Dark Lord of Derkholm

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Derk, Derk!” Mara cried out. “The other children! They were all indoors!”

  “I’ll go and look,” said Shona. “Mum, you look ready to faint. Sit down.”

  “Not indoors! Look through the windows,” said Mara. “We stretched the house. Any of it might come down! Be careful!”

  “Yes, yes,” Shona said soothingly as Derk scrambled in through the front door. In some mad way, the front door was still standing. A mound of rubble had shot out through it and past it on either side. Bertha went bounding in ahead of Derk. As Derk climbed carefully through a chaos of fallen beams and bricks, he heard her start barking in short, triumphant bursts.

  From further inside the chaos, Kit’s voice said distinctly, “Shut up, you stupid dog.”

  Poor Bertha. It was not her day. Derk heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Lucky we’re all wizards here,” Barnabas said behind him. “Finn, you make sure the side walls don’t fall in, while Derk and I see what we can do ahead.”

  As Derk crawled on through a crisscross of rafters draped with cobwebs and sheets from the second-floor linen cupboard, he felt the walls on either side groan a little and then steady under Finn’s spell. They found Kit a yard or so further on, dumped in a huge black huddle and coated with plaster and horsehair, in a sort of cage of splintered roof beams and broken marble slabs. Out of it, his eyes stared enormous, black and wild.

  “Have you broken anything?” said Derk.

  Kit squawked. “Only the new marble stairs.”

  “Wings and legs and things, he means, you stupid griffin,” Barnabas said.

  “I’m … not sure,” answered Kit.

  “Good. Then we’ll get you out,” said Barnabas. “Where’s the dog?”

  “She went squirming out at the back,” said Kit. “She smelled the kitchen.”

  “Oh, gods!” said Derk. “Lydda was probably in there!”

  “One thing at a time,” Barnabas said. “This is going to take a separate levitating spell for each beam and most slabs, I think. Finn, can you join us?”

  Finn came crawling through, white with dust and very cheerful. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I see. Can do. Derk, you’ll now get to see some of the techniques we use when we put cities back together after the tours leave. You take the left side, Barnabas.”

  Derk crouched against a piece of timber and watched enviously. It was like a demonstration for students. Neatly and quickly, with only a murmur here and there, the two wizards inserted their spells under each balk of wood or stone and then around Kit. After a mere minute Barnabas said, “Right. Now activate.” And the entire tangle of beams and marble slabs unfolded like a clawed hand and went to rest neatly stacked against the walls. “Can you move?” Barnabas asked Kit.

  Kit said, “Umph. Yes.” And then, as he rose to a crouch and started to crawl forward: “Yeeow-ouch!” Derk watched him struggle forward across the rubble that had been the hall. At least all Kit’s limbs seemed to be working.

  “Look on the bright side,” Finn said. “You’re halfway to a ruined Citadel already. Want us to stabilize it?”

  “Yes, but how do we get up to the bedrooms?” Derk said, looking up at the ragged hole in the roof. “And Shona’s piano was up on the second floor.”

  “It’s still up there,” said Barnabas, “or we’d have met it by now. Better reassemble the stairs, Finn, and slap some kind of roof on, don’t you think? Derk, you’re going to owe us for this.”

  “Fine. Thanks,” said Derk. His mind was on Kit.

  Kit squeezed out through a gap beside the front door and flopped down on his stomach with his head bent almost upside down between his front claws. “My head aches,” he said, “and I hurt all over.” He was a terrible sight. Every feather and hair on him was gray with dust or cobwebs. There was a small cut on one haunch. Otherwise he seemed to have been lucky.

  Derk looked anxiously around for some sign of the others. Mara had gone, too, but he could hear her voice somewhere. In the chorus of voices answering, he could pick out Elda, Blade, Lydda, Don, and Callette. “Thank goodness,” he said. “You don’t seem to have killed any of the others.”

  Kit groaned.

  “And you could have done,” added Derk. “You know how heavy you are. Come along to your den, and let me hose you down with warm water.”

  Kit was far too big to live in the house these days. Derk led the way to the large shed he had made over to Kit, and Kit crawled after him, groaning. He made further long, crooning moans while Derk played the hose over him outside it, but that seemed to be because he had started to feel his bruises. Derk made sure nothing was broken, not even the long, precious flight feathers in Kit’s great wings. Kit grumbled that he had broken two talons.

  “Be thankful that was all,” Derk said. “Now, do you want to talk to me out here, or indoors in private?”

  “Indoors,” Kit moaned. “I want to lie down.”

  Derk pushed open the shed door and beckoned Kit inside. He felt guilty doing it, as if he was prying into Kit’s secrets. Kit did not usually let anyone inside his den. He always claimed it was in too much of a mess, but in fact, as Derk had often suspected, it was neater than anywhere in the house. Everything Kit owned was shut secretly away in a big cupboard. The only things outside the cupboard were the carpet Mara had made him, the huge horsehair cushions Kit used for his bed, and some of Kit’s paintings pinned to the walls.

  Kit was too bruised to mind Derk’s seeing his den. He simply crawled to his cushions, dripping all over the floor, too sore to shake himself dry, and climbed up with a sigh. “All right,” he said. “Talk. Tell me off. Go on.”

  “No, you talk,” said Derk. “What did you think you were playing at there with Mr. Chesney?”

  Kit’s sodden tail did a brief hectic lashing. He buried his beak between two cushions. “No idea,” he said. “I feel awful.”

  “Nonsense,” said Derk. “Come clean, Kit. You got the other four to pretend they couldn’t speak and then you sat there in the gateway. Why?”

  Kit said something muffled and dire into the cushions.

  “What?” said Derk.

  Kit’s head came up and swiveled savagely toward Derk. He glared. “I said,” he said, “I was going to kill him. But I couldn’t manage it. Satisfied?” He plunged his beak back among the cushions again.

  “Why?” asked Derk.

  “He orders this whole world about!” Kit roared. It was loud, even through the horsehair. “He ordered you about. He called Shona a slave girl. I was going to kill him, anyway, to get rid of him, but I was glad he deserved it. And I thought if most people there thought the griffins were just dumb beasts, then you couldn’t be blamed. You know—I got loose by accident and savaged him.”

  “I’m damn glad you didn’t, Kit,” said Derk. “It’s no fun to have to think of yourself as a murderer.”

  “Oh, I knew they’d kill me,” said Kit.

  “No, I mean it’s a vile state of mind,” Derk explained. “A bit like being mad, except that you’re sane, I’ve always thought. So what stopped you?” He was shocked to hear himself sounding truly regretful as he asked this question.

  Kit reared his head up. “It was when I looked in his face. It was awful. He thinks he owns everything in this world. He thinks he’s right. He wouldn’t have understood. It was a pity. I could have killed him in seconds, even with that demon in his pocket, but he would have been just like food. He wouldn’t have felt guilty, and neither would I.”

  “I’m glad to hear you think you ought to have felt guilty,” Derk observed. “I was beginning to wonder whether we’d brought you up properly.”

  “I do feel guilty. I did,” Kit protested. “And I hated the idea. But I’ve been feeling rather bloodthirsty lately, and saving the world seemed a good way to use it. I don’t seem to be much use otherwise. And now,” he added miserably, “I feel terrible about the house, too.”

  “Don’t. Most of it has to come down, anyway—on Mr. Chesney’s orders,” Derk s
aid. “So you were crouching in the bushes by the terrace fueling your bloodlust, were you?”

  “Shut up!” Kit tried to squirm with shame and left off with a squawk when his bruises bit. “All right. It was a stupid idea. I hate myself, if that makes you feel any better!”

  “Don’t be an ass, Kit.” Derk was thinking things through, fumbling for an explanation. Something had been biting Kit for months. Long before there was any question of Derk’s becoming the Dark Lord, Kit had been in a foul, tetchy, snarling mood—bloodthirsty, as he called it himself—and Derk had put it down simply to the fact that Kit was now fifteen. But suppose it was more than that. Suppose Kit had a reason to be unhappy. “Kit,” he said thoughtfully, “I didn’t see you at all until you arrived between the gateposts, and when you were there, you looked about twice your real size—”

  “Did I?” said Kit. “It must have been because you were worried about Mr. Chesney.”

  “Really?” said Derk. “And I suppose I was just worried again when I distinctly heard you tell me Mr. Chesney had a demon in his pocket?”

  Kit’s head shot around again, and for a moment his eyes were lambent black with alarm. Derk could see Kit force them back to their normal golden yellow and try to answer casually. “I expect somebody mentioned it to me. Everyone knows he keeps it there.”

  “No. Everybody doesn’t,” Derk told him. “I think even Querida would be surprised to know.” Damn! He hadn’t told Barnabas about that accident yet! “Kit, come clean. You’re another one like Blade, aren’t you? How long have you known you could do magic?”

  “Only about a year,” Kit admitted. “About the same time as Blade. Blade thinks we both inherited it from you, but we both seem to do different things.”

  “Because, of course, you’ve compared notes,” said Derk. “Kit, let’s get this straight at once. Even more than Blade, there’s no question of you going to the University—”

  Kit’s head flopped forward. “I know. I know they’d keep me as an exhibit. That’s why I didn’t want to mention it.”

  “But you must have some teaching,” Derk pointed out, “in case you do something wrong by accident. Mara and I should have been teaching you at the same time as Blade. You ought to have told us, Kit. Let me tell you the same as I told Blade. I will find you a proper tutor, both of you, but you have to be patient, because it takes time to find the right magic user, and you’ll have to be patient for the next year at least, now that I have to be Dark Lord. Can you bear to wait? You can learn quite a bit helping me with that if you want.”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you at all,” Kit said.

  “So you bit everyone’s head off instead,” Derk said.

  Kit’s beak was still stuck among his cushions, but a big griffin grin was spreading around the ends of it. “At least I haven’t been screaming you’re a jealous tyrant,” he said. “Like Blade.”

  Well, I am, a little, Derk thought. Jealous, anyway. You’ve both got your magical careers before you, and you, Kit, have all the brains I could cram into one large griffin head. “True,” he said, sighing. “Now lie down and rest. I’ll give you something for the bruises if they’re still bad this evening.”

  He shut the door quietly and went back to the house. Shona met him at the edge of the terrace, indignant and not posing at all. “The younger ones are all safe,” she said. “They were in the dining room. They didn’t even notice the roof coming down!”

  “What?” said Derk. “How?”

  Shona pointed along the terrace with her thumb. “Look at them!”

  Blade sat at the long, littered table. So did Mara, Finn, and Barnabas. Lydda and Don were stretched on the flagstones among the empty chairs. Callette was couchant along the steps to the garden, with her tail occasionally whipping the cowering orchids. Elda was crouching along the table itself. Each of them was bent over one of the little flat machines with buttons, pushing those buttons with finger or talon as if nothing else in the world mattered.

  “Callette found out how to do this,” Don said.

  “She’s a genius,” Barnabas remarked. “I never realized they did anything but add numbers. I made her a hundred of them in case the power packs run out.”

  Elda looked up briefly when Derk went to peer across her feathered shoulder. “You kill little men coming down from the sky and they kill you,” she explained. “And we did so notice the roof fall in! The viewscreens got all dusty. Damn. You distracted me, and I’m dead.”

  “Is Kit all right?” Blade asked. “Hey! I’m on level four now. Beat that!”

  “Level six,” Callette said smugly from the steps.

  “You would be!” said Blade.

  “Level seven,” Finn said mildly. “It seems to stop when you’ve won there. Will the house do like this, Derk?”

  The middle section of the house was there again, in a billowy, transparent way. Derk could see the stairs through the wall, also back in place. The piece of roof that had fallen in was there, too, hovering slightly like a balloon anchored at four corners. At least it would keep the rain out until it all had to be transformed into ruined towers, Derk supposed.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Thanks.” He put a hand on Barnabas’s arm. “I hate to interrupt, but Querida had an accident awhile ago, around by the paddock. I think she broke a couple of bones. She wouldn’t let me see to them. She’s gone home.”

  “Oh, dear!” said Barnabas. He and Mara came out of their button-pushing trances, looking truly concerned.

  “You should have brought her up to the house at once!” Mara said.

  “She wouldn’t let me do anything,” Derk explained. “She translocated.”

  “She’s done this before,” Barnabas said. “Five years ago some fool Pilgrim broke her wrist, and Querida got us all fined by translocating straight home and refusing to come back. We had to do without an Enchantress for the rest of the tours. I think shock takes her that way.”

  Finn stood up anxiously. “We’d better go to the University and check.”

  Barnabas sighed and got up, too. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  He and Finn stood there looking at Derk expectantly.

  “Oh. Sorry,” Derk said. “What do we owe you for restoring the house?”

  The two wizards exchanged looks. “Thought you’d never ask,” said Barnabas. “We’ll accept a bag of coffee each, please.”

  “Phew!” said Shona when the two wizards had finally gone. “I think this was the most upsetting day I’ve ever known. And the tours haven’t even started yet!”

  “I should hope not,” said Mara. “There are several thousand things to do before that.”

  FIVE

  FROM BLADE’S POINT OF VIEW, the several thousand things to be done were all learning: learning the rules in the black book, the routes in the pink list and the green pamphlet, and the adventure points marked on the map. He had never found anything so boring. He was used to learning things in an interesting way from his parents, among a crowd of griffins who were all good at learning things, too. If he had thought anything in the lists was real, he might have become quite nervous, but it was only the tours, and because he knew his own Pilgrim Party was the very last to set off, he knew he had eight weeks to get ready in and did not worry very much. Besides, it was beautiful early-autumn weather.

  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 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 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 around 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 126 magical objects for the dragon to guard in the north. Most of the time all that could be seen of her was her large gray-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 criticize. 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?”