Dark Lord of Derkholm

by Diana Wynne Jones

  But why? Derk wondered. Demons were never this obliging.

  The demon’s laughter flooded against his brain, making him sick and dizzy. I have my reasons. Be sure I don’t do it to oblige you, little wizard.

  And it was gone, in another zigzag of blue light, just as Finn, white as a sheet and shaking all over, had nerved himself to raise a hand and quaver, “Avaunt!”

  How do I manage to follow an effect like that? Derk wondered irritably. It took him a second or so to pull himself together and muster his Dark Lord illusion again. Luckily it took Finn an equal time to remember to take the immobility spell off his party, and even when he had, the Pilgrims were slow to move. By the time they came hesitantly among the black arches, Derk was a vague black shadow with burning eyes, outlined against the flickering balefire of the trench.

  The Pilgrims stopped dead again at the sight of him. Finn kicked the nearest one in the ankle. “We know your weakness,” the man said uncertainly. “Your time is up, Dark Lord.”

  The next part was truly difficult. Try as he might, Derk could not get the Pilgrims even to attempt to kill him. He bellowed with sinister laughter; he loomed over them uttering threats; he adopted a toneless, chilling voice and explained that he was about to toss each of them into this bottomless pit flaming with balefire. This pit. Here. Then he went and stood invitingly beside the trench. But they simply stood and stared at him. It was not for nearly a quarter of an hour, until Finn managed to cannon into the woman who happened to be in front, causing her to stumble against Derk with a scream, that Derk was able to consider the deed done. In the greatest relief he threw up his arms and toppled sideways into his trench.

  From there he heard the woman burst into tears. “That’s horrible!” she wept. “Whatever it was, it was entitled to life, just like we are!”

  “It will come back to life soon enough,” Finn said truthfully. “And you’ve saved the world and the tour’s over. Look. The portal’s just opening now.”

  Derk had always been curious to know how the Pilgrims got home once their tour was finished. He rolled over and, with his chin on the edge of the terrace, he watched among his illusory flames as a pointed oval opening appeared, floating in nowhere above the flagstones. He could feel, distantly, the presence of another demon who was making the opening.

  A pretty, smiling lady appeared in the space. She was wearing a smart uniform with a peaked cap. “Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “You may now return home. On behalf of Chesney Pilgrim Parties, I hope you have had a most enjoyable tour.”

  The Pilgrims turned and shuffled eagerly toward the opening and the lady. “Well, it was interesting,” one of them said carefully.

  “I could use a bath!” said someone else.

  The woman who had pushed Derk wiped her hand along under her eyes. “But we don’t approve of the way you exploit this whole world for—”

  Another woman took hold of her arm. “Not now! Wait until we get outside Chesney Building. Then we can go to a newspaper office.” She pulled the first woman through the opening.

  They were the last to go through. The pretty lady smiled and nodded, and the distant demon closed the opening. And that was all. Derk climbed out of his trench.

  “Thank the gods!” said Finn, sinking down on to a nearby wall. Luckily it was the outdoor table in disguise and supported his weight. “Sorry about that. These were a really slow lot. Total wimps. You always get some, but these were the worst I’ve ever known. You couldn’t manage a cup of coffee, could you, by any chance?”

  “It’s about the only thing the dwarfs don’t like. There should be some,” Derk said, and led the way across the balefire to the kitchen. Finn shuddered at the sight of it and retreated to the dining room.

  “Forgive me. I’ve been living rough for nearly six weeks,” he explained when Derk brought the coffee. “Phew! That party was hard work. And I’m afraid none of the gods did manifest, did you know? I made my tour one down in your village, in the end—a sort of smiling child, promising them success. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I hope the real gods don’t.” Derk turned one of Callette’s drawings over and wrote on the back of it, “Fran. To tell wizards smiling child in village,” as a reminder to himself to make sure the other wizards faked a god, too. Querida had really let him down there.

  “Nothing struck me down,” Finn said. “There are two more parties waiting in the village. I’ll drop a hint to them on my way back, if you like, and they can have their gods before coming on up here. By the way, whatever went wrong in Chell? I arrived to find the place deserted. I had a real job to keep my party from seeing the other ones, and a lot of fast talking to do when we found the duke in a dungeon. Your elves managed quite well, considering. But where did all the people go?”

  “I wish I knew,” Derk said.

  Finn gulped the last of his coffee and sprang up. “I have to go. My next tour starts tomorrow night. I want to get some sleep, a proper meal, and a hot bath—in that order—before I set off again. See you again in six weeks.”

  Finn left, and while Derk waited for the next Pilgrim Party, he wondered how Blade and Shona were getting on.

  NINETEEN

  BLADE AND SHONA ARRIVED to find bunting hung out in the town and a large banner over the main street saying GNA’ASH WELCOMES YOUR TOUR. The inn where the Pilgrim Party was to assemble was just up the street. It was large, empty, and quiet. The landlord, who seemed to be all on his own, showed them to two sparse little rooms overlooking the main street and pointed out the bathrooms down the corridor.

  “A bath!” said Shona. “Let’s get clean!” It was clear Shona had been right to come. Blade could see that she was instantly much more cheerful.

  They had baths, blissfully, and washed their hair. Blade had truly meant to spend all the rest of the time studying the black book and the map. Instead, he went to sleep. So did Shona. It was so marvelous to be in a real room with a bed. Every so often they were woken by the landlord for a meal, after which they staggered upstairs and fell asleep again.

  The third time they were sitting dozing over their food in the empty taproom, Shona remarked, “This is the same as the last meal. Or have we only had one?”

  The landlord looked long-suffering. “Don’t blame me; blame the wife. She joined this Women Against Pilgrim Parties they’re all joining this year and walked out a month ago. Took all the barmaids with her and left me on my own. Bread and stew is all I know how to cook.”

  “Well, it’s filling,” Blade said, and they went upstairs to sleep again.

  On the morning the tour started, Blade woke up in a panic. The Pilgrim Party would be arriving that afternoon, and he knew there was absolutely no way he was going to learn all the rules and the route in time. He spread the black book and the map and the pamphlet out on his bed and tried, anyway. But it was no good. He was still half asleep. By the end of the morning all he had really learned was that his tour was one of those which went northeast to the Inland Sea, so that his party could be captured by pirates and rescued by dragons while the other tours were busy down in Grapland and Costamaret. He was just going to have to look each day up in the pamphlet as it came. As for the black book, there were whole sections of it he had not even looked at. He leafed through them. “Rules,” he read. “1. Wizards are to grow beards, wear their hair below shoulder length, and carry a staff at all times.”

  “Help!” said Blade. He leaped up and rushed to the mirror. After half an hour of trial and error, he found a way to grow himself a long white beard and a bush of white hair. Out of it, his face stared, rosy and rounded and young. He looked like an albino dwarf. Hopeless. He found how to turn all the new hair dark. This time he just looked like a dwarf who had forgotten to do his plaits, but it would have to do. Now, staff. Blade rushed out of his room and tore down to the inn kitchen, where there was a rack of wooden spoons. He snatched the largest and was racing upstairs with it when he ran into Shona.

  She actually ga
ve a gurgle of laughter, the first laugh he had heard from her since the bard handed her that scroll. “Blade, you look ridiculous! Like a dwarf on a bad day. And why are you waving a spoon?”

  “Staff,” panted Blade. “Rules. Better in robes.” He pushed past her and hurried to his room, where he spent another twenty minutes trying to persuade the spoon to look like a wizardly staff. Whatever he did, the staff grew a broad flat part at the end that was a spoon. And the robes, when he put them on, were too big. Even when he hitched them up with his belt and rolled up the sleeves, they were too big. He waded down to lunch, treading on hems and trying to disentangle beard from his belt buckle. As for eating stew through all this hair, he was not sure it was possible.

  Shona watched him struggling. Before long she had both hands over her mouth to stop herself giggling. Finally, she took pity on him and went upstairs for her scissors. “Hold still,” she said, and carved him a hole in the beard for his mouth. After that Blade could eat—though he still found himself chewing hair from his chin from time to time—and when he had finished, Shona made him stand on a chair while she cut the robes down to the right size. She prized the spoon out of his hand and fetched him a walking stick someone had left in the inn hat stand. “There,” she said. “Wasn’t it lucky I decided to come with you? Come upstairs, and I’ll hem the edges.”

  Hemming the robes took awhile. Shona was only halfway done when they heard confused rhythmic shouting out in the street. Blade wrestled open the window, and they both leaned out. The main street below was lined with people, mostly women and children. As far as they could hear, some of them were shouting, “Go home, Pilgrims!” while the rest chanted, “Ban the tours!”

  “There really is strong feeling!” Shona remarked.

  Blade could not be bothered with that. Between the crowds he could just see the heads of other people coming up the middle of the street. His stomach did some strange diving about as he realized he was about to meet his first live Pilgrims. His Pilgrims. He snatched up his list and ran for the door. Shona was only just in time to grab the back of his shirt.

  “Don’t be silly! I haven’t finished your robes. Anyway, you should give them time to get settled in their rooms. Then go down to the taproom and meet them. Remember you’re a wise and stately wizard, and you don’t need to run after them.”

  Blade supposed she was right. Besides, it was soon clear that not all the Pilgrims arrived at once. Every so often there was a new outbreak of chanting in the street, and when Blade craned from the window, he saw another few heads moving slowly up the middle. He sat nervously twisting his list and watching Shona sew.

  Shona had just bitten off the last thread when the landlord knocked at the door. Blade jumped up again, and Shona hastily got him into the shortened robes. “Man from the tours to speak to the wizard at the kitchen door,” the landlord said when Shona opened the door.

  Rather puzzled, Blade followed the landlord down the back stairs and through the kitchen, which was now full of the smell of onions being chopped for tonight’s stew. The man waiting at the back door wore a casual version of the kind of clothes Mr. Chesney and his people had worn. “Sorry about this, Wizard,” he said. “I oughtn’t to be here, really, but there’s a bit of a crisis at the portal. We’re ten parties of dwarfs short. Only one lot came through. You didn’t happen to see any others on your way here, did you?”

  “Er—with ponies and baskets?” Blade asked.

  “That’ll be them!” the man said, obviously relieved. “How far off were they?”

  “Quite a long way,” Blade said truthfully. “They grumbled about the way they were delayed.” He felt so dishonest that he was forced to stroke his beard and look wise.

  The tour man pulled his own chin in a worried way. “I don’t know what to do then. The last pair of Pilgrims just came through, and the portal’s due to be closed in an hour. There’ll be a right stink if the dwarfs aren’t here by then. I could lose my job. Look, if you see them on your route, better tell them to make for the Dark Lord’s Citadel instead and we’ll take the lot through from there. And I’ll ask the other Wizard Guides to tell them the same. All right?”

  “All right,” Blade agreed, and he went upstairs again, rather sobered to think that someone was going to be out of work just because he and Don had rescued six dwarfs.

  “Nothing’s ever simple,” Shona said when he told her. “Wait another hour, and then go to the taproom.”

  Blade could not wait that long. He went down after half an hour. By that time at least half the twenty people on his list were sitting about on the benches awkwardly drinking tankards of beer and getting to know one another. “I know it’s expensive,” a woman was saying as Blade came in. “Dad and I sold our house to come on this tour. But we wanted to do something really interesting before we got too old to enjoy it.”

  “That’s right, Mother,” agreed the man beside her. “Nothing ventured.”

  They both looked immensely old to Blade, and rather fat. He wondered if they would survive the tour, let alone enjoy it. At that, he realized that his nervousness had vanished, and he was simply interested. All the Pilgrims had their hair cut in a way he was not used to and carried foreign looks on their faces. This made them seem to be wearing fancy dress, even though they were dressed in the sort of clothes Blade thought of as normal himself. One of the rules was that Pilgrims should dress in the clothes of Blade’s world. He went toward them with his list.

  “Ooh!” shrieked a small fair girl. “It’s our wizard! Look, bro, a real wizard! Isn’t he small!”

  “I have dwarven ancestry,” Blade lied, rather crossly, as he looked for the girl on his list. Why couldn’t he grow, the way Kit did?

  The girl was Susan Sleightholm on the list, and down as a late entry. She had big blue eyes, and her hair hung in masses of not quite real curls, like wood shavings. She squealed excitedly and hung on to Blade’s newly hemmed sleeve. “Call me Sukey,” she said, staring fixedly up into Blade’s eyes. She was even shorter than he was. “I’m Sukey, and this is my brother, Geoffrey.”

  Sukey was about Shona’s age, Blade thought. She was wearing a baby blue tunic and trousers. He did not like her at all. He pitied her brother for having to put up with her. Geoffrey was tallish and fairish, and he looked nice. Blade dragged his sleeve away from Sukey’s spiky fingers—she had red nails, like Don’s talons when he was eating meat—and went to the people who had sold their house. They were Mr. and Mrs. Poole, but they insisted that he call them Dad and Mother.

  More Pilgrims were coming downstairs all the time now. As they sat down and the landlord brought them tankards, Blade went among them, trying to fit them all to the names on his list. It was bewildering. Although they were young, old, fat, serious, jolly, dark, mid-brown, and fair, they all had that foreign look, and he could not tell them apart. For a start, there were six intense-looking younger women with long, straight hair, four men with rugged, faraway gazes wrinkling their eyes, and two more couples just like Dad and Mother Poole. One of them must be supposed to report back to Mr. Chesney, Blade thought, but he simply could not tell which. He was polite to all of them, in case.

  Almost the last Pilgrim to arrive was a shortish, fair-haired young man, who came sauntering down the stairs with an air. He was obviously rich, rich enough not to have to sell anything to afford the tour. Blade could tell he was, both from his air and from his clothes, which were stylish and made of very good cloth. And he was almost the only Pilgrim who wore those clothes as if they were not fancy dress. Blade looked at him with relief because he knew he would remember this man. In fact, as he hurried over to him, Blade had a feeling that he did remember the man, as if he had seen him before somewhere. But that was obviously a stupid idea.

  “I’m Blade, your Wizard Guide,” he said. “I’m small because I have dwarven ancestry. And your name is—?”

  The man smiled charmingly. “I’m Reville Townsend.”

  I like him, Blade thought, as he hunted for the
name on his list. He missed it somehow, but as he started at the beginning again, he was distracted by the arrival of the last two Pilgrims. The woman came first, pushing past Blade and Reville and marching toward the nearest free bench. She was very tall and rather lean, and she wore glasses. Her hair was white, cut in a sort of scalloped helmet. It looked more like a majestic hat than hair. But the most notable thing about her sent Blade scurrying after her, forgetting his list.

  “Excuse me, lady. Excuse me! You’re not supposed to be wearing those kind of clothes!”

  The lady smoothed her neat maroon-colored trousers and patted the pearls around the neck of her fluffy white sweater before she looked at Blade. It was a totally immovable look. “Young man, I see no reason at all to masquerade in silly clothing like yours. What I have on is respectable and practical, and I shall continue to wear it.” She looked past Blade and called out, “Come along, Eldred. Don’t dawdle.”

  The man with her came forward vaguely. He was tall and thin, too, with deep creases down his cheeks and deep, hollow eyes, and he had a lot of fine white fluffy hair. As Shona said later, he looked like a dandelion seeding. And he was wearing otherworld clothes as well, though his were tweedy and shabby. Blade looked for his list to see who these people were. Reville Townsend came up with a smile and handed him the folder. “You left me with this.”

  “Thanks.” The only two people not yet accounted for were down as E. and S. Ledbury. Oh, yes, and here was Reville down at the bottom, R. Townsend, a late entry like the awful Sukey. “Look, Mrs. Ledbury, the rules say—”

  The lady looked at him chillingly. “Miss Ledbury, if you please, young man. Professor Ledbury is my brother. He is a very learned man and naturally a trifle vague. You cannot expect him to bother with your rules. He is above them, and I disregard such things. Sit down beside me here, Eldred.” She turned her back on Blade and fetched some crochet out of her bag.