The Dark Lord of Derkholm

Derk of course was having to learn the same lists in just two weeks, as well as doing the other things a Dark Lord had to see to. Barnabas paid almost daily visits. He and Derk spent long hours consulting in Derk’s study, and then later that day Derk would rush off, looking harassed, to consult with King Luther or some dragons about what Barnabas had told him. In between, he was busily writing out clues to the weakness of the Dark Lord or answering messages. Carrier pigeons came in all the time with messages. Shona dealt with those when she could, and with the messages for Mara too. Mara before long was rushing off all the time, as busy as Derk, to the house near the Central Wastelands she had inherited from an aunt, which she was setting up as the Lair of the Enchantress.

Parents, it seemed to Blade, always had twice the energy of their children and never seemed to get bored the way he did. It was all most unrestful and he kept out of the way. He spent most days hanging out with Kit and Don in the curving side valley just downhill from Derkholm, basking under a glorious dark blue sky. There Kit lazily preened his feathers, recovering from his bruises, while Don sprawled with the black book in his talons, so that they could test Blade on the rules when any of them remembered to. They did not tell Lydda or Elda where they went because those two might tell Shona. Shona was to be avoided like the plague. If Shona saw any of them she was liable to say, “Don, you exercise the dogs while I do my piano practice.”

Or, “Blade, Dad needs you to water the crops while he sees the Emir.”

Or, “Kit, we want four bales of hay down from the loft – and while you’re at it, Dad says to make a space up there for six new cages of pigeons.”

As Kit feelingly said, it was the “while you’re at it” that was worst. It kept you slaving all day. Shona was very good at ‘while you’re at it’s’. She slid them in at the end of orders like knives to the heart. Those days, when they saw Shona coming, even Kit went small and hard to see.

Shona knew of course and complained loudly. “I’ve put off going to Bardic College,” she went round saying, “where I’d much rather be, in order to help Dad out, and the only other people doing anything are Lydda and Callette.”

“But they’re enjoying themselves,” Elda pointed out. “It’s not my fault I’m no good at things.”

“You’re worse than Callette,” Shona retorted. “I’ve never yet caught Callette being good at anything she doesn’t enjoy. At least the boys are honest.”

Callette was certainly enjoying herself just then. She was making the hundred and twenty-six magical objects for the dragon to guard in the north. Most of the time all that could be seen of her was her large grey-brown rump projecting from the shed that was her den, while the tuft on the end of her tail went irritably bouncing here and there as it expressed Callette’s feelings about the latest object. For Callette had become inspired and self-critical with it. She was now trying to make every object different. She kept appearing in the side-valley to show Blade, Kit and Don her latest collection and demand their honest opinions. And they were, in fact, almost too awed to criticise. Callette had started quite modestly with ten or so assorted goblets and various orbs, but then Don had said – without at all meaning to set Callette off – “Shouldn’t the things light up or something when a Pilgrim picks them up?”

“Good idea,” Callette had said briskly, and spread her wings and coasted thoughtfully away with her bundle of orbs.

The next set of objects lit up like anything, some of them quite garishly, but even Callette was unable to say what they were intended to be. “I call them gizmos,” she said, collecting the glittering heap into a sheet to carry them back to her shed.

Every day after that the latest gizmos were more outlandish. “Aren’t you getting just a bit carried away?” Blade suggested, picking up a shining blue rose in one hand and an indescribable spiky thing in the other. It flashed red light when he touched it.

“Probably,” said Callette. “I think I’m like Shona when she can’t stop playing the violin. I keep getting new ideas.”

The one hundred and ninth gizmo caused even Kit to make admiring sounds. It was a lattice of white shapes like snowflakes that chimed softly and turned milky bright when any of them touched it. “Are you sure you’re not really a wizard?” Kit asked, turning the thing respectfully around between his talons.

Callette shot him a huffy look over one brown-barred wing. “Of course not. It’s electronics. It’s what those button-pushing machines work by. I got Barnabas to multiply me another hundred of them and took them apart for the gizmos. Give me that one back. I may keep it. It’s my very best.”

Carrying the gizmo carefully, she took off to glide down the valley. At the mouth of it, she had to rise hastily to clear a herd of cows someone from the village was driving up into the valley.

That was the end of peace in that valley. The cows turned out to belong to the mayor, who was having them penned up there for safety until the tours were over. Thereafter he and his wife and children were in and out of there several times a day, seeing to the cattle. Don flew out to see if there was anywhere else they could go, but came back glumly with the news that every hidden place was now full of cows, sheep, pigs, hens or goats. The three of them were forced to go and lurk behind the stables, which was nothing like so private.

By that time, Derk’s face had sagged from worry to harrowed misery. He felt as if he had spent his entire life rushing away on urgent, unpleasant errands. Almost the first of these was the one he hated most, and he only got himself through it by concentrating on the new animal he would create. He had to go down to the village and break the news there that Mr Chesney wanted the place in ruins. He hated having to do this so heartily that he snapped at Pretty while he was saddling Pretty’s mother Beauty. And Pretty minced off in a sulk and turned the dogs among the geese in revenge. Derk had to sort that out before he left.

“Can’t you control that foal of yours?” he said to Beauty. Beauty had waited patiently through all the running and shouting, merely mantling her huge glossy black wings when Derk came back, to show him she was ready and waiting.

“Ghett’n htoo mhuch f’mhe,” she confessed. She did not speak as well as Pretty, even without a bit in her mouth.

To Derk, Beauty meant as much as the hundred and ninth gizmo did to Callette. He would have died rather than part with Beauty to the University. So he smiled and patted her shining black neck. Not ants, he thought. Not insects at all. Something even more splendid than Beauty. And when he mounted and Beauty bunched her quarters and rose into the air rather more easily even than Kit did, he felt tight across the chest with love and pride. As they sailed down the valley, he considered the idea of a water creature. He had not done one of those yet. Suppose he could get hold of some cells from a dolphin …

He landed in the centre of the village to find nearly every house there being knocked down. “What the hell’s going on?” he said.

The mayor left off demolishing the village shop and came to lean on his sledgehammer by Beauty’s right wing. “Glad to see you, Derk. We were going to need to speak to you about the village hall. We want to leave that standing if we can, but we don’t want any Pilgrims or soldiers messing about in it destroying things. I wondered if you could see a way of disguising it as a ruin.”

“Willingly,” said Derk. “No problem.” The hall had been built only last spring. “But how did you know – how are you going to live with all the houses down?”

“Everyone in the world knows what to expect when the tours come through,” the mayor replied. “Not your fault, Derk. We knew the job was bound to come your way in time. We had pits dug for living in years ago, roofed over, water piped in, cables laid. Furniture and food got moved down there yesterday. Place is going to look properly abandoned by tomorrow, but we’re leaving Tom Holt’s pigsty and Jenny Wellaby’s wash house standing. I heard they expect to find a hovel or two. But I can tell you,” he said, running a hand through the brickdust in his hair, “I didn’t expect these pulled-down houses to look so new. That worries me a lot.”

“I can easily age them a bit for you,” Derk offered.

“And blacken them with fire?” the mayor asked anxiously. “It would look better. And we’ve told off two skinny folk – Fran Taylor and Old George – to pick about in the ruins whenever a tour arrives, to make like starving survivors, you know, but I’d be glad if you could make them look a little less healthy – emaciated, sort of. One look at Old George at the moment and you’d know he’s never had a day’s illness in his life. Can you sicken him up a bit?”

“No problem,” said Derk. The man thought of everything!

“And another thing,” said the mayor. “We’ll be driving all the livestock up the hills to the sides of the valley and penning them up for safety – don’t want any animals getting killed – but if you could do something that makes them hard to see, I’d be much obliged.”

Derk felt he could hardly refuse. He spent the rest of that day adding wizardry to the blows of the sledgehammers and laying the resulting brick dust around as soot. By sunset, the place looked terrible. “What do you think of all this?” Derk asked Old George while he was emaciating him.

Old George shrugged. “Way to earn a living. Stupid way, if you ask me. But I’m not in charge, am I?”

Neither am I, Derk thought as he went to mount Beauty. The frightening thing was that there was nothing he could do about it, any more than Old George could.

Beauty, rattling her wings and snorting to get rid of the dust, gave it as her opinion that this was not much of a day. “Bhoring. No fhlying.”

“You wait,” Derk told her.

Next day he flew north to see King Luther. The day after he went south to an angry and inconclusive meeting with the Marsh Dwellers, who wanted more pay for pretending to sacrifice Pilgrims to their god. He flew home with “Is blasphemy, see, is disrespect for god!” echoing in his ears, wistfully wondering if his water creature might be something savage that fed exclusively on Marsh people. But the next day, flying east to look at the ten cities scheduled to be sacked, he took that back in favour of something half dolphin, half dragon that lived in a river. The trouble was that there were no big rivers near Derkholm. The day after that, flying south-east to talk to the Emir, he decided something half dragon would be too big.

The Emir was flatly refusing to be the Puppet King the lists said he should be. “I’ll be anything else you choose,” he told Derk, “but I will not have my mind enslaved to this tiara. I have seen Sheik Detroy. He is still walking like a zombie after last year. He drools. His valet has to feed him. It’s disgusting! These magic objects are not safe.”

Derk had seen Sheik Detroy too. He felt the Emir had a point. “Then could you perhaps get one of your most devoted servants to wear the tiara for you?”

“And have him usurp my throne?” the Emir said. “I hope you joke.”

They argued for several hours. At length Derk said desperately, “Well, can’t you wear a copy of the tiara and act being enslaved to it?”

“What a good idea!” said the Emir. “I rather fancy myself as an actor. Very well.”

Derk flew home tired out and, as often happened when he was tired, he got his best idea for animal yet. Not an animal. Something half human, half dolphin. A mermaid daughter, that was it. As Beauty wearily flapped onwards, Derk turned over in his mind all the possible ways of splicing dolphin to human. It was going to be fascinating. The question was, would Mara agree to be the mother of this new being? If he presented the idea to her as a challenge, it might be a way of bridging the chilly distance that seemed to have opened up between them.