thought I saw submerged houses and then a straggling of tents where the people from the houses seemed to be camping out.
“You know,” Rees said, “it looks as if the barrier has made the rivers back up into floods.”
We had no time to consider this. A great wind suddenly sprang up. It hit me in the back like a hard hand and I know I yelped. Finn grabbed Green Greet to him by the tips of his one hand. Then we were riding with the wind, speeding over swollen rivers and lakes with trees standing out of them; then over inundated fields, winding roads, villages and a small town. I saw Blodred’s wing retreat to the top of the balloon. Shortly, she came sliding down a rope to Rees’s shoulder, a small lizard again. And still we hurtled on.
Logra is enormous. It is by far the largest of the islands. We rushed across it, over field after field, village after town, for a good hour to judge by the steadily climbing sun, and the other coast of it was still not in sight. At first, I thought the place was even flatter than Bernica, but we drifted lower as we went and then I could see that there were plenty of hills and valleys, just lower than I was used to and all seeming splendidly fertile. Now we could see people on the roads, riding horses or walking. Most of them were looking up at us and pointing. Others ran out of houses to look and point too.
“I wish I could have made us invisible,” Rees said uneasily.
“We’re attracting a lot of notice,” Finn agreed.
“I think we should go higher,” Rees said. “Everyone to the pumps again.”
So we all crowded to the bellows, except Aunt Beck, and became too hot and breathless for a while to see if people were seeing us or not. When I did get a chance to look, we were high, high again and passing over some quite large towns.
“I don’t think the barrier is a dome,” I said. “There must be thousands of people down there. Surely they would have run out of air after ten years.”
“We must give thought to where we need to land,” Finn suggested.
“Need to land,” Green Greet said.
“I was hoping we could come down somewhere near whatsit. The capital city,” Rees said. “It’s nearly opposite the Pandy. What’s its name again?”
“Haranded,” Riannan and Ogo said together.
This made me realise that Ogo had hardly said a word for hours. I looked at him and I could see he was full of strange feelings.
“Do you remember any of this?” I asked him.
“Not really,” he said. “Just the colours. The towns are red and the fields are yellow and green. And there’s a smell coming up that I know.” He pulled his lips in hard against his teeth and I could see he was struggling not to cry. I knew better than to make him talk any more.
I considered the smell. Logra smelt of hay and spices and smoke. Gallis had smelled of heather and incense, Bernica of damp farmyards. I remembered, like biting on a sore tooth, the scents of Skarr – stone, lichen, gorse and bracken – and I felt like crying too for a moment.
Meanwhile, the others were arguing about how we were to recognise Haranded if we came to it.
“It must be a big city,” Rees said. “We can damp down the fire when we see it – no problem there.”
“It would be simpler to take the spell off the raft,” Riannan said.
“But we have to be sure where we are,” Rees insisted.
“Won’t there be large buildings?” Finn said.
“Yes, fine large ones. It’ll be where the king lives,” Ivar said. “But we just went over a place with a golden dome. Have we overshot?”
Here Ogo conquered his emotions and said, very definitely, “The king’s palace is on a hill in the middle of Haranded. It’s white. It has big towers with blue roofs.”
Everyone relaxed a little at this. Rees said, “Warn me when you see it. We don’t want to land on its roof.”
Nothing like that happened. We had time to eat our provisions, and Rees was beginning to watch our fuel anxiously and say he hoped we would have enough left to get us aloft again, when we began to discern the outline of a large city, over to our left and a good many miles off.
“We’re going to miss it,” Ivar said. “We’re miles to the south of it.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Plug-Ugly reared up beside me out of nowhere and threw himself hard against me. I went down with a wallop into the bottom of the boat. Winds hit us from all quarters as I fell. I lay on my back with Plug-Ugly crouching on my stomach and saw the fire streaming just above me, roaring. I would have been burnt but for Plug-Ugly. Next second, the fire was streaming another way. I had jumbled sights of everyone throwing themselves flat and the balloon above us blatting this way, then that way. I could feel us lurching and spinning. The fire roared and bellied around in a stream, and I watched, feeling it inevitable, the flames bite into the great silken patchwork and set it burning over our heads.
Rees howled out the words of a quenching spell. Riannan broke into song. The flames went out in gusts of beastly-smelling smoke, but the damage was done. With a third of the great balloon missing, we went down and sideways. I could feel us doing it. When I scrambled to my knees and looked over the side, I could see the ground rushing underneath us and ourselves no higher than a house. I was truly terrified.
But the winds had left us by then. We slowed, and slowed more, and went down until we skimmed hedges. I saw a horseman duck as we sailed over him. I saw the city that had seemed so far off now only a mile or so away. I saw Rees standing up, swinging the anchor on its rope, and Finn beside him, bleeding from one arm where Green Greet had frantically clung on to him.
“That field there,” Finn said. “No one will get hurt there.”
We missed the field. We came down in a road with a mighty grinding and a whoosh as the hot air left the silk and the burnt patchwork flopped down half across us.
Next moment we were surrounded by people. “Kill them!” they yelled. “Kill them! They put that damned barrier up!”
Logra people are taller than I was used to, and fairer, and they have a strange accent. A whole crowd of tall, skinny, ragged women were pulling at the balloon, shrieking. It took me a moment to gather that they were yelling, “It’s silk! It’s real silk! What a waste of good clothing!”
The men, who were equally ragged and even taller, were rocking at the boat where we sat, trying to tip us out, but the spell on the floater kept pulling us back upright and defeating them. Ivar had his sword drawn and was shouting, “Keep off! Keep back! First one to touch us gets his throat cut!” Green Greet was flapping and shrieking. Rees and Ogo both had their knives out and Plug-Ugly was rearing up, spitting. This made the people hesitate to touch us, but I knew it was only a matter of time before someone got brave enough to climb aboard. Then we would be swamped.
What
