Dark Lord of Derkholm Read online

  “Well, there are two reasons,” Mara said. “The first is that the University didn’t understand Derk, or treat him at all well, when he was there. I was there with him, so I know what a miserable time he had. Your father was full of new ideas—like creating the griffins—and he wanted nothing so much as to be helped to find out how to make those ideas work. But instead of helping him, they tried to force him to do things their way. It didn’t matter to them at all that he was brilliant in his way. They went on at him about how wizardry these days had to be directed toward things that made the tours better, and they told him contemptuously that pure research was no use. I found him in tears more than once, Blade.”

  “Yes, but that was him,” Blade objected. “I’m different. I’ve got lots of ideas, but I don’t want to try them out yet. I want to know the normal things first.”

  “Fair enough,” said Mara. “I didn’t share my ideas about micro-universes in those days. But you can surely understand the second reason Derk doesn’t want you at the University. They really do nothing there these days that isn’t going to help the tours. They haven’t time to look beyond. They probably don’t dare to. And your father thinks, rightly or wrongly, that you’ll end up as miserable as he was, or you’ll find yourself doing nothing but look after the tours like the rest of them. And that would break his heart, Blade.”

  Blade found himself wanting to say whole numbers of things—everything from I do understand to But this is not his life, it’s mine!—and could only manage, rather sulkily, “Well, it turns out we’re both having to look after the tours anyway.”

  Before Mara could reply, Lydda cut in with “This Mr. Chesney—does he eat the same stuff as us? He’s from a different world, isn’t he?”

  Mara sprang up. “Oh, yes. I’m sure he does. That reminds me—”

  “Good,” said Lydda. “I’m planning godlike snacks.”

  “And I must get us organized,” said Mara. “Let me see, there’ll be eighty-odd wizards, plus two people with Mr. Chesney, and us. Blade, come and help me see if we can turn the dining room into a Great Hall. And there’s your father’s clothes—”

  From then on it was all a mighty bustle. Derk, for the most part, strode through it muttering, “There must be a way out!” and doing all his usual things, like feeding and exercising the animals, turning the sprinkler on his coffee bushes, milking the Friendly Cows, and checking his experiments, while everyone else raced about. Blade thought rather angrily that Dad seemed to have taken Shona’s offer of help far too literally. Derk did not come near the house until Blade and Mara were trying to move the garden.

  It was almost dark by then. Before that, Blade and Mara had tried to stretch the house out to make room for a Great Hall in the middle. Shona decided that they needed marble stairs, too, leading into the hall, and sat on the ordinary wooden stairs making drawings of sculptured banisters and sketches of the sort of clothes Derk should wear. But before the house was even half long enough, there were alarming creakings and crunchings from all over it. Kit roared a warning, and Don and Elda dashed indoors to say the middle of the roof was dipping downward, spreading the tiles like scales on a fir cone. At the same time Lydda shrieked that the kitchen was falling in and Shona shouted that the new marble stairs were swaying. Blade and Mara had to prop the house up and think again.

  “Put everyone out on the terrace,” Kit suggested, “and make sure it doesn’t rain. That way the griffins can help hand round the food.”

  This was almost the only help Kit had offered, Blade thought morosely, and he knew it was only because Kit was far too big to be comfortable indoors these days. At least Don and Elda were helping in the kitchen. Or no, Blade knew he was being unfair to Kit really. After Blade and Mara had expanded the terrace into a large stone platform reaching halfway to the front gates, Kit got busy hauling all the tables and chairs in the house out there. Blade’s annoyance with Kit was because he knew the griffins were up to something. He had seen all five of them, even Lydda—and Callette, who almost never, on principle, did anything Kit wanted—gathered in a secretive cluster around Kit in the twilight. It made Blade feel hurt and left out. The griffins were, after all, his brothers and sisters. Most of the time, it worked like that. But there were times—like this, and almost always under Kit’s leadership—when the griffins shut the rest of them out. Blade hated it.

  So much for family solidarity! he thought, and turned to help Mara to bend and push the shrubberies and all the flower beds into some kind of shape around the new, huge terrace. “If we shunt the little forest up to this corner—” Mara said to him. “No, even if we do, we’ll have to straighten the drive. I know your father hates straight lines in a garden, but there simply isn’t room.”

  Here Don backed out onto the terrace, carrying one end of the piano stool, with Shona attached to the other end of it, screaming, “I said give it back! I need it to do my practice on!”

  Kit slammed down the kitchen table and gave voice like six out-of-tune bugles. “LET HIM TAKE IT. WE NEED IT. YOU CAN PRACTICE AT COLLEGE.”

  “No, I can’t! I’m not going to college until this is over! I promised Dad!” Shona shrilled.

  “You’re still going to give it here.” Kit dropped to all fours, tail slashing, and advanced on Shona. Even on all fours, he towered over her.

  “You big bully,” Shona said, not in the least impressed. “Do you want me to poke you in the eye?”

  “I think I’d better break that up,” Mara said.

  But at that point Derk appeared, rushing across the acre of terrace to stare down at the twilit garden in horror. “What do you think you’re doing, woman?”

  “Trying to make it fit—what did you think?” Mara said, while behind Derk, Kit and Shona hastily pretended to be having a friendly discussion.

  “Leave it. I’ll do it,” said Derk. “Why is it that no one but me has the slightest artistic sense when it comes to gardening?”

  Everyone went to bed exhausted.

  THREE

  WIZARDS BEGAN ARRIVING from about eleven the next morning. When Querida and Barnabas reached the gates of Derkholm, they found themselves met by a silent pair of griffins. These were Don and Lydda. Kit, for some reason, had insisted on a matched pair. Don and Lydda were the same age—thirteen—and almost the same handsome golden to brown colors, and they were the same size, if you allowed for the fact that Lydda’s shape was—to put it politely—chunky, while Don’s was spare. Under the big gold-tinted brown feathers of his wings, his ribs always showed and always worried Mara.

  The two of them preceded Querida and Barnabas up the straight drive (for despite working until after midnight, Derk had not found room to make the drive wander as he wanted) and to the enormous terrace, where they politely bowed the two wizards up the steps. It was perhaps unfortunate that the moving around of the garden had resulted in the clump of man-eating orchids arriving at a bed just beside these steps. They made a dart at Querida as she passed, all several dozen yellow blooms at once. Querida turned and looked at them. The orchids drew back hastily.

  On the terrace the various tables had been converted into one long one, covered with a white cloth—which had been two dozen tea towels an hour before—and the assorted chairs had become identical graceful gold seats. Mara felt rather proud of the effect as she came forward wearing a rich brocade dress—Shona had stylishly sewn together two aprons and a tablecloth to make the basis of the dress—to show the newcomers to their seats.

  Derk was beside Mara in clothes Shona and Mara had worked on late into the night. They were indigo velvet—Callette’s idea—with a cloak that swirled to reveal a starry night sky. It was real sky and real stars, as if seen small and distant. Querida naturally ignored this wondrous lining. “I’m glad to see you’re being sensible about this, Wizard Derk,” she said.

  “Not sensible,” he said. “Resigned.” While he worked on the garden in the dark, it had come to Derk that the only way to go through with this was to promise himself t
hat as soon as it was over, he would start work at once on a completely new kind of animal.

  Barnabas, like every other wizard to arrive, was captivated by the lining of that cloak. “Is that real sky?” he asked. “How?”

  Derk annoyed Mara, as he had annoyed her when every single other wizard had asked about it, by lifting one arm to peer at the miraculous lining she had worked so hard to fix there, and saying, “Oh, it’s just one of Mara’s clever little universes, you know.” He saw Mara turn away in irritation and lead Querida to the chair reserved for her. She and Querida seemed to have a lot to say to one another. He cursed the Oracle. It was not just that he did not like Querida. This Dark Lord business was already putting differences between himself and Mara, and he had a feeling it could end by separating them entirely. He said glumly to Barnabas, “We’ve put you and Querida at the end where Mr. Chesney’s going to sit.”

  As Barnabas sat in a golden chair that was in fact Shona’s piano stool, Callette tramped up the steps and thumped down another barrel of beer. Barnabas eyed it gladly. “Ah!” he said. “Is that some of Derk’s own brew?” Callette inspected him with one large gray and black eye and nodded briefly before she went away.

  Why aren’t they talking? Blade wondered as he came onto the terrace carrying their biggest coffeepot. Elda was in front of him, pushing a trolley loaded with wine, glasses, and mugs. She had been in the kitchen with him for half an hour, and nothing would possess her to utter a word. He supposed it was something to do with Kit’s plan. Stupid. He felt tired and nervous. And he had been woken far too early this morning by groanings and creakings from the overstretched roof. No one had had time to put it right. And there was no time now. Blade’s job was to make sure that every one of the eighty or so wizards around the table had the drinks they preferred. They did look tired, he thought, as he went his rounds with coffeepot and trolley. The fact that they were all in formal robes, red or white or black, made their faces look really pale and tired. And the beards did not help. Wizards he had met without beards had suddenly got them now.

  “Oh, it’s the rules,” one of the younger ones, a wizard called Finn, told him. “Mr. Chesney won’t hear of a wizard guiding a Pilgrim Party without a beard. Coffee, please. How do you come by your coffee? I can only get it from the tours. I asked to be paid in coffee last year, I love it so much.”

  “My father grows it,” Blade said.

  “Really?” Finn said eagerly. “Will he sell me any?”

  “I should think so,” said Blade. “Look, does that mean I’ll have to wear a beard? I’m supposed to be a Wizard Guide.”

  Finn gave him a startled look. “We-ell,” he said. “You’d look a bit odd—see what Mr. Chesney says.”

  I can’t wait! thought Blade. You’d think Mr. Chesney rules the universe.

  Once every wizard was in a seat and supplied with a drink, Shona stepped out through the windows at the end of the terrace, carrying her violin and wearing her green bardic robes. They made her look lovely. Shona’s hair was darker than Mara’s, dark, glossy, and wavy. Otherwise she had inherited her mother’s good looks. Several wizards made admiring noises as she set the violin under her chin. Shona’s color became lovelier than ever. She struck an attitude and, very conscious of admiring stares, began to play divinely.

  “Can’t you stop her showing off?” Derk murmured to Mara as he went around with a bottle of wine.

  “She’ll grow out of it,” Mara whispered back.

  “She’s seventeen!” Derk hissed angrily. “It’s about time she did.”

  “She’s beautiful. She plays wonderfully. She’s entitled!” Mara whispered forcefully.

  “Bah!” said Derk. Another disagreement already. What kind of animal would he create when this was over? He hadn’t done much with insects up to now.

  As he considered insects, he felt the magics of Derkholm reacting with someone else’s. It felt like Barnabas. He gave Barnabas a puzzled look.

  “It’s all right,” Barnabas said. “I made Mr. Chesney a horseless carriage—thing with a sort of motor in front—years ago. He always uses it to get around in. That’ll be him coming now.”

  Here we go then, Derk thought. He stared, along with everyone else, anxiously at the gates. You could see nothing but sky beyond the gates from the terrace, but he felt the other magics travel up the valley toward Derkholm and then stop. Shortly Lydda and Don came pacing up the driveway, tails sedately swinging, and behind them strode a gaggle of purposeful-looking people, four of them, in tight dark clothes. Four! Derk looked anxiously at Mara, and Mara hastily stood up, leaving an extra chair free. She picked up a bottle of wine and joined Blade by the trolley.

  “Go and get the snacks now,” she whispered.

  “In a second.” Blade was frankly fascinated by the people striding up the drive. All had their hair cut painfully short, even the one at the back, who was a woman in a tight striped skirt. The smallest man strode in front, not carrying anything. The other two men were large, and they both carried little cases. The woman carried both a case and a board with papers clipped to it. On they came, looking neither right nor left, busy expressions on their faces. Blade, suddenly and unexpectedly, found he was hurt and quite angry that they did not bother even to glance at the garden, which his father had worked so hard on last night. Derk had got it looking marvelous. They were not bothering to notice Don and Lydda either, and they were looking quite as marvelous. Their coats shone with brushing, and their feathers gleamed gold against the reds and greens and blues lining the drive.

  Perhaps I have got some family solidarity after all! Blade thought, and he hoped the orchids would take a bite out of one of these people. He could tell Shona was feeling much the same. She was playing a marching tune, harshly, in time to the four pairs of striding feet.

  They swept on up the steps. To Blade’s disappointment, something seemed to intimidate the orchids. They only made a halfhearted snap at the woman, and she did not notice. She just followed the others. The man in front behaved as if he had eighty wizards waiting for him around a huge table every day. He marched straight to the empty seat at the head of the table and sat in it, as if it was obvious where he would sit. The two other men took chairs on either side of him. The woman took Mara’s empty chair and moved it back so that she could sit almost behind the first man. He put out a hand, and she put the little case into it without his needing to look. He slapped the case down on the table and clicked the locks back with a fierce snap.

  “Good afternoon,” he said, in a flat, chilly voice.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Chesney,” said nearly every wizard there.

  Shona changed from a march to a sentimental ballad, full of treacly swooping.

  Mr. Chesney had grayish, mouse-colored, lank hair and a bald patch half hidden by the lank hair combed severely across it. His face was small and white and seemed ordinary, until you noticed that his mouth was upside down compared with most people’s. It sat in a grim downward curve under his pointed nose and above his small, rocklike chin, like the opening to a man-trap. Once you had noticed that, you noticed that his eyes were like cold gray marbles.

  Widow spiders, Derk thought desperately, if I gave them transparent green wings.

  Lydda loped past Blade before he could observe any more, glaring at him. He and Elda both jumped guiltily and hurried away to the kitchen. They came back carrying large plates fragrantly piled with Lydda’s godlike snacks, in time to hear Mr. Chesney’s flat voice saying, “Someone silence that slave girl with the fiddle, please.”

  There was a loud twang as one of Shona’s strings snapped. Her face went white and then flooded bright red.

  Ants, thought Derk, with all sorts of interesting new habits. “You mean my daughter, Mr. Chesney?” he asked pleasantly.

  “Is she?” said Mr. Chesney. “Then you should control her. I object to noise in a business meeting. And while I’m on the subject of control, I must say I am not at all pleased with that village at the end of your valle
y. You’ve allowed it to be far too prosperous. Some of the houses even look to have electric light. You must order it pulled down.”

  “But—” Derk swallowed and thought the ants might have outsize stings. He did not say that he had no right to pull down the village or add that everyone there was a friend of his. He could see there was no point. “Wouldn’t an illusion do just as well?”

  “Settle it how you want,” said Mr. Chesney. “Just remember that when the Pilgrim Parties arrive there, they will expect to see hovels, abject poverty, and heaps of squalor and that I expect them to get it. I also expect you to do something about this house of yours. A Dark Lord’s Citadel must always be a black castle with a labyrinthine interior lit by baleful fires—you will find our specifications in the guide Mr. Addis will give you—and it would be helpful if you could introduce emaciated prisoners and some grim servitors to solemnize the frivolous effect of these monsters of yours.”

  Perhaps the ant stings could spread diseases, Derk thought. “You mean the griffins?”

  “If that’s what the creatures are,” said Mr. Chesney. “You are also required to supply a pack of hounds, black with red eyes, a few iron-fanged horses, leathery-winged avians, et cetera—again the guidebook will give you the details. Our Pilgrims will be paying for the very greatest evil, Wizard, and they must not be disappointed. By the same token, you must plow up these gardens and replace them with a gloomy forecourt and pits of balefire. And you’ll need the place to be guarded by a suitable demon.”

  “I’ll supply the demon,” Querida put in quickly.

  Derk remembered the blue demon as well as Querida did. He turned to give her a grateful look and caught sight of Mara, standing behind Querida, looking delighted. Now what? he thought. She knows I can’t summon demons. What makes her so happy about it? He thought hard of six different diseases an ant might spread and asked Mr. Chesney, “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. You yourself,” Mr Chesney said. “Your appearance is far too pleasantly human. You will have to take steps to appear as a black shadow nine feet high, although, as our Pilgrims will only expect to meet you at the end of their tour, you need not appear very often. When they do meet you, however, they require to be suitably terrified. Your present appearance is quite inadequate.”