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Neither of their parents attended, though Mara shot Shona an angry look. Mara was enclosed in the steel-blue light of a wizard’s shields and she seemed quite as excited as Shona. “Stop being a fool, Derk!” she was shouting. “If the Oracle says you’re to be Dark Lord, then there’s nothing you can do!”
Magefire fizzed on Mara’s shields as Derk howled back, “Sod the Oracle! I’m not going to stand for it! And you should be helping me find a way out of it, not standing there backing the whole rotten system up!”
“I’m doing no such thing!” Mara screamed. “I’m merely trying to tell you it’s inevitable. You’d know that too if you weren’t in such a tantrum!”
Blade was trying to stamp out the flames on the rugs when the big griffin Callette lumbered calmly through the front door carrying the rainwater butt and upended it over the carpet. The hall hissed and steamed and smelt horrible.
Shona hastily snatched her luggage out of the water. “Dad,” she said, “be reasonable. We’ll all help you. We’ll get you through it somehow. Think of it. You’ve got five griffins, two wizards and a bard, who are all going to look after you while you do it. I bet none of the other Dark Lords has ever had help like you’ve got.”
You had to hand it to Shona, Blade thought. She was far better at getting on with Dad than he was. Within minutes, Derk was calm enough simply to go striding about the house with his face all puzzled and drooping, saying over and over, “There has to be a way out of it!” while Shona followed him, coaxing. Elda did her bit by following Derk too, looking sweet and golden and cuddly.
Blade managed to talk to his mother at last.
He found her sitting at the kitchen table, pale but relieved-seeming, while Lydda made supper. Lydda was the only one of the griffins who really liked cooked food. And she not only liked it, she was passionate about it. She was always inventing new dishes. Blade found it very hard to understand. In Lydda’s place, he would have felt like Cinderella, but it was clear Lydda felt nothing of the kind. She said, turning her yellow beak and one large bright eye towards Blade, “Do you have to come and get under my feet in here?”
Mara looked up at Blade’s face. “Yes,” she said. “He does.”
Lydda’s tail lashed, but she said nothing. The golden feathers of her wings and crest were loud with No Comment.
“What did the Oracle say?” Mara asked Blade.
“Your teacher will be Deucalion,” Blade quoted glumly. He saw his mother’s fine, fair eyebrows draw together. “Don’t tell me. You haven’t heard of him either.”
“No – o,” Mara said. “The name rings a bell somewhere, but I certainly don’t remember any wizard of that name. It must be some other magic user. Be patient. He – or she – will turn up, Blade. The White Oracle is always right.”
Blade sighed.
“And what else?” asked his mother.
“Why doesn’t Dad understand?” Blade burst out. “He let Shona go to bard college. Why is he so set against me going to University? I’ve told him and told him that I need to get there and get some training now in the junior section if I’m going to be properly grounded – and all he says is that he’ll teach me himself. And he can’t, Mum! You can’t. The things I can do are all quite different from yours or Dad’s. So why?”
“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 towards 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 that 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 organised,” 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 bannisters 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 downwards, spreading the tiles like scales on a fircone. 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 round 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 flowerbeds 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 on to 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 PRACTISE 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.
(#ulink_8bb41c7e-7600-516e-8868-43bf9daf1a91)
izards 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 colours, 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 that, 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 grey and black eye and nodded briefly before she went away.
Why aren’t they talking? Blade wondered as he came on to the terrace carrying their biggest coffee pot. 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 round the table had the drinks they preferred. They did look tired, he thought, as he went his rounds with coffee pot 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 colour 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 round 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 towards 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 that his father had worked so hard on last night. Derk had got it looking marvellous. They were not bothering to notice Don and Lydda, either, and they were looking quite as marvellous. 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 half-hearted 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 round 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 greyish mouse-coloured 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 grey 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 slavegirl 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 valley. 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 solemnise the frivolous effect of these monsters of yours.”
Perhaps the antstings 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 etcetera – 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 plough 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.”
Diseases! Derk thought. But he could not resist saying, “Isn’t there a case for the Dark Lord appearing to have a divine and sickly beauty?”
“Not,” said Mr Chesney, “to any Pilgrim Party. Besides, this would interfere with our choice for this year’s novelty. This year, I have decided that one of your gods must manifest at least once to every party.”
An anxious rustle ran round the entire table.
Mr Chesney’s head came up and his mouth clamped like a man-trap round someone’s leg. “Is there some problem with that?”
Querida was the only person brave enough to answer. “There certainly is, Mr Chesney. Gods don’t appear just like that. And I don’t think any god has appeared to anyone for at least forty years.”
“I see no problem there,” Mr Chesney told her. He turned to Derk. “You must have a word with High Priest Umru. Tell him I insist on his deity appearing.” He picked a sheaf of crisp blue papers out of his little case and flicked the pages over. “Failure to supply this year’s novelty is covered by article twenty-nine of our original contract. Yes, here it is. I quote. ‘In the event of such failure all monies otherwise accruing as payment for services rendered over the tour or tours will be withheld by Chesney Pilgrim Parties for that year and the individuals responsible will be fined in addition a sum not exceeding one hundred gold coins.’ This means that no one will get paid unless a god appears. Yes, I think there’s no problem here,” Mr Chesney said. He put the papers away and sat back. “I shall now let Mr Addis take over the meeting.”
In the silence that followed, the large man on Mr Chesney’s right put his briefcase on the table and smiled jovially round at everyone. Mr Chesney meanwhile refused wine from Mara and beer from Elda, but accepted a cup of coffee from Blade, which he pushed to one side without tasting. He took a snack from the plate Lydda offered him, sniffed at it and, with a look of slight distaste, laid it beside the coffee. The woman behind him refused everything. At least, Blade thought, the wizards were eating and drinking heartily enough. The beer barrel was empty when he tested it.
“Tell Callette to bring another one,” he whispered to Elda in the dreadful silence.
Ants needn’t sting people to spread the diseases, Derk thought. They could do it just by crawling between people’s toes.
The large Mr Addis was fetching wads of different coloured pamphlets out of his case. Such was the silence that Blade could clearly hear the shiftings and creakings from the place where the stretched roof dipped down. He looked up anxiously. He saw a row of round snouts and interested little eyes peering over the bent gutter. So that was what the noise was! Blade nearly laughed. The pigs had discovered that the dip in the roof was beautifully warm and gave them an excellent view of the terrace. It looked as if the whole herd was up there. Some of the sounds were definitely those of a porker blissfully scratching its back against a loose tile. Blade longed to point the pigs out to Mara at least, but everyone was looking so shocked and solemn that he did not dare.
“Well, folks,” Mr Addis said cheerfully, “this year we have one hundred and twenty-six Pilgrim Parties booked. They’ll be starting a fortnight from now and going off daily in threes, from three different locations, for the next two months. In view of the unusual numbers, we’re confining the tours just to this continent, but that still gives us plenty of scope. It means that some of you Wizard Guides are going to have to do double tours, but you should get round that easily by aiming to get your first party of Pilgrims through in a snappy six weeks or so. We’ll be starting from the three inns in Gna’ash, Bil’umra and Slaz’in—”
“Where?” said Derk.
“—so apportion yourselves accordingly,” said Mr Addis. “Pardon?”
“I’ve never heard of these places,” said Derk.
“They’re all marked down on our map,” said Mr Addis. “Here.” He picked up the top one of his papers, a cream one, and handed it to Derk. Barnabas made a tired, practised gesture on the other side of the table, and there was a map in front of everyone. There was even one for Blade, on top of the plate of snacks he was holding. He put the plate on the table and unfolded the map. To his slight alarm, it meant nothing to him.
“Oh, I see,” said Derk. “You mean Greynash, Billingham and Sleane.”
