The Dark Lord of Derkholm

“There,” he said. “You’re answered. Satisfied?”

“No I am not!” said the boy. “I’ve never heard of this person. Who is he?”

“Goodness knows,” replied the man. “But he’s no one at the University, so it’s quite clear you’re not going to the University to learn your wizardry anyway. I was right.”

The boy’s chin bunched angrily. “There’s no need to look so pleased. You always try to stop me doing what I want!”

And the two of them stood in the sand and shouted at one another.

“Who are they?” Regin asked again.

“I don’t know the boy,” Querida said, “but I know the man all right. His name is Derk. And he did once qualify at the University as a wizard. There is no doubt Mr Chesney would accept him as Dark Lord.”

“The boy’s his son,” Barnabas said. “His name’s Blade. Querida, I don’t want to do this. Derk is a nice man and a friend of mine. He’s actually very gifted—”

“There are two opinions about that,” Querida snapped. “Has the boy any talent?”

“Bags of it,” Barnabas said miserably. “Takes after his mother.”

“Oh – Mara, I remember,” Querida said. “I must talk to Mara. That’s settled then. We have our Dark Lord and our Wizard Guide according to both the Oracles.”

“We could always pretend we hadn’t seen them and choose the next two people we see,” King Luther suggested.

“The gods forfend!” Umru gasped, mopping his face with his undercape.

Querida shot King Luther her snakiest look and marched over to the two outside the white temple. As she reached them, Derk was leaning forward to bawl into his son’s face, with a wholly reasonable air, as if he were simply discussing something quietly, “I tell you, the University’s not a place to learn anything these days. They haven’t had a new idea for thirty years. All they do is crawl to Mr Chesney.”

Querida could easily pretend not to hear this, because Blade was at the same time screaming, “I don’t want to hear! It’s just excuses to stop me doing what I want! You let Shona go to Bardic College, so why don’t you let me learn magic?”

“ER – HEM!” said Querida, loudly enlarged by magic.

Derk and Blade both whirled round. “Tyrant!” Blade screamed in her face and then bowed over, consumed with embarrassment.

Derk surveyed the tiny glistening lady in the robes of High Chancellor. His eyes travelled on to the tall glum sweaty figure of King Luther and the huge shape of Umru and the blisters of sweat popping out on his vast red-blotched cheeks. He nodded to them and smiled at Barnabas, whose curls were wet and whose face was even redder than Umru’s. Finally he looked at the young man in the rear who was a stranger to him and only pretending not to be hot. “Oh hallo,” he said. “What are you all doing here? Is there some reason you aren’t using a refrigeration spell?”

“No, I forgot, bother it!” said Querida. “I like the heat.”

Derk nudged Blade. Blade recovered from his embarrassment enough to make a slight gesture. Incredible, blessed coolness spread over the four men. “Bags of talent indeed,” Regin murmured.

“Thank you, young man,” Umru said gratefully.

Blade was clearly intending to demonstrate that it was not usual for him to scream into people’s faces. He bowed. “You’re welcome, Your Reverence,” he said with great politeness. “And – excuse me – do any of you know a wizard called Deucalion?” He looked round them anxiously as they all shrugged and shook their heads. “Magic user then?” he asked, with his voice dropping hopelessly.

“Never heard of anyone of that name, Blade,” said Barnabas. “Why?”

“He’s the one the White Oracle says is going to train me as a wizard,” Blade explained. “Dad’s never heard of him either.” He sighed.

Querida swept this aside. “We, as it happens, have consulted the Oracles also,” she said. “They have named you, Wizard Derk, as this year’s Dark Lord and you, young Blade, as Wizard Guide to the last tour.”

“Now listen—” said Derk.

“No arguing with the Oracles, Derk,” Barnabas said quietly.

“But—” said Blade.

“Nor you, young man,” said Querida. “Both of you are going to be very busy for the next six months.”

At this Derk stirred himself, powerfully but a little uncertainly, and stood over Querida. “I don’t think you can do this,” he said.

“Oh yes I can,” she said. “Go home and make ready. Tomorrow at midday sharp, Mr Chesney and all the Wizard Guides and I will be arriving at your house to brief you on this year’s plans.” When Derk still stood there, she gazed up at him like a cobra ready to strike and added, “In case you are planning to be away from home tomorrow, I must point out you are in a very poor position, Wizard Derk. You have not paid your wizard’s dues to the University for fifteen years. This gives me the right to exact penalties.”

“I sent you a griffin’s egg,” Derk said.

“It was addled,” said Querida. “As I am sure you knew.”

“And I couldn’t send you anything else,” Derk went on seriously. “All the products of my wizardry are alive. It would be criminal to shut them up in the University dues-vault. You’d want to kill them and embalm them first. Besides, my wife has paid dues enough for the two of us.”

“Mara’s miniature universes are quite irrelevant to Mr Chesney,” Querida stated. “Be warned, Wizard Derk. Either you present yourself at Derkholm to Mr Chesney and the rest of us tomorrow, or you have every magic user in this world looking for you to make you be Dark Lord. Do I make myself clear?”

Blade pulled his father’s arm. “Better go, Dad.”

“And you, young man,” said Querida. “You’re to be there too.”

Blade succeeded in pulling his father round sideways, but Derk still looked down at Querida across his own shoulder. “No one should have this kind of power,” he said.

“To whom do you refer, Wizard?” she asked, still in her cobra stance.

“Chesney, of course,” Derk said rather hastily.

Here Blade pulled harder and the two of them disappeared in a stinging cloud of blown sand.

“Phew!” said Barnabas. “Poor old Derk!”

“Let us go home more slowly,” said Querida. “I feel a little tired.”

The return journey was more like a lingering walk, in which they trod now on a patch of hot sand, now on wiry dead grass, now on rocks or moss. Regin put himself beside Querida as they went. “Who is this Wizard Derk?” he asked.

Querida sighed. “A shambles of a man. The world’s worst wizard, to my mind.”

“Oh come now, Querida,” said Barnabas. “He’s excellent at what he does – just a little unconventional, you know. When we were students together I always thought he was twice as bright as me.”

Querida shuddered. “Unconventional is a kind word for it. I was Senior Instructor then. Of all the things he did wrong, my worst memories are of being dragged up in the middle of the night to deal with that vast blue demon that Derk had called up and couldn’t put down. You remember?”

Barnabas nodded and bit his lip in order not to laugh. “Nobody knew its name, so none of the usual exorcisms worked. It took the entire staff of the University to get rid of it in the end. All through the night. Derk was never much good at conventional wizardry, I admit. But you use him a lot, don’t you, Reverend?”

Umru smiled sweetly, his fat comfortable cool self again. “I pay for Wizard Derk’s services almost every time my temple has a tour party through. No one but Wizard Derk can make a convincing human corpse out of a dead donkey.” Regin stared. Umru smiled ever more sweetly. “Or a sheep,” he said. “We are always chosen as an evil priesthood, and the Pilgrims expect us to have a vilely tortured sacrifice to display. Wizard Derk saves us the necessity of using people.”

“Oh,” said Regin. He turned to where King Luther was trudging grimly in the rear. “And you, Your Majesty? You know this wizard too?”

“We use him for hangings and heads on spikes occasionally,” King Luther said, “But I hire him most often for the feast when the damn Pilgrims have gone. He has performing animals. Pigs mostly.”

“Pigs?” said Regin.

“Yes, pigs,” said King Luther. “They fly.”

“Oh,” Regin said again. As he said it, they arrived back on the flagstone in the council room again. Regin’s teeth chattered, Barnabas was shivering, Umru was juddering all over. Querida was unaffected. So was King Luther, whose northern kingdom was never warm.

“What is the matter?” Umru cried out. People turned from reading the heaps of letters on the table to stare at him. He held his hands out piteously. “Look. Blue!”

“Oh. Um,” said Barnabas. “It’s young Blade’s fault, I’m afraid. Boys of that age never know their own strength. I’ll do what I can, but it may take an hour or so.”

erkholm was in an uproar. Blade’s sister Shona was by the stables, saddling two of the horses so that Derk could take her to Bardic College as soon as he got home from the Oracle, when Elda came galloping up with her wings spread, rowing herself along for extra speed, screaming that Derk was going to be Dark Lord. Elda was squawking with excitement, according to Don, who had been galloping after Elda to try to calm things down, and Shona either did not understand her or did not believe her straight away. When she did, Shona instantly unsaddled the horses and turned them back into the paddock.

According to Don, Shona then struck a fine pose (it was something Shona had been doing ever since she was enrolled as a trainee bard, and it annoyed Don particularly and Kit almost as much) and declared, “I’ll put off going to college for as long as Dad needs me. We have to show family solidarity over this.”

Shona, despite the pose, was highly excited by the news. As she raced back to the house carrying her saddlebags and violin case, with Don and Elda bounding ahead, all the animals caught it, even the Friendly Cows, and the rest of the day was loud with honks, squawks, moos and the galloping of variously shaped feet.

Otherwise, Blade thought sourly, there was not much family solidarity around. When Shona burst in, flushed and looking violently pretty, their parents were having a row. Derk was roaring, “There must be a way to get out of it! I refuse to touch Chesney’s money!” Though he was not much given to wizardly displays, Derk was feeling so strongly that he was venting magefire in all directions. One of the hall carpets was in flames.

“Dad!” Shona cried out. “You’ll set the house on fire!”

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.

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.