Diana Wynne Jones - Dalemark 1 by Cart; Cwidder

Author:Cart; Cwidder
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-09-08T19:54:13+00:00

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pressed yesterday, with horses. The other notes said much the same.

'What do you think this means?' said Brid.

Kialan came over to look. 'Do you think,' he said, after some puzzling, 'those might be for my father, or someone in the North? It could be about the army Tholian's gathering.'

'You know, I do believe that's it!' said Brid. 'They mean how many men went for soldiers from each place. Don't you agree, Moril?'

'Probably,' said Moril. It seemed a bit boring to him. 'We'd better take them North then.' He put them back and, just to be on the safe side, went on working his hand round the other side of the jar. There were cold hard things. He gripped one and pulled it out. 'I say!' It was a gold piece. 'Whose is this?'

They were all mystified. Brid suggested that it was payment for taking Kialan North, but, as Moril and Kialan rather scornfully pointed out, if Clennen had organized that, he would have been paying himself. No other explanation seemed likely, either.

'Anyway, that means we can buy food tomorrow,' Brid said. 'Father couldn't mind that.'

'Don't be a big idiot!' said Moril. 'When did we ever have a gold piece before?

Someone's going to think we stole it, and if we get arrested the whole thing's going to come out.' Carefully, he slipped the coin back behind the basket again.

Brid sighed. 'A whole bottleful of gold! Oh, all right. I suppose you're right and it would look odd. I'm going to bed. Get out of the cart.'

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Moril helped Kialan put up the tent. By then Kialan was so tired that he dragged a blanket into it and fell asleep before the sun set. Moril felt too agitated to go to sleep straight away. He sat against the cliff, with Olob companionably cropping grass nearby, and strummed on the cwidder for comfort. He did not play any particular song, just snatches of this and a bar or so of that. It seemed to express the state of his feelings. He still found it hard to believe that his father had been a notorious agent. Of all the discoveries of the last few days, that one was hardest to take. He had thought he knew Clennen. Now he saw he had not. He wondered when Dagner had found out, and how he had felt. And he made an effort to think of Clennen in this new light.

But somehow, he did not want to think of his father. He wanted to forget the blood gushing into the lake, and he did not want to consider how Clennen could be so public and so private at one and the same time. Instead, by degrees, Moril took refuge in hazy memories from much earlier. He thought of the cart rolling down a green road in the North. Clennen was singing in the driving-seat, Lenina doing some mending beside him, and the three children playing happily on the lockers. The sun shone and, somewhat to his surprise, the cwidder began to produce a muzzy sound.

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