Dark Lord of Derkholm

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Better turn for home,” he told Beauty.

  She banked around, wheeling across the river, and set off south, flying much faster. She was always anxious to get back to Pretty. The blue line of the mountains came nearer with every wingbeat. Very shortly the mountains were a line of individual hills, with craggy places pushing out into the cultivated fields like headlands, dark with heather or gray-green with rough grass. One headland over to the left caught Derk’s eye because it was so green and handsomely wooded with clumps of trees. As Beauty moved nearer to it, he saw a tiny white oblong up there in the midst of the green. It could have been an altar.

  “Hang on,” he told Beauty. “Can you land by that white thing just for a moment?”

  Beauty’s tail gave a circular swish of protest, but she went obediently planing down to the left and landed softly, deep in long, tender grass.

  Derk dismounted in a small meadow mostly circled by trees. The leaves were a wonderful array of tinged reds, dark greens, and acid autumn yellow. The grass had been mown a little, but not much—just enough to allow the growth of every kind of meadow flower. Bees buzzed among them. Beauty put her head down eagerly and moved off to graze. Derk simply stood for a while. It felt here as if peace was climbing out of the very roots of the grass, moving up through his feet to his body, and filling him with an alert kind of softness. All the worries of being Dark Lord seemed small, and far off, and easily solved. After a minute or so he walked over to the white thing. It was an altar, as he had thought, small and plain. Plain letters on its side said “Umru gives this to the glory of Anscher.”

  “I thought this must be the place,” Derk murmured.

  It seemed to him that there could be no harm in asking Anscher for help. He began to explain, in an ordinary, conversational way, far more calmly than he had explained to Umru, that Mr. Chesney demanded a god for this year’s special effect. “And if we don’t produce something,” he said, “nobody gets any pay at all. I know this sounds very worldly, but what it means is that there will be a lot of showy fighting over this good farming country and people will be killed for no reason at all. A great deal of effort going to utter waste, do you see?”

  As he went on speaking, Derk had the feeling that he, and the small altar, were the center of a kind of cone of attention. It was a vast cone, whose point centered on the meadow while the rest went spreading out and out, and up through the sky—or not exactly up, Derk thought: more like outward, into realms and spaces beyond anything humans could reach. The attentiveness was more alive than anything Derk had ever experienced, and it was strong as a bright light. For a while he was sure he was being heard. But there was no kind of answer.

  “Please,” Derk said. “Can you see your way to doing anything? Anything?”

  There was no reply. After a time, though not immediately, he felt the cone very softly and quite kindly going away. He sighed. “Ah, well. It was worth a try.” He turned away from the altar and stepped through the grass. And realized he was utterly exhausted. He had never in his life felt so drained. It was an effort to get his feet through the grass.

  Beauty looked up as Derk dragged himself over to her. “Nhize ghrass,” she remarked. “Htasty fhlowers.” Whatever had drained Derk had had the opposite effect on Beauty. He had never seen her eyes so bright or her coat glow so. Every feather in her great black wings gleamed with well-being.

  He got himself onto her back by hanging over her, stomach down, and then scrambling. “Home,” he panted, and Beauty leaped into the air with a will.

  They crossed the mountains. They crossed the moors and then the great magical wastes that were kept mostly for Pilgrims to seem to get lost in and came finally, near sundown, to the more roughly cultivated land north of Derkholm. By this time Derk was recovering, but still tired enough that when they saw a crossroads and an inn beside it, he had a sudden longing for a rest and a quiet pint of ale before he went home and faced all the new pigeon messages. He knew this inn. He knew its landlord, Nellsy, and didn’t much care for him. Nellsy was a whinger. But he brewed a good ale.

  “Go down by that inn there,” he told Beauty.

  She turned her head to fix a large blue-brown eye on him. “Nheed to hsee Prehtty.”

  “Soon. I’ll just have one really quick pint,” Derk said.

  She sighed and went down into the innyard.

  The two cart horses standing there backed and stamped with mild alarm. They were not used to other horses coming out of the sky. Nellsy bawled at them to stand still. He was hard at work loading the dray the horses were harnessed to with barrels, mugs, and chairs. As Derk walked toward the dray, he could see a sofa and a mattress among the load as well.

  “Evening, Nellsy,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “Closing the inn down. Getting out,” Nellsy answered. “This is my last load. The wife went with the rest of it this morning. I’m right in the path of the tours here, and I’m not staying to watch the place broken up by werewolves or some such.”

  “I think most of the tours are coming into Derkholm from the east,” Derk said, “and the werewolves are programmed to attack in the north. You should be all right here.”

  “Can’t rely on that. Bloody Wizard Guides get lost all the time,” Nellsy retorted. “And I’m not hanging around to give them directions either. You wanted a drink?”

  “Well, I did,” Derk admitted.

  “Go on in. Help yourself. There’s still a last barrel set up,” Nellsy said. “Sorry I can’t stay and serve you, but I’m late on the road as it is. It’ll be dark midnight before I get this lot to the wife’s sister, and the sour-faced bitch is going to be in bed and pretending she thought I was coming tomorrow and there’ll be no food saved—”

  Derk left Nellsy grumbling and went into the taproom. It was practically empty. All the tables and benches had gone, and the fire was out. His boots clumped on the bare floor as he went to the bar. Someone had swept the floor, possibly even scrubbed it. Without its usual coating of sawdust and litter, it was quite handsome oak boards. Derk unhooked the last remaining battered pewter mug and managed to fill it three-quarters full from the barrel before the dregs started coming. Then he clumped outside to sit in the last of the sun and watch Nellsy rope down his load and, finally, leave. Being Nellsy, he left with a lot of shouting, hoof battering, and the squealing of undergreased axles. But he was gone at last. Peace came falling down on the yard as the dust settled. Beauty had found some wispy hay sticking out of the barn wall and was morosely pulling at it. The jingling of her tack made everything even quieter. It was such a small noise.

  Derk drank, and felt better, and thought. Ideas seemed to fall through his head like the settling dust. No god then. Only three days to the start of the tours and no demon either. He was going to have to summon a demon himself. Soon. Dangerous. But he had had years of wizardry since his failure over that blue demon, and he thought he now knew enough to manage it, provided there was no one else around to get hurt. He needed somewhere totally deserted with a nice flat floor for chalking the symbols on. Like this inn. It was practically ideal. It was near enough to Derkholm that he could get here translocating in about three hops. And once the demon was there, well—Anscher had quite politely refused his help, but demons were said to take wicked pleasure in pretending to be gods. Suppose he offered the idea to the demon as a reward for guarding the Dark Lord’s Citadel …

  Derk poured the rest of his beer on the ground and stood up. Better do it tonight before he lost his nerve. Demons were best summoned at night. Before that he had to get Beauty out of here and, most importantly, look up in the books exactly how you did summon a demon.

  SEVEN

  WHERE’S DAD?” Elda asked later that evening. “He promised to look at my story.”

  Everyone except Callette was sitting or lying about on the still-vast terrace, enjoying the warm sunset. “He’s in,” Blade said. “He made me rub down Beauty.”

  “He hasn’t eaten the supper I left him
,” said Lydda.

  Shona looked up from waxing her traveling harp. “Then he’s probably in his study. I left him at least ten urgent pigeon messages there.”

  “I’ll go and interrupt him then,” said Elda.

  “You do that,” said everyone, anxious for some peace.

  They had just settled down again when Elda shot out through the front door with shrill screams. “He isn’t there! He’s gone to call up a demon! Look!” She held out toward them a fruit that glowed orange in the twilight.

  “Since when does an apple mean you’re calling a demon?” Kit wanted to know.

  “Stupid! It’s underneath! I’ve got it skewered on my talon!” Elda squawked.

  “You dipped your talon in a demon?” Don said.

  “Ooh!” Elda yelled. She dropped to sitting position, put the orange fruit carefully down on the terrace, and held out her right set of talons with a piece of paper stuck on the middle one. “Someone get it off for me. Carefully.”

  Blade went and worked the paper free. Tipping it into the light from the front door, he read in his father’s scrawling writing, “‘Elda, here’s a new fruit for you. Save me the rind and the pips and I’ll look at your story tomorrow. I’ve got to spend the night at Nellsy’s inn.’ This doesn’t say a word about demons, Elda.”

  “Come and see,” Elda said portentously.

  Blade looked at Don. “Your turn.”

  Don snapped his beak at Blade and stood up. “Where?”

  “His study, stupid!” Elda said. She galloped back into the house with Don lazily slinking after her. Blade heard their talons clicking up the stairs and hoped that would be the end of the fuss. It was all typical Elda. He had almost forgotten the matter when Don reappeared, walking on three legs, with his tail lashing anxiously.

  “She may be right about the demon,” he announced. “He’s not in the house, and he’s left four demonologies and a grimoire open on his desk. Here, Lydda. He left this for you. It was on the grimoire making the page greasy.” He handed Lydda a pasty on a piece of paper.

  Lydda rose up on her haunches and took the pasty. She sniffed it. She sliced delicately into the crust with the tip of her beak. “Carrots, basil, eggs,” she murmured low in her throat. “Saffron. Something else I can’t make out. This is elegant.” Then it occurred to her to look at the paper.

  “First things first, eh, Lydda?” Kit said. “What does he say?”

  “Only ‘This seems to be High Priest Umru’s favorite food. Save me supper. You have to conjure fasting.’ Is that true?” Lydda asked. “Can’t you really eat anything before you call up a demon?”

  “Yup,” said Kit, who had no idea really. “I don’t somehow think you’d be much good at the job.”

  Lydda ignored him. “Where’s Elda?”

  “In the kitchen fussing and eating her fruit,” said Don. “She’s got the idea the demon’s going to kill Dad. I told her not to be stupid.”

  “There’s nothing we can do, anyway,” Kit said.

  They settled down again in the twilight, all just a little worried. Mara had long ago told them the story of the blue demon, but as Shona said, it was a little late to stop Derk now. The pink of sunset sank away into dimness, and their worry sank with it. The evening was just too peaceful.

  Sometime later Callette heaved herself up the steps in the gloom and dumped a large, chinking bundle triumphantly down on the terrace. “There. Finished! One hundred and twenty-six gizmos! I said I’d finish before the light went and I did!”

  “Just as well,” said Shona. “I didn’t want to panic you, but there was a message today to say the dragon was coming to fetch them tomorrow. May we see?”

  Callette was only too ready to show off her gizmos. She proudly unwrapped the sheet around them. “Is Elda back yet?” she said.

  All their heads bending to look at the glimmering heap came up to look at Callette instead. “What do you mean?” said most of them.

  “She went flying down the valley while I was wiring the last gizmo,” Callette explained. “She went on about Dad and a demon, but I didn’t listen. It was fiddly work.”

  “When was this?” Kit asked tensely.

  Callette shrugged up her wings. “Half an hour ago? It was still quite light.”

  “Someone go and make sure she’s not in the house,” Kit snapped. “Everyone else search the grounds.”

  Callette shrugged again and rewrapped her bundle. She took it back to her shed, and then, for the next ten minutes, she sat quietly on the terrace while everyone else ran about calling Elda. “I didn’t think she was back,” she said when they all came back panting. “That’s why I asked. I’d have seen her coming from my shed.”

  “If she’s gone to Nellsy’s inn,” said Shona, “that’s fifteen or twenty miles off, and it’s almost dark now! Dad’s not going to forgive us if she gets lost.”

  “Or mixed up with a demon,” Blade added.

  “Let’s get going,” said Kit. “We’ll fly after her. Shona and Blade, you stay here in case she comes back while we’re out.”

  “Oh, no,” said Shona. “We may not have wings, but we’re going, too.”

  “Then fetch the old swing,” Kit ordered, and Don raced off. Lydda turned and galloped the other way, toward the house. “Where are you going?” Kit demanded.

  “Upstairs,” Lydda called over her shoulder. “I launch better from a window.”

  “Hey-up, look at that! Too fat to get off the ground!” Kit said disgustedly. “We’re not waiting for you!” he bellowed after Lydda as Don raced back, towing the old swing seat by its attached ropes. Don dumped the swing on the edge of the terrace, and Shona hastily sat herself on it. Blade sat himself on her knee. It did cross his mind that he might translocate after Elda, but then he might get lost, too, and cause more trouble. He held one of the ropes up for Kit, and Kit wrapped it into his talons, both of them regardless of the fact that Derk had expressly forbidden this activity when Blade was ten and Kit eleven and Kit had dropped Blade into a tree. “Ready?” Kit asked Callette.

  “Ready,” Callette said, scraping up the rope at the other side.

  Blade and Shona each gripped the ropes hard. “Don’t just hang on to it, Kit. Wrap it around your wrists,” Shona commanded nervously.

  “Teach your grandmother,” Kit retorted. “I’ll count three, Callette, to keep it even. One, two, three.”

  Lydda appeared at the bedroom window just as the two big griffins took off, the wind of their wings blasting Blade’s fringe about and whipping Shona’s hair into her eyes. As the swing scraped, swayed and went upward, too, Lydda jumped. There was a mighty whooping of wing feathers.

  “Glory! Hark at Lydda!” Don said, rising smoothly up beyond the swing. “Are you two all right?”

  “Fine,” said Blade, although his hands were numb already.

  Derk had the circle and the pentacle drawn on the taproom floor and was filling in the Signs and Sigils by the light of one of his lanterns. The other lantern was on the bar, pinning down his very necessary notes. The first note at the top of the first page was “TO DISMISS A DEMON IN CASE OF TROUBLE,” the next, “SAY THIS IN CASE OF OTHER TROUBLE,” and the third, “TO BIND A DEMON SECURELY.” Only after that did the notes get down to the Signs and Words he was going to need.

  Moving faster and faster out of pure nervousness, Derk hurried between the notes and the floor. When he was finished with the Signs and Sigils and holding the lantern up to make sure they were all exactly correct, he realized he was racing around the circle like a frightened rabbit. He made himself slow down, with the result that he nearly lost his nerve completely and could not at first bring himself to light the candles.

  But he forced himself to light them, five new flames, each with a Word Spoken, and four more guardian flames. He backed away to the bar and put his lantern down beside the other one. Then, with the paper he had written it out on growing sweaty in his hand, he began on the Invocation. That went very strangely. At first it was as though
each word got forgotten between his eyes and his mouth, and when he did remember and did say it, that word seemed to be dragging his brain up by the roots. Then, around halfway, as if he had passed some point of greatest resistance, it all went easy. Too easy. The words rolled themselves through his head and said themselves through his mouth as if they were something he said every day, rather than something he had not looked at for twenty years. Derk had a dim memory that the same thing had happened before, but it was too late to stop now. No one leaves a demon half conjured.

  He came to the end, where he had to call out the name of the demon three times. Derk had settled on a medium-size demon called Maldropos, which the books said was moderately obliging as demons went. He opened his mouth to say the name. And he seemed unable to say it. While he gasped and glucked, all the candles flickered down to sparks. The pentacle began to shine, very strongly, blue.

  Oh, no! Derk thought. It’s happening again! What do I do wrong?

  Still unable to speak, he backed against the bar, wishing he could back right through it and crouch down among the barrels on the other side. His eyes felt peeled open like one of Umru’s oranges, unable to look away from the blueness slowly rising out from among the magic Signs. It was a beautiful blue in its way. It was dense and dark, yet it was luminous and pale, too, like a night sky overlaid by a perfect spring day. And it was absolutely terrifying. It rose and it rose, and as it climbed, it grew denser and thicker. Derk felt his teeth chattering. He tried to reach for his notes on the bar and found he could not move. The blueness was a star-shaped cloud, almost up to the beams in the ceiling. Derk knew he had to dismiss it now, before it broke loose from the pentacle. But he still could not move.