Dark Lord of Derkholm

by Diana Wynne Jones

  They watched until the dragon was a seagull-shaped speck in the distance. “You know,” Shona said, suddenly and unexpectedly, “I didn’t like her very much. She was so artificial.”

  “That’s rich, coming from you!” Kit said.

  “But she was,” Callette agreed, equally unexpectedly. “I didn’t like her either.”

  Everyone except Blade turned to disagree loudly with Shona and Callette. “Please!” Derk shouted. “No arguments! Next one to argue gets made into a statue and I grow vines up them. Dragons are strange people. These days they think of themselves as highly virtuous. I suspect this one was disgusted at having to pretend to be bad and guard treasure. I’m told they practically fight not to have to do it.”

  “Then why do they do it then?” said Elda.

  “No idea. More of Mr. Chesney’s persuasive arts, I suppose,” Derk said. “Now, is there any chance of any lunch?”

  There was a long, reluctant silence.

  “I’ll do it,” Blade said at last.

  He wished he had not said it when he was drudging in the kitchen. It was all so complicated, Kit wanting raw steak and garlic, Callette raw duck and herbs, Don raw anything, and Elda wanting cooked meat for a change. That meant five lots of bacon and fried bread, the way Blade cooked. He was getting out the biggest frying pan, sighing, when he heard the dogs and the geese yelling again and Big Hen clucking her head off. Shortly the Friendly Cows and the horses joined in. The pigs squealed blue murder. What’s the matter now? Blade wondered.

  Elda appeared in the doorway, her wings mantled with excitement. “The dragon’s coming back! Kit says it’s flying wrong. Something’s hurt it. Where’s Dad?”

  Derk was already running toward the gate when Blade and Elda reached the terrace. Shona and the other griffins were there already. Derk went out beyond the gate and stood on the grass, shading his eyes with both hands. Blade and Elda wedged themselves into the gateway.

  The large black seagull shape was definitely coming toward Derkholm again, out over the plains. Even at that distance they could see something was wrong. It was sort of staggering in the sky, Blade put it to himself. One wing seemed to be damaged. The dragon would tip that way, then overcompensate and tip the other, and then right itself with much ungainly flapping, so that it came nearer and bigger in jerks.

  “Distressing to watch,” said Derk. “But I don’t think this is the same dragon.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Shona.

  “Yes,” said Derk. “This one’s a male, and I’d say it was a good deal bigger.”

  “How do you tell their sex?” Don wanted to know.

  “The males don’t have that long, lizardy look,” Derk said absently, staring outward at the unsteady shape in the distance. It was odd to have two dragons here on the same day. The only explanation he could think of was that there had been some misunderstanding—or maybe even a fight—over who was to guard the gizmos.

  It slowly became clear that the injured dragon was very much bigger than the first one. They kept expecting it to reach the valley any moment, only to find it was still some miles off, still approaching and still getting larger. Finally it seesawed in across the ruins of the village.

  “It’s blinking enormous!” said Don.

  It was so enormous that its ruined wings—they could see slits in them now—were truly in danger of brushing the hills on either side. The dragon had to struggle into an updraft—while they all held their breaths, expecting it to crash—in order to find room, and then manage to right itself and glide above the crests of the hills, still coming toward Derkholm. As its vast shadow blocked the daylight, everybody flinched. Then they ducked and tried to hide behind the gateposts as the tattered wings folded and the dragon came down like a meteor. It had clearly decided that a crash landing was the only possibility in the space available. Derk jumped backward as the mountainous body hurtled down, hit like an earthquake, seemed unable to stop, and continued uphill, plowing four large grooves in the turf. By some miracle, it came to rest quite neatly in front of Derk in a cloud of grass bits, clods of soil, and brownish, nasty-smelling smoke.

  “Where’s Wizard Derk?” it demanded in a further roll of smoke. It had a deep, windy voice, like somebody blowing across the top of a very large bottle.

  “That’s me.” Derk coughed in the smoke and stared up at it. It was at least as large as a house. And there was something very wrong with it. Where the first dragon had been sleek and glistening, this one was dull, jagged, and stringy. Many of its dingy green scales were split, or peeling, and they hung in ridges over the sharp bones beneath. Its eyes were filmy. One wing—the bad one—was literally in tatters, with pieces of membrane fluttering loose, and the other wing was only a little better. The part of the dragon that Derk could most easily see was its underside, hollow and sagging and a queer, unhealthy-looking white. There was a piece of gold chain and a bent coronet caught among the broken scales there. When Derk looked down at the nearest huge foot, he saw it was knotty and bent, with the claws growing out and upward like the untrimmed hoof of a horse. “Do you,” he said politely, “perhaps need medical aid?”

  “Don’t be impertinent,” the hollow voice boomed. The sick-smelling smoke that came with it made Derk choke. “I’ve come to join your side.”

  “Sorry?” said Derk.

  “You’re the Dark Lord, aren’t you?” the dragon demanded.

  “For this year, yes,” Derk agreed.

  “Then I’ve come to join the Forces of Evil as any right-minded dragon should,” the dragon boomed impatiently. “Can I put it any plainer? I’ve come to kill your enemies.”

  “Er—” said Derk. There was something even wronger with this dragon than he had thought. Possibly it was insane. He threw his head back and looked into its filmy green eyes. Under the green and behind the film, red flickered. Red in the eyes of a dragon, he remembered learning as a student, meant that it was angry. He said, very carefully and calmly, “That is extremely kind of you, but I think someone has misrepresented the position to you.”

  “How so?” boomed the dragon.

  “Because my post as Dark Lord means simply that I pretend to be evil for the benefit of tourists who come from a world next door to this one,” Derk explained. “I’m just an ordinary wizard really. And I’m only allowed one dragon, and she—”

  That was as far as he got before the dragon gave way to rage. Its eyes became wholly a cloudy red. “So it’s all a stupid GAME!” it thundered. Derk backed away from the roar with his hands over his ears, surrounded in wet brown smoke. “You’ve dragged me all this way to pretend! What are dragons coming to, letting humans make fools of them like this?”

  “I assure you I’m not trying to make a fool of you,” Derk managed to say. The smoke was making his lungs sore. He felt dizzy.

  “YES, YOU ARE!” bellowed the dragon. The force of the bellow sent Derk reeling away.

  This was more than Kit could take. He plunged forward. “Will you stop that!” he screamed, standing rampant under the dragon’s huge muzzle. “It’s nothing to do with him!”

  The muzzle swiveled down so that the red eyes could look at Kit. “Just get out of my way, little cat-bird,” the dragon said, quite mildly.

  “Little!” choked Kit. “Cat-bird!” He had never been so insulted in his life.

  “I don’t know what else you are,” the dragon said. “Move. Leave this game-playing wizard to me.”

  “No,” said Kit. “Over my—”

  The dragon swung one huge, gnarly foot and simply batted Kit aside. Kit went head over heels, rolling downhill in an undignified muddle of legs, wings, tail, feather, and fur. He came to a stop sitting in a heap with his wings in two different directions, looking shattered. He had never, ever thought of himself as smaller and weaker than anything before.

  “You’d no call to do that,” Derk choked, feeling for Kit.

  “I haven’t hurt him. Only his pride,” the dragon rumbled. “You’re the one I mean to
hurt.”

  “Now listen—” Derk began.

  But the dragon opened its mouth and bellowed rage and smoke at him. Derk felt his skin begin to boil. His lungs went from sore to agonizing so quickly that he could only put up the feeblest of shields against the blast. And the dragon was clearly a magic user. Derk felt the shield ripped away and more rage and smoke pour over him. He fell to the ground, trying to breathe, and trying not to breathe because of the pain. He had never felt pain like it. He wanted to scream, but that was another thing he could not do. The burning brown smoke continued to pour at him and around him, and he could hear it frying the grass he rolled on. Somewhere in the distance he could also hear griffins screaming, and Shona and Blade, too.

  Blade began screaming at the point when the grass caught fire. By that time he had tried to put deep cold on the dragon’s breath and then, when that had no effect at all, to translocate the dragon elsewhere. After that, he tried to do the same with Derk. And it was as if he was doing nothing. He felt weak and strange and belated—as if it took five minutes for him to realize what was happening, anyway—and totally helpless. The dragon seemed to be able to cancel anything Blade did. It swiveled a red eye toward him every time he tried to help Derk and then went on calmly trying to kill his father.

  “Make it stop!” Shona screamed at him.

  “I can’t!” Blade screamed back.

  There was a thundercrack of displaced air that blew the scalding smoke sideways over Kit—who opened his beak and made desperate noises—and Mara was suddenly standing between the gate and the dragon, wearing a dress that consisted mostly of small amounts of pink silk and black lace, which she had evidently been in the middle of trying on. “I felt something happen to Derk!” she said. “What—? Oh, ye gods!” She took one glance at Derk rolling on the burning grass and dashed in under the dragon’s great smoking nose. “Stop that at once! Do you hear me?” She stood with her hands on her pink silk hips, glaring up at the dragon. “Stop it!”

  There was the fizz of strong magics clashing. Then the dragon took its snout back a foot or so. Its mouth shut, cutting off the hideous smoke. “This is wrong?” it said.

  “It certainly is! Don’t you dare do that again, unless you want to be half an inch long!” Mara shouted.

  “Then explain why I shouldn’t,” said the dragon.

  “So sit down and listen!” Mara bawled up at it.

  To everyone’s great surprise, the dragon doubled its scrawny back legs under itself and sank down on its mangy haunches. “I’m listening,” it thundered in a new cloud of brown smoke. “It’s about time someone explained this mad world to me!”

  “All right,” said Mara. “All right! Just stop blowing smoke at me!”

  “It comes out when I breathe,” the dragon growled.

  “Nonsense,” said Mara.

  Callette waited to see that the dragon did indeed stop blowing out smoke and then took off in a mighty clap of wings. “Where are you off to?” Don shrieked.

  “Healer!” Callette screamed over her shoulder, making her fastest wing strokes toward the hills.

  “Oh. Gods. Yes,” Don said, and took off after her, going so hard to catch Callette up that he was flying like a sparrow, in swoops and furious flutters.

  “Blade,” said Mara, “get your father to the house.”

  Blade always found it easier to translocate someone if he was touching him. He did not dare touch Derk. Derk was writhing about in the cinders of the grass, blue-purple in the face and hideous red in most other places. Most of his clothes were still smoking. The way much of his skin had gone into yellow streaks and blisters made Blade hurt, too, in sympathy. Blade stood himself gingerly astride him and translocated both of them to the living room sofa. The dragon rolled an eye at them as they went but did not try to stop them. Next instant the griffin fur and dog hairs on the sofa sizzled. The translocation somehow tipped Derk on his side, which made him give a horrible hoarse yell. This so appalled Blade that he simply stood astride his father on the sofa and wondered what to do.

  Lydda shot into the room. “Make him cold. Quick. First aid for burns. Freeze him!” she panted.

  “Oh, yes.” Thankful to be told, Blade concentrated until he could feel his own feet ache with cold. Derk stopped writhing, but he was still boiled red and streaked oozing yellow, and he was not breathing properly. “Where’s Mum?” Blade said desperately.

  “Talking to that beastly dragon,” Lydda said, sounding quite as desperate. “I suppose she has to keep it under control.”

  As Blade was carefully climbing off the sofa, Shona and Elda arrived. The slightest jolt made Derk utter more of those terrible hoarse noises. Blade was shaking when Shona helped him finally climb to the floor. “He’s lost half his hair!” Elda wailed. “And Mum’s just standing there giving that dragon a history lesson on how the tours started!”

  Lydda’s beak snapped. “Be quiet. We have to wait for the healer.”

  They waited. Shortly Kit put his head through the window, grassy and ruffled with shame. He told them that Mara was still talking to the dragon. “It turns out to have been asleep for the last three hundred years,” he said. “I suppose that accounts for it. Things must have been very different when it was last awake.”

  “I wish it had never woken up,” Elda said miserably.

  Blade wished that, too. It seemed unbelievable that only half an hour ago he had been annoyed with Derk for making him drudge about getting lunch. Now he would have given anything to go back to being angry with his father in the old comfortable way. “We never had lunch,” he said.

  Nobody wanted lunch. They waited.

  About half an hour later Callette’s wings boomed as she hovered above the terrace, carrying the healer slung in a blanket like a marshwoman’s baby, while Don hastily landed to catch the healer as Callette tipped her out.

  “Thank—thank Anscher!” said Lydda.

  The healer, who was a thin, brown, harassed-looking woman, took one look at Derk and turned everyone out of the room except Lydda. “You look the calmest,” she said.

  “I’m not. Really,” Lydda said, but she stayed.

  Soon after, Mara left the dragon for a short while and went in to speak to the healer. She came out with a shawl wrapped over her startling dress, looking gray. “She’s still trying to clear his lungs,” Mara said to everyone sitting or couchant on the terrace. “She says to thank whoever cooled the burns off because she can concentrate on his breathing first. But she’ll have to stay the night. Shona and Elda, you run up and get her a bed ready and put clean sheets on Derk’s bed, and Blade can move Derk when she’s finished. Don and Kit, let me know at once when she’s through, please. I want her to come and see to the dragon after that.”

  “You want her to see to the dragon!” Shona exclaimed.

  Mara gave Shona one of her grimmest, chin-up looks. “That dragon,” she said, “is half dead. His wings need stitching, and I think he has some kind of deficiency disease. It may have affected his mind. He needs help, Shona.”

  “Oh, fine!” said Kit. “Fine! And has that dragon of yours killed Dad? Or not?”

  “The healer thinks he’ll be all right,” Mara said, at which everyone let out large sighs of relief. “But,” Mara added, “she’ll have to put him in a healing coma for the next five days at least, and he’ll be in bed for a while after that.”

  “But,” said Shona, “Mum, the tours start the day after tomorrow!”

  “I know. And the Dark Lord’s army comes through tomorrow,” Mara said. “It’s a disaster. Let me know when the healer’s finished with Derk.” And she hurried away to see the dragon again.

  NINE

  IT SEEMS RATHER HARD on Barnabas,” said Blade.

  “Not nearly so hard as it would be if we told him the truth,” Don muttered.

  They were all clustered to the side of the terrace, watching Mara explain to Barnabas that Derk would be away for a few days. Mara was looking tired and harassed, in a coat thrown
over her Enchantress finery. “Still in that awful dress, I see,” Shona said, arriving after seeing the healer off on one of the horses. The healer had flatly refused to let Callette or even Kit carry her home.

  “I think it’s a pretty dress,” said Elda.

  “You would,” said Callette.

  “I like it, too,” said Kit. “And it makes her look as if she’s only just got here.”

  There had not been much discussion about what to do. Everyone knew Mr. Chesney must not find out that Derk was injured, and nobody trusted Barnabas not to tell Mr. Chesney. Blade had not really understood how strongly they all felt this, until he saw Barnabas bouncing up the terrace steps this morning and jovially asking Kit, who was roosting there on watch, “Where’s Derk? The soldiers have arrived.” When Kit answered that Derk was away for a while, the change in Barnabas was startling. He went pale. He sagged with such dismay that even his curls seemed to droop. “But he can’t go away!” Barnabas protested. “He’s Dark Lord! It’s—it’s irresponsible!”

  “He’s afraid he’s going to have to do it,” Lydda said, while Don scudded away to alert Mara.

  Mara shortly came rushing around the side of the house, coat and black lace and hair streaming. Barnabas turned to her indignantly. “What’s Derk playing at?”

  Mara was cross and out of breath and certainly looked as if she had just arrived from Aunt’s house. In fact, she had spent the early morning carefully erasing the burned patch outside the gates and had just come from coaxing the sick old dragon up into the side valley where the mayor’s cows were. According to Don, the first thing the dragon did was to eat two of those cows. “She was trying to stop it eating too much. She says its name’s Scales or something,” Don reported, settling down among the others.