Copyright

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2013

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1998

Cover artwork © Duncan Smith.

Design by James Fraser

Diana Wynne Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007507573

Ebook Edition © August 2013 ISBN: 9780007507597

Version: 2017-01-30

To Robin McKinley

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

About the Author

Also by Diana Wynne Jones

About the Publisher

ill you all be quiet!” hissed High Chancellor Querida. She pouched up her eyes and glared round the table.

“I was only trying to say—” a king, an emperor and several wizards began.

“At once,” said Querida, “or the next person to speak spends the rest of his life as a snake!”

This shut most of the University Emergency Committee up. Querida was the most powerful wizard in the world and she had a special feeling for snakes. She looked like a snake herself, small and glossy-skinned and greenish, and very, very old. Nobody doubted she meant what she said. But two people went on talking anyway. Gloomy King Luther murmured from the end of the table, “Being a snake might be a relief.” And when Querida’s eyes darted round at him, he stared glumly back, daring her to do it.

And Wizard Barnabas, who was Vice-Chancellor of University, simply went on talking “… trying to say, Querida, that you don’t understand what it’s like. You’re a woman. You only have to be the Glamorous Enchantress. Mr Chesney won’t let women do the Dark Lord.” Querida’s eyes snapped round at him with no effect at all. Barnabas gave her a cheerful smile and puffed a little. His face seemed designed for good humour. His hair and beard romped round his face in grey curls. He looked into Querida’s pouched eyes with his blue, bloodshot ones and added, “We’re all worn out, the lot of us.”

“Hear, hear!” a number of people round the table muttered cautiously.

“I know that!” Querida snapped. “And if you’d listen, instead of all complaining at once, you’d hear me saying that I’ve called this meeting to discuss how to put a stop to Mr Chesney’s Pilgrim Parties for good.”

This produced an astonished silence.

A bitter little smile put folds in Querida’s cheeks. “Yes,” she said. “I’m well aware that you elected me High Chancellor because you thought I was the only person ruthless enough to oppose Mr Chesney and that you’ve all been very disappointed that I didn’t immediately leap at his throat. I have, of course, been studying the situation. It is not easy to plan a campaign against a man who lives in another world and organises his tours from there.” Her small green-white hands moved to the piles of paper, bark and parchment in front of her and she began stacking them in new heaps with little dry rustling movements. “But it is clear to me,” she said, “that things have gone from bad, to intolerable, to crisis point and that something must be done. Here I have forty-six petitions from all the male wizards attached to the University and twenty-two from other male magic users, each pleading chronic overwork. This pile is three letters signed by over a hundred female wizards, who claim they are being denied equal rights. They are accurate. Mr Chesney does not think females can be wizards.” Her hands moved on to a mighty stack of parchments with large red seals dangling off them. “This,” she said, “is from the kings. Every monarch in the world has written to me at least once protesting at what the tours do to their kingdoms. It is probably only necessary to quote from one. King Luther, perhaps you would care to give us the gist of the letter I receive from you once a month?”

“Yes, I would,” said King Luther. He leant forward and gripped the table with powerful blue-knuckled hands. “My kingdom is being ravaged,” he said. “I have been selected as Evil King fifteen times in the last twenty years, with the result that I have a tour through once a week, invading my court and trying to kill me or my courtiers. My wife has left me and taken the children with her for safety. The towns and countryside are being devastated. If the army of the Dark Lord doesn’t march through and sack my city, then the Forces of Good do it next time. I admit I’m being paid quite well for this, but the money I earn is so urgently needed to repair the capital for the next Pilgrim Party that there is almost none to spare for helping the farmers. They grow hardly anything these days. You must be aware, High Chancellor—”

Querida’s hand went to the next pile, which was of paper, in various shapes and sizes. “I am aware, thank you, Your Majesty. These letters are a selection of those I get from farmers and ordinary citizens. They all state that what with magical weather-conditions, armies marching over crops, soldiers rustling cattle, fires set by Dark Lord’s Minions and other hazards, they are likely to starve for the foreseeable future.” She picked up another smallish pile of paper. “Almost the only people who seem to be prospering are the innkeepers and they complain that the lack of barley is making it hard to brew sufficient ale.”

“My heart bleeds,” King Luther said sourly. “Where would we be if a Pilgrim Party arrived at an inn with no beer?”

“Mr Chesney would not be pleased,” murmured a High Priest. “May the gods defend us, Anscher preserve us from that!”

“Chesney’s only a man,” muttered the delegate from the Thieves’ Guild.

“Don’t let him hear you say that!” Barnabas said warningly.

“Of course he’s only a man,” snapped Querida. “He just happens to be the most powerful man in the world, and I’ve taken steps to ensure that he cannot hear us inside this council chamber. Now may I go on? Thank you. We are being pressured to find a solution by several bodies. Here” – she picked up a large and beautifully lettered parchment with paintings in the margins – “is an ultimatum from Bardic College. They say that Mr Chesney and his agents appear to regard all bards with the tours as expendable. Rather than lose any more promising musicians, they say here, they are refusing to take part in any tours this year, unless we can guarantee the safety of—”

“But we can’t!” protested a wizard two places down from Barnabas.

“True,” said Querida. “I fear the bards are going to have to explain themselves to Mr Chesney. I also have here similar but more moderate letters from the seers and the healers. The seers complain that they have to foresee imaginary events and that this is against the articles of their guild, and the healers, like the wizards, complain of chronic overwork. At least they only threaten not to work this year. And here—” she lifted up a small ragged pile of paper, “here are letters from the mercenary captains. Most of them say that replacements to manpower, equipment and armour cost them more than the fees they earn from the Pilgrim Parties, and this one on top from – Black Gauntlet, I think the man’s name is – also very feelingly remarks that he wants to retire to a farm, but he has not in twenty years earned enough for one coo—”

“One what?” said King Luther.

“Cow. He can’t spell,” said Barnabas.

“—even if there were any farms where he would be safe from the tours,” said Querida. She shuffled more papers, saying as she shuffled, “Pathetic letters from nuns, monks, werewolves. Where are—? Oh yes, here.” She picked up a white sheet which glowed faintly and a large pearly slice of what seemed to be shell, covered with faint marks. “Probably one of their old scales,” she remarked. “These are protests from the Elves and the dragons.”

“What have they got to complain of?” another wizard asked irritably.

“Both put it rather obscurely,” Querida confessed. “I think the Elfking is talking about blackmail and the dragons seem to be bewailing the shrinking of their hoards of treasure, but both of them seem to be talking about their birthrate too, so one cannot be sure. You can all read them in a short while, if you wish, along with any other letters you want. For now, have I made my point?” Her pouchy eyes darted to look at everyone around the long table. “I have asked everyone I can think of to tell me how the tours affect them. I have received over a million replies. My study is overflowing with them and I invite you all to go and inspect it. What I have here are only the most important. And the important thing is that they all, in different ways, say the same thing. They want an end to Mr Chesney’s Pilgrim Parties.”

“And have you thought of a way to stop them?” Barnabas asked eagerly.

“No,” said Querida. “There is no way.”

“What?” shouted almost everyone round the table.

“There is no way,” Querida repeated, “that I can think of. Perhaps I should remind you that Mr Chesney’s decisions are supported by an extremely powerful demon. All the signs are that he made a pact with it when he first started the tours.”

“Yes, but that was forty years ago,” objected the young Emperor of the South. “Some of us weren’t born then. Why should I have to keep on doing what that demon made my grandfather do?”

“Don’t be foolish,” Querida snapped. “Demons are immortal.”

“But Mr Chesney isn’t,” argued the young Emperor.

“Possibly he isn’t, but I’ve heard he has children being groomed to take over after him,” Barnabas said sadly.

Querida’s eyes darted to the Emperor in venomous warning. “Don’t speak like that outside this room. Mr Chesney does not like to hear anyone being less than enthusiastic about his Pilgrims, and we do not mention the demon. Have I made myself plain?” The young Emperor swallowed and sat back. “Good,” said Querida. “Now, to business. The tour agents have been in this world for over a month and the arrangements for this year’s tours are almost complete. Mr Chesney is due here himself tomorrow to give the Dark Lord and the Wizard Guides their final briefings. The purpose of this meeting is supposed to be to appoint this year’s Dark Lord.”

Heavy sighs ran round the table. “All right,” said one of the wizards, out of the general dejection. “Who is it to be? Not me. I did it last year.”

Querida gave her sour little smile, folded her hands and sat back. “I have no idea,” she said blandly. “I have no more idea who is to be Dark Lord than I have about how to stop the tours. I propose that we consult the Oracles.”

There was a long, thoughtful silence. Relieved shiftings began around the table as even the slowest of the people there realised that Querida was, after all, trying to find a way out. At last, the High Priest said dubiously, “Madam Chancellor, I understood that the Oracles were set up for Mr Chesney by wizards of the University—”

“And by a former High Priest, who asked the gods to speak through the Oracles,” Querida agreed. “Is that any reason why they shouldn’t work, Reverend Umru?”

“Well,” said the High Priest. “Er. Mightn’t the Oracles, in that case, be – well – biased?”

“Probably,” said Querida. “For that reason, I propose to ask both the White Oracle and the Black Oracle. They will say two different things and we will do them both.”

“Er,” said High Priest Umru. “Two Dark Lords?”

“If necessary,” said Querida. “Anything it takes.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. Because she was so small, this kept her head at exactly the same height. Her small lizard-like chin jutted as she looked round the table. “We can’t all go to the Oracles,” she said, “and some of you look far too tired. I shall take a representative body. King Luther, I think, and Barnabas, you come. And you, High Priest Umru—”

Umru stood up and bowed, with his hands clasped across his large belly. “Madam Chancellor, I would hate to be selected on false pretences. I am probably one of the few people here who does not object to the Pilgrim Parties. My temple has prospered exceedingly out of them over the years.”

“I know,” said Querida. “You people keep taking me for a fool. I want you as a representative of the other point of view, of course. And I’ll take you too, for the same reason.” Her hand darted out like a snake’s tongue to point at the delegate from the Thieves’ Guild.

He was a young man, thin and fair and clever-looking. He was extremely surprised. “Me?” he said. “Are you sure?”

“What a silly question,” Querida said. “Your Guild must have made a mint from the Pilgrims, one way and another.”

A strange expression crossed the face of the thief, but he got up without a word. His clothing was as rich as that of the High Priest. His long silk sleeves swirled as he walked gracefully round the table. “Aren’t the Oracles in the Distant Desert?” he asked. “How do we go?”

“By a translocation spell I have already set up,” Querida said. “Come over here, the four of you.” She led the way to the empty part of the room, where one of the large flagstones in the floor could be seen to have faint marks round its edges. “The rest of you can start reading those letters while we’re away,” she said. “And I’ll need a name for you,” she told the young thief.

“Oh – Regin,” he said.

“Stand here,” Querida said, pushing him to one corner of the flagstone. She pushed King Luther, Barnabas and High Priest Umru to each of the other corners and slithered between Umru and King Luther to stand in the centre of the stone herself. From the point of view of the people still sitting at the table, she disappeared entirely behind Umru’s belly. Then, quietly and without warning, all five of them vanished and the flagstone was bare.

From the point of view of the four people with Querida, it was like suddenly stepping into an oven – an oven that was probably on fire, King Luther thought, shielding his eyes with his stout woollen sleeve. Sweat ran out from under Barnabas’s curls. Umru gasped and staggered and then tried wretchedly to get sand out of his embroidered slippers and loosen his vestments at the same time.

Only Querida was perfectly happy. She said “Ah!” and stretched, turning her face up to the raging sun with a blissful smile. Her eyes, the young thief noticed, were wide open and looking straight into the sun. Wizards! he thought. He was as uncomfortable as the other three, but he had been trained to seem cool and keep his wits about him. He looked around. The Oracles were only a few yards away. They were two small domed buildings, the one on the left so black that it looked like a hole in the universe, and the one on the right so dazzlingly white that sweat ran stinging into his eyes and he had to look away from it.

While they waited for the other three to recover, Querida took Regin’s arm and pulled him across the sand, towards the white building. “Why did you look so oddly when I said your guild must have made a mint from the tours?” she hissed up at him. “Does that mean you want the tours stopped too?”

Trust her to notice! the thief thought ruefully. “Not exactly, Madam Chancellor. But if you think about it, you’ll see that after forty years we haven’t got much else to steal. We’re debating stealing from one another – and even if we did, there’s nothing much left to spend what we steal on. Actually, I was sent to ask whether it was permissible to steal from the Pilgrims.”

“Don’t you steal from tourists?” Querida asked. When he shook his head, another blissful grin spread over Querida’s little lizard face. “Do you know, I believe that must be one thing that Mr Chesney forgot to put in his rules. By all means start stealing from tourists.” Her face darted round towards Umru, who was now mopping his head with his embroidered cape. “Come along, man! Don’t just stand there! Come along, all of you, before you fry. We’ll begin with the White Oracle.”

She led the way to the white building. Regin followed, stepping lightly in his soft boots, although sweat trickled past his ears. King Luther and Barnabas trudged glumly after them. Umru floundered behind and had some trouble fitting through the narrow white doorway.

Inside, it was dark and beautifully cool. They stood in a row looking into a complete darkness that seemed to take up much more space than such a small building could hold.

“What do we do?” King Luther asked.

“Wait,” said Querida. “Watch.”

They waited. After a while, as happens when you stare into total darkness, they all thought they could see dots, blobs and twirling patterns. Sun dazzle, King Luther thought. Trick of the eyeballs, Regin thought. Take no notice. Means nothing.

All at once the seeming dazzles gathered purposefully together. It was impossible to think they meant nothing. In a second or so, they definitely formed the shape of something that might have been human, though swirling and too tall, composed of dim reds and sullen blues and small flashes of green. A soft hollow voice, with a lot of echoes behind it, said, Speak your question, mortals.

“Thank you,” Querida said briskly. “Our question is this: What do we do to abolish the Pilgrim Parties and get rid of Mr Chesney for good?”

The swirling shape dived, mounted to something twenty feet high and then shrank to something Querida’s size, weaving this way and that. It seemed agitated. But the hollow voice, when it spoke, was the same as before. You must appoint as Dark Lord the first person you see on leaving here.

“Much obliged,” said Querida.

Quite suddenly, the little temple was not dark at all. It was a very small space, hardly big enough for the five of them, with bare white walls and a floor of drifted sand in which bits of rubbish could be seen, evidently dropped by other people who had been to consult the White Oracle. There were scraps of paper, a small shoe, buckles, straps and plumstones. Something flashed, half-buried in the sand by the toes of Regin’s boots. While everyone was turning to go out, he stooped and picked it deftly up, and then paused in surprise with the rest of them, because the doorway was no longer narrow. It was now wide enough for all five of them to walk out side by side. They stepped forward into the heat again, blinking at empty miles of glaring desert.

“No one here,” said Querida.

“I suppose it’ll be the first person we see when we get back then,” Barnabas said.

Regin looked at what he had picked up. It was a strip of cloth. There were black letters printed on it that read: Be careful what you ask for: you may get it. He passed it silently to King Luther, who was nearest.

“Now it warns us!” said King Luther, and passed it to Umru.

“This is something I often tell my flock,” Umru said.

“Wizards know it too,” Barnabas said. He took the cloth and passed it to Querida. “We’ve been warned, Querida. Do you still want to consult the Black Oracle as well?”

“Of course I do. And I am always very careful what I ask for,” Querida retorted. She led the way across the short distance to the black temple. The others looked at one another, shrugged, and followed.

The black building breathed out cold from its surface. Umru sighed with relief as he came under its walls, but his teeth were actually chattering slightly by the time it was his turn to squeeze through the narrow entrance. Inside, he moaned miserably, because it was as hot in there as the desert outside. He stood puffing and panting in deep darkness while, just as before, dazzles and blobs gathered in front of their eyes.

We wait for them to gather, Regin thought wisely. But this time, instead of gathering, the twirling dazzles retreated, swirling away to the sides and glowing more and more strongly. It took all the watchers a full minute to realise that the darkness left behind was now the shape of a huge nearly-human figure.

“Oh, I see!” muttered Querida.

You do? said a great hollow voice. It was deep as a coalmine. Then ask.

“Thank you,” said Querida and, just as before, she asked, “What do we do to abolish the Pilgrim Parties and get rid of Mr Chesney for good?”

There was a long, long silence. The darkness remained absolutely still while the silence lasted, and then abruptly quivered and broke up, with shoots of light rushing through it from either side. When it spoke again, the deep voice shook a little.

You must appoint as Wizard Guide to the last tour the second person you see on leaving here.

Then, as in the white temple, the space was small and empty and they were crowded together, standing among rubbish. It was slightly less hot.

“I swear that thing was laughing!” Barnabas said as they turned to go and found, as before, that the doorway was now wide enough to take all of them.

Something glittered in the sand by Regin’s boot. This time he did not pick it up. He put his toe under it and nudged it until he could see that it was a scrap of paper with one gold edge. Sure enough, it had written on it: Be careful what you ask for: you may get it. He decided not to mention it to the others.

“Well, the desert’s still empty,” said King Luther. “Oh!”

A man was just coming out of the temple of the White Oracle. He was a tall, fattish, mild-faced man, dressed in the kind of clothes farmers wore. He was edging sideways out of the narrow entrance with one arm up to shade his eyes, but they could all see his face quite clearly.

Barnabas said, “Oh no!” and King Luther said, “I’ll be damned!” Umru shook his head. “Be careful what you ask for,” he sighed. Querida drew in a little hiss of breath.

“What’s the matter?” asked Regin. “Who is he? Who are they, I mean?” he added as someone else squeezed out of the white doorway behind the wide man. This person was a boy of about fourteen who looked rather like the man, except that he was skinny where the man was wide. As he asked, the man rounded on the boy.

“There,” he said. “You’re answered. Satisfied?”

“No I am not!” said the boy. “I’ve never heard of this person. Who is he?”

“Goodness knows,” replied the man. “But he’s no one at the University, so it’s quite clear you’re not going to the University to learn your wizardry anyway. I was right.”

The boy’s chin bunched angrily. “There’s no need to look so pleased. You always try to stop me doing what I want!”

And the two of them stood in the sand and shouted at one another.

“Who are they?” Regin asked again.

“I don’t know the boy,” Querida said, “but I know the man all right. His name is Derk. And he did once qualify at the University as a wizard. There is no doubt Mr Chesney would accept him as Dark Lord.”

“The boy’s his son,” Barnabas said. “His name’s Blade. Querida, I don’t want to do this. Derk is a nice man and a friend of mine. He’s actually very gifted—”

“There are two opinions about that,” Querida snapped. “Has the boy any talent?”

“Bags of it,” Barnabas said miserably. “Takes after his mother.”

“Oh – Mara, I remember,” Querida said. “I must talk to Mara. That’s settled then. We have our Dark Lord and our Wizard Guide according to both the Oracles.”

“We could always pretend we hadn’t seen them and choose the next two people we see,” King Luther suggested.

“The gods forfend!” Umru gasped, mopping his face with his undercape.

Querida shot King Luther her snakiest look and marched over to the two outside the white temple. As she reached them, Derk was leaning forward to bawl into his son’s face, with a wholly reasonable air, as if he were simply discussing something quietly, “I tell you, the University’s not a place to learn anything these days. They haven’t had a new idea for thirty years. All they do is crawl to Mr Chesney.”

Querida could easily pretend not to hear this, because Blade was at the same time screaming, “I don’t want to hear! It’s just excuses to stop me doing what I want! You let Shona go to Bardic College, so why don’t you let me learn magic?”

“ER – HEM!” said Querida, loudly enlarged by magic.

Derk and Blade both whirled round. “Tyrant!” Blade screamed in her face and then bowed over, consumed with embarrassment.

Derk surveyed the tiny glistening lady in the robes of High Chancellor. His eyes travelled on to the tall glum sweaty figure of King Luther and the huge shape of Umru and the blisters of sweat popping out on his vast red-blotched cheeks. He nodded to them and smiled at Barnabas, whose curls were wet and whose face was even redder than Umru’s. Finally he looked at the young man in the rear who was a stranger to him and only pretending not to be hot. “Oh hallo,” he said. “What are you all doing here? Is there some reason you aren’t using a refrigeration spell?”

“No, I forgot, bother it!” said Querida. “I like the heat.”

Derk nudged Blade. Blade recovered from his embarrassment enough to make a slight gesture. Incredible, blessed coolness spread over the four men. “Bags of talent indeed,” Regin murmured.

“Thank you, young man,” Umru said gratefully.

Blade was clearly intending to demonstrate that it was not usual for him to scream into people’s faces. He bowed. “You’re welcome, Your Reverence,” he said with great politeness. “And – excuse me – do any of you know a wizard called Deucalion?” He looked round them anxiously as they all shrugged and shook their heads. “Magic user then?” he asked, with his voice dropping hopelessly.

“Never heard of anyone of that name, Blade,” said Barnabas. “Why?”

“He’s the one the White Oracle says is going to train me as a wizard,” Blade explained. “Dad’s never heard of him either.” He sighed.

Querida swept this aside. “We, as it happens, have consulted the Oracles also,” she said. “They have named you, Wizard Derk, as this year’s Dark Lord and you, young Blade, as Wizard Guide to the last tour.”

“Now listen—” said Derk.

“No arguing with the Oracles, Derk,” Barnabas said quietly.

“But—” said Blade.

“Nor you, young man,” said Querida. “Both of you are going to be very busy for the next six months.”

At this Derk stirred himself, powerfully but a little uncertainly, and stood over Querida. “I don’t think you can do this,” he said.

“Oh yes I can,” she said. “Go home and make ready. Tomorrow at midday sharp, Mr Chesney and all the Wizard Guides and I will be arriving at your house to brief you on this year’s plans.” When Derk still stood there, she gazed up at him like a cobra ready to strike and added, “In case you are planning to be away from home tomorrow, I must point out you are in a very poor position, Wizard Derk. You have not paid your wizard’s dues to the University for fifteen years. This gives me the right to exact penalties.”

“I sent you a griffin’s egg,” Derk said.

“It was addled,” said Querida. “As I am sure you knew.”

“And I couldn’t send you anything else,” Derk went on seriously. “All the products of my wizardry are alive. It would be criminal to shut them up in the University dues-vault. You’d want to kill them and embalm them first. Besides, my wife has paid dues enough for the two of us.”

“Mara’s miniature universes are quite irrelevant to Mr Chesney,” Querida stated. “Be warned, Wizard Derk. Either you present yourself at Derkholm to Mr Chesney and the rest of us tomorrow, or you have every magic user in this world looking for you to make you be Dark Lord. Do I make myself clear?”

Blade pulled his father’s arm. “Better go, Dad.”

“And you, young man,” said Querida. “You’re to be there too.”

Blade succeeded in pulling his father round sideways, but Derk still looked down at Querida across his own shoulder. “No one should have this kind of power,” he said.

“To whom do you refer, Wizard?” she asked, still in her cobra stance.

“Chesney, of course,” Derk said rather hastily.

Here Blade pulled harder and the two of them disappeared in a stinging cloud of blown sand.

“Phew!” said Barnabas. “Poor old Derk!”

“Let us go home more slowly,” said Querida. “I feel a little tired.”

The return journey was more like a lingering walk, in which they trod now on a patch of hot sand, now on wiry dead grass, now on rocks or moss. Regin put himself beside Querida as they went. “Who is this Wizard Derk?” he asked.

Querida sighed. “A shambles of a man. The world’s worst wizard, to my mind.”

“Oh come now, Querida,” said Barnabas. “He’s excellent at what he does – just a little unconventional, you know. When we were students together I always thought he was twice as bright as me.”

Querida shuddered. “Unconventional is a kind word for it. I was Senior Instructor then. Of all the things he did wrong, my worst memories are of being dragged up in the middle of the night to deal with that vast blue demon that Derk had called up and couldn’t put down. You remember?”

Barnabas nodded and bit his lip in order not to laugh. “Nobody knew its name, so none of the usual exorcisms worked. It took the entire staff of the University to get rid of it in the end. All through the night. Derk was never much good at conventional wizardry, I admit. But you use him a lot, don’t you, Reverend?”

Umru smiled sweetly, his fat comfortable cool self again. “I pay for Wizard Derk’s services almost every time my temple has a tour party through. No one but Wizard Derk can make a convincing human corpse out of a dead donkey.” Regin stared. Umru smiled ever more sweetly. “Or a sheep,” he said. “We are always chosen as an evil priesthood, and the Pilgrims expect us to have a vilely tortured sacrifice to display. Wizard Derk saves us the necessity of using people.”

“Oh,” said Regin. He turned to where King Luther was trudging grimly in the rear. “And you, Your Majesty? You know this wizard too?”

“We use him for hangings and heads on spikes occasionally,” King Luther said, “But I hire him most often for the feast when the damn Pilgrims have gone. He has performing animals. Pigs mostly.”

“Pigs?” said Regin.

“Yes, pigs,” said King Luther. “They fly.”

“Oh,” Regin said again. As he said it, they arrived back on the flagstone in the council room again. Regin’s teeth chattered, Barnabas was shivering, Umru was juddering all over. Querida was unaffected. So was King Luther, whose northern kingdom was never warm.

“What is the matter?” Umru cried out. People turned from reading the heaps of letters on the table to stare at him. He held his hands out piteously. “Look. Blue!”

“Oh. Um,” said Barnabas. “It’s young Blade’s fault, I’m afraid. Boys of that age never know their own strength. I’ll do what I can, but it may take an hour or so.”

erkholm was in an uproar. Blade’s sister Shona was by the stables, saddling two of the horses so that Derk could take her to Bardic College as soon as he got home from the Oracle, when Elda came galloping up with her wings spread, rowing herself along for extra speed, screaming that Derk was going to be Dark Lord. Elda was squawking with excitement, according to Don, who had been galloping after Elda to try to calm things down, and Shona either did not understand her or did not believe her straight away. When she did, Shona instantly unsaddled the horses and turned them back into the paddock.

According to Don, Shona then struck a fine pose (it was something Shona had been doing ever since she was enrolled as a trainee bard, and it annoyed Don particularly and Kit almost as much) and declared, “I’ll put off going to college for as long as Dad needs me. We have to show family solidarity over this.”

Shona, despite the pose, was highly excited by the news. As she raced back to the house carrying her saddlebags and violin case, with Don and Elda bounding ahead, all the animals caught it, even the Friendly Cows, and the rest of the day was loud with honks, squawks, moos and the galloping of variously shaped feet.

Otherwise, Blade thought sourly, there was not much family solidarity around. When Shona burst in, flushed and looking violently pretty, their parents were having a row. Derk was roaring, “There must be a way to get out of it! I refuse to touch Chesney’s money!” Though he was not much given to wizardly displays, Derk was feeling so strongly that he was venting magefire in all directions. One of the hall carpets was in flames.

“Dad!” Shona cried out. “You’ll set the house on fire!”

Neither of their parents attended, though Mara shot Shona an angry look. Mara was enclosed in the steel-blue light of a wizard’s shields and she seemed quite as excited as Shona. “Stop being a fool, Derk!” she was shouting. “If the Oracle says you’re to be Dark Lord, then there’s nothing you can do!”

Magefire fizzed on Mara’s shields as Derk howled back, “Sod the Oracle! I’m not going to stand for it! And you should be helping me find a way out of it, not standing there backing the whole rotten system up!”

“I’m doing no such thing!” Mara screamed. “I’m merely trying to tell you it’s inevitable. You’d know that too if you weren’t in such a tantrum!”

Blade was trying to stamp out the flames on the rugs when the big griffin Callette lumbered calmly through the front door carrying the rainwater butt and upended it over the carpet. The hall hissed and steamed and smelt horrible.

Shona hastily snatched her luggage out of the water. “Dad,” she said, “be reasonable. We’ll all help you. We’ll get you through it somehow. Think of it. You’ve got five griffins, two wizards and a bard, who are all going to look after you while you do it. I bet none of the other Dark Lords has ever had help like you’ve got.”

You had to hand it to Shona, Blade thought. She was far better at getting on with Dad than he was. Within minutes, Derk was calm enough simply to go striding about the house with his face all puzzled and drooping, saying over and over, “There has to be a way out of it!” while Shona followed him, coaxing. Elda did her bit by following Derk too, looking sweet and golden and cuddly.

Blade managed to talk to his mother at last.

He found her sitting at the kitchen table, pale but relieved-seeming, while Lydda made supper. Lydda was the only one of the griffins who really liked cooked food. And she not only liked it, she was passionate about it. She was always inventing new dishes. Blade found it very hard to understand. In Lydda’s place, he would have felt like Cinderella, but it was clear Lydda felt nothing of the kind. She said, turning her yellow beak and one large bright eye towards Blade, “Do you have to come and get under my feet in here?”

Mara looked up at Blade’s face. “Yes,” she said. “He does.”

Lydda’s tail lashed, but she said nothing. The golden feathers of her wings and crest were loud with No Comment.

“What did the Oracle say?” Mara asked Blade.

“Your teacher will be Deucalion,” Blade quoted glumly. He saw his mother’s fine, fair eyebrows draw together. “Don’t tell me. You haven’t heard of him either.”

“No – o,” Mara said. “The name rings a bell somewhere, but I certainly don’t remember any wizard of that name. It must be some other magic user. Be patient. He – or she – will turn up, Blade. The White Oracle is always right.”

Blade sighed.

“And what else?” asked his mother.

“Why doesn’t Dad understand?” Blade burst out. “He let Shona go to bard college. Why is he so set against me going to University? I’ve told him and told him that I need to get there and get some training now in the junior section if I’m going to be properly grounded – and all he says is that he’ll teach me himself. And he can’t, Mum! You can’t. The things I can do are all quite different from yours or Dad’s. So why?”

“Well, there are two reasons,” Mara said. “The first is that the University didn’t understand Derk, or treat him at all well, when he was there. I was there with him, so I know what a miserable time he had. Your father was full of new ideas – like creating the griffins – and he wanted nothing so much as to be helped to find out how to make those ideas work. But instead of helping him, they tried to force him to do things their way. It didn’t matter to them at all that he was brilliant in his way. They went on at him about how wizardry these days had to be directed towards things that made the tours better, and they told him contemptuously that pure research was no use. I found him in tears more than once, Blade.”

“Yes, but that was him,” Blade objected. “I’m different. I’ve got lots of ideas but I don’t want to try them out yet. I want to know the normal things first.”

“Fair enough,” said Mara. “I didn’t share my ideas about micro-universes in those days. But you can surely understand the second reason Derk doesn’t want you at the University. They really do nothing there these days that isn’t going to help the tours. They haven’t time to look beyond. They probably don’t dare to. And your father thinks, rightly or wrongly, that you’ll end up as miserable as he was, or that you’ll find yourself doing nothing but look after the tours like the rest of them. And that would break his heart, Blade.”

Blade found himself wanting to say whole numbers of things – everything from I do understand to But this is not his life, it’s mine! – and could only manage, rather sulkily, “Well, it turns out we’re both having to look after the tours anyway.”

Before Mara could reply, Lydda cut in with, “This Mr Chesney – does he eat the same stuff as us? He’s from a different world, isn’t he?”

Mara sprang up. “Oh – yes. I’m sure he does. That reminds me—”

“Good,” said Lydda. “I’m planning godlike snacks.”

“And I must get us organised,” said Mara. “Let me see – there’ll be eighty-odd wizards, plus two people with Mr Chesney, and us. Blade, come and help me see if we can turn the dining room into a Great Hall. And there’s your father’s clothes—”

From then on it was all a mighty bustle. Derk, for the most part, strode through it muttering “There must be a way out!” and doing all his usual things, like feeding and exercising the animals, turning the sprinkler on his coffee bushes, milking the Friendly Cows and checking his experiments, while everyone else raced about. Blade thought rather angrily that Dad seemed to have taken Shona’s offer of help far too literally. Derk did not come near the house until Blade and Mara were trying to move the garden.

It was almost dark by then. Before that, Blade and Mara had tried to stretch the house out to make room for a Great Hall in the middle. Shona decided that they needed marble stairs, too, leading into the Hall, and sat on the ordinary wooden stairs making drawings of sculptured bannisters and sketches of the sort of clothes Derk should wear. But before the house was even half long enough, there were alarming creakings and crunchings from all over it. Kit roared a warning, and Don and Elda dashed indoors to say the middle of the roof was dipping downwards, spreading the tiles like scales on a fircone. At the same time, Lydda shrieked that the kitchen was falling in and Shona shouted that the new marble stairs were swaying. Blade and Mara had to prop the house up and think again.

“Put everyone out on the terrace,” Kit suggested, “and make sure it doesn’t rain. That way, the griffins can help hand round the food.”

This was almost the only help Kit had offered, Blade thought morosely, and he knew it was only because Kit was far too big to be comfortable indoors these days. At least Don and Elda were helping in the kitchen. Or no, Blade knew he was being unfair to Kit really. After Blade and Mara had expanded the terrace into a large stone platform reaching halfway to the front gates, Kit got busy hauling all the tables and chairs in the house out there. Blade’s annoyance with Kit was because he knew the griffins were up to something. He had seen all five of them, even Lydda – and Callette, who almost never, on principle, did anything Kit wanted – gathered in a secretive cluster round Kit in the twilight. It made Blade feel hurt and left out. The griffins were, after all, his brothers and sisters. Most of the time, it worked like that. But there were times – like this, and almost always under Kit’s leadership – when the griffins shut the rest of them out. Blade hated it.

So much for family solidarity! he thought, and turned to help Mara to bend and push the shrubberies and all the flowerbeds into some kind of shape around the new, huge terrace. “If we shunt the little forest up to this corner—” Mara said to him. “No, even if we do, we’ll have to straighten the drive. I know your father hates straight lines in a garden, but there simply isn’t room.”

Here Don backed out on to the terrace carrying one end of the piano stool, with Shona attached to the other end of it, screaming, “I said give it back! I need it to do my practice on!”

Kit slammed down the kitchen table and gave voice like six out-of-tune bugles. “LET HIM TAKE IT. WE NEED IT. YOU CAN PRACTISE AT COLLEGE.”

“No I can’t! I’m not going to college until this is over! I promised Dad!” Shona shrilled.

“You’re still going to give it here.” Kit dropped to all fours, tail slashing, and advanced on Shona. Even on all fours, he towered over her.

“You big bully,” Shona said, not in the least impressed. “Do you want me to poke you in the eye?”

“I think I’d better break that up,” Mara said.

But at that point Derk appeared, rushing across the acre of terrace to stare down at the twilit garden in horror. “What do you think you’re doing, woman?”

“Trying to make it fit – what did you think?” Mara said, while behind Derk, Kit and Shona hastily pretended to be having a friendly discussion.

“Leave it. I’ll do it,” said Derk. “Why is it that no one but me has the slightest artistic sense when it comes to gardening?”

Everyone went to bed exhausted.

izards began arriving from about eleven the next morning. When Querida and Barnabas reached the gates of Derkholm, they found themselves met by a silent pair of griffins. These were Don and Lydda. Kit, for some reason, had insisted on a matched pair. Don and Lydda were the same age – thirteen – and almost the same handsome golden-to-brown colours, and they were the same size, if you allowed for the fact that Lydda’s shape was – to put it politely – chunky, while Don’s was spare. Under the big gold-tinted brown feathers of his wings, his ribs always showed and always worried Mara.

The two of them preceded Querida and Barnabas up the straight drive (for, despite working until after midnight, Derk had not found room to make the drive wander as he wanted) and to the enormous terrace, where they politely bowed the two wizards up the steps. It was perhaps unfortunate that the moving around of the garden had resulted in the clump of man-eating orchids arriving at a bed just beside these steps. They made a dart at Querida as she passed, all several dozen yellow blooms at once. Querida turned and looked at them. The orchids drew back hastily.

On the terrace, the various tables had been converted into one long one, covered with a white cloth – which had been two dozen tea towels an hour before – and the assorted chairs had become identical graceful gold seats. Mara felt rather proud of the effect as she came forward wearing a rich brocade dress – Shona had stylishly sewn together two aprons and a tablecloth to make the basis of the dress – to show the newcomers to their seats.

Derk was beside Mara in clothes Shona and Mara had worked on late into the night. They were indigo velvet – Callette’s idea – with a cloak that swirled to reveal a starry night sky. It was real sky and real stars, as if seen small and distant. Querida naturally ignored this wondrous lining. “I’m glad to see you’re being sensible about this, Wizard Derk,” she said.

“Not sensible,” he said. “Resigned.” While he worked on the garden in the dark, it had come to Derk that the only way to go through with this was to promise himself that, as soon as it was over, he would start work at once on a completely new kind of animal.

Barnabas, like every other wizard to arrive, was captivated by the lining of that cloak. “Is that real sky?” he asked. “How?”

Derk annoyed Mara, as he had annoyed her when every single other wizard had asked about it, by lifting one arm to peer at the miraculous lining she had worked so hard to fix there, and saying, “Oh, it’s just one of Mara’s clever little universes, you know.” He saw Mara turn away in irritation and lead Querida to the chair reserved for her. She and Querida seemed to have a lot to say to one another. He cursed the Oracle. It was not just that he did not like Querida. This Dark Lord business was already putting differences between himself and Mara, and he had a feeling it could end by separating them entirely. He said glumly to Barnabas, “We’ve put you and Querida at the end where Mr Chesney’s going to sit.”

As Barnabas sat in a golden chair that was in fact Shona’s piano stool, Callette tramped up the steps and thumped down another barrel of beer. Barnabas eyed it gladly. “Ah!” he said. “Is that some of Derk’s own brew?” Callette inspected him with one large grey and black eye and nodded briefly before she went away.

Why aren’t they talking? Blade wondered as he came on to the terrace carrying their biggest coffee pot. Elda was in front of him, pushing a trolley loaded with wine, glasses and mugs. She had been in the kitchen with him for half an hour and nothing would possess her to utter a word. He supposed it was something to do with Kit’s plan. Stupid. He felt tired and nervous. And he had been woken far too early this morning by groanings and creakings from the overstretched roof. No one had had time to put it right. And there was no time now. Blade’s job was to make sure that every one of the eighty or so wizards round the table had the drinks they preferred. They did look tired, he thought, as he went his rounds with coffee pot and trolley. The fact that they were all in formal robes, red or white or black, made their faces look really pale and tired. And the beards did not help. Wizards he had met without beards had suddenly got them now.

“Oh, it’s the rules,” one of the younger ones, a wizard called Finn, told him. “Mr Chesney won’t hear of a wizard guiding a Pilgrim Party without a beard. Coffee, please. How do you come by your coffee? I can only get it from the tours. I asked to be paid in coffee last year, I love it so much.”

“My father grows it,” Blade said.

“Really?” Finn said eagerly. “Will he sell me any?”

“I should think so,” said Blade. “Look – does that mean I’ll have to wear a beard? I’m supposed to be a Wizard Guide.”

Finn gave him a startled look. “We-ell,” he said. “You’d look a bit odd – see what Mr Chesney says.”

I can’t wait! thought Blade. You’d think Mr Chesney rules the universe.

Once every wizard was in a seat and supplied with a drink, Shona stepped out through the windows at the end of the terrace, carrying her violin and wearing her green bardic robes. They made her look lovely. Shona’s hair was darker than Mara’s, dark, glossy and wavy. Otherwise she had inherited her mother’s good looks. Several wizards made admiring noises as she set the violin under her chin. Shona’s colour became lovelier than ever. She struck an attitude and, very conscious of admiring stares, began to play divinely.

“Can’t you stop her showing off?” Derk murmured to Mara as he went round with a bottle of wine.

“She’ll grow out of it,” Mara whispered back.

“She’s seventeen!” Derk hissed angrily. “It’s about time she did.”

“She’s beautiful. She plays wonderfully. She’s entitled!” Mara whispered forcefully.

“Bah!” said Derk. Another disagreement already. What kind of animal would he create when this was over? He hadn’t done much with insects up to now.

As he considered insects, he felt the magics of Derkholm reacting with someone else’s. It felt like Barnabas. He gave Barnabas a puzzled look.

“It’s all right,” Barnabas said. “I made Mr Chesney a horseless carriage – thing with a sort of motor in front – years ago. He always uses it to get around in. That’ll be him coming now.”

Here we go then, Derk thought. He stared, along with everyone else, anxiously at the gates. You could see nothing but sky beyond the gates from the terrace, but he felt the other magics travel up the valley towards Derkholm, and then stop. Shortly Lydda and Don came pacing up the driveway, tails sedately swinging, and behind them strode a gaggle of purposeful-looking people, four of them, in tight dark clothes. Four! Derk looked anxiously at Mara and Mara hastily stood up, leaving an extra chair free. She picked up a bottle of wine and joined Blade by the trolley.

“Go and get the snacks now,” she whispered.

“In a second.” Blade was frankly fascinated by the people striding up the drive. All had their hair cut painfully short, even the one at the back, who was a woman in a tight striped skirt. The smallest man strode in front, not carrying anything. The other two men were large and they both carried little cases. The woman carried both a case and a board with papers clipped to it. On they came, looking neither right nor left, busy expressions on their faces. Blade, suddenly and unexpectedly, found he was hurt and quite angry that they did not bother even to glance at the garden that his father had worked so hard on last night. Derk had got it looking marvellous. They were not bothering to notice Don and Lydda, either, and they were looking quite as marvellous. Their coats shone with brushing and their feathers gleamed gold against the reds and greens and blues lining the drive.

Perhaps I have got some family solidarity after all! Blade thought, and he hoped the orchids would take a bite out of one of these people. He could tell Shona was feeling much the same. She was playing a marching tune, harshly, in time to the four pairs of striding feet.

They swept on up the steps. To Blade’s disappointment, something seemed to intimidate the orchids. They only made a half-hearted snap at the woman, and she did not notice. She just followed the others. The man in front behaved as if he had eighty wizards waiting for him round a huge table every day. He marched straight to the empty seat at the head of the table and sat in it, as if it was obvious where he would sit. The two other men took chairs on either side of him. The woman took Mara’s empty chair and moved it back so that she could sit almost behind the first man. He put out a hand and she put the little case into it without his needing to look. He slapped the case down on the table and clicked the locks back with a fierce snap.

“Good afternoon,” he said, in a flat, chilly voice.

“Good afternoon, Mr Chesney,” said nearly every wizard there.

Shona changed from a march to a sentimental ballad, full of treacly swooping.

Mr Chesney had greyish mouse-coloured lank hair and a bald patch half hidden by the lank hair combed severely across it. His face was small and white and seemed ordinary, until you noticed that his mouth was upside-down compared with most people’s. It sat in a grim downward curve under his pointed nose and above his small rocklike chin, like the opening to a man-trap. Once you had noticed that, you noticed that his eyes were like cold grey marbles.

Widow spiders, Derk thought desperately, if I gave them transparent green wings.

Lydda loped past Blade before he could observe any more, glaring at him. He and Elda both jumped guiltily and hurried away to the kitchen. They came back carrying large plates fragrantly piled with Lydda’s godlike snacks, in time to hear Mr Chesney’s flat voice saying, “Someone silence that slavegirl with the fiddle, please.”

There was a loud twang as one of Shona’s strings snapped. Her face went white and then flooded bright red.

Ants, thought Derk, with all sorts of interesting new habits. “You mean my daughter, Mr Chesney?” he asked pleasantly.

“Is she?” said Mr Chesney. “Then you should control her. I object to noise in a business meeting. And while I’m on the subject of control, I must say I am not at all pleased with that village at the end of your valley. You’ve allowed it to be far too prosperous. Some of the houses even look to have electric light. You must order it pulled down.”

“But—” Derk swallowed and thought the ants might have outsize stings. He did not say that he had no right to pull down the village, or add that everyone there was a friend of his. He could see there was no point. “Wouldn’t an illusion do just as well?”

“Settle it how you want,” said Mr Chesney. “Just remember that when the Pilgrim Parties arrive there, they will expect to see hovels, abject poverty and heaps of squalor, and that I expect them to get it. I also expect you to do something about this house of yours. A Dark Lord’s Citadel must always be a black castle with a labyrinthine interior lit by baleful fires – you will find our specifications in the guide Mr Addis will give you – and it would be helpful if you could introduce emaciated prisoners and some grim servitors to solemnise the frivolous effect of these monsters of yours.”

Perhaps the antstings could spread diseases, Derk thought. “You mean the griffins?”

“If that’s what the creatures are,” said Mr Chesney. “You are also required to supply a pack of hounds, black with red eyes, a few iron-fanged horses, leathery-winged avians etcetera – again, the guidebook will give you the details. Our Pilgrims will be paying for the very greatest evil, Wizard, and they must not be disappointed. By the same token, you must plough up these gardens and replace them with a gloomy forecourt and pits of balefire. And you’ll need the place to be guarded by a suitable demon.”

“I’ll supply the demon,” Querida put in quickly.

Derk remembered the blue demon as well as Querida did. He turned to give her a grateful look and caught sight of Mara, standing behind Querida, looking delighted. Now what? he thought. She knows I can’t summon demons. What makes her so happy about it? He thought hard of six different diseases an ant might spread and asked Mr Chesney, “Is there anything else?”

“Yes. You yourself,” Mr Chesney said. “Your appearance is far too pleasantly human. You will have to take steps to appear as a black shadow nine feet high, although, as our Pilgrims will only expect to meet you at the end of their tour, you need not appear very often. When they do meet you, however, they require to be suitably terrified. Your present appearance is quite inadequate.”

Diseases! Derk thought. But he could not resist saying, “Isn’t there a case for the Dark Lord appearing to have a divine and sickly beauty?”

“Not,” said Mr Chesney, “to any Pilgrim Party. Besides, this would interfere with our choice for this year’s novelty. This year, I have decided that one of your gods must manifest at least once to every party.”

An anxious rustle ran round the entire table.

Mr Chesney’s head came up and his mouth clamped like a man-trap round someone’s leg. “Is there some problem with that?”

Querida was the only person brave enough to answer. “There certainly is, Mr Chesney. Gods don’t appear just like that. And I don’t think any god has appeared to anyone for at least forty years.”

“I see no problem there,” Mr Chesney told her. He turned to Derk. “You must have a word with High Priest Umru. Tell him I insist on his deity appearing.” He picked a sheaf of crisp blue papers out of his little case and flicked the pages over. “Failure to supply this year’s novelty is covered by article twenty-nine of our original contract. Yes, here it is. I quote. ‘In the event of such failure all monies otherwise accruing as payment for services rendered over the tour or tours will be withheld by Chesney Pilgrim Parties for that year and the individuals responsible will be fined in addition a sum not exceeding one hundred gold coins.’ This means that no one will get paid unless a god appears. Yes, I think there’s no problem here,” Mr Chesney said. He put the papers away and sat back. “I shall now let Mr Addis take over the meeting.”

In the silence that followed, the large man on Mr Chesney’s right put his briefcase on the table and smiled jovially round at everyone. Mr Chesney meanwhile refused wine from Mara and beer from Elda, but accepted a cup of coffee from Blade, which he pushed to one side without tasting. He took a snack from the plate Lydda offered him, sniffed at it and, with a look of slight distaste, laid it beside the coffee. The woman behind him refused everything. At least, Blade thought, the wizards were eating and drinking heartily enough. The beer barrel was empty when he tested it.

“Tell Callette to bring another one,” he whispered to Elda in the dreadful silence.

Ants needn’t sting people to spread the diseases, Derk thought. They could do it just by crawling between people’s toes.

The large Mr Addis was fetching wads of different coloured pamphlets out of his case. Such was the silence that Blade could clearly hear the shiftings and creakings from the place where the stretched roof dipped down. He looked up anxiously. He saw a row of round snouts and interested little eyes peering over the bent gutter. So that was what the noise was! Blade nearly laughed. The pigs had discovered that the dip in the roof was beautifully warm and gave them an excellent view of the terrace. It looked as if the whole herd was up there. Some of the sounds were definitely those of a porker blissfully scratching its back against a loose tile. Blade longed to point the pigs out to Mara at least, but everyone was looking so shocked and solemn that he did not dare.

“Well, folks,” Mr Addis said cheerfully, “this year we have one hundred and twenty-six Pilgrim Parties booked. They’ll be starting a fortnight from now and going off daily in threes, from three different locations, for the next two months. In view of the unusual numbers, we’re confining the tours just to this continent, but that still gives us plenty of scope. It means that some of you Wizard Guides are going to have to do double tours, but you should get round that easily by aiming to get your first party of Pilgrims through in a snappy six weeks or so. We’ll be starting from the three inns in Gna’ash, Bil’umra and Slaz’in—”

“Where?” said Derk.

“—so apportion yourselves accordingly,” said Mr Addis. “Pardon?”

“I’ve never heard of these places,” said Derk.

“They’re all marked down on our map,” said Mr Addis. “Here.” He picked up the top one of his papers, a cream one, and handed it to Derk. Barnabas made a tired, practised gesture on the other side of the table, and there was a map in front of everyone. There was even one for Blade, on top of the plate of snacks he was holding. He put the plate on the table and unfolded the map. To his slight alarm, it meant nothing to him.

“Oh, I see,” said Derk. “You mean Greynash, Billingham and Sleane.”

“We like to rename our places, Mr Dark Lord, to give the right exotic touch,” Mr Addis explained kindly. “Now, as you’ll see, in order to get the Pilgrim Parties through all their scheduled adventures, we have to route them in a number of ways, colour-coded on your map. Note that some of you will have your temple episode early, some in the middle and some late, and that the same applies to the exotic eastern adventure. We then split the tours into two for the enslavement episode. Half of you will go north to be captured by pirates and half south to Costamara to be taken as gladiators. Because of this division, we have selected ten cities for sacking this year. Mr Dark Lord, please negotiate with your Dark Elves on this point and make sure they allow the Pilgrims to escape before the cities are burnt. And after this, all Pilgrim Parties come together again for the regular weekly battle in Umru’s lands. Wizard Guides must take care here that each party is unaware of the presence of other parties. We like our customers to believe that their own tour is unique. You’ll find all the tour-plans laid out in the pink schedule.”

He picked up a pink pamphlet. Barnabas made another gesture, and everyone had one of those too. Blade unfolded page after page of lists and swallowed unhappily. “And here are your colour-coded copies,” said Mr Addis. This time, Blade received a green paper that looked slightly simpler. The other wizards got blue or yellow or green lists.

In a fuzz of bewilderment, Blade heard Mr Addis continue, “Please take note that this year’s tour is choreographed around the one weakness of the Dark Lord. Each party will pick up clues to the Dark Lord’s weak point as it goes round, ending in the retrieval of an object that contains this weakness – this is to be guarded by a dragon in the north – and then going on, after the battle, to kill the Dark Lord. Mr Dark Lord, I’m sure I can count on you to lay one hundred and twenty-six clues at each spot marked with an asterisk on the map. And you will, of course need the same number of objects for the dragon to guard.”

Derk thought vehemently of ants crawling between people’s toes to spread disease. Otherwise, he thought he might cry. “What kind of objects have you in mind?” he asked.

“Any object, at your discretion,” smiled Mr Addis, “though we tend to prefer something with a romantic bias, such as a goblet or an orb. But basically it should be capable of containing the weakness of your choice.”

“Athlete’s foot?” asked Derk, with his mind on ants.

“We prefer it to be a magical weakness, or even a moral one,” Mr Addis corrected him, with a kindly smile.

Derk stared at him, unable to concentrate. It was not just that he was thinking of ants while being deluged with instructions and coloured papers. Mara was up to something. He could feel her working magic and it worried him acutely. “Moral weakness?” he said. “You mean sloth or something? Callette likes making objects. I suppose I could ask—”

And here was Callette herself, with her back talons grating the terrace as she heaved along another beer barrel. She set it down with an enormous thump, in the wrong place, between Mr Chesney and the woman with the clipboard. Whump. The top was open. Bright red stuff splashed in all directions, smelling rather nasty.

Chairs scraped as everyone but Mr Chesney got out of the way. The woman sprang up with a scream. “Oh, Mr Chesney! It’s blood!”

Blood was running down one side of Mr Chesney’s face and dripping on his suit. He turned and stared reprovingly at the barrel while he got out his handkerchief.

Derk wondered how Callette had come to be so stupid. Callette’s mind was always a mystery to him, but still—! “Callette,” he said. “That’s not beer.”

Callette’s huge head pecked forward. She stared down into the rippling red liquid in the utmost surprise. Every innocent line of her said How is it not beer?

“It just isn’t,” Derk told her. “It’s one of the vats from my workroom and I know it was sealed by a stasis spell. I can’t think why it’s open. I’m terribly sorry,” he said to the woman. She was still standing up, whimpering and dabbing at red spots on her tight pin-striped skirt with a paper hanky. “I’ll get it off for you – for both of you. It’s only pigs’ blood.”

The pigs on the roof heard him. At the words pigs’ blood, there was an instant outcry, squeals, grunts and yells of protest. Pink bodies surged about up there and trotters clattered on tiles.

“Oh, shut up!” Derk yelled up at them. “It’s a pig from the village. Your ancestors came from the marshes.”

This did nothing to soothe the pigs. They continued to surge about, yelling their protest, until Ringlet, one of the larger sows, slipped, overbalanced, and toppled off the roof. As her heavy round body came plummeting down, squealing fearsomely, she looked certain to land splat in the middle of the table. Half the wizards prudently ducked underneath. Several vanished. Chairs fell over, and cups and mugs. Even Mr Addis put his hands nervously over his head. But Ringlet, still squealing mightily, struggled about in the air and managed to right herself in time to spread her stubby little white wings. Violently flapping, and squealing hysterically, she got control inches from the table and flew screaming down the length of it, just rising in time to miss Mr Chesney, and then rising again to swoop up to the roof. The whole herd took off from the tiles joyfully to meet her, flapping, grunting and bawling like a disturbed pink rookery.

Shona dashed past Blade and fled in through the front door. He could see her there, and Elda with her, inside the hall, clutching one another and shaking with laughter. He marvelled that Callette could sit there on her haunches looking so solemnly innocent – he took his hat off to her. He wanted badly to giggle himself, until he looked at Mr Chesney. Mr Chesney had not moved, except to wipe the blood off himself. He was just sitting there, waiting for the interruption to stop.

“Take it away and get a proper barrel of beer,” Derk told Callette. She heaved the vat up and tramped away with it without a word. “I’m sorry,” Derk said, as wizards began cautiously reappearing from under the table or out of thin air and setting chairs upright again.

“Accepted, but don’t let it occur again,” said Mr Chesney. “Mr Addis.”

“Right.” Mr Addis switched on his friendly smile again. “I’m now going on to the update of our rules, which you will find in this black book.” He passed a heavy little volume to Barnabas.

Barnabas raised his hand. Then he paused, puffing a little from his recent dive under the table. “I think,” he said, “that as we have a new Dark Lord this year, I’d better appoint myself his Chief Minion, as the most experienced wizard here. Is that agreed?”

A sigh ran round the table as the wizards saw the favourite job go out of their reach, but most of them nodded. “It won’t be the usual cushy post this year anyway,” someone murmured.

Barnabas smiled ruefully and gestured. Blade and Derk each found themselves holding a thick shiny book labelled in gold, Wizards’ Bible.

“Keep this by you and consult it at all times,” Mr Addis said, “and please note that the rules are here to be kept. We had a few slip-ups last year, which have resulted in changes. This year, we require all Wizard Guides to make sure that a healer stays within a day’s trek of them. Healers have been instructed about this. And Wizard Guides are now officially required to ensure that all Pilgrims marked expendable on their list meet with a brave and honourable end and have that end properly witnessed by other Pilgrims. Last year we had someone return home alive. And in another case, lack of witnesses caused searching enquiries from the Missing Persons Bureau. Let’s do better this year, shall we? And now I hand you over to my financial colleague, Mr Bennet.”

Callette came back and boomed another barrel down on the terrace. Everyone looked at it nervously, but when Blade opened the tap, it was beer.

Mr Bennet cleared his throat and opened his briefcase.

It was hard to listen to Mr Bennet. He had that boring kind of voice you shut your mind to. Derk sat leafing through the black book, wondering how he would ever learn all these rules. Ants that built real cities perhaps? Blade was busy handing out fresh beer and being surprised at how many wizards leant forward and attended eagerly to Mr Bennet. The word bonus seemed to interest them particularly. But all Blade gathered was that the Dark Lord was allowed a bonus if he thought up any interesting new evils, and Dad did not seem to be attending. After quite a long while, Mr Bennet was saying, “With the usual proviso that Chesney Pilgrim Parties will query extravagant claims, will you please use these calculators to record your expenses.”

Barnabas gestured and Blade found a flat little case covered with buttons in his hand. He was examining it dubiously when Callette silently reappeared from the other end of the terrace and took hold of the case in two powerful talons.

“All right, as long as you give it back,” Blade said automatically. “And explain how it works,” he added as Callette took it away. Callette always understood gadgets. She nodded at him over one brown-barred wing as she padded off.

Then, for a moment, Blade was sure the meeting was over. Mr Addis and Mr Bennet stood up. The wizards relaxed. But Mr Chesney passed his briefcase back to the woman without looking at her and said, “One more thing.”

Everyone stiffened, including Mr Addis and Mr Bennet.

“Wizard Derk,” said Mr Chesney, “since you owe me for this suit, which your monster has ruined, I propose that instead of the usual fine we appoint your lady wife as this year’s Glamorous Enchantress. Without fee, of course.”

Derk spun in his chair and saw Mara standing there, glowing with a glamour and looking absolutely delighted. She doesn’t need the glamour, he thought. She’s still beautiful. So this was what she had been working on.

“You agree?” asked Mr Chesney and, before Derk could say a word, he turned to Querida. “You will be standing down from the post this year.”

“Glad to,” Querida said dryly. But Derk kept his eye on her, and on Mara, and saw Querida was truly pleased. She and Mara were exchanging looks and all but hugging themselves.

What’s going on? Derk wondered angrily.

He was taken by surprise to find that Mr Chesney and the others were actually leaving. They went clattering down the terrace steps, with Mr Chesney in front again. This time the orchids cringed away as the four strode off down the driveway. Derk started after them, but not very fast. He was not sure if he should show them politely to the gate, as he would have done for normal people. He was only halfway down the drive when they reached the gate.

And Kit was suddenly there, several tons of him, parked in the gateway, sitting like a cat and blocking the way entirely. He towered over Mr Chesney and his three helpers. From where Derk was, he could have sworn Kit was as tall as the house. Funny, he thought. I didn’t think even Kit was that big.

“Out of my way, creature,” Mr Chesney said in his flat colourless voice.

Kit’s answer was to spread his wings, which made him look even larger. As Kit was mainly black these days and his wing feathers were jetty, the effect was very menacing indeed. Even Mr Chesney took half a step backwards. As soon as he did, Kit bent forward and peered very intently into Mr Chesney’s face.

Mr Chesney stared at that wickedly large sharp buff-coloured beak pointing between his eyes. “I said get out of my way, creature,” he said, his voice grating a little. “If you don’t, you’ll regret it.”

At this, Mr Addis and Mr Bennet each dropped their briefcases and reached under their coats in a way that looked meaningful. The girl threw down her board and fumbled at her waist. Derk broke into a run, with the starry cloak billowing behind and holding him back. “Kit!” he yelled. “Stop it, Kit!”

But as soon as Mr Chesney’s followers moved, Kit leapt into the air. His enormous wings clapped once, twice, causing a wind that made the four people stagger about, and then he was sailing above them, uttering squawks of sheer derision. He sailed low above Derk, almost burying Derk in the windblown cloak. “Kit!” Derk bawled angrily.

“Squa-squa-squiii-squa-squa!” Kit said and sailed on, up into the dip in the roof, where the pigs erupted again in a frenzy of flapping and squealing, trying to get out of Kit’s way before Kit landed on them.

Most of them made it, Derk thought. He felt the thump of Kit’s landing even from beside the gate. “I do apologise,” he said to Mr Chesney. “Kit’s only fifteen—”

“Consider yourself fined a hundred gold, wizard,” Mr Chesney said coldly, and marched away to his horseless carriage.

fter that, Derk badly wanted to be alone. He wanted to visit his animals, scratch backs and rub noses in peace. But he knew he must talk to Querida, much as he disliked her. “Would you like me to show you my animals?” he asked her, by way of doing both things at once.

Querida looked along the table. Most of the wizards were still there, eating and drinking and chatting cheerfully. She nodded and stood up. She barely came up to Derk’s elbow. “On the understanding that I don’t offer to embalm any of the creatures, I suppose,” she said. “Although I think I’d hesitate before I tried embalming a griffin.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the roof. All that could be seen there was a ruffled lump of black feathers where Kit was, after a fashion, lying low.

“I’ll talk to you when I come back!” Derk shouted up at the lump. “If I have to get on a ladder to do it!”

Kit gave no sign that he had heard. Derk gave up on him and led Querida across the terrace and round to the back of the house. She remarked as they went, “Dealing with an adolescent griffin must be even worse than dealing with an adolescent human.”

“Hm,” said Derk, Remembering some of the things Blade had said to him yesterday, he was not sure that was true. But there was no doubt that Kit had been very difficult lately. He sighed, because he had sudden piercing, overwhelming memories of Kit when he was first hatched, memories of a small, scrawny, golden bundle of down and fine fur; of his own pride in his very first successfully hatched griffin; of himself and Mara lovingly bundling Kit from one to the other; of two-year-old Shona and Kit rolling on the floor together, rubbing beak to nose and laughing. Kit had been so small and thin and fluffy that they had called him their Kitten. No one had expected him to grow so very big. Or so difficult.

They came round the back of the house where the pens and plantations stretched away uphill. “What a lot of space you have here!” Querida exclaimed.

“The whole end of the valley,” Derk said.

The animals knew Derk was there. Most of them came rushing towards the ends of their pens to meet him. Derk fed Big Hen a corncob – she was about the size of an ostrich and he had used the shells of her eggs as eggs for the griffins – and then suffered himself to be slobbered on and gazed at by the Friendly Cows. He began to feel soothed. Bother ants! he thought. He had done bees after all. What he needed was an animal that no one had thought of before.

“Cows?” asked Querida, looking up at the big sticky noses and the great moony eyes.

“Er – sort of,” Derk admitted. “I bred them to be very stupid. Animals know, you see – you saw the pigs’ opinion of that blood – and I wanted a cow that wouldn’t know when we needed her for the griffins to eat. But they turned out so very friendly that it’s quite difficult at times.”

“Indeed.” Querida moved on to the next pen, full of very small sheep. “What’s your opinion of the great Mr Chesney?”

“If I ever bred a piranha with a hyena, I’d call it a Chesney,” Derk said.

“That’s right,” said Querida. “We’re just like your Friendly Cows to him, you know.”

“I know,” said Derk.

“And he means every word he says. You did understand that, did you?”

“I understood,” Derk said sombrely. If he ever bred a Chesney, he thought, it would have to have gills and be amphibious.

“Good,” said Querida. “You aren’t a fool, whatever else you are. Did you know those sheep eat meat? There’s one over there munching a sparrow.”

“They do,” Derk admitted. “I got them a bit wrong somewhere.”

They moved on to the next enclosure, whose occupants stood in a row with their long necks stretched, honking sarcastically. “It sounds just as if those geese are jeering,” said Querida.

“They are.” Derk sighed. “I bred them for intelligence and I hoped they’d talk – and I think they may talk, but they do it in their own language.”

“Hm. I think your geese are safe from the University,” said Querida, moving on. What she wanted was a griffin. She knew which one, too. But she was prepared to go about it quite slowly and very cunningly. “Why is this cage empty? The pigs?”

“No, the pigs are free-range. That should be cats,” Derk told her. “I think the ones still in there are invisible, but most of them got out through the walls somehow.”

Querida gave a hissing chuckle. “That’s cats for you! Mine do that too, and as far as I know they’re just ordinary cats. What were you breeding them for?”

“Colour,” said Derk. “I was hoping for red or blue, but they didn’t like the idea and it didn’t work. But they took to invisibility. And the old female cat who’s dead now was very proud of the fact that I took some of her cells for Elda. She used to spend hours washing Elda when Elda first hatched.”

They walked past giant guinea pigs and inch-high monkeys sporting in tiny trees Derk had grown for them. “Did you use cats to make all your griffins?” Querida asked curiously, as they came to the daylight owls.

“Goodness, no.” Derk unlatched the pen and let two large snowy owls hop out on to his shoulders, where they sat staring at Querida as unblinkingly as she stared up at them. “I found an old lioness who’d been wounded and left behind by the pride. I got her well again and she obliged me with cells for all the griffins before she left. And some of the other cells were from that eagle Barnabas used to have. But I used cells from myself and from Mara too. I wanted the griffins to be people, you see – but I didn’t expect Kit or Callette to grow so big. I think Lydda and Don are going to turn out a more reasonable size, but I wouldn’t bet on it. That’s why I used some cat for Elda. She’s definitely smaller, you may have noticed.” He stroked the owls’ heads and strolled on. There were always problems with the griffins. He had hoped Kit and Callette would make a breeding pair, but Kit despised Callette and Callette hated Kit. And now Kit had put on that extraordinary act with Mr Chesney – Derk wondered how he was going to pay a fine of a hundred gold without selling off half the animals.

They rounded the experimental beehives – Derk was glad Querida did not ask about those – and strolled on through the coffee plantation, where the owls left his shoulders and went ghosting off to hunt. He did not mind Querida asking about the coffee. He was prepared to tell her quite frankly that Barnabas had taken some of his Pilgrim pay in coffee some years back. Derk had begged a few beans and was now growing coffee you did not need to roast. But there were other things over towards the stables and in the vats in his workshed he had no intention of telling Querida about.

Querida did not ask. She sniffed the rich smell rising from the bushes and wondered how many other things from Mr Chesney’s world Derk was secretly growing here. Tea? Exotic vegetables like potatoes and tomatoes? Antibiotics? That stuff they made the T-shirts from that the younger wizards liked so much? – cotton, that was its name. When she finally extorted the University dues from him, she would ask for all those if he wouldn’t give her a griffin. And she wondered why he was letting her know some of his secrets. There must be something he badly wanted to ask from her.

“Wizard Derk,” she said, “I’m sure you didn’t bring me all this way simply to sniff coffee and admire your beautiful owls. What were you wanting to say?”

Derk found he was going to have to work up to that thing. But there were plenty of others. “I didn’t understand that man Addis,” he said, “when he talked about expendable tourists. What did he mean?”

“Just what he said,” Querida answered. “I suspect that is where Mr Chesney really makes his money. A lot of people come on the tours who are either a trial to their families, or very rich, with poor relatives who wish to inherit their money, and so on. These families pay enormous fees to make sure the person doesn’t come back from the tour.”

Derk pushed out from among the coffee bushes and swung round to face Querida outside the dog pen. “But that’s vile! And we all go along with this?”

“And with the fact that the Pilgrim Parties kill an average of two hundred of our citizens each,” Querida retorted, dry as a snake in a desert. “Given that Mr Chesney has his wishes enforced by the demon, I don’t see how we don’t go along with it. Do you?”

“No.” Derk turned unhappily back to the dog run. Its door was open. The only dog still in there was the elderly houndbitch, Bertha. She came stiffly strutting out and scraped at his leg with one paw. Derk frowned as he bent to rub her ears. He knew the dogs had been shut in before the first wizard arrived. It looked as if Pretty really had learnt how to open doors, in which case damn! Pretty was one of the many things he did not want Querida to see. He could hear the other dogs in the distance, now he thought about it, barking and yelping over by the stables, and the pigs squealing over there too. Some game, by the sound of it. Fine, as long as they kept over there. “And how am I supposed to die one hundred and twenty-six times?” he asked distractedly.

“You have to fake that,” said Querida. “As Barnabas will tell you, it’s time-consuming more than anything, considering all the other things the Dark Lord has to do. Is that dog bred for something, or just a dog?”

“I was trying for wings,” Derk confessed, “but they always drop off when the puppies lose their milk teeth. See. Here’s where they were.” He showed Querida the two folds in the brindled fur by Bertha’s shoulder blades. Bertha turned and made an amiable effort to lick Querida’s face as Querida bent to look. Derk hastily distracted Bertha by walking on round the dog run to the paddock.

“You should have tried reducing the length of their tongues instead,” Querida said sourly, at which Bertha shot her a nervous look and moved to the other side of Derk. So he bred them for understanding too, Querida thought. “It’s all right, dog. I just hate my face wet. What are these? Horses?”

“The horses we keep for riding,” Derk said. He was nervous. He was going to have to say what he had brought Querida here to say to her soon.

Querida looked shrewdly from Derk to the horses trotting eagerly over to the fence. He messes about breeding monsters out of these animals, she thought, and they still all adore him. Then she remembered the sarcastic geese. Perhaps not all of them. And none of the horses seemed anything but normal, several solid thick-legged hacks, a couple of nice desert-breds, and one truly classy brood mare, who was in foal, to judge by her bulging sides. Querida watched Derk nervously fumbling for sugar and wondered what all the dogs were barking about in the distance. “Well, Wizard Derk?”

Derk could not get round to it yet. “Did Mr Chesney really mean it about wanting a god to manifest?” he asked instead.

“You heard the man,” said Querida. “And as none of the gods struck him dead, I conclude that his word is law with them too and you’re going to have to produce a god for him.”

“Me?” said Derk.

“Yes,” said Querida. “You. The Dark Lord always sees to the novelty.”

“But I can’t! No one can tell the gods what to do!” Derk protested, feeding sugar to horses in distracted handfuls.

“Except, of course, Mr Chesney,” Querida agreed. “This is something else you’re going to have to fake, I imagine. I think it would be safest to invent a god that doesn’t exist. It can be done with a simple illusion spell then. You do remember how to do illusions, do you?” Derk nodded, still distracted. Well, that’s something at least! Querida thought. But she was not sure she trusted the man to invent a suitable deity. “I’ll think up a plausible god for you and let you know what it looks like.”

“Thanks,” said Derk. The sugar was all gone. He had run out of other things to ask Querida. He wiped his hands on his velvet trousers, wondering how to say what he wanted.

“Out with it, Wizard Derk!” Querida snapped impatiently.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s a bit difficult. I don’t like – I mean Mara’s a free woman and it’s not that I mind her dressing up and seducing tourists exactly—”

“I’ve done it for years,” said Querida. “It’s only more faking, if that’s what’s worrying you. At least Mara’s not a dried-up old snake like me and she won’t need to disguise herself with twenty different glamours—” Derk turned and looked her keenly in the face. Querida uneasily remembered that great black griffin of his staring at Mr Chesney. “It’s a shame she’s not being paid,” she said.

“No. There’s something else,” Derk said. “You and Mara are up to something, aren’t you? What’s going on?”

Querida, for once, had a little trouble controlling her face. It was something that had not happened to her for years. Mara did warn me, she thought. He’s not at all the farmerish fool he looks. Perhaps she ought to revise her plans and tell him, before he messed everything up trying to find out. “Now it’s interesting you should say that—” she began cautiously.

The yelling and baying of the dogs abruptly grew louder, mixed with squealing, grunting, sounds like hysterical laughter, and the hammering of paws, hooves and trotters. Before Querida could turn to see what was going on, or Derk could move, a confused crowd of excited animals swept round the corner of the paddock and galloped straight through the spot where Querida was standing.

Derk saw, horrified, Querida’s tiny dry body hurled into the air by a mixed crowd of galloping animals – and Pretty, of course. He saw her tossed aside, to land with a thwack against the paddock fence.

From Querida’s point of view, she was suddenly in an avalanche of careering creatures. As she sailed through the air, she saw waving tails, wings, excited bared fangs, and an eye-twisting blur of black and white zigzags that puzzled her slightly. Then something slammed into her, all along one side, and she heard a snapping noise from her own body. Rather to her surprise, the old dog Bertha leapt to her side and seemed to try to defend her. And I don’t even like dogs! Querida thought, as Bertha was pushed aside and Querida found herself lying on the ground being punched by hard trotters galloping across her. To her utter dismay, something else in her body snapped, towards the far end of her.

Derk was roaring at the creatures. The horses in the paddock galloped clear, trumpeting with dismay. Otherwise most of the noise stopped, except for Bertha’s indignant snarling. In fact, Bertha had made things worse by making the onrushing pigs swerve and trample Querida. “Shut up, Bertha!” Derk told her ungratefully as he dashed towards Querida lying against the fence. He hoped she had fainted. He could see her left arm was broken and he rather feared her left ankle was too. He knelt down beside her to see what he could do.

Querida sat up as he reached towards her leg. “Oh no!” she said. She did not trust Derk an inch.

“I do know about bones,” Derk pointed out. “Muscles too.”

That was probably true, Querida thought, trying not to scream with the pain, but she still did not trust Derk an inch. She stared beyond him through a dreadful throbbing mistiness. The black and white thing that had bowled her over was standing anxiously some way up the path. He was all long legs and a perky little fringe of mane. His big black and white flight feathers did indeed grow in eye-twisting zigzags. So he’s bred a winged horse, Querida thought. Derk made another move to help her. She pushed him off with her good hand. “I don’t want to grow wings like that creature!” she hissed. “And you should have reported it to the University.” It was unfair, but she did hurt so.

“Pretty,” said Derk. “Pretty’s only just weaned. He was playing with the dogs and the pigs. Do let me try to set those bones.”

“No!” snapped Querida. It was horrible the way a person could be a perfectly sound old lady one second and a wounded emergency the next. She felt dreadful. She wanted – passionately – to have her own home and own healer and a soothing cup of her own tea, and she wanted it all now. “I may be injured,” she said, “but I am a wizard still. If you’d just stay clear, I’ll translocate home and call my own healer, please.”

“Are you sure?” said Derk. Querida’s face looked like grey-blue withered paper. He knew he could not have translocated an inch in that state – not that he could go any distance at the best of times.

“Quite sure,” snapped Querida. And she was gone as she spoke, with a small whiff of moving air.

Derk stared at the empty place by the fence and hoped very much that Querida had arrived in the right place. He had better get Barnabas to go after her and make sure. But first, he turned to Pretty.

“Only playing,” said Pretty, who knew perfectly well what he had done.

“I’ve told you before,” said Derk, “that you have to look where you’re going when you rush about like that. If you cause any more accidents, I shall have to shut you up in a stall all day.”

Pretty tossed his head and gave Derk a resentful look over one feathery shoulder. Then he minced away sideways to where his pregnant grandmother was leaning anxiously over the fence to him. Derk thought it a pity the brood-mare could not talk. She might have talked some sense into Pretty. But all she could do was nose Pretty protectively. Pretty said to her, “Don’t like Derk.”

“And I don’t like you at the moment,” Derk retorted. “I told you not to let any of the visitors see you, and then you go and bowl one of them over. Come on, Bertha.”

Most of the wizards had left when Derk and the dog arrived back on the terrace. But Barnabas was still there and the young wizard Finn, enjoying another cup of coffee with Shona and Mara. Derk was making for Barnabas to tell him about Querida, when he was brought up short by the sound of something splintering up in the roof. “Where’s Kit?” he said.

“Still up there,” Shona said.

Derk backed to a place on the terrace where he could see the black feathery hump across the bent gutter. He could hear rafters creaking under Kit’s weight. “KIT!” he bellowed. “Kit, get down before the roof breaks!”

There was a squawky mutter from above. The politest it could have been was “Get lost!”

“What’s got into him?” Mara wondered anxiously.

“I don’t know,” said Derk, “and I don’t care. He could get hurt. Kit!” he yelled. “Kit, I give you three seconds to get down here. Then I fetch you down by magic. One. Two—”

Sulkily, Kit surged upright. Perhaps he meant to fly down to the terrace. Derk thought it more likely that Kit intended to take off for the hills, and wondered if bringing him back with a catch spell would damage Kit’s pride too badly. But he never got a chance to cast it, any more than Kit had a chance to fly. As Kit braced his powerful hind legs for take off, the roof fell in beneath him. And Kit fell with it. He simply vanished inwards, along with the centre part of the house. With him went tiles, a chimney, broken rafters, crumpled walls and smashed windows, in a billow of plaster dust and old cobwebs. The crash was tremendous.

“Oh ye gods!” said Mara. “He never even had time to spread his wings!”

“Be glad he didn’t. He’d have broken them for sure,” Derk said. He dashed for the house, followed by the ever-helpful Bertha, followed by Finn and Barnabas.

“Derk, Derk!” Mara cried out. “The other children! They were all indoors!”

“I’ll go and look,” said Shona. “Mum, you look ready to faint. Sit down.”

“Not indoors! Look through the windows,” said Mara. “We stretched the house – any of it might come down! Be careful!”

“Yes, yes,” Shona said soothingly as Derk scrambled in through the front door. In some mad way, the front door was still standing. A mound of rubble had shot out through it, and past it on either side. Bertha went bounding in ahead of Derk. As Derk climbed carefully through a chaos of fallen beams and bricks, he heard her start barking in short triumphant bursts.

From further inside the chaos, Kit’s voice said distinctly, “Shut up, you stupid dog.”

Poor Bertha. It was not her day. Derk heaved a sigh of relief.

“Lucky we’re all wizards here,” Barnabas said behind him. “Finn, you make sure the side walls don’t fall in, while Derk and I see what we can do ahead.”

As Derk crawled on through a criss-cross of rafters draped with cobwebs and sheets from the second floor linen cupboard, he felt the walls on either side groan a little and then steady under Finn’s spell. They found Kit a yard or so further on, dumped in a huge black huddle and coated with plaster and horsehair, in a sort of cage of splintered roof beams and broken marble slabs. Out of it, his eyes stared enormous, black and wild.

“Have you broken anything?” said Derk.

Kit squawked. “Only the new marble stairs.”

“Wings and legs and things, he means, you stupid griffin,” Barnabas said.

“I’m – not sure,” answered Kit.

“Good. Then we’ll get you out,” said Barnabas. “Where’s the dog?”

“She went squirming out at the back,” said Kit. “She smelt the kitchen.”

“Oh gods!” said Derk. “Lydda was probably in there!”

“One thing at a time,” Barnabas said. “This is going to take a separate levitating spell for each beam and most slabs, I think. Finn, can you join us?”

Finn came crawling through, white with dust and very cheerful. “Oh yes,” he said. “I see. Can do. Derk, you’ll now get to see some of the techniques we use when we put cities back together after the tours leave. You take the left side, Barnabas.”

Derk crouched against a piece of timber and watched enviously. It was like a demonstration for students. Neatly and quickly, with only a murmur here and there, the two wizards inserted their spells under each baulk of wood or stone, and then around Kit. After a mere minute, Barnabas said, “Right. Now activate.” And the entire tangle of beams and marble slabs unfolded like a clawed hand and went to rest neatly stacked against the walls. “Can you move?” Barnabas asked Kit.

Kit said, “Umph. Yes.” And then, as he rose to a crouch and started to crawl forward, “Yeeow-ouch!” Derk watched him struggle forward across the rubble that had been the hall. At least all Kit’s limbs seemed to be working.

“Look on the bright side,” Finn said. “You’re halfway to a ruined Citadel already. Want us to stabilise it?”

“Yes, but how do we get up to the bedrooms?” Derk said, looking up at the ragged hole in the roof. “And Shona’s piano was up on the second floor.”

“It’s still up there,” said Barnabas, “or we’d have met it by now. Better reassemble the stairs, Finn, and slap some kind of roof on, don’t you think? Derk, you’re going to owe us for this.”

“Fine. Thanks,” said Derk. His mind was on Kit. Kit squeezed out through a gap beside the front door and flopped down on his stomach with his head bent almost upside down between his front claws. “My head aches,” he said, “and I hurt all over.” He was a terrible sight. Every feather and hair on him was grey with dust or cobwebs. There was a small cut on one haunch. Otherwise, he seemed to have been lucky.

Derk looked anxiously around for some sign of the others. Mara had gone too, but he could hear her voice somewhere. In the chorus of voices answering, he could pick out Elda, Blade, Lydda, Don and Callette. “Thank goodness,” he said. “You don’t seem to have killed any of the others.”

Kit groaned.

“And you could have done,” added Derk. “You know how heavy you are. Come along to your den and let me hose you down with warm water.”

Kit was far too big to live in the house these days. Derk led the way to the large shed he had made over to Kit, and Kit crawled after him, groaning. He made further long, crooning moans while Derk played the hose over him outside it, but that seemed to be because he had started to feel his bruises. Derk made sure nothing was broken, not even the long, precious flight feathers in Kit’s great wings. Kit grumbled that he had broken two talons.

“Be thankful that was all,” Derk said. “Now, do you want to talk to me out here, or indoors in private?”

“Indoors,” Kit moaned. “I want to lie down.”

Derk pushed open the shed door and beckoned Kit inside. He felt guilty doing it, as if he was prying into Kit’s secrets. Kit did not usually let anyone inside his den. He always claimed it was in too much of a mess, but in fact, as Derk had often suspected, it was neater than anywhere in the house. Everything Kit owned was shut secretly away in a big cupboard. The only things outside the cupboard were the carpet Mara had made him, the huge horsehair cushions Kit used for his bed, and some of Kit’s paintings pinned to the walls.

Kit was too bruised to mind Derk seeing his den. He simply crawled to his cushions, dripping all over the floor, too sore to shake himself dry, and climbed up with a sigh. “All right,” he said. “Talk. Tell me off. Go on.”

“No – you talk,” said Derk. “What did you think you were playing at there with Mr Chesney?”

Kit’s sodden tail did a brief hectic lashing. He buried his beak between two cushions. “No idea,” he said. “I feel awful.”

“Nonsense,” said Derk. “Come clean, Kit. You got the other four to pretend they couldn’t speak and then you sat there in the gateway. Why?”

Kit said something muffled and dire into the cushions.

“What?” said Derk.

Kit’s head came up and swivelled savagely towards Derk. He glared. “I said,” he said, “I was going to kill him. But I couldn’t manage it. Satisfied?” He plunged his beak back among the cushions again.

“Why?” asked Derk.

“He orders this whole world about!” Kit roared. It was loud, even through the horsehair. “He ordered you about. He called Shona a slavegirl. I was going to kill him anyway to get rid of him, but I was glad he deserved it. And I thought if most people there thought the griffins were just dumb beasts, then you couldn’t be blamed. You know – I got loose by accident and savaged him.”

“I’m damn glad you didn’t, Kit,” said Derk. “It’s no fun to have to think of yourself as a murderer.”

“Oh, I knew they’d kill me,” said Kit.

“No, I mean it’s a vile state of mind,” Derk explained. “A bit like being mad, except that you’re sane, I’ve always thought. So what stopped you?” He was shocked to hear himself sounding truly regretful as he asked this question.

Kit reared his head up. “It was when I looked in his face. It was awful. He thinks he owns everything in this world. He thinks he’s right. He wouldn’t have understood. It was a pity. I could have killed him in seconds, even with that demon in his pocket, but he would have been just like food. He wouldn’t have felt guilty and neither would I.”

“I’m glad to hear you think you ought to have felt guilty,” Derk observed. “I was beginning to wonder whether we’d brought you up properly.”

“I do feel guilty. I did,” Kit protested. “And I hated the idea. But I’ve been feeling rather bloodthirsty lately and saving the world seemed a good way to use it. I don’t seem to be much use otherwise. And now,” he added miserably, “I feel terrible about the house too.”

“Don’t. Most of it has to come down anyway – on Mr Chesney’s orders,” Derk said. “So you were crouching in the bushes by the terrace fuelling your bloodlust, were you?”

“Shut up!” Kit tried to squirm with shame and left off with a squawk when his bruises bit. “All right. It was a stupid idea. I hate myself, if that makes you feel any better!”

“Don’t be an ass, Kit.” Derk was thinking things through, fumbling for an explanation. Something had been biting Kit for months. Long before there was any question of Derk becoming the Dark Lord, Kit had been in a foul, tetchy, snarling mood – bloodthirsty, as he called it himself – and Derk had put it down simply to the fact that Kit was now fifteen. But suppose it was more than that. Suppose Kit had a reason to be unhappy. “Kit,” he said thoughtfully, “I didn’t see you at all until you arrived between the gateposts, and when you were there you looked about twice your real size—”

“Did I?” said Kit. “It must have been because you were worried about Mr Chesney.”

“Really?” said Derk. “And I suppose I was just worried again when I distinctly heard you tell me Mr Chesney had a demon in his pocket?”

Kit’s head shot round again and, for a moment, his eyes were lambent black with alarm. Derk could see Kit force them back to their normal golden yellow and try to answer casually. “I expect somebody mentioned it to me. Everyone knows he keeps it there.”

“No. Everybody doesn’t,” Derk told him. “I think even Querida would be surprised to know.” Damn! He hadn’t told Barnabas about that accident yet! “Kit, come clean. You’re another one like Blade, aren’t you? How long have you known you could do magic?”

“Only about a year,” Kit admitted. “About the same time as Blade – Blade thinks we both inherited it from you – but we both seem to do different things.”

“Because of course you’ve compared notes,” said Derk. “Kit, let’s get this straight at once. Even more than Blade, there’s no question of you going to the University—”

Kit’s head flopped forward. “I know. I know they’d keep me as an exhibit. That’s why I didn’t want to mention it.”

“But you must have some teaching,” Derk pointed out, “in case you do something wrong by accident. Mara and I should have been teaching you at the same time as Blade. You ought to have told us, Kit. Let me tell you the same as I told Blade. I will find you a proper tutor, both of you, but you have to be patient, because it takes time to find the right magic user – and you’ll have to be patient for the next year at least, now that I have to be Dark Lord. Can you bear to wait? You can learn quite a bit helping me with that if you want.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you at all,” Kit said.

“So you bit everyone’s head off instead,” Derk said.

Kit’s beak was still stuck among his cushions, but a big griffin grin was spreading round the ends of it. “At least I haven’t been screaming you’re a jealous tyrant,” he said. “Like Blade.”

Well I am, a little, Derk thought. Jealous anyway. You’ve both got your magical careers before you, and you, Kit, have all the brains I could cram into one large griffin head. “True,” he said, sighing. “Now lie down and rest. I’ll give you something for the bruises if they’re still bad this evening.”

He shut the door quietly and went back to the house. Shona met him at the edge of the terrace, indignant and not posing at all. “The younger ones are all safe,” she said. “They were in the dining room. They didn’t even notice the roof coming down!”

“What?” said Derk. “How?”

Shona pointed along the terrace with her thumb. “Look at them!”

Blade sat at the long, littered table. So did Mara, Finn and Barnabas. Lydda and Don were stretched on the flagstones among the empty chairs. Callette was couchant along the steps to the garden, with her tail occasionally whipping the cowering orchids. Elda was crouching along the table itself. Each of them was bent over one of the little flat machines with buttons, pushing those buttons with finger or talon as if nothing else in the world mattered.

“Callette found out how to do this,” Don said.

“She’s a genius,” Barnabas remarked. “I never realised they did anything but add numbers. I made her a hundred of them in case the power packs run out.”

Elda looked up briefly when Derk went to peer across her feathered shoulder. “You kill little men coming down from the sky and they kill you,” she explained. “And we did so notice the roof fall in! The viewscreens got all dusty. Damn. You distracted me and I’m dead.”

“Is Kit all right?” Blade asked. “Hey! I’m on level four now. Beat that!”

“Level six,” Callette said smugly from the steps.

“You would be!” said Blade.

“Level seven,” Finn said mildly. “It seems to stop when you’ve won there. Will the house do like this, Derk?”

The middle section of the house was there again, in a billowy, transparent way. Derk could see the stairs through the wall, also back in place. The piece of roof that had fallen in was there too, hovering slightly like a balloon anchored at four corners. At least it would keep the rain out until it all had to be transformed into ruined towers, Derk supposed.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Thanks.” He put a hand on Barnabas’s arm. “I hate to interrupt, but Querida had an accident a while ago, round by the paddock. I think she broke a couple of bones. She wouldn’t let me see to them. She’s gone home.”

“Oh dear!” said Barnabas. He and Mara came out of their button-pushing trances, looking truly concerned.

“You should have brought her up to the house at once!” Mara said.

“She wouldn’t let me do anything,” Derk explained. “She translocated.”

“She’s done this before,” Barnabas said. “Five years ago some fool Pilgrim broke her wrist and Querida got us all fined by translocating straight home and refusing to come back. We had to do without an Enchantress for the rest of the tours. I think shock takes her that way.”

Finn stood up anxiously. “We’d better go to the University and check.”

Barnabas sighed and got up too. “Yes, I suppose so.”

He and Finn stood there looking at Derk expectantly.

“Oh. Sorry,” Derk said. “What do we owe you for restoring the house?”

The two wizards exchanged looks. “Thought you’d never ask,” said Barnabas. “We’ll accept a bag of coffee each, please.”

“Phew!” said Shona, when the two wizards had finally gone. “I think this was the most upsetting day I’ve ever known. And the tours haven’t even started yet!”

“I should hope not,” said Mara. “There are several thousand things to do before that.”

rom Blade’s point of view, the several thousand things to be done were all learning: learning the rules in the black book, the routes in the pink list and the green pamphlet and the adventure points marked on the map. He had never found anything so boring. He was used to learning things in an interesting way from his parents, among a crowd of griffins who were all good at learning things too. If he had thought anything in the lists was real, he might have become quite nervous, but it was only the tours, and because he knew his own Pilgrim Party was the very last to set off, he knew he had eight weeks to get ready in and did not worry very much. Besides, it was beautiful early autumn weather.

Derk of course was having to learn the same lists in just two weeks, as well as doing the other things a Dark Lord had to see to. Barnabas paid almost daily visits. He and Derk spent long hours consulting in Derk’s study, and then later that day Derk would rush off, looking harassed, to consult with King Luther or some dragons about what Barnabas had told him. In between, he was busily writing out clues to the weakness of the Dark Lord or answering messages. Carrier pigeons came in all the time with messages. Shona dealt with those when she could, and with the messages for Mara too. Mara before long was rushing off all the time, as busy as Derk, to the house near the Central Wastelands she had inherited from an aunt, which she was setting up as the Lair of the Enchantress.

Parents, it seemed to Blade, always had twice the energy of their children and never seemed to get bored the way he did. It was all most unrestful and he kept out of the way. He spent most days hanging out with Kit and Don in the curving side valley just downhill from Derkholm, basking under a glorious dark blue sky. There Kit lazily preened his feathers, recovering from his bruises, while Don sprawled with the black book in his talons, so that they could test Blade on the rules when any of them remembered to. They did not tell Lydda or Elda where they went because those two might tell Shona. Shona was to be avoided like the plague. If Shona saw any of them she was liable to say, “Don, you exercise the dogs while I do my piano practice.”

Or, “Blade, Dad needs you to water the crops while he sees the Emir.”

Or, “Kit, we want four bales of hay down from the loft – and while you’re at it, Dad says to make a space up there for six new cages of pigeons.”

As Kit feelingly said, it was the “while you’re at it” that was worst. It kept you slaving all day. Shona was very good at ‘while you’re at it’s’. She slid them in at the end of orders like knives to the heart. Those days, when they saw Shona coming, even Kit went small and hard to see.

Shona knew of course and complained loudly. “I’ve put off going to Bardic College,” she went round saying, “where I’d much rather be, in order to help Dad out, and the only other people doing anything are Lydda and Callette.”

“But they’re enjoying themselves,” Elda pointed out. “It’s not my fault I’m no good at things.”

“You’re worse than Callette,” Shona retorted. “I’ve never yet caught Callette being good at anything she doesn’t enjoy. At least the boys are honest.”

Callette was certainly enjoying herself just then. She was making the hundred and twenty-six magical objects for the dragon to guard in the north. Most of the time all that could be seen of her was her large grey-brown rump projecting from the shed that was her den, while the tuft on the end of her tail went irritably bouncing here and there as it expressed Callette’s feelings about the latest object. For Callette had become inspired and self-critical with it. She was now trying to make every object different. She kept appearing in the side-valley to show Blade, Kit and Don her latest collection and demand their honest opinions. And they were, in fact, almost too awed to criticise. Callette had started quite modestly with ten or so assorted goblets and various orbs, but then Don had said – without at all meaning to set Callette off – “Shouldn’t the things light up or something when a Pilgrim picks them up?”

“Good idea,” Callette had said briskly, and spread her wings and coasted thoughtfully away with her bundle of orbs.

The next set of objects lit up like anything, some of them quite garishly, but even Callette was unable to say what they were intended to be. “I call them gizmos,” she said, collecting the glittering heap into a sheet to carry them back to her shed.

Every day after that the latest gizmos were more outlandish. “Aren’t you getting just a bit carried away?” Blade suggested, picking up a shining blue rose in one hand and an indescribable spiky thing in the other. It flashed red light when he touched it.

“Probably,” said Callette. “I think I’m like Shona when she can’t stop playing the violin. I keep getting new ideas.”

The one hundred and ninth gizmo caused even Kit to make admiring sounds. It was a lattice of white shapes like snowflakes that chimed softly and turned milky bright when any of them touched it. “Are you sure you’re not really a wizard?” Kit asked, turning the thing respectfully around between his talons.

Callette shot him a huffy look over one brown-barred wing. “Of course not. It’s electronics. It’s what those button-pushing machines work by. I got Barnabas to multiply me another hundred of them and took them apart for the gizmos. Give me that one back. I may keep it. It’s my very best.”

Carrying the gizmo carefully, she took off to glide down the valley. At the mouth of it, she had to rise hastily to clear a herd of cows someone from the village was driving up into the valley.

That was the end of peace in that valley. The cows turned out to belong to the mayor, who was having them penned up there for safety until the tours were over. Thereafter he and his wife and children were in and out of there several times a day, seeing to the cattle. Don flew out to see if there was anywhere else they could go, but came back glumly with the news that every hidden place was now full of cows, sheep, pigs, hens or goats. The three of them were forced to go and lurk behind the stables, which was nothing like so private.

By that time, Derk’s face had sagged from worry to harrowed misery. He felt as if he had spent his entire life rushing away on urgent, unpleasant errands. Almost the first of these was the one he hated most, and he only got himself through it by concentrating on the new animal he would create. He had to go down to the village and break the news there that Mr Chesney wanted the place in ruins. He hated having to do this so heartily that he snapped at Pretty while he was saddling Pretty’s mother Beauty. And Pretty minced off in a sulk and turned the dogs among the geese in revenge. Derk had to sort that out before he left.

“Can’t you control that foal of yours?” he said to Beauty. Beauty had waited patiently through all the running and shouting, merely mantling her huge glossy black wings when Derk came back, to show him she was ready and waiting.

“Ghett’n htoo mhuch f’mhe,” she confessed. She did not speak as well as Pretty, even without a bit in her mouth.

To Derk, Beauty meant as much as the hundred and ninth gizmo did to Callette. He would have died rather than part with Beauty to the University. So he smiled and patted her shining black neck. Not ants, he thought. Not insects at all. Something even more splendid than Beauty. And when he mounted and Beauty bunched her quarters and rose into the air rather more easily even than Kit did, he felt tight across the chest with love and pride. As they sailed down the valley, he considered the idea of a water creature. He had not done one of those yet. Suppose he could get hold of some cells from a dolphin …

He landed in the centre of the village to find nearly every house there being knocked down. “What the hell’s going on?” he said.

The mayor left off demolishing the village shop and came to lean on his sledgehammer by Beauty’s right wing. “Glad to see you, Derk. We were going to need to speak to you about the village hall. We want to leave that standing if we can, but we don’t want any Pilgrims or soldiers messing about in it destroying things. I wondered if you could see a way of disguising it as a ruin.”

“Willingly,” said Derk. “No problem.” The hall had been built only last spring. “But how did you know – how are you going to live with all the houses down?”

“Everyone in the world knows what to expect when the tours come through,” the mayor replied. “Not your fault, Derk. We knew the job was bound to come your way in time. We had pits dug for living in years ago, roofed over, water piped in, cables laid. Furniture and food got moved down there yesterday. Place is going to look properly abandoned by tomorrow, but we’re leaving Tom Holt’s pigsty and Jenny Wellaby’s wash house standing. I heard they expect to find a hovel or two. But I can tell you,” he said, running a hand through the brickdust in his hair, “I didn’t expect these pulled-down houses to look so new. That worries me a lot.”

“I can easily age them a bit for you,” Derk offered.

“And blacken them with fire?” the mayor asked anxiously. “It would look better. And we’ve told off two skinny folk – Fran Taylor and Old George – to pick about in the ruins whenever a tour arrives, to make like starving survivors, you know, but I’d be glad if you could make them look a little less healthy – emaciated, sort of. One look at Old George at the moment and you’d know he’s never had a day’s illness in his life. Can you sicken him up a bit?”

“No problem,” said Derk. The man thought of everything!

“And another thing,” said the mayor. “We’ll be driving all the livestock up the hills to the sides of the valley and penning them up for safety – don’t want any animals getting killed – but if you could do something that makes them hard to see, I’d be much obliged.”

Derk felt he could hardly refuse. He spent the rest of that day adding wizardry to the blows of the sledgehammers and laying the resulting brick dust around as soot. By sunset, the place looked terrible. “What do you think of all this?” Derk asked Old George while he was emaciating him.

Old George shrugged. “Way to earn a living. Stupid way, if you ask me. But I’m not in charge, am I?”

Neither am I, Derk thought as he went to mount Beauty. The frightening thing was that there was nothing he could do about it, any more than Old George could.

Beauty, rattling her wings and snorting to get rid of the dust, gave it as her opinion that this was not much of a day. “Bhoring. No fhlying.”

“You wait,” Derk told her.

Next day he flew north to see King Luther. The day after he went south to an angry and inconclusive meeting with the Marsh Dwellers, who wanted more pay for pretending to sacrifice Pilgrims to their god. He flew home with “Is blasphemy, see, is disrespect for god!” echoing in his ears, wistfully wondering if his water creature might be something savage that fed exclusively on Marsh people. But the next day, flying east to look at the ten cities scheduled to be sacked, he took that back in favour of something half dolphin, half dragon that lived in a river. The trouble was that there were no big rivers near Derkholm. The day after that, flying south-east to talk to the Emir, he decided something half dragon would be too big.

The Emir was flatly refusing to be the Puppet King the lists said he should be. “I’ll be anything else you choose,” he told Derk, “but I will not have my mind enslaved to this tiara. I have seen Sheik Detroy. He is still walking like a zombie after last year. He drools. His valet has to feed him. It’s disgusting! These magic objects are not safe.”

Derk had seen Sheik Detroy too. He felt the Emir had a point. “Then could you perhaps get one of your most devoted servants to wear the tiara for you?”

“And have him usurp my throne?” the Emir said. “I hope you joke.”

They argued for several hours. At length Derk said desperately, “Well, can’t you wear a copy of the tiara and act being enslaved to it?”

“What a good idea!” said the Emir. “I rather fancy myself as an actor. Very well.”

Derk flew home tired out and, as often happened when he was tired, he got his best idea for animal yet. Not an animal. Something half human, half dolphin. A mermaid daughter, that was it. As Beauty wearily flapped onwards, Derk turned over in his mind all the possible ways of splicing dolphin to human. It was going to be fascinating. The question was, would Mara agree to be the mother of this new being? If he presented the idea to her as a challenge, it might be a way of bridging the chilly distance that seemed to have opened up between them.

Pretty came dashing up as they landed by the stables and Beauty almost snapped at him. She was as tired as Derk was. “At this rate,” Derk told Shona, who came to help him unsaddle Beauty, “we shall be worn to shadows.”

“Black shadows with red eyes?” Shona said. “Lucky you. Just what Mr Chesney ordered.”

Derk felt a rush of gratitude to Shona. When the time came, he would make the human half of the mermaid daughter from Shona’s cells. It would ensure excellence.

“And do you know,” Shona said, “those lazy boys haven’t done a thing today unless I nagged them. Elda’s just as bad. I haven’t had time to practise. Every time I tried, a new pigeon arrived. The messages are all over your desk. Dad, you ought to breed pigeons that can speak. It would be much easier.”

“That’s quite an idea, Derk said, “but it’s not something I can think of just now. I shall have to go and see Querida tomorrow. There were two important things she said she’d do for me and I haven’t had a word from her since she left here.”

“Perhaps she hurt herself, translocating away in such a hurry,” Shona suggested.

“Barnabas says she got back all right,” said Derk. “Her healer told him she’s as well as can be expected. But I can’t afford to wait much longer, so I shall have to go and disturb her.”

In fact, it was days later that Derk set off to see Querida. The messages Shona had put on his desk kept him and Beauty busy for most of a week. When he finally set off, he was determined that Querida should not set eyes on Beauty. He had seen the way she had looked at Pretty, even in shock and pain, and he was not having her claim Beauty for the University. He left Beauty grazing in a field about five miles away from University City, which was as far as he could translocate himself. He wished he had Blade’s gift for it as he heaved himself onwards.

He got there, just, with a rush and a stagger on landing, at the end of the street of little grey houses where Querida lived, and walked slowly along to the right one. It looked – and felt – completely lifeless. Perhaps Querida had recovered enough by now, he thought, to get herself to the University buildings. Still, he thought he would try the door now he was here. He knocked.

To his surprise, the door moved under his fist and came open. Derk pushed it further ajar. “Is anyone here?”

There was no answer, but there was a faint feeling of life inside.

“Better make sure,” Derk muttered. He walked slowly and cautiously into the house, afraid that someone like Querida would have quite a few nasty traps for intruders, and very conscious of the way the old floor creaked under his boots.

He found himself in a small, busy living room, full of feathers in jars, knicknacks, patterned cushions, patterned shawls, patterned rugs and a lot of twisted snake-shaped candlesticks. It smelt sour and furry and old-ladyish. There was a couch at the far end, all patterns and frills. Querida lay on it, covered with a patterned rug, looking less small than usual because of the smallness of the room. Disposed at comfortable intervals around her were three large tabby cats, who gazed up at Derk with three hostile looks from three pairs of wide yellow eyes. That explains the open door, he thought. The cats have to get in and out. Querida was fast asleep. Her face was white and her mouth open slightly. Her skinny splinted little left arm was laid across her chest, and he could just see it move as she breathed. He could see the outline of splints round her left leg, beside the biggest of the cats.

It seemed a shame to wake her. Derk coughed. “Er – Querida.”

Querida did not move. Derk said her name louder, and then loud enough to cause the cats to twitch their ears crossly, and finally almost in a shout. The cats glared, but it had absolutely no effect on Querida. Derk was alarmed. “I think I’ll get her healer,” he said, feeling a little foolish, not knowing if he was speaking to the cats, to himself or to Querida.

He left the house, with the door carefully not quite shut, and set off towards the University buildings, looking for someone who might know where Querida’s healer lived. Nobody seemed to be about, until he came to the square in front of the University. Here was a considerable crowd, all oddly quiet, patiently waiting around a cart pulled up in the middle, which was loaded with boxes, bundles and rolls of cloth. A tall calm lady, very straight-shouldered and seraphic-looking, was handing the things in the cart out to the waiting people and giving instructions as she did so.

“You’re on the eastern posting,” Derk heard her say as he pushed up closer, “so you’ll need most of febrifuges and herbs for stomach upsets. Here.” She briskly doled out handfuls of little cloth bags and turned to the next group waiting. “Now you people are backing up the tour parties, so make sure you have a baggage mule as well as a horse to ride. I’m going to have to give you remedies for everything under the sun. You wouldn’t believe the things those Pilgrims do to themselves – everything from festering wounds to alcohol poisoning. Here. I call this my body bag.” She turned to pull a sack the size of a bolster out from the cart and her eye fell on Derk. She seemed to know at once that he was not there to collect medicines. “Yes?” she said coldly. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for someone who knows Querida’s healer,” Derk explained.

“I am Querida’s healer,” the lady said majestically. “Is there a problem?”

“Well, she seems to be asleep—” Derk began.

“Of course she is,” said the majestic lady. “Querida reacts very badly to pain, so I have, at her own request, put her into a healing coma until the pain has gone.”

“Oh,” said Derk. “But I need to speak to her urgently. Is there any chance—?”

“No chance at all,” said the lady. “Come back in—” She passed the bolsterlike bag to the nearest waiting person, nearly choking Derk with the intense whiff of herbs from it, and counted on her fingers. “Come back in a week.”

“A week!” Derk cried out.

“Or ten days,” said the lady.

“But it’s only four days now until the tours start!” Derk protested desperately.

“Precisely,” said the lady. “This is why I am in the middle of outfitting my healers. Now do you mind going away? It is most important that every healer is in place, with the correct remedies, before the first offworlders come through.”

“Yes, yes of course,” Derk found himself saying humbly. She was so majestic that it never even occurred to him to suggest that the Dark Lord might be important too. He backed sadly away to a clear space and tried to translocate to the place where he had left Beauty.

To his disgust, he fell short by nearly two miles. It took him most of the rest of that day to find the field where Beauty was grazing. And he had been relying on Querida’s help. While he searched, he had to keep his mind on the mermaid-daughter in order not to feel sick with worry. She was going to have to have her own pool. It would be quite difficult bringing up a child that had to be kept wet at all times. Mara and he would have to spend a lot of time in the pool with her. They would have to buy a cart in order to take her to the sea …

In spite of this, they arrived home with Beauty bright-eyed and well rested and Derk grey with worry.

“What’s the matter, Dad?” asked Shona.

Derk groaned. “Querida’s going to be asleep for the next ten days. I think she insisted on it. I’d forgotten what she was like. But the trouble is she promised to help me over the god manifesting and raise me a demon. I don’t know what to do!”

“Ask Barnabas?” Lydda suggested, shuffling in with a plate of buttery biscuits.

“He’s busy making camps for the Dark Lord’s army,” Derk said, absently taking four biscuits and not tasting one of them. “That’s quite as urgent. They have to be ready before the Pilgrims come through. They send the soldiers in early.”

“You’d better not try raising demons by yourself,” Shona said anxiously.

“Or gods,” said Lydda. “And Elda wants to know when you can look at the new story she’s written.”

“Tomorrow night,” Derk said. “I think I’ll go and see Umru tomorrow. Perhaps he can persuade his god Anscher to manifest – I told Umru I’d visit him anyway. But what I’m going to do about a demon, I can’t think!”

“Why not ask Mum?” Shona suggested. “She said she’d be in for supper.”

Derk could not see Mara helping him in her present frame of mind, but he said, “Good idea,” in order not to hurt Shona’s feelings. Perhaps if he were very careful speaking to Mara, and particularly careful not to mention the mermaid idea yet …

But Mara arrived late for supper, with two little creases full of her own worries above her pretty nose. She had gone very thin, and her hair had come down to hang in a fat fair plait over one shoulder. “Sorry. I can’t stay long,” she said. “Now Querida’s had herself put to sleep, I have hundreds of things to do for her tomorrow at the latest. I’ll have to get back and start moving people from the village tonight.”

“From the village? Whatever for?” said Derk.

“Didn’t Shona tell you?” Mara asked, and Shona looked down at her plate, not wanting to say that Derk had been too worried for her to want to tell him anything. “Well, you know I never liked the idea of them sitting right in the path of the final confrontation,” Mara said. “You might be careful, Derk, but Pilgrims never are, and the village people could be hurt even in those pits. So I solved the problem by hiring them all as servants to the Enchantress.”

Derk gave her an appalled look. “What with?”

Mara frowned the two little creases tighter yet. “What do you mean, what with?”

Derk swallowed and remembered he was meaning to be very careful and tactful tonight. She’s borrowed a lot of money from someone, he thought. I have to go even more carefully. “Mara,” he said, “you aren’t being paid for being the Enchantress. And I’ve been fined a hundred gold before we even start. We haven’t any money to hire a whole village.”

Mara gave an odd little smile. “Oh, I think I can manage.”

She’s borrowed a massive amount! Derk thought. Dear gods! “Have you hired Fran Taylor and Old George as well? I went to a lot of trouble emaciating them.”

Mara chuckled. “Fran wants to stay picking about in the ruins, but I love Old George! He’s far too good to waste on the village. I want him to be my former lover that I’ve drained to skin and bone. The Pilgrims should be really impressed.”

Derk watched all his plans for a mermaid daughter dwindle into unimportance and then to nothing. His chest hurt. Mara’s going to leave me, he thought. She’s going to leave me for this person she’s borrowed money from. What shall I do? He had always been afraid of this. Wizards’ marriages almost never lasted. Nearly every wizard he knew had one broken marriage, and some had more. That young Finn was on his second marriage; Barnabas’s wife had walked out years ago; even Querida had been married once. Derk miserably supposed he should consider himself lucky that he and Mara had lasted eighteen years.

Mara meanwhile had turned to Shona. “Shona, darling, have you made up your mind yet? I want your help over at Aunt’s house more than ever now, with Querida out of action. I’m going to need lots of silly fashionable clothes – the kind you and Callette are both so good at inventing. What does Callette say?”

“Callette’s on her hundred and nineteenth gizmo,” Shona said. “She’ll need another day at least to do the rest. She says she might come over then. But—” She shot a look at the brooding Derk. “Mum, I don’t think I can come. There’d be no one but Lydda to look after things here.”

“I’ve said I can manage,” Lydda said with her beak full.

“I can help here too,” Elda muttered into a pile of fruit. “Everyone thinks I’m too small.”

“Not so much small as young,” Mara told Elda. “You are only ten, love, and I want you to come over to me with Callette. And why should Lydda do everything here? What’s wrong with you, Don, or you, Blade?”

Don sat with a raw chop halfway to his beak, Blade sat with a cooked one on the end of his fork. They exchanged looks of panic and consternation.

“Or Kit?” added Mara.

“May I consider?” Shona asked rather hectically. “Perhaps I’ll come when Callette’s finished – and there isn’t a piano in Aunt’s house, is there?”

“Yes there is,” said Mara. She got up. “That’s settled then. I’ll expect you and Callette and Elda the day after tomorrow. You’re going to love my pink embroidered hangings!”

Breaking up the family too, Derk thought miserably as Mara rushed away.

Blade, fairly naturally, tried to rush away too as soon as supper was over. But Shona deftly seized him by one arm and dragged him through to the kitchen, where Elda was swilling plates with careless abandon.

“Blade, you really have to help me do something!” Shona whispered. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“Noticed what?” Blade asked.

“Mum and Dad. They’re terminally not getting on.”

“They’re always quarrelling. You worry too much,” Elda said, shoving three wet plates into the rack.

“Wash those again,” Shona said automatically. “No, that’s just the trouble – they’re not quarrelling. Dad should have exploded just now about the money, and he hardly said a word.”

Blade sighed, knowing that his carefree time was over. “I see what you mean.”

mru’s priestly kingdom was north of Derkholm, adjoining King Luther’s. Derk, riding Beauty, descended over the temple of Anscher towards midday, dazzled by the sun on the huge golden domes. Other domes of other gods caught the sun too, all over the city, but Umru’s temple to Umru’s god was the biggest. Anscher must surely look kindly on a High Priest who had done so much for him, Derk thought. Perhaps Umru could persuade Anscher to show himself to Pilgrims. It was worth a try, anyway.

“Bhrright!” Beauty remarked as she wheeled down towards the main courtyard.

“It surely is,” Derk agreed. “Umru has to find something to do with his money.” He sighed as Beauty descended. He had been trying hard not to think of money, or of how much Mara might have borrowed, or of the mermaid daughter they would never have now. Not thinking of these things left a cold emptiness somewhere in the middle of his mind. I must think of an entirely different creature, he told himself as Beauty’s hooves touched the ground.

Willing, fanatical-looking men rushed to look after Beauty. More of them rushed to conduct Derk to the presence of Umru. He was handed over to a covey of acolytes, who handed him to priests, who handed him in turn to more priests, who led him through long upstairs cloisters painted with gold leaf to where Umru was waiting, smiling, in an empty sun-filled room.

“You could have landed on my balcony, if I had known your horse had wings,” Umru said to him. “Come. Sit.” He led Derk to a couple of throne-like chairs.

This room was only empty after a fashion, Derk thought, settling among carved cedarwood and gold. The floor was a pattern of blocks of wood, variously scented and coloured. Astoundingly beautiful silk rugs lay here and there upon it. The ceiling was a masterpiece of marble carved to resemble a tree in bloom, and the many narrow window frames were like trees too, with fruit. In between, the walls were inlaid with more masterpieces in coloured stone. But it was still an austere room, fit for a priest. Umru was a funny mixture, Derk thought. His vestments looked simple, but the cost of them would buy Derkholm several times over. Derk suddenly noticed that his own boots had not been cleaned after milking. And one of his cuffs was fraying.

“I’ve come to ask you to help me,” he said, tucking the offensive cuff under and doubling his feet back until the boots were under the sumptuous chair.

“And you can help me, my friend,” said Umru. “As you must have seen from your black book and your maps and lists, the battles are scheduled to take place this year just beyond this city of mine, all over my fields and farms – all over this land that I have worked so hard to make prosper. What am I to do?”

“I’m not sure there’s anything you can do,” Derk said.

“One battle a week for the next three months,” Umru added. “Everything will be trampled to mud by next spring.”

“Yes, I’m sorry about that,” Derk said, “but I am good at making things grow. I’ll come back when the tours are over and make sure you have some crops at least.”

“Penury and disaster will ensue,” said Umru. “No seeds will be sown—”

“Oh no, it won’t be that bad,” Derk assured him. “If you tell the people to plant seeds anyway, I’ll make as many grow as I can.”

“My people too will be trampled underfoot, the women raped, the infants slain. There will be no one to sow the seeds,” Umru proclaimed.

“But,” Derk objected, “you must have hundreds of cellars and crypts for people to hide in!”

Umru sighed. “My friend,” he said, in a noticeably more normal manner, “I think you are not following my drift. If the Dark Lord wishes, he can surely oblige a friend by moving the battles a few miles – say, twenty miles, bringing the site south of the mountains that border my country.”

“Not easily,” Derk hastened to explain. “You see the routes have been very carefully interlocked to bring several tours to the same battle—”

Umru sighed again. “How much?”

“Eh?” Derk found his fingers fiddling with the frayed ends of his cuff. He let go quickly. “If you’re saying what I think you are, then the answer’s—” He stopped short. Money would be very welcome, money to pay that fine, money to cover the huge sum Mara had to have borrowed in order to pay everyone in the village. On the other hand, he needed a god, or no one would get any money at all. And he needed Umru’s help for that. “I don’t take bribes,” he said.

Umru’s face dropped forward on to his stack of double chins. He looked so thoroughly depressed that Derk added, “But, as I was going to say, I’ll see if I can shift the battles south for nothing. It won’t be easy, because they’ve got everyone converging on you this year – you’re supposed to hold the final clue to my weakness – and Barnabas is setting up the main camp for me. I’ll have to give him the wrong map reference, tell him I made a mistake or something. But I’ll do what I can.”

Umru raised his face from his chins and looked deeply at Derk. “You’re an honest man.”

“Well, not—” Derk shifted in his carved chair until it creaked.

“And I admire you for it. With sadness,” Umru said. “I really do have a great deal of money. You needn’t do it for nothing.”

“I will. I’ve said I’ll try,” Derk protested. “After all, I may not be able to do it.”

“Very honest,” sighed Umru. “So. You said I could help you. How?”

With an uneasy feeling that Umru might have been readier to help him if he had accepted a bribe, Derk leant forward in the carved chair and explained about Mr Chesney’s idea for a novelty. And it was worse than Derk had expected. As soon as he mentioned Anscher, Umru’s head tilted back and his mouth became a fat, grim line. His large face became more and more stony, the longer Derk talked. “It was in the contract, you see,” Derk explained. “I know the contract was drawn up when both of us were only children, but Mr Chesney regards it as binding. None of us gets any money this year if we don’t get a god to manifest.”

“Not even for money,” Umru said, very upright in his chair. “It is odd how every man has his sticking-point, Wizard Derk. You have told me yours. You have just met mine. I have done many things for Mr Chesney, for money, but this is one thing I will not, cannot do. We do not command the gods. They command us. Any attempt to coerce the gods is vile.”

This man is truly a devout priest after all! Derk thought. He was completely sure Umru meant what he said. “I see. I accept that,” he said hastily. “But perhaps you could give me a hint about some way I could fake—”

“You don’t see at all, wizard,” Umru interrupted, “or you would not ask. No one who has known a god could even speak of faking. Let me tell you. I was not always as you see me now. I was once a slender young boy, the youngest in my family, and my family was not rich. We lived by the mountains, a long way south of this city. My father had a few cows, some goats and a flock of geese. I was only entrusted with the geese. If I lost those geese, you see, the family would not starve, and I was considered too young to watch the animals. And one day I drove my geese out to feed on a certain swelling green hill. I was sitting there as carelessly as you sit in that chair now, thinking of nothing much, rather bored, but with no ambition in the world except perhaps to guard the cows for once, when Anscher appeared to me. As close as I am to you, wizard, Anscher stood before me. And he was a god, wizard. There was absolutely no doubting it, though it is not a thing I can describe. He smiled at me. He never even asked my name. He never asked me to do anything for him. He just stood in front of me and said, ‘I am Anscher, your god,’ and he smiled.”

Umru stared out into the empty room. Derk could see tears in his eyes.

“The glory of that appearance,” Umru said after a moment, “has been with me every moment of every day, of every year of my priesthood, through everything I have done. I have always hoped he would appear again, but he never has, wizard. He never has. When I first became High Priest and started to raise Anscher above other gods, I made that hill where I saw him into a sanctuary to him. I had an altar set up there. Now I think that was presumptuous. By doing that, I tried to command Anscher to appear to me again, and that was wrong. He will not come to me again now. I am too proud, too old, too fat. No, he will not come.”

Umru’s voice faded away and he sat staring, with tears running down his great cheeks. Derk watched uncomfortably. He sat and watched and Umru sat and stared for so long that Derk began to wonder whether he should simply get up and tiptoe away. But Umru suddenly smiled, wiped the tears off with the sleeve of his expensive gown and said, “You know, I think it’s lunchtime. Will you join me in some lunch, Wizard?”

Derk was thoroughly unnerved. “I – I’d be honoured,” he managed to say.

Umru clapped his chubby hands. Instantly a group of young boys, who had obviously been waiting outside for the signal, came hurrying in with a folding table, beakers, jugs, plates and trays of food. The trays were probably gold. The glassware was exquisite crystal. The food smelt wonderful. Derk had forgotten that the worshippers of Anscher never ate meat, but the various dishes were so beautifully cooked that he hardly noticed they were all made of vegetables. He slipped a particularly fine pasty into his pocket to show Lydda. And when the boys raced in again with bowls heaped with fruit, Derk wanted to take the strangest sort for Elda, but he did not quite like to, not after the pasty.

“Try one of these, Wizard,” Umru said. “You won’t have met this fruit before. I bought them off one of Mr Chesney’s tour agents – we often do little deals on the side, you know. She called them oranges, I believe.”

“They are,” said Derk. “Orange, I mean.”

Umru laughed. “You peel the outside off,” he explained. “Like this. Then the inside splits into pieces, just as if one of their gods had designed them for people to eat. Remarkable, aren’t they?”

“Mm.” Derk was not sure he liked the sharp, definite taste, but he was sure Elda would.

“Take another home with you,” Umru said generously. “I have two dozen. I only paid four gold for them, too.” While Derk weighed the orange globe in his hand, thinking the thing was rather like one of Callete’s early gizmos, Umru added, “They have pips. The young woman told me that they grow well in warm, dry conditions. I think they grow like apples, on trees.”

“Ah.” Derk looked up to see Umru smiling meaningly.

“I would buy as many as you could grow,” Umru said. He clapped his hands again and the boys brought water and cloths. As Derk washed the pungent juice off his fingers, he realized that he would only need a couple of trees, at two gold for a dozen fruit, to earn the money for that fine. But they might take years to grow. Umru looked sideways at him as they dried their hands, almost uncertainly. “I – er – have another small favour to ask, Wizard, something more along the lines of what you usually do for me.”

“Ask away,” said Derk.

“I need forty or so newly severed heads to go on stakes all over the city when the tours come through,” Umru explained. “This year I am the kind of priest who beheads heretics. Could you—?”

“No trouble at all,” said Derk.

Umru looked so relieved that Derk saw the man had been truly worried in case his refusal to help with the god had annoyed Derk into refusing to work magic for him.

“I promise to move the battles if I can,” Derk assured him.

Umru heaved himself to his feet. “As I said, every man has his sticking-point,” he said, showing Derk he was right.

He led Derk outside and down steep stairs. It was almost like Derk’s usual visits. Up to now, Derk had been feeling quite out of his depth. No one had tried to bribe him before, nor did he know how to deal with Umru’s religious experiences; but there was no uncertainty when it came to putting a spell on a sheep’s head or so. Then he saw what Umru had waiting for him, piled in a small courtyard below. Derk stared at the heap of old yellowy-brown human skulls and swallowed.

“Where—?”

Umru smiled. “We fetched them up from the catacombs. They were all priests once. I hope they don’t worry you.”

“Not at all,” Derk lied.

He took a deep breath and began. It was the sort of thing he was good at and so used to that he could have done it with his eyes shut. Before long, he did have his eyes shut most of the time. The skulls, under his hands, turned back into the people they had once been, but without their bodies. None of them seemed to like the experience. Most of them stared at Derk reproachfully. If he looked away, he saw Umru nodding and smiling cheerfully. Even with his eyes shut, he felt quite ill by the end.

“Nice quantities of blood,” Umru said. “Splendid. Let us hope the weather stays chilly. The usual fee?”

For a second, Derk was tempted to ask for a hundred gold. He felt he had earned it. Umru could afford it. But he could not bear to stand beside the heap of bleeding heads, most of which were still staring at him from half-shut resentful eyes, and bargain. “Usual fee,” he agreed hastily.

He took the money and fled to the main courtyard, where the fanatical men were waiting with Beauty. “This horse is for sale?” one of them asked him greedily.

“No!” Derk snapped. He was still feeling ill as Beauty took off. The surge when she leapt into the air was almost too much for him.

“Home nhow?” Beauty asked hopefully.

Derk swallowed. “No. Take a bit of a swing eastwards. I need to look at the battlefield.” And to calm down, he thought. This had not been a good day.

Beauty obediently swerved out beyond the domes of the city and flapped high above the countryside there. They flew above orderly rows of orchard trees, vines and vegetables that followed the shape of the ground, green fields and stubbled ones, and some fields rich brown and already ploughed, woods, meadows, hedges. Everything was bronze-green and a little hazy in the afternoon light. Everything was beautifully kept. Through it all swung the river in prosperous curves that reminded Derk of Umru’s belly, of his dragon-dolphin and then of his not-to-be mermaid daughter. He told himself sternly that Shona’s idea of an intelligent carrier pigeon was a much more practical one and began to feel a little better. He could see why Umru was anxious not have the battles here. This was some of the best farmland he had ever seen. He would have to move the battlefield. That was one good thing to come out of today – and he had gained a new fruit. But he still had no god and no demon. He sighed.

“Better turn for home,” he told Beauty.

She banked round, wheeling across the river, and set off south, flying much faster. She was always anxious to get back to Pretty. The blue line of the mountains came nearer with every wingbeat. Very shortly, the mountains were a line of individual hills, with craggy places pushing out into the cultivated fields like headlands, dark with heather or grey-green with rough grass. One headland over to the left caught Derk’s eye because it was so green and handsomely wooded with clumps of trees. As Beauty moved nearer to it, he saw a tiny white oblong up there in the midst of the green. It could have been an altar.

“Hang on,” he told Beauty. “Can you land by that white thing just for a moment?”

Beauty’s tail gave a circular swish of protest, but she went obediently planing down to the left and landed softly, deep in long tender grass.

Derk dismounted in a small meadow mostly circled by trees. The leaves were a wonderful array of tinged reds, dark greens and acid autumn yellow. The grass had been mown a little, but not much – just enough to allow the growth of every kind of meadow flower. Bees buzzed among them. Beauty put her head down eagerly and moved off to graze. Derk simply stood for a while. It felt here as if peace was climbing out of the very roots of the grass, moving up through his feet to his body, and filling him with an alert kind of softness. All the worries of being Dark Lord seemed small, and far-off, and easily solved. After a minute or so, he walked over to the white thing. It was an altar, as he had thought, small and plain. Plain letters on its side said Umru gives this to the glory of Anscher.

“I thought this must be the place,” Derk murmured.

It seemed to him that there could be no harm in asking Anscher for help. He began to explain, in an ordinary conversational way, far more calmly than he had explained to Umru, that Mr Chesney demanded a god for this year’s special effect. “And if we don’t produce something,” he said, “nobody gets any pay at all. I know this sounds very worldly, but what it means is that there will be a lot of showy fighting over this good farming country and people will be killed for no reason at all. A great deal of effort going to utter waste, do you see?”

As he went on speaking, Derk had the feeling that he, and the small altar, were the centre of a kind of cone of attention. It was a vast cone, whose point centred on the meadow while the rest went spreading out and out, and up through the sky – or not exactly up, Derk thought: more like outwards, into realms and spaces beyond anything humans could reach. The attentiveness was more alive than anything Derk had ever experienced, and it was strong as a bright light. For a while, he was sure he was being heard. But there was no kind of answer.

“Please,” Derk said. “Can you see your way to doing anything? Anything?”

There was no reply. After a time, though not immediately, he felt the cone very softly and quite kindly going away. He sighed. “Ah well. It was worth a try.” He turned away from the altar and stepped through the grass. And realised he was utterly exhausted. He had never in his life felt so drained. It was an effort to get his feet through the grass.

Beauty looked up as Derk dragged himself over to her. “Nhize ghrass,” she remarked. “Htasty flowers.” Whatever had drained Derk had had the opposite effect on Beauty. He had never seen her eyes so bright or her coat glow so. Every feather in her great black wings gleamed with well-being.

He got himself on to her back by hanging over her, stomach down, and then scrambling. “Home,” he panted and Beauty leapt into the air with a will.

They crossed the mountains. They crossed the moors and then the great magical wastes that were kept mostly for Pilgrims to seem to get lost in, and came finally, near sundown, to the more roughly cultivated land north of Derkholm. By this time Derk was recovering, but still tired enough that, when they saw a crossroads and an inn beside it, he had a sudden longing for a rest and a quiet pint of ale before he went home and faced all the new pigeon messages. He knew this inn. He knew its landlord, Nellsy, and didn’t much care for him. Nellsy was a whinger. But he brewed a good ale.

“Go down by that inn there,” he told Beauty.

She turned her head to fix a large blue-brown eye on him. “Nheed to hsee Prehtty.”

“Soon. I’ll just have one really quick pint,” Derk said.

She sighed and went down into the inn yard.

The two carthorses standing there backed and stamped with mild alarm. They were not used to other horses coming out of the sky. Nellsy bawled at them to stand still. He was hard at work loading the dray the horses were harnessed to with barrels, mugs and chairs. As Derk walked towards the dray, he could see a sofa and a mattress among the load as well.

“Evening, Nellsy,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Closing the inn down. Getting out,” Nellsy answered. “This is my last load. The wife went with the rest of it this morning. I’m right in the path of the tours here, and I’m not staying to watch the place broken up by werewolves or some such.”

“I think most of the tours are coming into Derkholm from the east,” Derk said, “and the werewolves are programmed to attack in the north. You should be all right here.”

“Can’t rely on that. Bloody Wizard Guides get lost all the time,” Nellsy retorted. “And I’m not hanging round to give them directions either. You wanted a drink?”

“Well, I did,” Derk admitted.

“Go on in. Help yourself. There’s still a last barrel set up,” Nellsy said. “Sorry I can’t stay and serve you, but I’m late on the road as it is. It’ll be dark midnight before I get this lot to the wife’s sister and the sour-faced bitch is going to be in bed and pretending she thought I was coming tomorrow and there’ll be no food saved—”

Derk left Nellsy grumbling and went into the taproom. It was practically empty. All the tables and benches had gone and the fire was out. His boots clumped on the bare floor as he went to the bar. Someone had swept the floor, possibly even scrubbed it. Without its usual coating of sawdust and litter, it was quite handsome oak boards. Derk unhooked the last remaining battered pewter mug and managed to fill it three-quarters full from the barrel before the dregs started coming. Then he clumped outside to sit in the last of the sun and watch Nellsy rope down his load and, finally, leave. Being Nellsy, he left with a lot of shouting, hoof-battering and the squealing of under-greased axles. But he was gone at last. Peace came falling down on the yard as the dust settled. Beauty had found some wispy hay sticking out of the barn wall and was morosely pulling at it. The jingling of her tack made everything even quieter. It was such a small noise.

Derk drank, and felt better, and thought. Ideas seemed to fall through his head like the settling dust. No god then. Only three days to the start of the tours and no demon either. He was going to have to summon a demon himself. Soon. Dangerous. But he had had years of wizardry since his failure over that blue demon, and he thought he now knew enough to manage it, provided there was no one else around to get hurt. He needed somewhere totally deserted with a nice flat floor for chalking the symbols on. Like this inn. It was practically ideal. It was near enough to Derkholm that he could get here translocating in about three hops. And once the demon was there – well – Anscher had quite politely refused his help, but demons were said to take wicked pleasure in pretending to be gods. Suppose he offered the idea to the demon as a reward for guarding the Dark Lord’s Citadel …

Derk poured the rest of his beer on the ground and stood up. Better do it tonight before he lost his nerve. Demons were best summoned at night. Before that, he had to get Beauty out of here and, most importantly, look up in the books exactly how you did summon a demon.

here’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 travelling 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 towards 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 pastry 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

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