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.

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 whirled 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.”