NINETEEN

BLADE AND SHONA ARRIVED to find bunting hung out in the town and a large banner over the main street saying GNA’ASH WELCOMES YOUR TOUR. The inn where the Pilgrim Party was to assemble was just up the street. It was large, empty, and quiet. The landlord, who seemed to be all on his own, showed them to two sparse little rooms overlooking the main street and pointed out the bathrooms down the corridor.

“A bath!” said Shona. “Let’s get clean!” It was clear Shona had been right to come. Blade could see that she was instantly much more cheerful.

They had baths, blissfully, and washed their hair. Blade had truly meant to spend all the rest of the time studying the black book and the map. Instead, he went to sleep. So did Shona. It was so marvelous to be in a real room with a bed. Every so often they were woken by the landlord for a meal, after which they staggered upstairs and fell asleep again.

The third time they were sitting dozing over their food in the empty taproom, Shona remarked, “This is the same as the last meal. Or have we only had one?”

The landlord looked long-suffering. “Don’t blame me; blame the wife. She joined this Women Against Pilgrim Parties they’re all joining this year and walked out a month ago. Took all the barmaids with her and left me on my own. Bread and stew is all I know how to cook.”

“Well, it’s filling,” Blade said, and they went upstairs to sleep again.

On the morning the tour started, Blade woke up in a panic. The Pilgrim Party would be arriving that afternoon, and he knew there was absolutely no way he was going to learn all the rules and the route in time. He spread the black book and the map and the pamphlet out on his bed and tried, anyway. But it was no good. He was still half asleep. By the end of the morning all he had really learned was that his tour was one of those which went northeast to the Inland Sea, so that his party could be captured by pirates and rescued by dragons while the other tours were busy down in Grapland and Costamaret. He was just going to have to look each day up in the pamphlet as it came. As for the black book, there were whole sections of it he had not even looked at. He leafed through them. “Rules,” he read. “1. Wizards are to grow beards, wear their hair below shoulder length, and carry a staff at all times.”

“Help!” said Blade. He leaped up and rushed to the mirror. After half an hour of trial and error, he found a way to grow himself a long white beard and a bush of white hair. Out of it, his face stared, rosy and rounded and young. He looked like an albino dwarf. Hopeless. He found how to turn all the new hair dark. This time he just looked like a dwarf who had forgotten to do his plaits, but it would have to do. Now, staff. Blade rushed out of his room and tore down to the inn kitchen, where there was a rack of wooden spoons. He snatched the largest and was racing upstairs with it when he ran into Shona.

She actually gave a gurgle of laughter, the first laugh he had heard from her since the bard handed her that scroll. “Blade, you look ridiculous! Like a dwarf on a bad day. And why are you waving a spoon?”

“Staff,” panted Blade. “Rules. Better in robes.” He pushed past her and hurried to his room, where he spent another twenty minutes trying to persuade the spoon to look like a wizardly staff. Whatever he did, the staff grew a broad flat part at the end that was a spoon. And the robes, when he put them on, were too big. Even when he hitched them up with his belt and rolled up the sleeves, they were too big. He waded down to lunch, treading on hems and trying to disentangle beard from his belt buckle. As for eating stew through all this hair, he was not sure it was possible.

Shona watched him struggling. Before long she had both hands over her mouth to stop herself giggling. Finally, she took pity on him and went upstairs for her scissors. “Hold still,” she said, and carved him a hole in the beard for his mouth. After that Blade could eat—though he still found himself chewing hair from his chin from time to time—and when he had finished, Shona made him stand on a chair while she cut the robes down to the right size. She prized the spoon out of his hand and fetched him a walking stick someone had left in the inn hat stand. “There,” she said. “Wasn’t it lucky I decided to come with you? Come upstairs, and I’ll hem the edges.”

Hemming the robes took awhile. Shona was only halfway done when they heard confused rhythmic shouting out in the street. Blade wrestled open the window, and they both leaned out. The main street below was lined with people, mostly women and children. As far as they could hear, some of them were shouting, “Go home, Pilgrims!” while the rest chanted, “Ban the tours!”

“There really is strong feeling!” Shona remarked.

Blade could not be bothered with that. Between the crowds he could just see the heads of other people coming up the middle of the street. His stomach did some strange diving about as he realized he was about to meet his first live Pilgrims. His Pilgrims. He snatched up his list and ran for the door. Shona was only just in time to grab the back of his shirt.

“Don’t be silly! I haven’t finished your robes. Anyway, you should give them time to get settled in their rooms. Then go down to the taproom and meet them. Remember you’re a wise and stately wizard, and you don’t need to run after them.”

Blade supposed she was right. Besides, it was soon clear that not all the Pilgrims arrived at once. Every so often there was a new outbreak of chanting in the street, and when Blade craned from the window, he saw another few heads moving slowly up the middle. He sat nervously twisting his list and watching Shona sew.

Shona had just bitten off the last thread when the landlord knocked at the door. Blade jumped up again, and Shona hastily got him into the shortened robes. “Man from the tours to speak to the wizard at the kitchen door,” the landlord said when Shona opened the door.

Rather puzzled, Blade followed the landlord down the back stairs and through the kitchen, which was now full of the smell of onions being chopped for tonight’s stew. The man waiting at the back door wore a casual version of the kind of clothes Mr. Chesney and his people had worn. “Sorry about this, Wizard,” he said. “I oughtn’t to be here, really, but there’s a bit of a crisis at the portal. We’re ten parties of dwarfs short. Only one lot came through. You didn’t happen to see any others on your way here, did you?”

“Er—with ponies and baskets?” Blade asked.

“That’ll be them!” the man said, obviously relieved. “How far off were they?”

“Quite a long way,” Blade said truthfully. “They grumbled about the way they were delayed.” He felt so dishonest that he was forced to stroke his beard and look wise.

The tour man pulled his own chin in a worried way. “I don’t know what to do then. The last pair of Pilgrims just came through, and the portal’s due to be closed in an hour. There’ll be a right stink if the dwarfs aren’t here by then. I could lose my job. Look, if you see them on your route, better tell them to make for the Dark Lord’s Citadel instead and we’ll take the lot through from there. And I’ll ask the other Wizard Guides to tell them the same. All right?”

“All right,” Blade agreed, and he went upstairs again, rather sobered to think that someone was going to be out of work just because he and Don had rescued six dwarfs.

“Nothing’s ever simple,” Shona said when he told her. “Wait another hour, and then go to the taproom.”

Blade could not wait that long. He went down after half an hour. By that time at least half the twenty people on his list were sitting about on the benches awkwardly drinking tankards of beer and getting to know one another. “I know it’s expensive,” a woman was saying as Blade came in. “Dad and I sold our house to come on this tour. But we wanted to do something really interesting before we got too old to enjoy it.”

“That’s right, Mother,” agreed the man beside her. “Nothing ventured.”

They both looked immensely old to Blade, and rather fat. He wondered if they would survive the tour, let alone enjoy it. At that, he realized that his nervousness had vanished, and he was simply interested. All the Pilgrims had their hair cut in a way he was not used to and carried foreign looks on their faces. This made them seem to be wearing fancy dress, even though they were dressed in the sort of clothes Blade thought of as normal himself. One of the rules was that Pilgrims should dress in the clothes of Blade’s world. He went toward them with his list.

“Ooh!” shrieked a small fair girl. “It’s our wizard! Look, bro, a real wizard! Isn’t he small!”

“I have dwarven ancestry,” Blade lied, rather crossly, as he looked for the girl on his list. Why couldn’t he grow, the way Kit did?

The girl was Susan Sleightholm on the list, and down as a late entry. She had big blue eyes, and her hair hung in masses of not quite real curls, like wood shavings. She squealed excitedly and hung on to Blade’s newly hemmed sleeve. “Call me Sukey,” she said, staring fixedly up into Blade’s eyes. She was even shorter than he was. “I’m Sukey, and this is my brother, Geoffrey.”

Sukey was about Shona’s age, Blade thought. She was wearing a baby blue tunic and trousers. He did not like her at all. He pitied her brother for having to put up with her. Geoffrey was tallish and fairish, and he looked nice. Blade dragged his sleeve away from Sukey’s spiky fingers—she had red nails, like Don’s talons when he was eating meat—and went to the people who had sold their house. They were Mr. and Mrs. Poole, but they insisted that he call them Dad and Mother.

More Pilgrims were coming downstairs all the time now. As they sat down and the landlord brought them tankards, Blade went among them, trying to fit them all to the names on his list. It was bewildering. Although they were young, old, fat, serious, jolly, dark, mid-brown, and fair, they all had that foreign look, and he could not tell them apart. For a start, there were six intense-looking younger women with long, straight hair, four men with rugged, faraway gazes wrinkling their eyes, and two more couples just like Dad and Mother Poole. One of them must be supposed to report back to Mr. Chesney, Blade thought, but he simply could not tell which. He was polite to all of them, in case.

Almost the last Pilgrim to arrive was a shortish, fair-haired young man, who came sauntering down the stairs with an air. He was obviously rich, rich enough not to have to sell anything to afford the tour. Blade could tell he was, both from his air and from his clothes, which were stylish and made of very good cloth. And he was almost the only Pilgrim who wore those clothes as if they were not fancy dress. Blade looked at him with relief because he knew he would remember this man. In fact, as he hurried over to him, Blade had a feeling that he did remember the man, as if he had seen him before somewhere. But that was obviously a stupid idea.

“I’m Blade, your Wizard Guide,” he said. “I’m small because I have dwarven ancestry. And your name is—?”

The man smiled charmingly. “I’m Reville Townsend.”

I like him, Blade thought, as he hunted for the name on his list. He missed it somehow, but as he started at the beginning again, he was distracted by the arrival of the last two Pilgrims. The woman came first, pushing past Blade and Reville and marching toward the nearest free bench. She was very tall and rather lean, and she wore glasses. Her hair was white, cut in a sort of scalloped helmet. It looked more like a majestic hat than hair. But the most notable thing about her sent Blade scurrying after her, forgetting his list.

“Excuse me, lady. Excuse me! You’re not supposed to be wearing those kind of clothes!”

The lady smoothed her neat maroon-colored trousers and patted the pearls around the neck of her fluffy white sweater before she looked at Blade. It was a totally immovable look. “Young man, I see no reason at all to masquerade in silly clothing like yours. What I have on is respectable and practical, and I shall continue to wear it.” She looked past Blade and called out, “Come along, Eldred. Don’t dawdle.”

The man with her came forward vaguely. He was tall and thin, too, with deep creases down his cheeks and deep, hollow eyes, and he had a lot of fine white fluffy hair. As Shona said later, he looked like a dandelion seeding. And he was wearing otherworld clothes as well, though his were tweedy and shabby. Blade looked for his list to see who these people were. Reville Townsend came up with a smile and handed him the folder. “You left me with this.”

“Thanks.” The only two people not yet accounted for were down as E. and S. Ledbury. Oh, yes, and here was Reville down at the bottom, R. Townsend, a late entry like the awful Sukey. “Look, Mrs. Ledbury, the rules say—”

The lady looked at him chillingly. “Miss Ledbury, if you please, young man. Professor Ledbury is my brother. He is a very learned man and naturally a trifle vague. You cannot expect him to bother with your rules. He is above them, and I disregard such things. Sit down beside me here, Eldred.” She turned her back on Blade and fetched some crochet out of her bag.

Reville grinned. “Leave her. You get people like that.”

Blade nodded ruefully. He and Reville sat on a bench together, but where Blade sat with his robes twisted and had to get up again to put them straight before he strangled, Reville sat with his silk-lined cloak thrown back and his rapier elegantly in a convenient position, all in one smooth movement. He saw Blade look. “I practice a lot,” he explained. “I spend an hour every—”

He broke off as Shona made her entry. Shona came down the stairs carrying her harp and wearing her green bardic robes, and she came with such an air that Blade could have sworn that not one Pilgrim noticed that the robes were creased all over and ragged where they had been unraveled to make magic reins. “Good evening,” she cried ringingly. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am the official bard to your Pilgrim Party.”

Everyone’s head turned, even Miss Ledbury’s waved helmet, and there were cries of admiration, interrupted by Mother Poole calling out, “Oh, do come and sit with me and Dad, dear!”

Shona did not leave the stairs straightaway. She stood three steps up, staring across the taproom, and seemed to Blade slowly to come alight. It was as if the life in her, which had not been there since the bard handed her the scroll, came welling back into her, and then welling up further, until Shona was twice as alive as she had been, brimming with life, glowing with it. Miss Ledbury’s lips pursed. Her head turned to look in a certain direction, disapprovingly. Blade turned to look the way Miss Ledbury and Shona were both looking and saw Geoffrey Sleightholm on the end of both gazes. He was looking back at Shona with the same sort of dawning of life.

Oh, dear! Blade thought. I wish it had been Prince Talithan now! It was not just that Mr. Chesney’s demon did not allow anyone to leave this world or any Pilgrim to stay here. It was worse. As Shona crossed the taproom and went to sit beside Geoffrey—just as if there were no one else there besides the two of them—Blade surreptitiously unfolded his list again. Yes. There it was. “G. Sleightholm X, P or E.” The X meant that Geoffrey was expendable, and the other letters meant that Blade was to arrange to have him killed either by pirates or by elves. Blade could only hope that Shona got over Geoffrey, or they found they didn’t really like one another, or quarreled, or something, before the expendable part had to happen.

Blade did not sleep well that night. It was not just Shona, although she was part of it. To his terror, Shona and Geoffrey clearly liked one another enormously. Blade kept thinking of the way Shona had been after the bard handed her the scroll and realized that she might be worse after Geoffrey was expended. And there was no Callette here to help her either. But there were many other things on his mind, too.

Some of it was the way all the Pilgrims seemed to rely on him and kept asking him things, even how to eat their suppers. He was not sure he could stand being in charge to this extent. The worst was when he had to show Dad Poole how to use the toilet.

Another difficulty was Geoffrey’s sister, Sukey. Maybe it was because her brother was suddenly only interested in Shona, or maybe she was going to do it anyway, or just because they were both small, but Sukey attached herself to Blade. She sat by him, she smiled at him, she stroked his arm, and his beard, and she wriggled herself up to him, saying, “I’ve always wanted to know a real wizard!” Apart from the fact that Blade knew he was not yet a real wizard, quite apart even from the fact that he did not like Sukey, she offended and embarrassed him. And other people. Dad Poole kept giving him troubled glances, and Miss Ledbury gave looks which raised her eyebrows up above the steel frames of her glasses.

By this time, anyway, Blade hated Miss Ledbury even more than he disliked Sukey. She had a notebook in her crochet bag. Blade knew she was the one reporting to Mr. Chesney. She made notes on everything, unclipping a pencil with efficient mauve fingers and scribbling it down whenever anything new happened or got mentioned. She scribbled in code or shorthand. Blade had looked and found he could not read a word.

“Don’t pry, young man,” Miss Ledbury said. “It’s not your place. Eldred, that’s enough beer tonight. It’s too sour. It’ll disagree with you.”

Blade hated the way she ordered her poor vague brother about, and he heartily resented the way she treated Blade himself like a servant. “Young man, fetch the landlord. This stew is uneatable.”

“You may well regard this as the best meal of your tour before it’s over,” Reville told her cheerfully.

Miss Ledbury raised eyebrows over steel glasses at Reville. “I do not intend to indulge in privations just for sport.” And she made Blade fetch the landlord and the landlord provide bread, cheese, and fruit. After that she brought out a special jar of coffee from her bag and made Blade get her a kettle of boiling water and some cream. “No, Eldred, not for you. Coffee keeps you awake.”

Miss Ledbury keeps you awake! Blade thought, tossing fretfully in bed. And Shona and Sukey, not to speak of Dad Poole peering anxiously into the earth closet. But in addition to all this, he kept finding himself doing sums as well. Mother Poole had set him off by telling everyone again that they had sold their house to afford the tour. Someone replied to this, “And I suppose you had to find another thousand credits each for the insurance?”

“Two thousand each,” said Mother Poole, “because we’re older, you see, dear.”

From what the others said to this, Blade was astonished to learn that all the tourists had had to pay Mr. Chesney from one thousand to six thousand credits each in case of accidents, even expendable Geoffrey, and that they did not even get it back if they arrived home unhurt. As he tossed and turned, Blade found himself adding up what Mother Poole had sold her house for—he did not know what a credit was worth, so he called it a gold piece—multiplying that amount by 20 for the rest of the Pilgrims … then by 125, for the other tours … adding in this insurance thing … multiplying that by 125 … then remembering that people paid more thousands of these credits to have Prince Talithan put his sword through Pilgrims … adding that in, too, at an average of two expendables a party … then putting a value on all that gold eleven parties of dwarfs brought in each year … and the answer came out with so many naughts on the end that Blade thought he must have gone to sleep in the middle and multiplied it all by 1,000 by mistake.

He turned over on his pillow and did the sum again. And it was the same huge number of gold pieces. Then he compared this figure with the money that wizards and kings got paid and remembered that Mara was not getting paid at all. It did not take much thinking to work out that Mr. Chesney was making more money in a year than there was in Blade’s whole world. And Blade’s people were the ones who did the work.

“But that’s not fair!” he murmured, and went to sleep at last, as if his mind had been waiting for him to arrive at saying that before it would let him stop thinking.