скачать книгу бесплатно
“We like to rename our places, Mr Dark Lord, to give the right exotic touch,” Mr Addis explained kindly. “Now, as you’ll see, in order to get the Pilgrim Parties through all their scheduled adventures, we have to route them in a number of ways, colour-coded on your map. Note that some of you will have your temple episode early, some in the middle and some late, and that the same applies to the exotic eastern adventure. We then split the tours into two for the enslavement episode. Half of you will go north to be captured by pirates and half south to Costamara to be taken as gladiators. Because of this division, we have selected ten cities for sacking this year. Mr Dark Lord, please negotiate with your Dark Elves on this point and make sure they allow the Pilgrims to escape before the cities are burnt. And after this, all Pilgrim Parties come together again for the regular weekly battle in Umru’s lands. Wizard Guides must take care here that each party is unaware of the presence of other parties. We like our customers to believe that their own tour is unique. You’ll find all the tour-plans laid out in the pink schedule.”
He picked up a pink pamphlet. Barnabas made another gesture, and everyone had one of those too. Blade unfolded page after page of lists and swallowed unhappily. “And here are your colour-coded copies,” said Mr Addis. This time, Blade received a green paper that looked slightly simpler. The other wizards got blue or yellow or green lists.
In a fuzz of bewilderment, Blade heard Mr Addis continue, “Please take note that this year’s tour is choreographed around the one weakness of the Dark Lord. Each party will pick up clues to the Dark Lord’s weak point as it goes round, ending in the retrieval of an object that contains this weakness – this is to be guarded by a dragon in the north – and then going on, after the battle, to kill the Dark Lord. Mr Dark Lord, I’m sure I can count on you to lay one hundred and twenty-six clues at each spot marked with an asterisk on the map. And you will, of course need the same number of objects for the dragon to guard.”
Derk thought vehemently of ants crawling between people’s toes to spread disease. Otherwise, he thought he might cry. “What kind of objects have you in mind?” he asked.
“Any object, at your discretion,” smiled Mr Addis, “though we tend to prefer something with a romantic bias, such as a goblet or an orb. But basically it should be capable of containing the weakness of your choice.”
“Athlete’s foot?” asked Derk, with his mind on ants.
“We prefer it to be a magical weakness, or even a moral one,” Mr Addis corrected him, with a kindly smile.
Derk stared at him, unable to concentrate. It was not just that he was thinking of ants while being deluged with instructions and coloured papers. Mara was up to something. He could feel her working magic and it worried him acutely. “Moral weakness?” he said. “You mean sloth or something? Callette likes making objects. I suppose I could ask—”
And here was Callette herself, with her back talons grating the terrace as she heaved along another beer barrel. She set it down with an enormous thump, in the wrong place, between Mr Chesney and the woman with the clipboard. Whump. The top was open. Bright red stuff splashed in all directions, smelling rather nasty.
Chairs scraped as everyone but Mr Chesney got out of the way. The woman sprang up with a scream. “Oh, Mr Chesney! It’s blood!”
Blood was running down one side of Mr Chesney’s face and dripping on his suit. He turned and stared reprovingly at the barrel while he got out his handkerchief.
Derk wondered how Callette had come to be so stupid. Callette’s mind was always a mystery to him, but still—! “Callette,” he said. “That’s not beer.”
Callette’s huge head pecked forward. She stared down into the rippling red liquid in the utmost surprise. Every innocent line of her said How is it not beer?
“It just isn’t,” Derk told her. “It’s one of the vats from my workroom and I know it was sealed by a stasis spell. I can’t think why it’s open. I’m terribly sorry,” he said to the woman. She was still standing up, whimpering and dabbing at red spots on her tight pin-striped skirt with a paper hanky. “I’ll get it off for you – for both of you. It’s only pigs’ blood.”
The pigs on the roof heard him. At the words pigs’ blood, there was an instant outcry, squeals, grunts and yells of protest. Pink bodies surged about up there and trotters clattered on tiles.
“Oh, shut up!” Derk yelled up at them. “It’s a pig from the village. Your ancestors came from the marshes.”
This did nothing to soothe the pigs. They continued to surge about, yelling their protest, until Ringlet, one of the larger sows, slipped, overbalanced, and toppled off the roof. As her heavy round body came plummeting down, squealing fearsomely, she looked certain to land splat in the middle of the table. Half the wizards prudently ducked underneath. Several vanished. Chairs fell over, and cups and mugs. Even Mr Addis put his hands nervously over his head. But Ringlet, still squealing mightily, struggled about in the air and managed to right herself in time to spread her stubby little white wings. Violently flapping, and squealing hysterically, she got control inches from the table and flew screaming down the length of it, just rising in time to miss Mr Chesney, and then rising again to swoop up to the roof. The whole herd took off from the tiles joyfully to meet her, flapping, grunting and bawling like a disturbed pink rookery.
Shona dashed past Blade and fled in through the front door. He could see her there, and Elda with her, inside the hall, clutching one another and shaking with laughter. He marvelled that Callette could sit there on her haunches looking so solemnly innocent – he took his hat off to her. He wanted badly to giggle himself, until he looked at Mr Chesney. Mr Chesney had not moved, except to wipe the blood off himself. He was just sitting there, waiting for the interruption to stop.
“Take it away and get a proper barrel of beer,” Derk told Callette. She heaved the vat up and tramped away with it without a word. “I’m sorry,” Derk said, as wizards began cautiously reappearing from under the table or out of thin air and setting chairs upright again.
“Accepted, but don’t let it occur again,” said Mr Chesney. “Mr Addis.”
“Right.” Mr Addis switched on his friendly smile again. “I’m now going on to the update of our rules, which you will find in this black book.” He passed a heavy little volume to Barnabas.
Barnabas raised his hand. Then he paused, puffing a little from his recent dive under the table. “I think,” he said, “that as we have a new Dark Lord this year, I’d better appoint myself his Chief Minion, as the most experienced wizard here. Is that agreed?”
A sigh ran round the table as the wizards saw the favourite job go out of their reach, but most of them nodded. “It won’t be the usual cushy post this year anyway,” someone murmured.
Barnabas smiled ruefully and gestured. Blade and Derk each found themselves holding a thick shiny book labelled in gold, Wizards’ Bible.
“Keep this by you and consult it at all times,” Mr Addis said, “and please note that the rules are here to be kept. We had a few slip-ups last year, which have resulted in changes. This year, we require all Wizard Guides to make sure that a healer stays within a day’s trek of them. Healers have been instructed about this. And Wizard Guides are now officially required to ensure that all Pilgrims marked expendable on their list meet with a brave and honourable end and have that end properly witnessed by other Pilgrims. Last year we had someone return home alive. And in another case, lack of witnesses caused searching enquiries from the Missing Persons Bureau. Let’s do better this year, shall we? And now I hand you over to my financial colleague, Mr Bennet.”
Callette came back and boomed another barrel down on the terrace. Everyone looked at it nervously, but when Blade opened the tap, it was beer.
Mr Bennet cleared his throat and opened his briefcase.
It was hard to listen to Mr Bennet. He had that boring kind of voice you shut your mind to. Derk sat leafing through the black book, wondering how he would ever learn all these rules. Ants that built real cities perhaps? Blade was busy handing out fresh beer and being surprised at how many wizards leant forward and attended eagerly to Mr Bennet. The word bonus seemed to interest them particularly. But all Blade gathered was that the Dark Lord was allowed a bonus if he thought up any interesting new evils, and Dad did not seem to be attending. After quite a long while, Mr Bennet was saying, “With the usual proviso that Chesney Pilgrim Parties will query extravagant claims, will you please use these calculators to record your expenses.”
Barnabas gestured and Blade found a flat little case covered with buttons in his hand. He was examining it dubiously when Callette silently reappeared from the other end of the terrace and took hold of the case in two powerful talons.
“All right, as long as you give it back,” Blade said automatically. “And explain how it works,” he added as Callette took it away. Callette always understood gadgets. She nodded at him over one brown-barred wing as she padded off.
Then, for a moment, Blade was sure the meeting was over. Mr Addis and Mr Bennet stood up. The wizards relaxed. But Mr Chesney passed his briefcase back to the woman without looking at her and said, “One more thing.”
Everyone stiffened, including Mr Addis and Mr Bennet.
“Wizard Derk,” said Mr Chesney, “since you owe me for this suit, which your monster has ruined, I propose that instead of the usual fine we appoint your lady wife as this year’s Glamorous Enchantress. Without fee, of course.”
Derk spun in his chair and saw Mara standing there, glowing with a glamour and looking absolutely delighted. She doesn’t need the glamour, he thought. She’s still beautiful. So this was what she had been working on.
“You agree?” asked Mr Chesney and, before Derk could say a word, he turned to Querida. “You will be standing down from the post this year.”
“Glad to,” Querida said dryly. But Derk kept his eye on her, and on Mara, and saw Querida was truly pleased. She and Mara were exchanging looks and all but hugging themselves.
What’s going on? Derk wondered angrily.
He was taken by surprise to find that Mr Chesney and the others were actually leaving. They went clattering down the terrace steps, with Mr Chesney in front again. This time the orchids cringed away as the four strode off down the driveway. Derk started after them, but not very fast. He was not sure if he should show them politely to the gate, as he would have done for normal people. He was only halfway down the drive when they reached the gate.
And Kit was suddenly there, several tons of him, parked in the gateway, sitting like a cat and blocking the way entirely. He towered over Mr Chesney and his three helpers. From where Derk was, he could have sworn Kit was as tall as the house. Funny, he thought. I didn’t think even Kit was that big.
“Out of my way, creature,” Mr Chesney said in his flat colourless voice.
Kit’s answer was to spread his wings, which made him look even larger. As Kit was mainly black these days and his wing feathers were jetty, the effect was very menacing indeed. Even Mr Chesney took half a step backwards. As soon as he did, Kit bent forward and peered very intently into Mr Chesney’s face.
Mr Chesney stared at that wickedly large sharp buff-coloured beak pointing between his eyes. “I said get out of my way, creature,” he said, his voice grating a little. “If you don’t, you’ll regret it.”
At this, Mr Addis and Mr Bennet each dropped their briefcases and reached under their coats in a way that looked meaningful. The girl threw down her board and fumbled at her waist. Derk broke into a run, with the starry cloak billowing behind and holding him back. “Kit!” he yelled. “Stop it, Kit!”
But as soon as Mr Chesney’s followers moved, Kit leapt into the air. His enormous wings clapped once, twice, causing a wind that made the four people stagger about, and then he was sailing above them, uttering squawks of sheer derision. He sailed low above Derk, almost burying Derk in the windblown cloak. “Kit!” Derk bawled angrily.
“Squa-squa-squiii-squa-squa!” Kit said and sailed on, up into the dip in the roof, where the pigs erupted again in a frenzy of flapping and squealing, trying to get out of Kit’s way before Kit landed on them.
Most of them made it, Derk thought. He felt the thump of Kit’s landing even from beside the gate. “I do apologise,” he said to Mr Chesney. “Kit’s only fifteen—”
“Consider yourself fined a hundred gold, wizard,” Mr Chesney said coldly, and marched away to his horseless carriage.
(#ulink_f032c091-4181-53e7-93f4-ca1ca384982a)
fter that, Derk badly wanted to be alone. He wanted to visit his animals, scratch backs and rub noses in peace. But he knew he must talk to Querida, much as he disliked her. “Would you like me to show you my animals?” he asked her, by way of doing both things at once.
Querida looked along the table. Most of the wizards were still there, eating and drinking and chatting cheerfully. She nodded and stood up. She barely came up to Derk’s elbow. “On the understanding that I don’t offer to embalm any of the creatures, I suppose,” she said. “Although I think I’d hesitate before I tried embalming a griffin.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the roof. All that could be seen there was a ruffled lump of black feathers where Kit was, after a fashion, lying low.
“I’ll talk to you when I come back!” Derk shouted up at the lump. “If I have to get on a ladder to do it!”
Kit gave no sign that he had heard. Derk gave up on him and led Querida across the terrace and round to the back of the house. She remarked as they went, “Dealing with an adolescent griffin must be even worse than dealing with an adolescent human.”
“Hm,” said Derk, Remembering some of the things Blade had said to him yesterday, he was not sure that was true. But there was no doubt that Kit had been very difficult lately. He sighed, because he had sudden piercing, overwhelming memories of Kit when he was first hatched, memories of a small, scrawny, golden bundle of down and fine fur; of his own pride in his very first successfully hatched griffin; of himself and Mara lovingly bundling Kit from one to the other; of two-year-old Shona and Kit rolling on the floor together, rubbing beak to nose and laughing. Kit had been so small and thin and fluffy that they had called him their Kitten. No one had expected him to grow so very big. Or so difficult.
They came round the back of the house where the pens and plantations stretched away uphill. “What a lot of space you have here!” Querida exclaimed.
“The whole end of the valley,” Derk said.
The animals knew Derk was there. Most of them came rushing towards the ends of their pens to meet him. Derk fed Big Hen a corncob – she was about the size of an ostrich and he had used the shells of her eggs as eggs for the griffins – and then suffered himself to be slobbered on and gazed at by the Friendly Cows. He began to feel soothed. Bother ants! he thought. He had done bees after all. What he needed was an animal that no one had thought of before.
“Cows?” asked Querida, looking up at the big sticky noses and the great moony eyes.
“Er – sort of,” Derk admitted. “I bred them to be very stupid. Animals know, you see – you saw the pigs’ opinion of that blood – and I wanted a cow that wouldn’t know when we needed her for the griffins to eat. But they turned out so very friendly that it’s quite difficult at times.”
“Indeed.” Querida moved on to the next pen, full of very small sheep. “What’s your opinion of the great Mr Chesney?”
“If I ever bred a piranha with a hyena, I’d call it a Chesney,” Derk said.
“That’s right,” said Querida. “We’re just like your Friendly Cows to him, you know.”
“I know,” said Derk.
“And he means every word he says. You did understand that, did you?”
“I understood,” Derk said sombrely. If he ever bred a Chesney, he thought, it would have to have gills and be amphibious.
“Good,” said Querida. “You aren’t a fool, whatever else you are. Did you know those sheep eat meat? There’s one over there munching a sparrow.”
“They do,” Derk admitted. “I got them a bit wrong somewhere.”
They moved on to the next enclosure, whose occupants stood in a row with their long necks stretched, honking sarcastically. “It sounds just as if those geese are jeering,” said Querida.
“They are.” Derk sighed. “I bred them for intelligence and I hoped they’d talk – and I think they may talk, but they do it in their own language.”
“Hm. I think your geese are safe from the University,” said Querida, moving on. What she wanted was a griffin. She knew which one, too. But she was prepared to go about it quite slowly and very cunningly. “Why is this cage empty? The pigs?”
“No, the pigs are free-range. That should be cats,” Derk told her. “I think the ones still in there are invisible, but most of them got out through the walls somehow.”
Querida gave a hissing chuckle. “That’s cats for you! Mine do that too, and as far as I know they’re just ordinary cats. What were you breeding them for?”
“Colour,” said Derk. “I was hoping for red or blue, but they didn’t like the idea and it didn’t work. But they took to invisibility. And the old female cat who’s dead now was very proud of the fact that I took some of her cells for Elda. She used to spend hours washing Elda when Elda first hatched.”
They walked past giant guinea pigs and inch-high monkeys sporting in tiny trees Derk had grown for them. “Did you use cats to make all your griffins?” Querida asked curiously, as they came to the daylight owls.
“Goodness, no.” Derk unlatched the pen and let two large snowy owls hop out on to his shoulders, where they sat staring at Querida as unblinkingly as she stared up at them. “I found an old lioness who’d been wounded and left behind by the pride. I got her well again and she obliged me with cells for all the griffins before she left. And some of the other cells were from that eagle Barnabas used to have. But I used cells from myself and from Mara too. I wanted the griffins to be people, you see – but I didn’t expect Kit or Callette to grow so big. I think Lydda and Don are going to turn out a more reasonable size, but I wouldn’t bet on it. That’s why I used some cat for Elda. She’s definitely smaller, you may have noticed.” He stroked the owls’ heads and strolled on. There were always problems with the griffins. He had hoped Kit and Callette would make a breeding pair, but Kit despised Callette and Callette hated Kit. And now Kit had put on that extraordinary act with Mr Chesney – Derk wondered how he was going to pay a fine of a hundred gold without selling off half the animals.
They rounded the experimental beehives – Derk was glad Querida did not ask about those – and strolled on through the coffee plantation, where the owls left his shoulders and went ghosting off to hunt. He did not mind Querida asking about the coffee. He was prepared to tell her quite frankly that Barnabas had taken some of his Pilgrim pay in coffee some years back. Derk had begged a few beans and was now growing coffee you did not need to roast. But there were other things over towards the stables and in the vats in his workshed he had no intention of telling Querida about.
Querida did not ask. She sniffed the rich smell rising from the bushes and wondered how many other things from Mr Chesney’s world Derk was secretly growing here. Tea? Exotic vegetables like potatoes and tomatoes? Antibiotics? That stuff they made the T-shirts from that the younger wizards liked so much? – cotton, that was its name. When she finally extorted the University dues from him, she would ask for all those if he wouldn’t give her a griffin. And she wondered why he was letting her know some of his secrets. There must be something he badly wanted to ask from her.
“Wizard Derk,” she said, “I’m sure you didn’t bring me all this way simply to sniff coffee and admire your beautiful owls. What were you wanting to say?”
Derk found he was going to have to work up to that thing. But there were plenty of others. “I didn’t understand that man Addis,” he said, “when he talked about expendable tourists. What did he mean?”
“Just what he said,” Querida answered. “I suspect that is where Mr Chesney really makes his money. A lot of people come on the tours who are either a trial to their families, or very rich, with poor relatives who wish to inherit their money, and so on. These families pay enormous fees to make sure the person doesn’t come back from the tour.”
Derk pushed out from among the coffee bushes and swung round to face Querida outside the dog pen. “But that’s vile! And we all go along with this?”
“And with the fact that the Pilgrim Parties kill an average of two hundred of our citizens each,” Querida retorted, dry as a snake in a desert. “Given that Mr Chesney has his wishes enforced by the demon, I don’t see how we don’t go along with it. Do you?”
“No.” Derk turned unhappily back to the dog run. Its door was open. The only dog still in there was the elderly houndbitch, Bertha. She came stiffly strutting out and scraped at his leg with one paw. Derk frowned as he bent to rub her ears. He knew the dogs had been shut in before the first wizard arrived. It looked as if Pretty really had learnt how to open doors, in which case damn! Pretty was one of the many things he did not want Querida to see. He could hear the other dogs in the distance, now he thought about it, barking and yelping over by the stables, and the pigs squealing over there too. Some game, by the sound of it. Fine, as long as they kept over there. “And how am I supposed to die one hundred and twenty-six times?” he asked distractedly.
“You have to fake that,” said Querida. “As Barnabas will tell you, it’s time-consuming more than anything, considering all the other things the Dark Lord has to do. Is that dog bred for something, or just a dog?”
“I was trying for wings,” Derk confessed, “but they always drop off when the puppies lose their milk teeth. See. Here’s where they were.” He showed Querida the two folds in the brindled fur by Bertha’s shoulder blades. Bertha turned and made an amiable effort to lick Querida’s face as Querida bent to look. Derk hastily distracted Bertha by walking on round the dog run to the paddock.
“You should have tried reducing the length of their tongues instead,” Querida said sourly, at which Bertha shot her a nervous look and moved to the other side of Derk. So he bred them for understanding too, Querida thought. “It’s all right, dog. I just hate my face wet. What are these? Horses?”
“The horses we keep for riding,” Derk said. He was nervous. He was going to have to say what he had brought Querida here to say to her soon.
Querida looked shrewdly from Derk to the horses trotting eagerly over to the fence. He messes about breeding monsters out of these animals, she thought, and they still all adore him. Then she remembered the sarcastic geese. Perhaps not all of them. And none of the horses seemed anything but normal, several solid thick-legged hacks, a couple of nice desert-breds, and one truly classy brood mare, who was in foal, to judge by her bulging sides. Querida watched Derk nervously fumbling for sugar and wondered what all the dogs were barking about in the distance. “Well, Wizard Derk?”
Derk could not get round to it yet. “Did Mr Chesney really mean it about wanting a god to manifest?” he asked instead.
“You heard the man,” said Querida. “And as none of the gods struck him dead, I conclude that his word is law with them too and you’re going to have to produce a god for him.”
“Me?” said Derk.
“Yes,” said Querida. “You. The Dark Lord always sees to the novelty.”
“But I can’t! No one can tell the gods what to do!” Derk protested, feeding sugar to horses in distracted handfuls.
“Except, of course, Mr Chesney,” Querida agreed. “This is something else you’re going to have to fake, I imagine. I think it would be safest to invent a god that doesn’t exist. It can be done with a simple illusion spell then. You do remember how to do illusions, do you?” Derk nodded, still distracted. Well, that’s something at least! Querida thought. But she was not sure she trusted the man to invent a suitable deity. “I’ll think up a plausible god for you and let you know what it looks like.”
“Thanks,” said Derk. The sugar was all gone. He had run out of other things to ask Querida. He wiped his hands on his velvet trousers, wondering how to say what he wanted.
“Out with it, Wizard Derk!” Querida snapped impatiently.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a bit difficult. I don’t like – I mean Mara’s a free woman and it’s not that I mind her dressing up and seducing tourists exactly—”
“I’ve done it for years,” said Querida. “It’s only more faking, if that’s what’s worrying you. At least Mara’s not a dried-up old snake like me and she won’t need to disguise herself with twenty different glamours—” Derk turned and looked her keenly in the face. Querida uneasily remembered that great black griffin of his staring at Mr Chesney. “It’s a shame she’s not being paid,” she said.
“No. There’s something else,” Derk said. “You and Mara are up to something, aren’t you? What’s going on?”
Querida, for once, had a little trouble controlling her face. It was something that had not happened to her for years. Mara did warn me, she thought. He’s not at all the farmerish fool he looks. Perhaps she ought to revise her plans and tell him, before he messed everything up trying to find out. “Now it’s interesting you should say that—” she began cautiously.
The yelling and baying of the dogs abruptly grew louder, mixed with squealing, grunting, sounds like hysterical laughter, and the hammering of paws, hooves and trotters. Before Querida could turn to see what was going on, or Derk could move, a confused crowd of excited animals swept round the corner of the paddock and galloped straight through the spot where Querida was standing.
