Dark Lord of Derkholm (34 page)

By the time he had done that, fed the animals, and induced Old George to wear the fluttering shreds of garments—“I'm not
decent!
” Old George protested, to which Derk replied, “No, you're a walking corpse, and you're beyond that!”—the first Pilgrim Party was actually making its way up the valley. Derk groaned. The valley was green, whitened by morning frost. He had forgotten to make it a waste of cinders. Well, it was too late now. He hurriedly assumed his disguise as Dark Lord and waited for them on the terrace.

There were sixteen tourists, led by Finn, men and women who all looked battered, grubby, and tired. They toiled their way up to the gates, which Callette had designed beautifully as a pair of great clawed hands, and stood looking through doubtfully. Finn stepped forward and threw a ball of witchfire at the gates. Derk obliged with a shower of sparks and allowed the clawed hands to swing apart. Finn urged the Pilgrims inside. None of them seemed keen on the idea. They hurried in and halted in a huddle, staring in extreme horror at the flower bed monsters. Finn urged them on again. Two steps later Old George crossed their path, uttering muted cries. It was not exactly wailing. It sounded more like “Ho, ho, ho!” The Pilgrims backed away from him. Finn shoved them forward.

Old George, pleased with the effect he was having, stopped and faced them. “I was once a prince like you,” he announced.

“Oh, shut up and go away, George!” Derk murmured, pacing the terrace.

Finn obviously felt the same. “Avaunt!” he said, and threw witchfire at Old George.

Old George retreated, huffily muttering, “I was only doing it to oblige!”

Finn pushed the Pilgrims forward again. They got halfway up the garden, and then it was the turn of the dwarfs, who sprang gleefully out of hiding, shouting war cries and whirling their axes. They looked spectacular. Derk congratulated himself. As well as coloring them blue-black, he had had the idea of converting all their braids into writhing snakes. And this part, he was pleased to see, went with a swing. The Pilgrims were used to fighting by this stage in their tour. They drew swords and hacked at the dwarfs. The dwarfs, with great artistry and much enjoyment, hacked back. They swung and wove and menaced the Pilgrims, but allowed themselves to be slowly driven backward through the transformed garden, until, after about ten minutes of fierce and bloodless fighting, the Pilgrims had almost reached the terrace steps.

And those steps were a sudden zigzag of acid blue light.

With a noise like the sky splitting, a vast blue three-legged being loomed above the fighting. Its rattail toyed and slithered among Derk's black archways. The blueness of it pulsed nastily, and the nearness of it scalded everyone's mind like salt water on a fresh graze. Old George was suddenly wailing in earnest in the background. The dwarfs fled screaming, and the Pilgrims only stayed where they were because Finn slammed a quick immobility spell on them. In the distance Derk could hear the pigs shrilling. He was quite at a loss himself. He simply had not expected the demon to appear.

The demon had two eyes glaring greedily upon the transfixed Pilgrim Party, and the third swiveled to look sarcastically at Derk. He felt the bleachlike burn of it on his mind.
That's why I'm here. I warned you. I shall appear like this to every tour party.

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.

B
LADE 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 gave 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.