“Never could,” said Lithar. “No more tricks, please.”
The nearest boat arrived then, and Jenro leaned out of it. “I will stir you over to Wind’s Road, you and the two other little ones and their father.”
“Thanks,” said Mitt. “And then you take Lithar home and look after him for me.” He looked at Lithar, but Lithar was not attending. He was looking woefully at his knee. His apple tree had gone. “He’s a bit in the head,” Mitt explained.
“We know that he is,” Jenro said, without expression.
“Do what I tell you,” said Mitt. “You look after him. You. And don’t let anyone else get at him.” Jenro still looked expressionless. Mitt was exasperated. “You’ve got to have someone until I come back,” he said. “And he needs looking after.”
“Until you come back,” said Jenro. He smiled. “Very well. Will you all five climb in and I will stir to the Wind’s Road?”
Riss leaned down to help Navis, Ynen, Hildy, and Mitt aboard Wind’s Road. As soon as they were up, he slid down into his own rowing boat and untied it.
“I think I’d better take first watch,” said Navis, rather wearily, looking at the three tired children.
“You do that,” Mitt said. He felt exhausted. He had barely strength to wave to Jenro and Riss.
They waved back. “Go now on the wind’s road and return sevenfold,” said Jenro. The island men sat in their boats and watched Wind’s Road lean away North in the brown tag end of sunset, carrying Libby Beer behind and Old Ammet in her bows.
DIANA WYNNE JONES’s most beloved character, Chrestomanci, returns in a new tale: Conrad’s Fate. Read on for a preview of his latest adventure!
When I was small, I always thought Stallery Mansion was some kind of fairy-tale castle. I could see it from my bedroom window, high in the mountains above Stallchester, flashing with glass and gold when the sun struck it. When I got to the place at last, it wasn’t exactly like a fairy tale.
Stallchester, where we had our shop, is quite high in the mountains, too. There are a lot of mountains here in Series Seven, and Stallchester is in the English Alps. Most people thought this was the reason why you could only receive television at one end of the town, but my uncle told me it was Stallery doing it.
“It’s the protections they put round the place to stop anyone investigating them,” he said. “The magic blanks out the signal.”
My Uncle Alfred was a magician in his spare time, so he knew this sort of thing. Most of the time he made a living for us all by keeping the bookshop at the cathedral end of town. He was a skinny, worrity little man with a bald patch under his curls, and he was my mother’s half brother. It always seemed a great burden to him, having to look after me and my mother and my sister, Anthea. He rushed about muttering, “And how do I find the money, Conrad, with the book trade so slow!”
The bookshop was in our name, too—it said GRANT AND TESDINIC in faded gold letters over the bow windows and the dark green door—but Uncle Alfred explained that it belonged to him now. He and my father had started the shop together. Then, just after I was born and a little before he died, my father had needed a lot of money suddenly, Uncle Alfred told me, and he sold his half of the bookshop to Uncle Alfred. Then my father died, and Uncle Alfred had to support us.
“And so he should do,” my mother said in her vague way. “We’re the only family he’s got.”
My sister, Anthea, said she wanted to know what my father had needed the money for, but she never could find out. Uncle Alfred said he didn’t know. “And you never get any sense out of Mother,” Anthea said to me. “She just says things like ‘Life is always a lottery’ and ‘Your father was usually hard up,’ so all I can think is that it must have been gambling debts. The casino’s only just up the road after all.”
I rather liked the idea of my father gambling half a bookshop away. I used to like taking risks myself. When I was eight, I borrowed some skis and went down all the steepest and iciest ski runs, and in the summer I went rock climbing. I felt I was really following in my father’s footsteps. Unfortunately, someone saw me halfway up Stall Crag and told my uncle.
“Ah, no, Conrad,” he said, wagging a worried, wrinkled finger at me. “I can’t have you taking these risks.”
“My dad did,” I said, “betting all that money.”
“He lost it,” said my uncle, “and that’s a different matter. I never knew much about his affairs, but I have an idea—a very shrewd idea—that he was robbed by those crooked aristocrats up at Stallery.”
“What?” I said. “You mean Count Rudolf came with a gun and held him up?”
My uncle laughed and rubbed my head. “Nothing so dramatic, Con. They do things quietly and mannerly up at Stallery. They pull the possibilities like gentlemen.”
“How do you mean?” I said.
“I’ll explain when you’re old enough to understand the magic of high finance,” my uncle replied. “Meanwhile…” His face went all withered and serious. “Meanwhile, you can’t afford to go risking your neck on Stall Crag, you really can’t, Con, not with the bad karma you carry.”
“What’s karma?” I asked.
“That’s another thing I’ll explain when you’re older,” my uncle said. “Just don’t let me catch you going rock climbing again, that’s all.”
I sighed. Karma was obviously something very heavy, I thought, if it stopped you climbing rocks. I went to ask my sister, Anthea, about it. Anthea is nearly ten years older than me, and she was very learned even then. She was sitting over a line of open books on the kitchen table, with her long black hair trailing over the page she was writing notes on. “Don’t bother me now, Con,” she said without looking up.
She’s growing up just like Mum! I thought. “But I need to know what karma is.”