Dark Lord of Derkholm (26 page)

“He's gone after those dwarfs,” said Don.

“I'm afraid he has,” Blade agreed.

“And maybe he hasn't,” Shona disagreed cheerfully. “He gave me a sort of insight after I—when I looked into his eyes that time, and I was rather amazed at how civilized and learned he was.”

“Anyway, we can't stop him,” Kit pointed out.

Blade knew Shona was wrong. He knew Scales was hunting dwarfs. The knowledge took the edge off even the Wild Hunt that night, though that was splendid fun. Blade came back with his hamper of satisfied avians and took off again with a black griffin on either side of him. With the weight of illusory horns on his head, Blade rode a winged black horse in the freshness of an autumn night under a growing yellow moon. Pretty had refused to come, but on the ground below, the dogs bayed and yelped and belled and made a wonderful din crashing through brushwood to keep up. Ahead of them, three times over, a small crowd of people made even more noise, running for their lives. The Pilgrims were never near enough to see, to Blade's annoyance, and the Hunt had to turn back each time after the tourists had pelted over a bridge across one of the rivers, because Kit said the black book said the Black Rider was not supposed to cross running water. But it was still great fun. It would have been even greater fun if Blade had not kept thinking of small pigtailed men being crunched the way Scales had pretended to crunch that soldier.

Q
UERIDA SAT ALONE IN
the conference hall of the University, working at the long table. Today she had managed to get from her house to this building by supporting herself on one real crutch and a magical one that she could handle with her broken arm. But it had been hard work, and the stairs up to her study had defeated her. The bones were a long way from healed yet. She had become pretty weak during her healing coma, too, and the effort tired her. She wished now—as she had wished last time she had broken a bone—that she had not insisted on the coma. But she was so bad at bearing pain.

She wished she could find someone to bring her a hot healing drink. The janitor had said he would do what he could, poor fellow, but it was not really his job, and he did not know where cups or kettles were kept. There was no one else about. The healers and the male wizards were all out with the Pilgrim Parties. Normally during tourtime the place would be abuzz with female wizards, who usually took this opportunity to use the equipment, but this year they were away on urgent business as well. In fact, the silence and emptiness of the University were a very satisfactory sign that the hasty arrangements Querida had made before she insisted on the coma were being acted upon.

She considered her plans. Querida's feeling had always been that Oracles helped those who helped themselves. The tours were not going to end just like that. So, in order to help the prophecies along a bit, she had all the women wizards out around the continent organizing mistakes, failures, and trouble for Pilgrim Parties. She was trusting Derk to make a thoroughly bad job of being Dark Lord, and it was always possible that if things went badly enough wrong, Mr. Chesney might decide the Pilgrim Parties were unworkable. But there was that demon of his. Querida's plans there hinged upon the fact that demons were very legal-minded. For this reason, the women wizards were also looking for anything—any small thing—that the tours were doing which was not in the contract. Querida could then confront the demon and tell it that Mr. Chesney had broken the law and it was free to go. If Mara did her part as well, then Mr. Chesney would be faced with three ways the tours had broken down. Surely that would be enough to make even Mr. Chesney give up.

Anyway—she pulled forward pen and paper—this accounted for the way the place was so strangely quiet and empty. Better get on. Almost the only people in town were the bards. But they had flatly refused either to join the tours or to help Querida stop them. Their college was out on the edge of town, and they were presumably all inside it sulking.

“And we can do without artistic tantrums,” Querida murmured.

Her small, dry voice rang through the great silence of the building.

“I wish I didn't talk to myself,” she said. “I keep making myself jump. Heigh-ho. Down to work.”

She had sixty or more pigeon messages to write. She hoped the janitor was up to fixing them to pigeons—the
right
pigeons—and setting the birds loose. She had no faith in the man. But first she would have to get down to reading some at least of the great stack of messages that the janitor—after having it explained several times—had fetched from her study and piled on the long table.

Querida sorted through the stack, awkwardly one-handed. Surely one of them by now would be from a woman wizard reporting a breach of contract.
Surely
. About half the messages were indeed from women wizards, but they all seemed to be saying, “We have done what you said. What do we do next?” There did not seem to be one from Mara, and there
ought
to have been. Mara had promised to deliver a suitable miniature universe before the sieges started. Better write to Mara at once. And to the woman in the Emirates. Oh, here was a message from Barnabas.

Querida unfolded it clumsily. Barnabas wrote that he was worried. Derk was turning out to be much more efficient than either of them had expected. “With this in mind,” Barnabas wrote, “I have jinxed the avians and made sure the containing camps for the army are really flimsy. I am putting the base camp in the wrong place and will probably jinx that, too, but I have to report that so far these measures have had little effect.”

Hmm. Querida leaned back in the large chair, considering. This was annoying. She had been
relying
on Pilgrims complaining about the Dark Lord. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that she had been injured herself before she could help Derk with either a demon or a god, or maybe it was the work of the Oracles, in which case it was possibly worth all the pain. She had better drag her heels a bit over demons and gods—while pretending to be helpful, of course—and it might be an idea to nag and bully Derk as well. In Querida's experience, most men responded badly to bullying. It got them making mistakes. Mara's activities ought to unbalance the man, too, and get him doing things wrong. Derk
had
to make mistakes.
Had to.

“Because we have
got
to win, now we are showing our hand,” she murmured. “Once Mr. Chesney realizes there is a fight on, we could all be in terrible trouble.”

This time her voice did not ring out entirely on its own. There were other noises, too, most of it a considerable scuffling outside the hall. Perhaps the janitor had actually managed to find the kettle and was bringing her a drink at last. If so, by the sound, he was making heavy weather of it.

Querida turned inquiringly toward the doorway, just as a scrawny gray wolf, with its hackles up in a hedge all down its spine, came backing in through it.

“Oh, really, Wilkie,” she said, “do please try to control yourself. What's the matter?” The janitor, being a werewolf, was always liable to change shape in moments of stress. “Assume your proper form!” Querida snapped at him. “I can't talk to a wolf.”

The wolf stood humbly on its hind legs and became a man, a hairy man who did not look very bright. Wilkie hitched his trousers—a wolf's waist being lower than a man's—and said indignantly, “I told it you were sick, ma'am, I told it you were busy, I told it to go away, and it won't take no for an answer!”

“What won't?” Querida snapped.

Wilkie pointed to the doorway. A huge brown bird head ducked itself down there, under the lintel, and a large, round, shiny brown eye rolled to look at Querida. Well, I never! Querida thought. One of Wizard Derk's griffins.
My
griffin. The big female.

“Let it come in,” she said. “Then you may leave us, Wilkie.”

As the griffin lowered its body and squeezed its wings inward to get through the doorway, Querida scarcely noticed the janitor shuffle warily around it and depart. She had eyes only for this huge, beautiful creature. It had caught her fancy utterly the day that Mr. Chesney came. She loved the soft browns of the head feathers and the creamy white bars on the great wings. Now she saw there was gray in the bars, too, greenish gray, and that the same gray-green mixed with the brown in the massed feathers of the neck and outlined the alert brown eyes. The most beautiful thing about it, though, was the way the eagle part phased so gracefully into the pale brown lion part—a most elegant deep-chested lion part with a slim and muscular rear—so that you did not think of the creature as a mixture but as a whole. She had to admit Wizard Derk had made a fabulous beast here. This one was even more superb than the little winged colt. Querida lusted to own this creature, to bury her hands in those soft-colored feathers, even maybe to ride on its back through the air.

“I'm not an it. I'm a she,” said the griffin. “My name's Callette.”

“Oh,” said Querida. “I was not aware you could speak.”

“Of course I can,” said Callette. “How did you think I was going to give you the message from Mum if I couldn't?”

She ducked her head and removed a leather pouch that was hanging around her neck. Even in her surprise, Querida was glad to see the pouch removed. It spoiled the griffin's beautiful lines. “I—er—remember your going to considerable lengths to suggest you were dumb,” she retorted. “And I assumed the message was in that pouch.”

Callette wrapped her talons in the thongs of the pouch and kept it between her front feet. “This is the miniature universe you wanted,” she said. “Not talking was an idea of Kit's. He often has silly ideas. It served him right when he fell through the roof. But I've got a message from Mum as well. Do you want to hear it or not?”

Querida looked at her, sitting like a great tall cat with her tufted tail wrapped across the pouch between her shapely, taloned feet and her barred wings neatly folded. And Querida longed, yearned, lusted for ownership of Callette. “Yes, I do very much want to hear it.”

Callette looked at Querida in turn, carefully, turning her head to focus on Querida first with one eye, then with the other. It was not something griffins needed to do, but Callette had the habit from her bird ancestry and tended to do it to double-check on things she felt cautious about. “Mum said I wasn't to tell you straightaway,” she said.

“I take it we're talking of Mara,” Querida said irritably. “Why not straightaway?”

Callette nodded. “Dad told me to take Elda to Mum's Lair, but he was in a hurry and he told me to
think
about the message, because Mum was sure to want me to tell you. So I thought, and I asked Mum. And she told me to tell you that if you try to own me or keep me here, by either a spell or any other way, Mum won't do any of the things you asked her to do. And the universe in this pouch will just dissolve.”

Disappointment made Querida cross. Mara had her over a barrel. She
needed
Mara. What a
nuisance!
Now she would have to waste time being very cunning
and
placating Mara. “I see,” she said dryly. “What a very prudent person you are, Callette. But it beats me why you call two human wizards your mother and father. How can they be really?”

“They can be because they both put cells from themselves into all of us,” Callette said. “It was the way to make us people, Dad says.”

Yes, Derk had taken care to explain that, Querida remembered. Pity Callette knew. All right. Try a little wizardly pressure next. Pushing hard at Callette's mind, Querida snapped, “Very well. What was this message then?”

Callette's tail lifted from her feet and rapped once, gently, on the floor. “You haven't promised to let me go yet.”

“I promise,” Querida said readily. “The message?”

Callette's tail did another gentle dab at the flagstones. “That's only promising to let me go. You have to promise not to own me or keep me either, in any way.”

Curses! Querida thought. That really was checkmate. This creature was no fool. “Oh, very well, bother you! I promise not to try to own you or keep you, either by magic or in any other way. Now please can I have the universe at least, if not the message?”

Callette tilted her head for a second, checking Querida's words through. “That will do. The message is that the dwarfs from the Mossy Mountains are paying a tribute of six bushels of wrought gold items to Mr. Chesney every year. Dad has witnesses to confirm this. Mum says you ought to know.”

Breakthrough! This
has
to be unlawful! Querida thought. It did something to make up for not owning Callette, at least. But what was Derk doing, making this discovery? “Did these dwarfs have a contract to supply this treasure?” she asked, at her sharpest and snakiest.

“No,” said Callette. “I went out there with Dad, and I heard him asking them. They said Mr. Chesney just ordered them to pay tribute forty years ago because he was Dark Lord of the world. And when the dwarfs argued, Mr. Chesney told them it was to stop the dragons from getting too greedy. The chieftain said he thought Mr. Chesney might have been making a joke.”

Ah!
Got him!
Querida's snaky smile wrapped itself halfway around her face. “I do not think,” she said, “that Mr. Chesney makes jokes. This was probably his true and actual reason. Did the dwarfs say anything else?”