The Dark Lord of Derkholm

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.

Derk saw, horrified, Querida’s tiny dry body hurled into the air by a mixed crowd of galloping animals – and Pretty, of course. He saw her tossed aside, to land with a thwack against the paddock fence.

From Querida’s point of view, she was suddenly in an avalanche of careering creatures. As she sailed through the air, she saw waving tails, wings, excited bared fangs, and an eye-twisting blur of black and white zigzags that puzzled her slightly. Then something slammed into her, all along one side, and she heard a snapping noise from her own body. Rather to her surprise, the old dog Bertha leapt to her side and seemed to try to defend her. And I don’t even like dogs! Querida thought, as Bertha was pushed aside and Querida found herself lying on the ground being punched by hard trotters galloping across her. To her utter dismay, something else in her body snapped, towards the far end of her.

Derk was roaring at the creatures. The horses in the paddock galloped clear, trumpeting with dismay. Otherwise most of the noise stopped, except for Bertha’s indignant snarling. In fact, Bertha had made things worse by making the onrushing pigs swerve and trample Querida. “Shut up, Bertha!” Derk told her ungratefully as he dashed towards Querida lying against the fence. He hoped she had fainted. He could see her left arm was broken and he rather feared her left ankle was too. He knelt down beside her to see what he could do.

Querida sat up as he reached towards her leg. “Oh no!” she said. She did not trust Derk an inch.

“I do know about bones,” Derk pointed out. “Muscles too.”

That was probably true, Querida thought, trying not to scream with the pain, but she still did not trust Derk an inch. She stared beyond him through a dreadful throbbing mistiness. The black and white thing that had bowled her over was standing anxiously some way up the path. He was all long legs and a perky little fringe of mane. His big black and white flight feathers did indeed grow in eye-twisting zigzags. So he’s bred a winged horse, Querida thought. Derk made another move to help her. She pushed him off with her good hand. “I don’t want to grow wings like that creature!” she hissed. “And you should have reported it to the University.” It was unfair, but she did hurt so.

“Pretty,” said Derk. “Pretty’s only just weaned. He was playing with the dogs and the pigs. Do let me try to set those bones.”

“No!” snapped Querida. It was horrible the way a person could be a perfectly sound old lady one second and a wounded emergency the next. She felt dreadful. She wanted – passionately – to have her own home and own healer and a soothing cup of her own tea, and she wanted it all now. “I may be injured,” she said, “but I am a wizard still. If you’d just stay clear, I’ll translocate home and call my own healer, please.”

“Are you sure?” said Derk. Querida’s face looked like grey-blue withered paper. He knew he could not have translocated an inch in that state – not that he could go any distance at the best of times.

“Quite sure,” snapped Querida. And she was gone as she spoke, with a small whiff of moving air.

Derk stared at the empty place by the fence and hoped very much that Querida had arrived in the right place. He had better get Barnabas to go after her and make sure. But first, he turned to Pretty.

“Only playing,” said Pretty, who knew perfectly well what he had done.

“I’ve told you before,” said Derk, “that you have to look where you’re going when you rush about like that. If you cause any more accidents, I shall have to shut you up in a stall all day.”

Pretty tossed his head and gave Derk a resentful look over one feathery shoulder. Then he minced away sideways to where his pregnant grandmother was leaning anxiously over the fence to him. Derk thought it a pity the brood-mare could not talk. She might have talked some sense into Pretty. But all she could do was nose Pretty protectively. Pretty said to her, “Don’t like Derk.”

“And I don’t like you at the moment,” Derk retorted. “I told you not to let any of the visitors see you, and then you go and bowl one of them over. Come on, Bertha.”

Most of the wizards had left when Derk and the dog arrived back on the terrace. But Barnabas was still there and the young wizard Finn, enjoying another cup of coffee with Shona and Mara. Derk was making for Barnabas to tell him about Querida, when he was brought up short by the sound of something splintering up in the roof. “Where’s Kit?” he said.

“Still up there,” Shona said.

Derk backed to a place on the terrace where he could see the black feathery hump across the bent gutter. He could hear rafters creaking under Kit’s weight. “KIT!” he bellowed. “Kit, get down before the roof breaks!”

There was a squawky mutter from above. The politest it could have been was “Get lost!”

“What’s got into him?” Mara wondered anxiously.

“I don’t know,” said Derk, “and I don’t care. He could get hurt. Kit!” he yelled. “Kit, I give you three seconds to get down here. Then I fetch you down by magic. One. Two—”

Sulkily, Kit surged upright. Perhaps he meant to fly down to the terrace. Derk thought it more likely that Kit intended to take off for the hills, and wondered if bringing him back with a catch spell would damage Kit’s pride too badly. But he never got a chance to cast it, any more than Kit had a chance to fly. As Kit braced his powerful hind legs for take off, the roof fell in beneath him. And Kit fell with it. He simply vanished inwards, along with the centre part of the house. With him went tiles, a chimney, broken rafters, crumpled walls and smashed windows, in a billow of plaster dust and old cobwebs. The crash was tremendous.

“Oh ye gods!” said Mara. “He never even had time to spread his wings!”

“Be glad he didn’t. He’d have broken them for sure,” Derk said. He dashed for the house, followed by the ever-helpful Bertha, followed by Finn and Barnabas.

“Derk, Derk!” Mara cried out. “The other children! They were all indoors!”

“I’ll go and look,” said Shona. “Mum, you look ready to faint. Sit down.”

“Not indoors! Look through the windows,” said Mara. “We stretched the house – any of it might come down! Be careful!”

“Yes, yes,” Shona said soothingly as Derk scrambled in through the front door. In some mad way, the front door was still standing. A mound of rubble had shot out through it, and past it on either side. Bertha went bounding in ahead of Derk. As Derk climbed carefully through a chaos of fallen beams and bricks, he heard her start barking in short triumphant bursts.

From further inside the chaos, Kit’s voice said distinctly, “Shut up, you stupid dog.”

Poor Bertha. It was not her day. Derk heaved a sigh of relief.

“Lucky we’re all wizards here,” Barnabas said behind him. “Finn, you make sure the side walls don’t fall in, while Derk and I see what we can do ahead.”

As Derk crawled on through a criss-cross of rafters draped with cobwebs and sheets from the second floor linen cupboard, he felt the walls on either side groan a little and then steady under Finn’s spell. They found Kit a yard or so further on, dumped in a huge black huddle and coated with plaster and horsehair, in a sort of cage of splintered roof beams and broken marble slabs. Out of it, his eyes stared enormous, black and wild.

“Have you broken anything?” said Derk.

Kit squawked. “Only the new marble stairs.”

“Wings and legs and things, he means, you stupid griffin,” Barnabas said.

“I’m – not sure,” answered Kit.

“Good. Then we’ll get you out,” said Barnabas. “Where’s the dog?”

“She went squirming out at the back,” said Kit. “She smelt the kitchen.”

“Oh gods!” said Derk. “Lydda was probably in there!”

“One thing at a time,” Barnabas said. “This is going to take a separate levitating spell for each beam and most slabs, I think. Finn, can you join us?”

Finn came crawling through, white with dust and very cheerful. “Oh yes,” he said. “I see. Can do. Derk, you’ll now get to see some of the techniques we use when we put cities back together after the tours leave. You take the left side, Barnabas.”

Derk crouched against a piece of timber and watched enviously. It was like a demonstration for students. Neatly and quickly, with only a murmur here and there, the two wizards inserted their spells under each baulk of wood or stone, and then around Kit. After a mere minute, Barnabas said, “Right. Now activate.” And the entire tangle of beams and marble slabs unfolded like a clawed hand and went to rest neatly stacked against the walls. “Can you move?” Barnabas asked Kit.

Kit said, “Umph. Yes.” And then, as he rose to a crouch and started to crawl forward, “Yeeow-ouch!” Derk watched him struggle forward across the rubble that had been the hall. At least all Kit’s limbs seemed to be working.

“Look on the bright side,” Finn said. “You’re halfway to a ruined Citadel already. Want us to stabilise it?”