The Islands of Chaldea. Diana Wynne Jones
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Название: The Islands of Chaldea
Автор: Diana Wynne Jones
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780007549191
isbn:
“You’re very considerate,” said Aunt Beck, “but she’s not ill – just a little tired – and we’ll both be ready directly. Outside with you now.” And she pushed a mug into his large pink hands and steered him out of the door again to the bench that catches the sun and the view of the sea. “Hurry up,” she said to me as she clapped the door shut behind him. “The blue dress and the best plaid and don’t forget to wash first. I’ll do your hair when you’re ready.”
I got up with a groan as Aunt Beck vanished behind the painted screen. I was stiff all over and still inclined to shiver. And Aunt Beck is so fussy about washing. I felt I had washed half to death yesterday and here she was expecting me to get wet all over again. But I didn’t dare disobey. I knew from bitter experience that she could always tell when I’d only wet the bowl and the face flannel. She never said she knew, but the hair-combing that followed was always punishing.
I dressed gloomily, wondering what King Kenig wanted now. He consults Aunt Beck once a week anyway, but he seldom bothers to include me. In fact, there’s quite a battle there because Aunt Beck nearly always takes me along as part of my education. Then my distant cousin King Kenig scowls and rakes at his beard, and snarls something about not needing the infantry, and Aunt Beck just gives him one of her diamond-hard smiles, very sweetly, and I usually have to stay, listening to the King asking about the omens for a raid on his neighbours or what to do about the crops this year.
The only interesting times are when Aunt Beck calls for the silver bowl to be filled and does a scrying for him. I like to watch that – not that I can ever see anything in the bowl, but I like to watch my aunt seeing. It gives you an exciting sort of shiver up your back when she says, in a strange, groaning voice, “I see fires up on the Peak of Storms and cattle stampeding.” She’s always right too. When she said that, the clans of Cormack raided from the next kingship, but thanks to Aunt Beck, our people were ready for them. I even got to see a bit of the fighting.
Anyway, as you will have gathered from this, Aunt Beck is a Wise Woman as well as a magic-worker, as all the women of our family are. The men born to us marry outside the family. This is how King Kenig comes to be a distant cousin. My great-great-grandmother’s brother married the sister of the then King and their son was King Kenig’s grandfather. At one time, our family was a large one, reputed to be the best Wise Women on the entire huge island of Skarr, but that was in the time of the Twelve Sisters of Kenneal. Now Aunt Beck and I are the only ones left. But Aunt Beck is still said to be the best there is.
She looked the part too, when she came out from behind the screen in her best dress and set about combing out my hair. My hair was still damp and there was a lot of tugging to get the stray bits of herb out of it.
It is a couple of miles to the castle, over the moor and down to the foreland, but it seemed longer because a mist came down and hid all the distances. I was tired. I trudged through the heather behind the other two, feeling small and untidy and a failure. Some of the time I was trying not to cry at the idea of having to spend another night in the Place in a month’s time.
Even if I did get initiated, then I knew with a dreadful certainty that I would never, ever be the equal of Aunt Beck. Oh, I had memorised the cantrips and procedures all right, and I knew all my herbs and weatherlore, but it takes more than that to be a proper magicwoman. I had only to look at my aunt’s tall, narrow figure striding elegantly ahead, with her plaid stylishly not quite wrapping her small, dark, neatly-plaited head, to know that. Aunt Beck’s best boots had red cork heels – they cost the earth because they came from Logra before the blockade – and never once did a splash of mud or spray of heather cling to those gleaming scarlet cubes.
My feet were muddy all over already. My hair is a messy pale brown and nothing seems to stop wisps of it separating from my pigtails. They flapped beside my face, fuzzy already. And I am short for my age. Even the younger children in the castle were taller than me now and I couldn’t see myself ever being tall or wise. I shall always be that little Aileen with the freckles and the buck teeth and no real gift at all, I thought sadly. Damn it, even Ogo looked more imposing than me.
Ogo had new shoes that laced up over his smart new trews to his knees. They must have taken a deal of leather to make because Ogo’s feet are enormous. They looked even bigger on the ends of his skinny, laced-up legs. I could see he was treading very carefully so as not to spoil them in the peat. I guessed he had promised the shoemaker to keep that pair good at least.
Poor Ogo. Everyone at the castle scolded him or jeered. He is a foreigner and different from the rest. As far as I knew, he had been left behind ten years ago when the magicmen of Logra cast the spells that made it impossible for anyone from Skarr – or Bernica, or Gallis for that matter – to cross the sea to Logra. Logra might be on the moon now for all that we can do to get to it.
We were at war with Logra then. We always are. All the same, there were quite a few families of Lograns on Skarr, traders and ambassadors, and priests and so forth, who all fled to boats on the night of the spellcasting. One or two others got left behind as well as Ogo: the mad old spinning-woman up in Kilcannon for one, and the man who claimed to be a scholar whom the Cormacks arrested as a spy, but Ogo was the only child. I believe he was five at the time. I suppose his relatives were traders or something who fled with the rest and simply forgot him. I think the worse of them for that. According to Ogo, some of them were magicmen, but that’s as maybe. If they were, they can’t have been half as good magic-workers as Aunt Beck. She never forgets anything. Ogo was lucky that King Kenig took him in.
Meanwhile, Aunt Beck went with her lovely swinging stride and Ogo marched like a pair of scissors beside her, down the hill to the river and across the stepping stones there, while I came galumphing after.
Dark shapes came out of the fog to us on the other side. “There they are now,” said my distant cousin Ivar. We had not seen him for the fog until then. “Ogo seems to have got it right for once. You can strike up now, fellows.”
“What is this?” demanded Aunt Beck, standing like a ramrod on the last stepping stone with brown water swirling below her red heels. But her voice was nearly drowned out by the sudden squeal and chant from the top of the bank as at least four pipers started on the ‘March of Chaldea’.
I was quite as astonished as my aunt. An honour of pipes was quite unheard of, at least since the days when we were the Twelve Sisters. But I could now see that there were six pipers up there – more than they had in the castle.
“I said, what is THIS?” my aunt yelled.
“Nothing, my dear cousin. Don’t be alarmed,” said Ivar. He came right to the bank and offered her his arm. “The King insisted on it for some reason. He said the ladies must be brought in with due honour.”
“Hmph,” said Aunt Beck. But she took his arm and stepped on up the bank. Ivar is a favourite of hers.
I felt better for seeing Ivar there too. He is dark and skinny, with a long neck with a big Adam’s apple in it. I consider him very handsome with his beaky, jagged profile, dark eyes and jutting cheekbones. And he makes good jokes too. Although he doesn’t know it yet, I have chosen him to be my husband when the time comes and, until then, I feel free to admire him greatly in secret. All the same, I wondered, as I scrambled up the bank, what had got into King Kenig, Ivar’s father, to escort us with СКАЧАТЬ