Dark Lord of Derkholm

by Diana Wynne Jones

  The blue cloud quivered and formed a long leglike piece, which pulled itself free from the Signs with a jerk and stepped carefully over the chalked marks. Another leglike piece formed, jerked, and stepped after it, followed by a third. Derk found himself waiting for a fourth one, but none came. Instead, a long blue-ringed tail, like a rat’s, tugged itself through the floor and swept jittering this way and that, contemptuously rubbing out the Signs.

  What kept you? demanded the demon. Derk was not sure if its voice was inside or outside his ears. Why have you waited twenty years to call me again?

  “Terror, I suppose,” Derk found himself saying. He looked up at the rest of the demon. It was all blue cloud, but he thought he could just pick out three sarcastic and pitiless eyes in a head up there. He could see the candles blazing away now, behind the demon and through it. The strength of it flattened him to the bar. Why me? he thought. Why me?

  Because you are more easily set aside than other wizards, of course, the demon answered. It did not make Derk feel any better to find it could read his thoughts. I don’t want any of those irksome Bindings laid on me. You were going to try to set me some task, weren’t you?

  “Not exactly, not you. I was hoping for a smaller demon to guard my house when I have to turn it into a Citadel,” Derk found himself replying. Well, it could read his mind. He might as well say what was in it. “To appear and menace Pilgrims. You know.”

  Ridiculous! said the demon. And this is why you called me to this place? To appear and make faces? Do wizards have no serious purpose these days?

  “Most of them are too busy running around after Mr. Chesney’s Pilgrim Parties,” Derk explained.

  So the lesser demons tell me. The demon’s tail appendage rippled contemptuously. It took a step toward Derk on its three lissome leglike parts. The bar behind Derk creaked under the pressure. He felt as if he were being spread out against the wood like butter. He had never, ever met any being so strong. He braced himself to be eaten, probably by some horrible means—digested first, maybe. No, I don’t intend to eat you, the demon said. Yet. Derk could tell it was laughing. The laughter came through his whole body, in pulses, shaking every nerve. Demons loved to play with humans. Nor do I want your soul, said the demon. Yet. I have other flesh to boil. When I have done that, I shall come back and pay you for letting me through into this plane.

  “H-how?” Derk asked.

  How? By infesting your house, of course. Isn’t that what you wanted? asked the demon.

  Was this a threat or a promise? Derk wondered. Did it matter? “When—when might I expect you then?”

  Whenever is least convenient for you, the demon replied. Number your days until then.

  Having said that, it began to grow again, bulging its way vastly upward, until all that Derk could see of it were its three wraithlike legs and its constantly twitching worm of a tail. Then there was an interminable time when the tail went still and the demon’s legs simply stood—forever, it felt like to Derk. He had to stand there, squashed against the bar by its presence, between his two flickering lanterns.

  And then, quite suddenly, the demon was gone. The taproom seemed darker without the blue of it, despite the benign yellow light from the candles, and felt much more ordinary. The pressure no longer squashed Derk to the bar. The relief of that made him drop to his knees, where he hawked up great gulps of air and realized that he felt utterly belittled, smaller than he had ever felt in his life.

  It was not until he had knelt like that for over a minute that Derk realized that he had never once, not even at the very back of his mind, thought of asking the demon to pretend to be a god. You simply could not bring a god and a demon together in one mind somehow.

  The rescue party, meanwhile, was not enjoying itself. Going down through the valley had been easy for the griffins, even Lydda. It was just a matter of a powered glide. But as the glide gathered speed, the swing seat with Shona and Blade on it swung more and more to the rear. This tipped it up, sliding both of them downward. They clung to the ropes frantically. Only the speed of the flight seemed to be holding them on.

  “I think I’d better translocate after all!” Blade gasped.

  “I’d fall off for sure. Sit still!” Shona snapped.

  Blade thought she was right. And they were high enough for Shona to be badly hurt. Then, as they leveled out and flew low over the dusky fields, Kit and Callette began to feel the strain. Neither had done much flying lately. Blade could feel them both trying not to pant as hard as they wanted to. In addition, Callette, although she was huge by human standards, was nothing like as large and strong as Kit. Kit was trying to fly slow, to level the difference out, but he kept hitting his stalling speed and having to go faster, while Callette flapped furiously the whole time—with the result that the swing wagged and dipped and surged. Blade hung on and stared at the dim gray tussocks of grass whipping by under him and hoped they found Elda soon. Out to one side, the naturally fit Don was weaving and wheeling to examine every pale place in case it was Elda’s golden coat. Blade could hear Lydda out on the other side trying to do the same and sounding more like a sawhorse than a griffin.

  Night flying made you freezing cold, Blade discovered. Shona kept muttering, “I think I’m slipping. Gods, you’re heavy! Gods, you’re bony!”

  After what seemed a century of misery, Kit panted, “There’s the inn!”

  “She must have made it there then,” Don said, wheeling in from beyond Callette.

  “Let’s check,” Kit gasped.

  Because he was dangling so far below Kit, Blade could not see the inn until a short while later, when the swing rushed over a hedge and he saw the building against the sky in the distance, very black, with barely a light showing. Shona, peering around him, asked, “What’s that funny blue light over its roof?”

  The light grew into a blue shaft as she spoke, and they all distinctly saw three eyes in it near the top. Don let out a squawk of total terror. All the griffins, with one instinctive accord, stretched their beaks upward and pumped their wings for altitude. Flight feathers whupped, and the swing soared. Blade dangled there, higher and higher, with the air around him frantic with wings being overworked and the roaring of griffin breath, and could only watch the blue thing grow and stretch higher and keep level with the griffins every foot they went upward. The three eyes sarcastically stared straight across at them. Up labored the panicked griffins, and up stretched the blue thing, like an impossibly long pale pole of light, and continued to stare at them in a way that said Do you think you can get away? Forget it!

  Then the thing seemed to lose interest. It shrank a little and stood poised on the inn roof. When the griffins wearily leveled out, heads bent down between their spread wings, ready to soar or sideslip if the thing came for them, the blueness leaped into a long flash of azure light, rushing in zigzags underneath them faster even than lightning, and disappeared into the distance behind.

  Almost at once, from where the first flash had touched, there came a terrified griffin screech, followed by frantic cheepings from down below.

  “There she is!” everyone cried out.

  Don and Lydda folded wings and plummeted. As Kit and Callette circled and went down more slowly, towing the swing, Blade had revolving views of a small pale blot on the dark ground, which on the next sighting was definitely Elda crouched in a heap with her wings puddled around her and her beak wide open, cheeping terror and loneliness like a fledgling. On Blade’s next sighting Don and Lydda had got there and were settling, out of instinct, head to tail on either side of Elda, each with a wing thrown across her. Elda’s cheeping died down a little and turned into words.

  “I was so tired. That was the demon. My wings hurt. I was so tired. That was the demon.”

  “Can you drop me off?” Blade called up to Callette and Kit. “I’ll get her home. You three go on and make sure Dad’s all right.”

  “Can do,” Callette called down. “Around again, Kit.”

  The swing whi
rled out and lower. Blade watched the dark ground swirl near, slid off Shona’s knees, and landed running and stumbling in uneven grass. He almost fell to his knees because his feet were so numb. Shona’s shoes whirled past his face as Kit and Callette whupped wings and gained height again. The sound receded fast as Blade stumbled over to Elda.

  “It was the demon,” Elda was saying from between Don and Lydda. “It came through me. It felt like that soda that melted your talon, Lydda. It was cold, and it burned.”

  Blade pushed into the warm huddle of griffins and sat down. “Can you two make it home if I translocate with her? I can’t manage the four of us.” He really meant, Could Lydda get home? but that was not the time to say it.

  “I’m all right once I’m in the air,” Lydda said.

  “We’ll just coast,” Don said. “We won’t try to prove anything.”

  “All right.” Blade shoved his legs right underneath Elda’s shaking body. “Elda, I’m going to hang on to you and I want you to hang on to me hard. Understand?”

  “Yup.” Elda fastened her talons onto Blade’s shoulders, too scared to notice she was hurting him. Blade bit his lip against the pain and grasped Elda around the lion part of her body. This was a thing all the griffins hated and probably meant Elda was as uncomfortable as Blade was, but none of it could be helped.

  “Ready? Here we go!”

  Blade heaved them both home. Elda was nearly half as big again as Blade, and it was truly hard work. For a moment Blade got it wrong, or seemed to. He was aiming for the terrace, and he got there, but it was standing up beside them like a stone wall. Blade wrenched it straight—or maybe he wrenched himself and Elda straight, he was not sure—and as he did so, he seemed to see a blue glimmer, behind his head where nobody ought to be able to see anything, and the glimmer was holding the terrace sideways. Elda began cheeping again.

  “Don’t do that!” Blade said to the demon, and he sat on the terrace gripping Elda’s furry torso and pulling the terrace back into place for dear life. “Can’t you see you’re scaring Elda stiff?”

  Elda had been right to compare the thing to caustic soda, Blade thought. He felt it against his mind as if he had his head in a bowl of bleach, pushing and sorting at him in a way that said, Hmm. What have we here?

  “Go away!” Blade told it.

  The demon was laughing. It found both of them hilarious. The laughter went through Blade in waves, and it hurt. He felt the demon say, I shall go now, but I’ll see you again soon.

  Blade wanted to say something like “Come near me again and I’ll kill you!” but that would have been ridiculous, and anyway, he had no strength left. Sweat from holding out against the demon was running down from his hair into his eyes. He wanted to cry like Elda.

  “It’s gone!” Elda cheeped thankfully. Then she squawked. “What was that?”

  It was the noise of Derk falling over a chair on the terrace and then a twoing as he kicked Shona’s harp. “Dad!” Blade shouted.

  Derk came and held up his lantern to look at them. “What’s wrong?”

  “The demon was here!” they told him in chorus. “And it told Blade it was coming back! Don’t let it!” Elda added.

  Derk had not the courage to explain how very wrong his conjuring had gone. He said soothingly, “We don’t need it yet, not until I’ve made the Citadel. Don’t worry. Where’s everyone else?”

  “Coming,” said Elda. But it was a good hour before weary wingbeats brought Kit, Callette, and Shona home, and a further half hour after that before Lydda staggered in with Don.

  “You blew her into the air, leaving with Elda,” Don said to Blade. “I think she’d have had to walk if you hadn’t. It was awful. She kept saying she had to land, and I had to shout at her to keep her flying.”

  “And Dad had left when we got to the inn,” Shona said disgustedly. “Where’s he gone now?”

  “Eating supper,” said Elda. “It’s gone all cold and horrible, but he’s gobbling.”

  EIGHT

  ELDA WAS FIT AS A fiddle the next day, and everyone else felt terrible. Lydda lay facedown on the living room sofa, filling it to overflowing. “Someone else can see to food today,” she said. “My shoulders hurt.”

  “Well, that won’t be me,” Shona said, examining the rope burns on her fingers. “I can’t even play the piano. Mum wants me to take Callette and Elda over to Aunt’s house today, and I’m too tired to try. Where’s Callette?”

  Callette was sulking in her shed, saying she was bored because she had finished the gizmos. Don’s opinion was that she was as stiff as the rest of them and too proud to admit it. Don lay on his back with his wings spread all over the dining room floor, refusing to move for anyone. He was not proud, he said.

  Blade felt strange, as if the demon had pushed something sideways in his mind. “Have I still got my soul?” he asked Kit anxiously.

  Kit glared into Blade’s eyes. “Of course you have! Fool!” Kit had got up at dawn and flown a circuit of the valley in order to convince himself he was fit. The opposite proved to be the case. Kit came home in such a ferocious bad temper that only Blade dared go near him.

  Derk supposed he ought to tell them all off for taking so many risks last night—night flying, going too far, dangling Shona and Blade on the swing, and barging straight into that demon—but he was too depressed about his double failure yesterday. He sat in his study and worried, unable even to think of designing a new carrier pigeon. He found he was rather touched at the way Elda had tried to go after him. She had carefully saved him her orange peel and pips as well. He could not bring himself to scold her. Instead, he sighed and went to plant the pips.

  They were all jolted out of their gloom around midday by Elda, followed by Pretty, galloping across the terrace shrieking, “The dragon’s coming! The dragon’s coming!”

  No one except Derk had ever seen a dragon. There was instant huge excitement. Kit and Callette burst out of their dens; Lydda and Shona tangled in the living room doorway, both trying to get outside at once; Don knocked over every seat in the dining room, getting to his feet; Blade raced down the wood and marble stairs; Derk pelted around from his workroom; and they all rushed to join Elda and Pretty at the gate, along with every one of the pigs. The dogs and the geese clamored to be let out, too, but no one could spare them any attention. The Friendly Cows and Big Hen simply clamored, catching the general excitement.

  The dragon was now halfway up the valley and seemed to fill it from wingtip to wingtip. Blade said, awed, “I didn’t know they were so big!”

  “She’s actually only a medium size,” Derk said.

  “They don’t fly at all like us,” Don observed.

  “More like seagulls,” Lydda agreed.

  The dragon lifted her wings and came to an elegant landing on the grass downhill from the gate. She was altogether elegant, slender, glistening, and lavender-colored, phasing to a creamy color underneath. With her wings folded as she came winding up to the gate, she almost had the look of a very large lizard.

  The pigs, by this time, were snuffling nervously and backing away. Pretty was shaking all over. When the dragon arrived, towering over everyone except Kit, and emitted a delicate curl of smoke from each nostril as she halted, Pretty had had enough. He screamed and bolted, wagging his undeveloped wings frantically. The pigs broke and ran with him, squealing and soon taking to the air for speed. Pretty was so frightened that he rose into the air with them. Nobody noticed Pretty’s maiden flight. They were all staring at the fine violet and green blood vessels in the dragon’s wings, the way her scales refracted the sunlight like jewels, and the deep, deep look in her purple eyes.

  There came a dreadful clamor from the pens and paddocks beyond the house as all the animals caught the dragon’s scent. The dragon politely ignored it. “I am to collect a number of objects from here, I believe,” she said. Her voice was like cellos and clarinets. Shona sighed.

  “I’ll fetch them,” said Callette, and tore herself away the short dist
ance to her shed.

  The dragon waited, looking above their heads with such a look of great wisdom that nobody liked to say anything until Callette came back hauling the sheet with the gizmos wrapped in it.

  “Here,” she said, dumping it a cautious three yards from the dragon. Chink. Chime.

  The dragon’s head turned sharply down at the sound. “May I examine them?” she asked.

  “Go ahead,” said Callette.

  The dragon’s huge clawed foot delicately picked at the knot at the top of the bundle and, even more delicately, laid the cloth away to the sides. Blade had the distinct impression that the dragon was disappointed by what was revealed. But she was evidently very polite. “But these are a treasure!” said the cellos and clarinets. “My, how they glitter! And what fine work! Beautiful!”

  Callette, who was not given to shyness, was overcome by this praise and put one wing over her face. “Callette made them,” Derk explained. “There should be one hundred and twenty-six. Do you wish to check?”

  “I shall trust you,” said the dragon. “They are utterly desirable, and I shall guard them with a will. What a pity that times have changed. A hundred years ago these would all have been made of gold. As it is, I shall have to exercise enormous self-restraint not to keep them for myself. Perhaps”—her violet eyes turned yearningly toward Blade—“perhaps someone should wrap them away out of sight again. I am so tempted.”

  With a faint feeling that the dragon was saying one thing and meaning another, Blade ventured in under the dragon’s head and gingerly tied up the knot again. The smell from the dragon’s breath was indescribable, hot and steamy, a little like roses mixed with rotten eggs. He had a hard job not to react like Pretty. It felt truly dangerous to be this close.

  “Can I offer you something to eat?” Derk asked politely—but not altogether tactfully to Blade’s mind.

  “No, thank you, I ate only yesterday,” the dragon replied. Blade was strongly relieved. He pulled the knot tight and backed away smartish. “I think I had better be moving along,” the dragon said. “It’s a long flight to the designated place in the north. A happy tourtime to you.” She picked up the chinking bundle and flowed around in a turn—a dizzying sight of sliding lavender jewels—until she faced down the valley. There she gave two or three gentle, almost slow-motion running strides and spread her wings. She was in the air as softly as a blown leaf. Lydda was not the only one who gave an envious sigh.