EIGHTEEN

WHEN DERK RETURNED from soothing angry Wizard Guides and heard the news, he had mixed feelings. In one way he was pleased that Blade would have Shona with him to keep him sensible. On the other hand, he was afraid that Shona was so upset at losing her career that she was thinking of getting herself killed somewhere along the way. But he had no time to argue. Tomorrow, unless Finn was badly behind schedule, the first Pilgrim Party would be arriving at the Citadel to kill the Dark Lord, and Derkholm was still not a Citadel. So he simply implored Shona to be careful and watched Blade take hold of Shona’s arm. Shona was clutching a bag, her violin, her harp, and her flute. Blade only had his bundle of robes and the folder.

“Black book?” said Derk.

“In my pocket,” said Blade. “Don’t fuss, Dad.” The two of them disappeared with the strong inrushing of wind that always went with a translocation.

“Kit, you’ll have to fly the Hunt tonight with Don and Callette,” Derk said to Kit. “I have to get to Derkholm.”

“But I’ve called a conference!” Kit protested.

“Then make it brief,” said Derk. “You haven’t time to enjoy yourself tonight.”

Kit was extremely offended, mostly because Derk was entirely right. Kit loved holding conferences. He was always thinking of reasons for calling them and ways of making them go on as long as possible. Derk left Kit scowling with his crest feathers right down on his beak and went to where he had left Beauty still saddled.

“Htake Phretty, htoo,” said Beauty. “He ghoes to bhad elfh ahll the htime.”

Derk knew this was true. Talithan had only to beckon, and Pretty vanished. But it was time Beauty got used to this. “Pretty can’t fly that far,” he said as he mounted. “Why is it I can’t do a simple thing like leaving camp without at least two arguments?”

Beauty whisked her tail crossly as she took off. But she was a good-hearted creature, and she made good speed. They were over the ruins of the village well before sunset. Derk went down there to check that skeletal Fran was now back, picking through the debris for the benefit of the tourists. She was. “Have you got everything you need?” he asked her.

“A sight more comfort than I would have up at your house!” she retorted.

Derk flew on up the valley, wondering what Fran meant by that. Had a row with Old George, he supposed, though there was always the possibility that Lydda had come home and turned Fran out. It was certainly high time Lydda returned. She had laid all the clues. Derk sometimes felt that the clues were the one thing the Wizard Guides did not complain to him about.

Before he took Beauty to the stables, Derk stood looking ruefully at the house. So far he had only had time to do one of Callette’s carefully designed transformations. About half the end where the living room was soared into half a black crooked tower. The result was peculiar.

“And I’m not going to have time to follow the plans properly, I’m afraid,” Derk murmured. “Sorry, Callette. They were brilliant.”

Here the pigs found him and rushed jubilantly across the garden, pursued as usual by Old George.

“I thought I asked you to keep them out of sight,” Derk said. On his last visit he had experimented with the pigs as servants of the Dark Lord. But as soon as he put the illusion on, they had stared at their bloated black bodies in such horror that Derk took pity on them and decided just to keep them where the Pilgrims could not see them.

“I do, I do,” said Old George, “but they get wind of you and they’re out before I can turn around. It’s as much as I can do to stop those damn dwarfs putting them in their pot. Can’t do more than that, not if you paid me every basket of treasure they’ve got.”

At this, Derk left Beauty with Old George and hurried to investigate. He had been afraid that the dwarfs would change their minds, once Scales was not there to intimidate them, and go on to the coast instead. But it seemed not. He found them, ponies and all, camping in the kitchen. Lydda would have fits, Derk thought. Perhaps Lydda had indeed come home, seen what six dwarfs could do to a kitchen, and left to live with Mara. He must ask Old George.

“I’m glad to see you got here,” he said to the dwarfs.

“Been here for days now,” said the surly one, whose name was Galadriel. Derk had been wondering, ever since he discovered this, what Galadriel’s parents had been thinking of. “What do you want done with the tribute then?”

“We’d like to see it properly stowed, have you sign for it, and be on our way home, you see,” the talkative one explained. His name, more aptly, was Dworkin. He was some kind of subchief.

Derk looked at the six huge baskets taking up the half of the kitchen that the dwarfs and their ponies were not using. Kit’s den, he thought. Kit would not be pleased, but according to these dwarfs, there were twenty more bands of them from all over the continent, making their way to the coast with tribute. If Scales only found half of them, Kit’s den was the only place big enough to hold it all. “I’ll show you where,” he said. A thought struck him, possibly because of the mess in the kitchen. These dwarfs might stand in for the pigs. “Would you,” he asked, “consider staying on a month or so and acting as the Dark Lord’s servitors? The tours would pay you, of course.”

“How much?” said Galadriel.

“Well,” said Dworkin, pulling his braided beard, “we would have been traveling for the next month, anyway, in the normal course of things, so I suppose it’s no skin off our nose, so to speak. It depends, really, on the money and on what you want to ask us to do.”

Derk consulted his black book. “This year’s fee is twenty gold each. I’d need to change you a bit—you have to look swart, you know—nothing radical, though, there’s no time. And the job is to pretend to stop the Pilgrims from getting near me. Make a show of violence, hack at their ankles, that sort of thing. Would that be possible?”

The dwarfs looked at one another and grinned a little. “Could be fun,” one suggested. Simpse, Derk thought this one’s name was.

“Make that forty gold each,” said Galadriel, “and it’s a bargain.”

Derk took out the calculator and entered on it: “Servitors 240 gold.” It rather pleased him that Mr. Chesney should pay the dwarfs for once, instead of the other way around. “Done,” he said. He showed them to Kit’s shed and watched wonderingly as each of them heaved up a tremendous basket and trudged off with it as if it weighed nothing at all. But it did not improve the state of the kitchen much. He would have to move those ponies.

For now he spread Callette’s drawings out on the dining room table and studied the work he needed to do on the Citadel.

There was no time for anything but skin-deep changes. Other wizards who were more practiced in this kind of work might have done it, but Derk had worked with animals and plants all his life, and he was slow with buildings. And first things first. The dwarfs needed the kitchen, and the animals needed protection. Derk went and led the dwarfs’ ponies out of the kitchen and shut them in the paddock with Pretty’s grandmother. “They’ll be much safer and happier here,” he told the dwarfs when they caught up with him and protested. Then he went around all his crops, tobacco, cotton, tea, coffee, nylon plants, the new orange trees, and many other things, most still experimental, shutting them inside a strong dome of magic that made them invisible. After that he did the same for the animals. There was no guarantee that the pigs would stay inside this dome, but Derk implored them to try. And the cats. Now the village was a deserted ruin, all the cats had come home in disgust. Derk told them to stay in their pen. They just looked at him.

“And how do I feed them now they’re twice as invisible?” Old George demanded, looming at Derk’s elbow.

“I’ll do it,” said Derk. “You just haunt the garden wailing.”

“What do you mean? I never wailed in my life!” Old George said.

“You get forty gold for it,” said Derk.

“Ah,” said Old George.

By the light of the setting sun, and with Callette’s drawings anxiously in his hands, Derk concentrated on the house and garden then. The garden became a desolate forecourt with pitfalls and chained monsters in place of the flower beds. The bushes and trees were broken black pillars or mazes of evil black walls. For the house itself, Derk followed Callette’s design drawing for the completed Citadel and made it a tortured black facade, full of weird sharp angles, twisted arches, and impossibly jutting towers. It looked highly impressive against the sunset. But since it was only an inch thick, Derk could not have any Pilgrims going inside it to confront him. Fortunately Callette had left the enlarged terrace almost as it was. All the griffins liked it this way because it was so big. Derk added broken black archways along the front of it, twisted like the towers, and tormented low walls. Then to prevent anyone going in through the front door, he constructed a long trench of illusory balefire just in front of the doorstep. This looked surprisingly impressive, flickering white and wraithlike in the growing dark. Derk considered a moment and then added an impression of untold depth to the trench. Like that, it made the perfect place to be done to death in. The Pilgrims could think they were hurling the Dark Lord down into a bottomless pit.

Quite pleased with his evening’s work, Derk walked through the trench and entered the house, where the dwarfs were making rather appetizing smells. “What are you cooking?” he asked.

They looked just a little shifty. “Your walking skeleton kept giving us eggs as big as my head, and we got rather sick of them,” Dworkin explained. “So we—er—”

“Went foraging,” said Galadriel.

“He wouldn’t let us touch the pigs or the monkeys, and we don’t eat cat,” Simpse added. “But we found a herd of cows in that side valley and they didn’t seem to belong to anyone, so—”

“We’re roasting an ox,” Galadriel said, jutting his plaited beard aggressively.

“Ah, well.” Derk sighed. “I owe the mayor for twelve others, anyway.”

“You can have some, too,” Dworkin said politely. “And we’ve got eggs, of course, and we found the cabbage patch and the place with those round brown roots.”

“You mean my experimental bread-potatoes,” said Derk.

The dwarfs gave him wary looks. “They cook down just like dumplings,” Simpse said. “Aren’t they digestible then?”

“They were designed to be highly nutritious,” Derk said. “I hope you left some for seed.”

“We didn’t pick quite all of them,” Simpse said.

Derk sighed again and joined them for a filling supper of roast beef, roots, and huge slices of hard-boiled egg, after which he slept better than he had been doing lately. In the morning he went anxiously outside, munching a leftover slice of egg as he went, to see if his transformed Citadel looked convincing by daylight.

Not bad, he decided, as long as the dwarfs kept the Pilgrims too busy to look closely. It had a flimsy sort of look, if you stared at any of it for long. But he was a little startled by the flower bed monsters. He had not realized that a griffin’s notion of a monster would be something made up of bits of human being. Still, they were unusual. And they stirred their many misplaced legs and wagged their several shaggy heads in the breeze in a horribly lifelike way. The balefire looked a little pale by daylight. Derk strengthened it to a brighter white and added another wall or so in the way, so that the Pilgrims would not see it straightaway. Then he went into the kitchen to shake the dwarfs awake and turn them swart.

By the time he had done that, fed the animals, and induced Old George to wear the fluttering shreds of garments—“I’m not decent!” Old George protested, to which Derk replied, “No, you’re a walking corpse, and you’re beyond that!”—the first Pilgrim Party was actually making its way up the valley. Derk groaned. The valley was green, whitened by morning frost. He had forgotten to make it a waste of cinders. Well, it was too late now. He hurriedly assumed his disguise as Dark Lord and waited for them on the terrace.

There were sixteen tourists, led by Finn, men and women who all looked battered, grubby, and tired. They toiled their way up to the gates, which Callette had designed beautifully as a pair of great clawed hands, and stood looking through doubtfully. Finn stepped forward and threw a ball of witchfire at the gates. Derk obliged with a shower of sparks and allowed the clawed hands to swing apart. Finn urged the Pilgrims inside. None of them seemed keen on the idea. They hurried in and halted in a huddle, staring in extreme horror at the flower bed monsters. Finn urged them on again. Two steps later Old George crossed their path, uttering muted cries. It was not exactly wailing. It sounded more like “Ho, ho, ho!” The Pilgrims backed away from him. Finn shoved them forward.

Old George, pleased with the effect he was having, stopped and faced them. “I was once a prince like you,” he announced.

“Oh, shut up and go away, George!” Derk murmured, pacing the terrace.

Finn obviously felt the same. “Avaunt!” he said, and threw witchfire at Old George.

Old George retreated, huffily muttering, “I was only doing it to oblige!”

Finn pushed the Pilgrims forward again. They got halfway up the garden, and then it was the turn of the dwarfs, who sprang gleefully out of hiding, shouting war cries and whirling their axes. They looked spectacular. Derk congratulated himself. As well as coloring them blue-black, he had had the idea of converting all their braids into writhing snakes. And this part, he was pleased to see, went with a swing. The Pilgrims were used to fighting by this stage in their tour. They drew swords and hacked at the dwarfs. The dwarfs, with great artistry and much enjoyment, hacked back. They swung and wove and menaced the Pilgrims, but allowed themselves to be slowly driven backward through the transformed garden, until, after about ten minutes of fierce and bloodless fighting, the Pilgrims had almost reached the terrace steps.

And those steps were a sudden zigzag of acid blue light.

With a noise like the sky splitting, a vast blue three-legged being loomed above the fighting. Its rattail toyed and slithered among Derk’s black archways. The blueness of it pulsed nastily, and the nearness of it scalded everyone’s mind like salt water on a fresh graze. Old George was suddenly wailing in earnest in the background. The dwarfs fled screaming, and the Pilgrims only stayed where they were because Finn slammed a quick immobility spell on them. In the distance Derk could hear the pigs shrilling. He was quite at a loss himself. He simply had not expected the demon to appear.

The demon had two eyes glaring greedily upon the transfixed Pilgrim Party, and the third swiveled to look sarcastically at Derk. He felt the bleachlike burn of it on his mind. That’s why I’m here. I warned you. I shall appear like this to every tour party.

But why? Derk wondered. Demons were never this obliging.

The demon’s laughter flooded against his brain, making him sick and dizzy. I have my reasons. Be sure I don’t do it to oblige you, little wizard.

And it was gone, in another zigzag of blue light, just as Finn, white as a sheet and shaking all over, had nerved himself to raise a hand and quaver, “Avaunt!”

How do I manage to follow an effect like that? Derk wondered irritably. It took him a second or so to pull himself together and muster his Dark Lord illusion again. Luckily it took Finn an equal time to remember to take the immobility spell off his party, and even when he had, the Pilgrims were slow to move. By the time they came hesitantly among the black arches, Derk was a vague black shadow with burning eyes, outlined against the flickering balefire of the trench.

The Pilgrims stopped dead again at the sight of him. Finn kicked the nearest one in the ankle. “We know your weakness,” the man said uncertainly. “Your time is up, Dark Lord.”

The next part was truly difficult. Try as he might, Derk could not get the Pilgrims even to attempt to kill him. He bellowed with sinister laughter; he loomed over them uttering threats; he adopted a toneless, chilling voice and explained that he was about to toss each of them into this bottomless pit flaming with balefire. This pit. Here. Then he went and stood invitingly beside the trench. But they simply stood and stared at him. It was not for nearly a quarter of an hour, until Finn managed to cannon into the woman who happened to be in front, causing her to stumble against Derk with a scream, that Derk was able to consider the deed done. In the greatest relief he threw up his arms and toppled sideways into his trench.

From there he heard the woman burst into tears. “That’s horrible!” she wept. “Whatever it was, it was entitled to life, just like we are!”

“It will come back to life soon enough,” Finn said truthfully. “And you’ve saved the world and the tour’s over. Look. The portal’s just opening now.”

Derk had always been curious to know how the Pilgrims got home once their tour was finished. He rolled over and, with his chin on the edge of the terrace, he watched among his illusory flames as a pointed oval opening appeared, floating in nowhere above the flagstones. He could feel, distantly, the presence of another demon who was making the opening.

A pretty, smiling lady appeared in the space. She was wearing a smart uniform with a peaked cap. “Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “You may now return home. On behalf of Chesney Pilgrim Parties, I hope you have had a most enjoyable tour.”

The Pilgrims turned and shuffled eagerly toward the opening and the lady. “Well, it was interesting,” one of them said carefully.

“I could use a bath!” said someone else.

The woman who had pushed Derk wiped her hand along under her eyes. “But we don’t approve of the way you exploit this whole world for—”

Another woman took hold of her arm. “Not now! Wait until we get outside Chesney Building. Then we can go to a newspaper office.” She pulled the first woman through the opening.

They were the last to go through. The pretty lady smiled and nodded, and the distant demon closed the opening. And that was all. Derk climbed out of his trench.

“Thank the gods!” said Finn, sinking down on to a nearby wall. Luckily it was the outdoor table in disguise and supported his weight. “Sorry about that. These were a really slow lot. Total wimps. You always get some, but these were the worst I’ve ever known. You couldn’t manage a cup of coffee, could you, by any chance?”

“It’s about the only thing the dwarfs don’t like. There should be some,” Derk said, and led the way across the balefire to the kitchen. Finn shuddered at the sight of it and retreated to the dining room.

“Forgive me. I’ve been living rough for nearly six weeks,” he explained when Derk brought the coffee. “Phew! That party was hard work. And I’m afraid none of the gods did manifest, did you know? I made my tour one down in your village, in the end—a sort of smiling child, promising them success. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I hope the real gods don’t.” Derk turned one of Callette’s drawings over and wrote on the back of it, “Fran. To tell wizards smiling child in village,” as a reminder to himself to make sure the other wizards faked a god, too. Querida had really let him down there.

“Nothing struck me down,” Finn said. “There are two more parties waiting in the village. I’ll drop a hint to them on my way back, if you like, and they can have their gods before coming on up here. By the way, whatever went wrong in Chell? I arrived to find the place deserted. I had a real job to keep my party from seeing the other ones, and a lot of fast talking to do when we found the duke in a dungeon. Your elves managed quite well, considering. But where did all the people go?”

“I wish I knew,” Derk said.

Finn gulped the last of his coffee and sprang up. “I have to go. My next tour starts tomorrow night. I want to get some sleep, a proper meal, and a hot bath—in that order—before I set off again. See you again in six weeks.”

Finn left, and while Derk waited for the next Pilgrim Party, he wondered how Blade and Shona were getting on.