finish off the important things if he could. Then he was to go North and stay there. And the message to Neathdale was important because it was about a spy who’d got in among them there.”

Moril sighed. He did not say that Dagner thought he had given the message to that very spy. There seemed no point. He said, “Dagner said I was to tell you Henda has asked for a ransom for you. And Tholian is gathering an army.”

“Oh damn!” Kialan said wearily. “Then I’ll have to get through somehow, won’t I? You saw Dagner? Tell me.”

Moril told Kialan all that happened to him in the jail. He could not help speaking low and looking nervously at Tholian’s mansion each time it came into view. He was relieved when they crossed the brow of the first hill and could not see it anymore.

“You were lucky, Moril,” said Brid. “If you’d known all the things Kialan’s just told us, we might be in jail at this moment.” Moril nodded soberly. He certainly could not have acted the surprise he felt when they told him what Dagner had been arrested for. But he knew it had been the merest good luck that he had not happened to mention Kialan.

“I couldn’t think,” said Kialan, “why Clennen made such a point of not telling you two anything. He wouldn’t let me say who I was, and neither would Dagner. But I think it saved our skins. I wish it could have saved Dagner’s.”

“You don’t think Dagner was really arrested because of you?” Moril asked.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones The Dalemark Quartet Fantasy
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