Dalemark Quartet

Cart and Cwidder is the first in the best-selling Dalemark Quartet of books and tells the story of Moril and his brother and sister who are travelling musicians journeying through Dalemark, until one day they pick up a mysterious passenger. Somehow Moril's family and the stranger are becoming bound together in terror, flight, and music.

The people of Holand in South Dalemark are bitterly oppressed by the tyrannical earl Hadd. Informers, secret police, and cruel rent-collectors terrorize the countryside, and Mitt has grown up with more than enough reasons for joining the freedom fighters. When his protest against the tyrannical government fails, a young boy escapes, with two other children, to the mysterious Holy Islands where they learn the identity and the power of two folk figures celebrated by their countrymen.

Tanqui discovers she has the only means to conquer the evil Kankredin who threatens her own people and the Heathens who have invaded prehistoric Dalemark.

When this final book of Diana Wynne Jones's quartet of novels about the mythical kingdom of Dalemark was published in 1995, it earned the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature. The Crown of Dalemark continues the adventures of Mitt after his flight from Holand as a fugitive accused of attempted murder. Since his arrival in the North of Dalemark, Mitt has become disillusioned. The North seems no more free than the South from which he came. And now he has been given an order to kill someone he doesn't even know, or else risk the lives of his friends. Forced once more to flee, Mitt is joined by Moril, the quietly powerful musician, and Maewen, out of her time but mysteriously fated to play a part in their quest. For the evil powers of the mage Kankredin are re-assembling, and only the Adon's gifts-the ring, sword, and cup-can reunite Dalemark. The Countess and Lord Keril send Mitt to kill a young woman Noreth Onesdaughter, who claims to know where the lost crown is hidden.