Dark Lord of Derkholm

  Talithan glanced across at him, rather coldly. “But none to match Pretty,” he said. “Well, my lord?”

  There was always the other winged foal Pretty’s grandmother would give birth to, Derk thought. “Look,” he said, “you may regret this. Pretty can be a dreadful handful.”

  “He is a colt of infinite spirit,” Talithan said.

  Besotted, Derk thought. But this was one way of ensuring that Querida could not get her hands on Pretty. Pretty would be far happier being doted on by an elf prince than shut in a pen at the University. “You could put it that way,” he told Talithan. “Oh, all right. After a year and a day then, Your Highness.”

  “Witnessed!” chorused the five captains.

  Talithan flung himself down on both knees and kissed Derk’s hand. “My liege! Command me as you will!”

  “Command him to leave so that you can go back to bed,” Lydda murmured, not quite quietly.

  Derk glowered at her. “Then please go and take up your tour position,” he said to the elves. “Tour number two has an expendable whom one of you has to kill in a surprise attack tomorrow, and after that you had better look at the ten cities you’ll be besieging.”

  “This shall be done!” Prince Talithan said, joyously leaping up. “Let us go, my captains.”

  They bowed deeply and filed out of the house. Old George began shooing the pigs out after them. Derk sat watching, feeling gray, the way elves made you feel when they left.

  “Upstairs, Dad. Bed,” said Lydda.

  Derk was just getting up to obey Lydda when Callette stuck her large brown head in through the open window. “Why did we have six soppy men in a green haze out here just now?”

  Lydda spread her wings and bounded straight up from the floor, tail lashing. “Damn you, Callette! Why do you have to turn up and stick your beak in now? We’d almost got him to go back to bed!”

  “I need several hundred more clues,” said Callette. “Five hundred and seventy-three, in fact. And I’m exhausted. I’m mean. I’m horrible. Don’t argue with me.”

  Derk shunted his chair across the floor so that he could lean against the wall by the window. “Just a short word,” he said soothingly to Lydda. “Elda, you’ll find the right number of clues in a package in the top right-hand drawer of my desk. Yellow envelope.”

  “Thank goodness!” said Callette as Elda scooted off. “I didn’t think I could fly all the way out to ask Shona for any! I went and asked Mum, and she tried, but she was too busy to think straight. And I don’t know what to do. I’m not as good at flying distances as I thought. I do twenty miles, and then I have to come down.”

  “You’re a high-energy flier, that’s why,” Derk explained. Callette’s eyes were dull, and her feathers scrawny. He could see she had lost weight. “Twenty miles is pushing it for you. You should be coming down for a rest every fifteen miles, at least until you’re older.”

  “But I’ll never get all the clues done if I have to come down every fifteen miles!” Callette wailed. Lydda sighed and sat down very upright against the far wall. Her tail, folded across her front legs, tapped the floor. Beside her Fran stood in the kitchen doorway with her sticklike arms folded, tapping one foot in a rather similar way. “Some of the places are in the desert,” Callette protested, “or right over by the far ocean! Half the tours are going to be past the places before I get there!”

  “It’s all right,” said Derk. “I never intended you to do the clues, Callette. I was going to get Blade to take me to do them in my spare moments.” Callette’s beak opened to point out that Blade was not available now. Derk said quickly, “And by the way, however tired and cross you are, you should never call a dragon names.”

  “This one deserved it,” said Callette. “He thought of eating me. I hoped he would. I was upset.” She lifted her beak and gave a great trumpeting howl. “I was so slow fetching a healer to you!”

  “You were not so!” Lydda called out. “Don couldn’t keep up with you.”

  “I flew and I flew and I hardly seemed to be moving!” Callette wailed.

  Elda came scampering back with a large yellow envelope skewered to one talon. “What do you mean?” she said. “I saw you. I never saw even Kit go that fast.”

  “It seemed that way to Callette,” Derk explained. “Callette, I think you were in a state of shock. Things happening very fast always seem to go very slowly then. I expect you saw every blade of grass you flew over.”

  “I did, you know!” Callette said wonderingly. “Pebbles, too. I counted them. Was that shock?”

  “Yes, and the need to go unusually fast,” Derk said. “I’m very grateful, Callette.”

  “In that case,” Callette said, looking a little brighter, “I’ll get on with the clues. Give them here, Elda.” She put her large feathery forearm in through the window.

  Derk curled the talons inward for her and pushed her arm back outside. “Not now. You need a rest. Let Lydda do it.”

  “Me?” Lydda sprang angrily across the room.

  “Lydda!” Callette’s beak stabbed toward Derk’s face.

  Derk sat between two angry griffins. He did not feel equal to this.

  “I can’t fly worth nuts!” Lydda snarled.

  “She has to launch from the window!” Callette squawked.

  “That dragon drove him mad. I knew it,” Fran put in.

  “You shut up, animal-woman!” Elda said venomously.

  “Be quiet, all of you!” Derk managed what was nearly a shout. Luckily they were all surprised enough to obey him. He went on hoarsely. “Lydda can certainly do it. She’s a long-distance flier. I should know. I made you that way, Lydda. If you go slow and take it steady and work up gradually to longer distances, you’ll be doing a hundred miles without noticing after a week.”

  “Are you sure?” said Lydda. “I thought you were making fun of me.”

  “Of course I’m sure,” said Derk. “I built you with a double-sized heart, massive wing muscles, slow metabolism—you’ve got better circulation than Callette has, Lydda. You were a special model. I hoped you might manage to cross the ocean when you were full grown. But I wasn’t going to bother you with that idea until you were older.”

  Lydda’s beak bent, and she looked uncertainly at her bulging front. “I’m fat.”

  “Most of it’s muscle,” said Derk, “though some is due to overeating, I admit. You’ll have to work the fat off as you fly. And make sure you have a high place to launch from until your muscles adjust, won’t you?”

  “I’ll be careful. Should I go now?” Lydda asked.

  “You’d make Mum’s Lair on the first stage if you go now,” Elda said wistfully.

  “But study the clues when you get there,” Derk advised. “They’re all fairly well labeled, but you’ll find some of them have to be spoken by people—the Emir, for instance—and you’ll have to ask to speak to those people. And I don’t have to remind you that some people find griffins alarming, do I? Be very polite, but ready to dodge in case of trouble.”

  “Ye-es.” Lydda held out her extended claws, and Elda carefully stuck the yellow packet onto them. Lydda looked at it dubiously. “But what about the broth?”

  “I can do broth,” Fran and Elda said together. They glared at one another.

  “And if I’m traveling, I shall have to eat things raw,” Lydda said.

  “I eat things raw most of the time. It hasn’t killed me,” Callette said. “Go away and be useful, the way you always are!”

  Callette’s feelings were very clearly hurt. As Lydda, full of thoughts and importance, paced slowly toward the stairs, Derk turned hurriedly to the window again. “Callette, I need to turn this house into a Citadel, but I won’t have time to do it all at once now. Have you any thoughts on how to design it section by section?”

  Callette’s crest came up, and her eyes were brighter. “In black stripes, living room first?” she asked. “You want it frowning? Evil towers?”

  “Exactly,” said Derk. “Lots of evil
towers and monsters in the forecourt.”

  “You’ll need drawings from all angles to show how to slot the stripes together. I’ll go and do some now,” Callette said briskly. “When do you want the first stripe?”

  “Tomorrow?” asked Derk.

  “Easy.” Callette turned busily from the window just as Lydda launched herself from overhead, shouting a cheerful good-bye. Lydda was clearly saving energy. There was none of the usual frantic wing whupping. “Huh!” said Callette. “You really think she won’t come down in the next five minutes?”

  “No,” said Derk.

  Indoors Elda was saying pathetically, “What about me, Dad?”

  “You can help me get back to bed,” Derk said wearily.

  TWELVE

  IT TOOK BLADE FIVE HOPS to get back to where the soldiers were—almost as many as Derk would have needed—and the only good thing when he got there was that it had stopped raining. He arrived to find Pretty galloping about in a crowd of dogs, the soldiers yelling steadily, something about their human rights, and Kit, Don, and Shona gathered anxiously around Barnabas.

  Barnabas had brought three heaps of what looked like large black kites. Blade gathered that Barnabas had fetched them from the store in the University. “What are they?” he asked.

  “Leathery-winged avians,” Barnabas said cheerfully. “They don’t have to look real. They attack in the dark. Your father not back yet? Then I hope you know how to animate the things. There are three Pilgrim Parties over in the coastal hills needing to be attacked tonight. I’d help if I could, but I haven’t nearly finished the base camp yet.”

  He departed in his usual cheerful clap of noise, leaving Kit and Blade staring glumly at the kites.

  “Well,” Kit said at length, “we’d better get busy.”

  They spent the next three hours trying to animate the kites. Kit once or twice got the things two feet into the air and sort of flapping. Blade could not move them at all. They seemed to need a magic that was quite different from any Blade could do. Don suggested tying them to some of the magic reins and towing them through the air, but when Shona sacrificed more of her robe and Don tried it, the things behaved exactly like kites and simply soared. Nothing would persuade them to look as if they were attacking anything. The soldiers inside the dome of magic pointed and laughed and jeered. Then they chanted again. This time it was “Got no food. Got no food.”

  “It’s entirely their own fault for refusing to come out,” Shona said. “They could have been nearly to the food in the next camp by now. Take no notice. What do we do about these avians?”

  “Get the wizards guiding the tours to animate them?” Blade suggested. “If three of us each take a pile and explain—”

  They decided to do that. Kit stayed behind, sitting by the entrance to the camp with his head bent, glowering at the soldiers. Don and Shona set off straightaway, Don flapping laboriously with a pile of kites clutched in his front talons, Shona with her pile balanced in front of Beauty’s saddle. Blade stayed to milk the Friendly Cows and feed the dogs and set off an hour or so before sunset with his arms wrapped around the third awkward bundle of kites.

  He came to what he was sure was the right place in the hills. Finn was in charge of this Pilgrim Party, and Blade translocated to home on Finn. Blade was rather excited, to tell the truth, at the thought that at last he might see some of the Pilgrims all this fuss was about. He set down the bundle of kites, sat on a rock, and waited. And waited. There was a big red sunset. Blade watched it. When the light was almost gone, he began wondering if this was the right place after all. It was pretty well dark when he heard someone coming slithering and scrambling down the hillside above him.

  Blade stood up. “Over here!” he called.

  “Oh, there you are. I was hunting all over,” said Finn. “Sorry about this. Blasted tourists insisted on getting as far as they could. We’re camped on the crest up there, a good couple of miles away. Got the avians?”

  “Yes,” said Blade. He gave Finn the careful explanation that he hoped Don and Shona were giving to the other Wizard Guides around now. Derk had been called north to a dragon. He had sent Blade with the kites and asked Finn to animate them.

  “I suppose I could,” Finn agreed, grudgingly. “Hard work after a day walking, but I suppose the things only have to swoop a bit and terrify people. Let’s have a look.”

  Blade led him by feel to the pile of kites. It was quite dark by then. Finn conjured up a little ball of clear blue witchlight, making Blade acutely envious. He wished someone had taught him how to do that. Wistfully he watched Finn loose the ball of light to hover over the pile of kites, so that Finn could see to pick one up and turn its leathery shape over, muttering. Finn stopped muttering after a while and held the kite close under the floating light. “This has got some damn queer spell on it,” he said. “I can’t make it do a thing. Didn’t your father give you a word to activate the spell at all?”

  “No,” said Blade.

  “Or even tell you what sort of spell?” demanded Finn.

  “No,” Blade said again, wishing now he had thought of a way to say Barnabas had brought them the kites.

  “Well, I can’t work it,” Finn said. He combed his fingers angrily through his long gray beard. “Now what do we do?”

  “We’d better skip them,” Blade said. “I’ll take them away again. The Pilgrims don’t know they’re supposed to be attacked tonight by avians, do they?”

  “I daren’t skip them!” Finn said. His blue-lit face was horrified. “I don’t know what the Pilgrims know, but I know one of them reports to Mr. Chesney at the end of the tour. I’ve seen her taking notes. I’ll be in real trouble if I skip anything!”

  “Oh,” said Blade. “All right. Give me another hour. Wait here.”

  “What are they supposed to think I’m doing here?” Finn demanded.

  “Meditating,” Blade said, and translocated away from what he saw was going to become a long and useless argument. He went to Derkholm again, in another set of translocations, landing goodness knew where in the dark, until around moonrise he finally arrived home, somewhere near the paddock. Big Hen promptly began cackling. “Shut up,” Blade said to her. “Please.” He felt his way along the fences to Derk’s workshop and, by the growing moonlight, managed to find one of the big wicker hampers Derk sometimes used for taking pigs across country in. A blue ball of witchlight would have been a great help, he thought, as he heaved the hamper down the path beside the cages and the pens. Big Hen cackled again as he went by. And now the geese woke up and shouted Big Hen down. “Be quiet,” Blade said to them. “I’ve come to talk to you. Shut up and listen.”

  The geese understood Blade perfectly. They just did not use human speech themselves. The noise from them died down, although there was one final sound from the rear, the sound of a goose sarcastically wondering when anything from a human was worth listening to.

  “This,” said Blade. “You know you always want to peck people. How would some of you like to go and fly at some people tonight and really peck bits off them and scare them properly?”

  There were thoughtful, wistful croonings from the geese. It was a nice idea. But people never let them do that. Blade didn’t mean it. The noises grew harsher. There had to be a catch.

  “Yes, there is a catch,” Blade told them. “The people have swords, and they’ll try to hurt you back. You’ll have to be really quick and cunning to hurt them without getting hurt yourselves. Come on. Who’s clever enough to hurt humans? I want six volunteers.” He opened the gate of the pen. He dumped the hamper on its side just beyond and opened the lid with an inviting creak. “Anyone volunteering just step in this hamper.”

  The geese thought about it, with sarcastic little nasal yodels. Blade could dimly see their white heads turning to one another, discussing it. Then one goose stepped forward.

  “Blade!” said Callette, at that crucial moment, almost invisible in the dark. The goose stopped dead. “What are you doing? I thought
it was thieves.”

  She made Blade give such a jump that he felt dizzy. He had forgotten how cat-quiet Callette could be. “Oh, bother you!” he wailed. “I need them for leathery-winged avians, and now I’ll never get them into the hamper!”

  Callette considered this. “Yes, you will,” she said. “You should have come and asked me instead of creeping about. You have to dare them. I always get them to do things by daring them to. Watch.” She leaned forward with her great head over Blade’s shoulder. “Come on, geese. Scaredy old geese. Daren’t sit in a hamper, then? Scared to climb in a big wicker box, are you?”

  There was an instant rush for the hamper. Geese fought one another to get into it. Callette had certainly got it right, Blade thought, shutting the lid down on at least eight geese. Callette hit the gate of the pen smartly with her tail so that it shut and cut off the rest of the flock. “See?” she said above their yells of protest. “Want help carrying it?”

  “I can manage,” Blade said, hoping this was true. “Thanks. That was brilliant.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Callette. “Dad’s a lot better, by the way. He sent Lydda out with the clues.”

  “You’re joking!” Blade said, sitting himself astride the restlessly creaking hamper.

  “No, I’m not,” said Callette as Blade departed.

  It took him ten hops to get back to Finn. Partly he was wondering if it would take Lydda twenty years or only ten to fly round the continent; partly he was truly tired. The geese were highly annoyed at the jerky journey. Finn was not pleased either.

  “What have you been doing?” he demanded.

  “Getting you some avians,” Blade panted. He climbed off and bent down to the hamper. “I dare you,” he said to it, “to chase every human in sight at the top of this mountain. Then I dare you to come back to the hamper. Coming back will be worse, because I’ll be very angry if you’ve hurt anyone.” He got behind the hamper, prudently, and took hold of the lid. “Stand beside me,” he said to Finn, “and make them look leathery as they come out.”

  “I can do that perfectly well from here,” Finn said crossly.