“Ah. Then I’d better put a word in here,” Mother Poole said cozily. “I work for Inland Revenue. And my inquiries suggest that the money for your insurance fraud and the fees for bumping people off here are paid in our own world. The tax owing on both must be in millions by now, not to speak of the fact that most of it is illegal income. Don’t talk to me about arresting this nice young bard’s father, my dear. I can’t wait to get you home. And Dad here’s licking his lips.”
Dad Poole cleared his throat. “I’m from the Monopolies Commission,” he said. “I was looking into the way you’re the only one who runs tours to this world, but I’ve since been hearing about a certain mining operation you have here.”
Mr. Chesney waved a cold hand. “I said speak to my lawyers. You’ll find I’m clean. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to my daughter and my stepson. Sukey, Geoffrey, I said come here.”
Shona dashed forward and seized Geoffrey’s arm. “He’s not going back with you!” she said.
“No, indeed he isn’t,” Mr Chesney agreed. “I want to speak to the wizard who had charge of his party. I marked Geoffrey down as expendable myself.”
“You did? You unfeeling—” Shona began.
Geoffrey said, “I can speak for myself, love.” He turned to Mr. Chesney. “So it was all lies about my getting experience of the tours, was it? And the ski lift and the car crash were intentional, were they? I did wonder. I can think, you know.”
“I didn’t want you taking a share of Sukey’s inheritance,” Mr. Chesney said, shrugging a little, as if this was the most natural thing. “It’s a considerable sum these days. That’s all. And I’m not at all pleased with you for bringing Sukey here with you.”
“She was dying to come,” Geoffrey said, “so I arranged it for her.”
“You’d do anything to spite me, wouldn’t you?” Mr. Chesney said.
“No,” said Geoffrey. “You just think I do.”
Mr. Chesney turned aside from him disgustedly. “Sukey.”
Blade had been watching Sukey as she edged around past Mara and Lydda to stand next to Reville. Now he understood why the escaped soldiers had carried her off and then treated her as if she was so valuable. They knew who she was. They must have been hoping for a reward from Mr. Chesney. Blade also knew why he had disliked Sukey so much. She was quite like Mr. Chesney to look at, although even Blade had to admit that she was a great deal prettier. He still thought she was quite like Mr. Chesney in her personality.
She seemed very like her father as she grabbed Reville’s arm and said, “I’m not coming, Daddy,” in the same sort of flat voice Mr. Chesney used. “I’m staying here. I’m getting married to Reville.”
Mr. Chesney was so angry at this that he almost looked human. “What?”
Sukey nodded. “Yup. Reville’s ever so rich. He’s got a lovely house for me. And he’s a thief. You should be ever so pleased.”
“Well, I’m not. It’s plain ridiculous,” Mr. Chesney stated. “It’s not going to happen, and that’s my final word, Sukey.”
Reville gave one of his smoothest bows. He looked around at the large numbers of people all watching and listening and said ruefully, “I intend it to happen, sir. And—this is a fact we don’t like generally known, but it may help to change your mind—I am actually the richest person in this world. Hereditary Head of Thieves Guild, at your service, Mr. Chesney.”
“It’s still ridiculous,” Mr. Chesney snapped. He turned to Sukey, almost pleadingly. “You don’t understand,” he said. “He’s not real life. None of these people are. They’re all just the way they are because I turned their world into a theme park. If they didn’t happen to be under contract to me, they’d be nothing—just rough types in a world that happens to have some magic to it.”
“Dear me,” Querida put in from her perch on the wall. “And now we all come fluttering down like a pack of cards, I suppose.” She cocked an eye up at the demon, still towering behind Mr. Chesney.
I can’t eat this one, the demon told her. The demon in his pocket prevents me. It is my mate, and he keeps it half starved. Set it free. Then I will eat him very slowly.
Querida glanced at Reville. “Regin—Reville—whatsyourname?” she murmured.
“Need a diversion,” Reville whispered back.
Elda nodded and slipped away around the wall. Don saw her go and slipped off after her.
Sukey said to Mr. Chesney, “They’re people just like you are. I’m staying.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Chesney, “how you can be so unfeeling.”
“Look who’s talking!” Sukey said.
Sukey was standing by Reville, and Mr. Chesney was looking at them both. Querida looked around for some way to make Mr. Chesney look away from Reville and found Scales’s enormous head looming above her. “Unfeeling indeed,” Scales boomed. “My dragons are being killed by inches because you keep them too short of gold.”
Mr. Chesney barely glanced at Scales. “There’s no suffering involved. I had an expert assess the exact amount they needed.”
“I don’t think much of your expert then,” Mara chipped in. “Who was it?”
Professor Ledbury stood up shakily. “It was I, madam. I remember I told him it was only a guess.”
Prince Talithan seemed to realize that they were trying to make Mr. Chesney look somewhere else. He stepped forward. “There is no lawfulness, sir, in the manner you took my brother and held him hostage to force the elves to your bidding.”
Still looking at Sukey, Mr. Chesney said, “Nonsense. He came of his own free will.”
“But I didn’t!” Professor Ledbury protested. “You tempted me with promises of strange sights, and when I came to see, I found I was seized and held in a place where I lost my magic and grew old. Only when I lost all memory of who I was did you turn me loose.”
Prince Talithan strode up to the professor and stared into his haggard old face. “Eldreth?” he said. “Can you be my brother Eldreth?”
“I fear so,” Professor Ledbury said sadly.
“Then pigs do fly!” Talithan cried out, and flung his arms around the professor.
“Well done, Eldred,” Miss Ledbury said, fetching out her notebook. “We can close the file on you at least.”
Querida felt Reville tense, hoping to use this reunion as a diversion. But Elda’s diversion arrived at that moment, and it was much more effective. She said afterward that she and Don had met it coming, anyway, and simply encouraged it a little. Ringlet came first, flying a jeering half foot too high for the dogs to reach her, with the whole pack of dogs beneath and around her, jumping, barking, yelping, and being pursued themselves by the rest of the pigs, some on foot, some in the air, and all squealing mightily. Pretty, who had clearly deserted Talithan for this game, came cantering after them, neighing with laughter, and after Pretty, flapping and angry, with their necks stretched out, rushed a number of geese, home at last, but only about half the usual number. Old George sped after them, shouting uselessly. After him lumbered the Friendly Cows, mooing and bewildered, dropping cowpats into the confusion, driven on by Don and Elda. And after them—Don explained later that it was pure coincidence—came galloping a herd of the dwarfs’ ponies, anxious to be reunited with their masters, followed by Nancy Cobber and all the Derkholm horses. Last of all came Beauty, flapping, neighing, and dragging the Horselady, who was hanging on to her bridle and trying to stop her.
“See Prhetty! See Prhetty!” Beauty screamed.
Almost everyone on the terrace was forced to roll, dive, or dodge out of the way of the stampede. The demon did not move. It just let all the animals flow through it. Mr. Chesney did not move either. Blade watched him being shoved this way and that by the racing crowd of animals and trying to pretend, just as he had before, that nothing was happening. While Blade was shoving himself and Kit aside to make room for Ringlet and the dogs, he kept his eye on Mr. Chesney and saw a blur beside him and then the same blur again beside Querida. The hammering
of paws and hooves and trotters had been too much for Querida. She had drawn herself up into a crouch on the wall, with her face hidden. As the Friendly Cows thundered past, Blade saw the blur become Reville. While the ponies streamed across the terrace, Reville nudged Querida and handed her what looked like a paperweight filled with yellowish fog. Blade found himself impressed by Reville’s skill.
The Horselady gave up the struggle and let Beauty chase the rest on her own. “I was only bringing her back,” she explained to Derk. “When I call, they all come, you see.”
As the stampede went rushing away around the house and Don and Elda came loping back to the terrace, grinning, Querida sat up on her wall and waved the paperweight.
“I’ve got your demon here, Mr. Chesney!” she called.
Mine, said the demon Tripos, snaking down a luminous blue hand thing.
“No, mine,” Scales said, grabbing for it with an enormous clawed foot.
Mr. Chesney strode toward Querida, holding out his hand imperiously. “I’ll have that here, if you please.”
Querida clung to the glass globe with all the might of her withered arms and all the strength of her magic. This was going to be difficult.
Then a great stillness came over everything. This was followed by a faint stirring in the air which gave the feeling of music. Everyone looked up and saw that Anscher was there.
Blade thought the gods probably came out through the front door, but perhaps they came from somewhere else entirely. There was absolutely no doubt they were the gods. They all had such a strong stillness about them that it almost gave you the feeling they were in violent motion, and there was a faint light on them that came from somewhere where the rules were different.
Blade had no doubt who was Anscher. He was the same person as the man he had met fishing. Beside Blade, Kit stirred and muttered, “He’s the one who told me to learn—”
No one had any doubt. Prince Talithan and his brother went down on one knee to a tall goddess with dark hair. The Horselady bowed almost to the paving stones to another goddess with an arched neck and flowing hair. Wizards and some of the Pilgrims knelt to others. Reville bowed deeply and elegantly to a small, smiling god. Even Scales bent his crowned head to a mighty dragon in the background.
Anscher smiled and came forward. The rest of the geese came stepping proudly around his feet, as smug as if they had brought him themselves—as maybe they had.
“Why have you waited until now to manifest some gods?” Mr. Chesney asked Derk. “There have been quite a few complaints, Wizard. I want an explanation.”
“You shall have one,” said Anscher. “We manifest by our will, not yours.”
He still seemed to be only a step or so beyond the front door, but he reached down and plucked the paperweight from among the hands and talons reaching for it at the other side of the terrace. The demon Tripos gave a soundless scream that made everyone’s mind throb.
“Be quiet,” Anscher said mildly. “You shall have your mate back shortly.” The noiseless noise stopped at once. “The gods have been forced to wait, too,” Anscher continued, “until people of this world asked to be able to rule their own affairs. The gods need to be asked. And for forty years the people of this world found it easier to do what Roland Chesney told them than to ask for this world for themselves. Roland Chesney, you have not used this world well. We now remove it from you. We give the wizard Querida the task of making this world into its own place.”
“But,” Querida whispered, “won’t that take ages?” Her dry little voice could hardly be heard.
“At least another forty years,” said Anscher. Querida, assured by this of a very long life, sat up straight and seemed much less frail. “And, as the Oracles warned you,” Anscher said, “it will not be easy. Slaves have to learn freedom. But we give you the children of Wizards Derk and Mara to help you in this. And for the same forty years, while this world mends, Roland Chesney shall live as he forced this demon to live.”
Anscher held up the smoky paperweight. It was now clear glass. Small as it was, everyone could clearly see the little dark figure of a person inside it. Mr. Chesney was no longer standing on the terrace. Anscher stowed the paperweight in the fisherman’s pouch at his belt. He smiled in a way that struck everyone as if he were smiling personally at them. “Do well,” he said.
Derk sighed as Anscher smiled at him. It seemed hard, he thought, that High Priest Umru had not happened to be here. But later, when he heard that Umru had died at almost that precise moment of a massive stroke, with a look of intense delight on his face, it seemed to him that Umru had indeed seen Anscher just once more. He always hoped so, anyway.
Everyone was distracted then by all the dragons on the hills hastily jumping or flapping out of the way of two madly zigzagging demons, one luminous blue, the other smoky yellow, who shot along the hills and around the hills and finally streaked over the top and out of sight. There were no gods anymore by then. The dragons were already crawling and winging down to Kit’s shed, where each of them seized at least two baskets of treasure.
“Hey!” said Galadriel to Scales. “We didn’t come all this way to pay tribute to dragons!”
“Then take it back from them,” suggested Scales.
“Doh!” said Galadriel. And all the dwarfs tried angrily to get Derk’s attention.
Derk was with Querida, surrounded by angry Wizard Guides. “How are my Pilgrims supposed to get home now?” demanded Finn.
“Easily.” Querida looked over their heads at the steady stream of grubby, footsore Pilgrims coming through the gates and edging around Scales. “There are over a hundred wizards here, male and female—enough to riddle the place with portals, now there’s no demon to keep them closed. Go and open one yourself.”
“I don’t know how,” Finn confessed.
Querida sighed. “Very well. I’ll do it myself.”
Blade, interested, watched her stand up on the wall and do it. It didn’t seem very difficult. Derk waited until the weary, travel-stained people were climbing eagerly through and then went to talk to Shona. She was with Geoffrey, Reville, and Sukey, talking with Miss Ledbury and the Pooles. Neither Geoffrey nor Sukey seemed at all bothered to be without Mr. Chesney. In fact, Derk thought they both looked relieved.
“We’ll be taking this tour business apart on the other side,” Dad Poole was saying, “and all the subsidiaries.”
“You won’t have much when you get home,” Miss Ledbury said. “I take it you are coming home really?”
Sukey and Geoffrey both shook their heads. “No. We’re staying.”
While they were talking, Derk took hold of Shona’s arm. “I’m going to Bardic College tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll make them take you back even if I have to bespell the lot of them.”
“No need, sir,” Geoffrey said, swinging around from Miss Ledbury. “I’m going to do that. They’ll do it.”
Derk had to admit that if Geoffrey told the bards, they were likely to stay told, but he felt the smallest bit hurt all the same. Shona was still his daughter.
Here they were all shoved out of the way by the mauve dragon, who came crawling up onto the terrace to drop a chinking bundle by Callette’s front feet. “Here,” she said, towering over Callette. “I didn’t let the Pilgrims have any of the good ones. I thought you’d want them back.”
In the bundle were more than half Callette’s gizmos, including the fabulous 109th. Callette bent over them, entranced. “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome. I’ve got real treasure now,” the mauve dragon said, and snaked around off the terrace, causing another stumbling rush of people trying to get out of the way.
“My goodness!” Querida said, standing on her wall and gazing down at the gizmos. “I’ll buy those from you. I’d like to exhibit them at the University.”
“Not till I’ve finished admiring them,” Callette said.
Blade looked up from the gizmos to find himself, and Kit, being beckoned by one of Scales’s massive talons. Th
ey looked at one another and went to the edge of the terrace, about level with the talon. “I’m going to be living in your side valley for the next decade or so,” Scales told them. “I’ve taken a fancy to it. While I’m there, I’m going to teach you both wizardry if it kills us all. We’ll start with mind reading. Turn up there tomorrow morning, both of you. Boy, cat-bird, got that?”
“My name’s Kit,” Kit said. “Is this because of what the god said?”
“Only partly,” said Scales. “Mostly it was the sight of the pair of you in that sandpit, with all the ability to get out of it and not knowing how to. That irritated me.” He turned himself slowly around, causing Pilgrims to scamper right and left, and marched away through what used to be garden, trampling false walls, real bushes, and fraying monsters as he went.
Kit looked at Blade. They both had mixed feelings. “Let’s have some fun first,” Kit said. He called out, “Griffin dance, anybody?”
All the other griffins, even Callette, bounded to join the dance.
“Do it in the garden then!” Mara bawled. She was distractedly counting dwarfs, elves, wizards, and stray Pilgrims and healers. “Hundreds,” she said. “Must get rid of the cowpats first. And then there’s us. Call it three hundred?”
The dwarfs had descended on Derk and were arguing with him. “Then if they’ve left seven baskets, you can give them to us,” Galadriel was saying.
Derk was distracted, too, thinking of how you made unicorns. But he had been counting on those seven baskets of treasure to stay solvent with after all this. “I don’t think I owe you quite that much,” he protested.
“You don’t owe them nothing!” Old George said, rather red and breathless after chasing animals. “They ate the little monkeys and the big hen and had a try nibbling your nylon plants. And ask Fran what they did in the kitchen. She’s got supper started,” he added.
“Oh, tell her not to bother,” Mara said. “I’m going to be conjuring a feast.”
“Can you do that?” Derk asked her, wishing it were something he had the knack of. He meant to go on to ask her what she thought of a unicorn in the family, but instead, the perfect idea came to him at last. “Mara, what do you think to us having a winged human?”