“And Callette came back just after the elves came, and she screamed at the dragon and then went over to see Mum,” Elda said. “You ought to leave that salve, Dad. The healer said!”
“What does Callette think she’s up to?” asked Derk.
“Finding out what clues you’d put out,” Elda explained. “She says you’d hardly done half of them.”
“Then who’s feeding the animals, if anyone?” Derk asked.
“Half of them are with Shona and the boys,” Elda explained. “Mum got Old George in to do the rest. And she got Fran to do you—only I don’t like Fran. She called me an animal.”
“Tell Fran she’s one, too,” said Derk. “Gods! What a mess this is!” He left the bathroom and tottered back to his bedroom to find his clothes. Elda bounded out of the bath and rushed to get her back under his weaving right hand. Derk leaned on her gratefully, even though she kept trying to steer him back to bed. At least she knew what Fran had done with his clothes. He made her fetch them and sat on the bed to get into them.
“Do let Lydda bring you the broth,” Elda pleaded while he dressed. “You must be starving!”
“Not really. No messages have come through from my stomach,” Derk said. He was worried about whoever was calling him. They sounded urgent. He put his boots on and stood up. “Help me get downstairs, Elda. Where are these elves?”
“In the dining room eating godlike lunch,” said Elda. “You could wait.”
Derk knew that if he waited, he would crawl into bed again and the mess would only get worse. “No,” he said, and tottered toward the stairs.
Lydda had heard the activity overhead. In its present state the house creaked mightily whenever anyone walked about upstairs. She met Derk with a mug of broth halfway downstairs and sat herself squarely in his way. “Sit down and drink this, Dad, or I’ll peck your burns.”
Derk sat heavily, with one arm over Elda’s back. Lydda had left him nowhere else to go. He meekly took the mug. The broth in it smelled wonderful. He sipped. It was beautiful. “A poem in liquid,” he told Lydda; she was sitting spread over the next four steps with her wings out to make sure he came down no further. Derk managed to grin. “Everyone should have griffin daughters to keep them in order,” he said. Elda moved around to the stair above him so that he could lean against her. Derk leaned into her warm feathers and sat comfortably sipping, staring out at the greenness of the garden and the valley beyond, through the magic wall Finn and Barnabas had made. “When all this is over, I think we’ll keep this front wall transparent,” he said. “The stairs always used to be too dark. So what else has happened since Callette left?”
“Blade came,” said Lydda, “but not for long. He was soaked through because it was raining in their camp. He went and looked at you.”
“He said you were much better,” Elda protested, “but you look awful, Dad. Your cheeks are all droopy and thin.”
“Sometimes,” Derk said, “Blade talks good sense. I could do with another cup of this wonderful broth, Lydda.”
Lydda took the mug but did not budge. “I’ll get you more when you’re back in bed.”
Derk smiled, sighed, and shook his head at her. Then he translocated to the person who was calling him so urgently.
Squawks of dismay were still ringing in his ears as he landed, heavily, not in the dining room, where he had expected to be, but somewhere outside. It was beginning to rain here, too. Derk sat for a moment, sore and winded and getting wet, staring at steep green hillside and wishing he did not make so many mistakes in translocating. A cow bellowed nearby.
“Curses! I keep forgetting how fragile humans are!” rumbled a huge voice. Derk recognized it as the one that had been calling him. “Are you badly hurt?” the voice asked him.
Derk scrambled slowly around on his knees to stare at the enormous green dragon lying by the stream just below him. It glistened healthily in the rain. At first he thought it was a complete stranger. Then he saw the stitches in the nearest vast peaked wing. “Oh,” he said, “it’s you.”
“And if I had not specifically called you, I would not have known you either,” the dragon rumbled. “My apologies. I asked you here to make amends. Once your wife had explained the situation to me, I saw that I had acted hastily and stupidly. I should never have burned you.”
“Er, thanks. Very decent of you,” Derk answered.
“Not decent,” boomed the dragon. “Ashamed. It was not you I should have attacked. But I was angry, very angry and shamed. I had been asleep—possibly I had settled down to die—when I was suddenly woken to find the world a different place. Dragons I had known as infants were now not only full grown but—of all things!—kowtowing to humans, taking part in a ridiculous game. And when I asked them their reasons, all they would do was stare into distance and pretend to be immeasurably wise.”
“Yes, they do that, the modern dragons,” Derk said. “I thought it was the dragon way.”
“I don’t hold with it,” said the great green dragon. “No living creature has the right to claim wisdom. There is always more to find out. I should know that. I imagine you know it, too, Wizard.”
“I’ve never ever felt wise,” Derk said frankly. “But I suppose it is a temptation, to stare into distance and make people think you are.”
“It’s humbug,” said the dragon. “It’s also stupid. It stops you learning more. I went away from the adults and asked the fledgling dragons. There are only two of them. That’s bad. Dragon numbers are badly down. They said the adults are too busy with those Pilgrim Parties to breed these days. So I asked about the Pilgrim Parties, and they told me that a Mr. Chesney is responsible for them and that the dragons side with this Mr. Chesney because he is the chief evil in the world. Foolishness. Dragons are never on anyone’s side. And they told me also that the Dark Lord represents Mr. Chesney in our world. I was very angry and very shamed for my people, and I came here directly, intending, I am afraid, to kill the Dark Lord. You were lucky, Wizard, that I was tired and feeble and had no real fire.”
“It was bad enough as it was,” Derk admitted. “What woke you up?”
“I wish I could remember,” said the dragon. “It’s been puzzling me. At my age, in my condition, I should simply have slept until I died. Of course I didn’t know how bad I was. Your wife and that little healer woman had to tell me. But I should have been too feeble to wake. All I know is that something did wake me, something that struck me like blue lightning—maybe it was lightning, though how it reached my cave I can’t think—and that I was awake and learning from the minds around me that this world had become a small, bad place.”
Derk had a notion what the blue lightning might have been. So I brought this on myself by trying to conjure a demon! he thought. But that was a small, fleeting thought beside his eager delight at discovering this dragon could read minds. It was something he had hoped the griffins would be able to do, and he had always been disappointed that they couldn’t. I’m ridiculous, he thought. Here I am on a wet hillside, getting soaked in this rain and feeling too ill to get up, and all I can think of is that there truly is a creature who can read minds. “I’m quite excited to know you read minds,” he told the dragon. “There aren’t many who can these days.”
“Nobody bothers to practice, that’s all,” said the dragon. “It used to be one of the first things they made you do when you started to learn magic. You could do it, Wizard, if you’d been properly taught. And be thankful that I was properly taught. I’ve been lying here learning things about you and about your household that I wouldn’t otherwise know. If I hadn’t, I might have killed most of your little cat-birds—certainly the brown one. She was most insulting. But the other two were quite rude, too.”
“What, Lydda and Elda as well?” said Derk. He was impressed that they had had the courage to insult a dragon. Callette was big enough to think she might get away with it—though she had seen what happened to Kit—but Lydda was only about the size of one of the mayor’s cows, and Elda w
as smaller than that. And the dragon had eaten at least half the mayor’s herd. I must pay the mayor back! Derk thought. Where do I find any money? “I apologize for my griffin daughters,” he said.
“They were worried about you,” the dragon explained, “and they rightly blamed me. They took out their temper on me. And it was the same with the two very thin people—though no doubt they hoped I would not think them worth eating. I saw my own behavior in theirs. It is impressive the way all your people have such great regard for you, Wizard. But the skinny small boy, your son, is the one who troubles me most—”
“Did Blade insult you, too?” Derk groaned.
“He was entirely polite,” the dragon said. “But it was partly on his account I called you here. It seems that he and three others are engaged in marching six hundred murderers across the country.”
What a mess! Derk groaned again. Apart from the danger, there should surely have been more than six hundred soldiers. Barnabas said there were to be a thousand. “Yes, I’d better see about that at once,” he said. He tried to scramble up, but his feet slipped in the wet grass, and his knees refused to hold him.
“Wait and hear me out!” The dragon puffed out a cloud of steam. The steam surrounded Derk in moist warmth, smelling grassy and sweet and quite unlike the smokes it had tried to kill Derk with. “I was about to say that this is where I should make reparation. Speaking as something of a murderer myself, I would say your other fledglings are in trouble.”
“I know they are!” Derk said faintly.
“Then I suggest that if you will give me your authority, I go and try intimidating these murderers.”
“Willingly,” said Derk. “Any authority you want.”
“While you go back to your house and continue to heal,” said the dragon.
“I’m well enough,” Derk lied.
“You are not. I have been healing you as you sat here,” said the dragon. “This was my other reparation. But you will need at least one more day in which to recover your strength. Meanwhile I should perhaps tell you that you have six members of the Elder Race, as they wrongly call themselves—dragons are much older—waiting in your house upon some footling errand of honor which they regard as hugely important.”
“Oh,” said Derk. “Bother, I’d forgotten those elves. I’d better see them now.”
He stood up again. This time his knees seemed stronger, although they showed a tendency to forget they had kneecaps and to try to bend the wrong way. He steadied himself with one hand on the soaking hillside and watched the dragon stand up, too. It stood by stages, front legs first and then, with a roaring grunt and a long puff of steam, heaving its back legs under it. The mayor’s cows belled with terror. “I know how you feel,” the dragon remarked, with its huge face now level with Derk’s. “I’m off for a practice flight to see if I still need the stitches in this wing. If all goes well, I shall glide gently in pursuit of your fledglings. Expect to find me with them.”
Derk nodded and managed to translocate himself home as far as the terrace. While he hung on to the outdoor table there for a moment, wild cackling from Big Hen and squeals from the pigs alerted him to the fact that the dragon was now in the air. He looked up and saw it pass above the house, dwarfing everything with its huge wingspread, grass green and glittering under the rain. It was a magnificant sight, even though it did fly rather slowly and stiffly.
“And this house has to be turned into a Citadel! Gods! The things I still have to do!” Derk groaned. He let go of the table and tottered to the dining room.
The six lordly elves there sprang up from behind after-dinner cups of coffee and bowed gracefully. “My liege lord,” said the one with the golden circlet. “Greetings.”
They were all nearly seven feet tall. Derk found them a bit much. He hurriedly pulled forward a chair and sank down on it, and it was just as well that he did. The pigs had scented Derk while they scented the dragon. With a frenzied drumming of trotters and much excited squealing, the whole herd swept in through the open front door and on into the dining room, where they threw themselves delightedly upon Derk. The youngest porker jumped painfully into his lap. The rest stood on hind trotters to bunt him with their snouts, or surged against his knees, while Ringlet, being the oldest and the cheekiest of the sows, fluttered up onto the table, where she could look soulfully into Derk’s eyes. Derk busily rubbed backs or scratched at the bases of stumpy wings and bawled at Ringlet to “Get down off there, pig!”
The effect on the elves was peculiar. The one with the circlet gaped and stood like a statue. His right hand was out, with its long, long index finger pointing stiffly at Ringlet. Derk would have been afraid he was trying to turn Ringlet to stone or something, except that the other five elves were falling about with laughter, crowing joyfully, slapping their elongated thighs, and hugging one another, as pleased as the pigs were. Finally, the laughing five swung the elf with the circlet around and hugged him, too, at which he joined in their laughter and began slapping the others on their backs. Old George, coming in hot pursuit of the pigs, skidded to a stop in the doorway and stared. Elves just did not behave like this normally.
“Forgive us, oh my lord!” gasped one of the five lesser elves. “Talithan, my prince, has this moment seen his prophecy come true, and we are witness to it.”
“Yes, truly, my lord,” said Prince Talithan. He was panting with emotion, and tears were running from his great greenish eyes. “Pray forgive me. I must tell you that my brother long ago went adventuring to our neighbor world, where Mr. Chesney has him a prisoner, thus forcing all elves to do his will. And when my father lately was sorrowing at this and saying that surely one day my brother must escape and come home to us, I answered him bitterly and scoffingly, saying, ‘Yea, that day will come when pigs do fly!’ for which reason my father grew angry and sent me to you, to become the Dark Lord’s minion. And here, where I come, behold! Pigs fly!” He pointed again at Ringlet, who was still on the table.
“Well, I’ve been breeding them with wings for years now,” Derk said. “Perhaps you shouldn’t build your hopes on it.”
“I do. It was spoken as a prophecy,” Talithan replied.
“Have it your own way,” Derk said. “What actually brings you here? I thought I’d made all the arrangements with your people.”
Prince Talithan blotted away his tears on his green silken sleeve and bowed again. “That was when others were to lead your Dark Elves, my lord. I must now pay my respects as the new leader of Dark Elves, with these my captains, Gwithin, Loriel, Damorin, Fandorel, and Beredin.”
They were all names famous in elflore. Derk did his best to bow respectfully while sitting in a chair under a heap of pigs. The Elfking, he thought, must have been very angry, if he sent people like this to be Dark Elves. It was considered a great disgrace. And this made it all the odder that Prince Talithan seemed so eager to pay his respects. Derk suspected there was more to this than the matter of flying pigs. “I am honored,” he said as he bowed.
“And I am distressed, my lord,” said Talithan, “that you seem not quite to be well.”
“I had a little disagreement with a dragon,” Derk said, “but I am honored at your concern, Your Highness.” And now let’s cut the cackle, he thought, and find out what they’ve really come for. “Indeed, you honor me too much. What is it you were waiting here for?”
“I do, in truth, my lord,” Talithan admitted, “require a boon of you.”
Ah, thought Derk. “You want to be released from having to be a Dark Elf, I imagine?”
“No, no, my lord!” Talithan protested. “To be allowed to serve you, obeying your every whim for a year and a day, is all I ask!”
“What?” Derk began to wonder if the elf prince was mad. Maybe this was why his father had sent him to Derkholm. “Why would you want to do that?”
Talithan smiled, as only elves could smile, heartrendingly, brilliantly. “You have a small wonder horse with striped wings,” he said, “that can talk and has the pow
er to visit the secret home of the elves.”
“Pretty?” said Derk. “Can Pretty do that?”
“He can indeed, my lord,” one of the other elves—Loriel, Derk thought—assured him. “We found the small horse, all of us, astray in our hidden places, crying out that he was lost.”
“That was probably a lie if I know Pretty,” Derk murmured. “And?”
“I crave the small horse, Pretty,” said Prince Talithan. “Give him to me, of your bounty, and I will serve you in any way you wish.”
“No,” said Derk.
To Derk’s consternation, Talithan vaulted the dining table, dislodging Ringlet in the process, and went down on one knee among the pigs at Derk’s feet. “I beg you!” he said, amid Ringlet’s irritated grunting. “My lord, I implore you! Never, for three hundred years, have I felt such joy in or longing for a living creature! Life would have meaning for me once again were I only to own this horse and train him and ride him in the sky! I would treat him better than I treat myself. You have my word.”
“Oh, do get up,” said Derk. “I said no. Pretty isn’t a year old yet.”
“That I know,” Talithan said, still kneeling. “That is why I said I would serve you a year and a day for him. I will most faithfully serve you, lord, if you will only let me have Pretty at the end of that time.” He stood up, towering over Derk. “This I swear to, in front of these thirty witnesses.”
Thirty? Derk looked round at the pigs, each, even Ringlet, with his or her snout turned wonderingly up to Talithan, then at Old George, looking quite as wondering, and then over at the five elves, who each had a hand over his heart, swearing witness. Finally Derk looked over at the kitchen door, where Lydda, Elda, and Fran were squeezed together, staring at him accusingly.
“I was hoping to breed more winged horses with Pretty,” Derk said weakly.
“That can be arranged,” Talithan suggested.
“We would like winged horses, too,” said one of the other elves, Gwithin, Derk thought.
“Herds of them!” Damorin said raptly.
Dark Lord of Derkholm Page 15
