Dark Lord of Derkholm (20 page)

“That's what they all said,” boomed the dragon. “And then they scolded me for roasting the wizard. If you've come to tell me off for that, too, consider it done.”

“Well, no, actually, I've come to ask you for help, Mr.—er—Scales,” Blade said boldly.

“Scales will do,” said the dragon. “What do you mean, help?”

“You owe me. You roasted my father,” said Blade.

“There. You see? You're scolding,” the dragon rumbled.

“No, I'm not. I'm starting to explain.” Blade braced his feet and stared up into the dragon's huge eyes. Despite the things Fran and Old George had said, this seemed the right thing to do. It had worked for Mara. “You see, because you roasted my father, we're having to do his Dark Lord work for him. We've got his army—they're six hundred murderers really, pretending to be soldiers—out in the middle of nowhere near the wastes, and we're supposed to be moving them to a base camp in Umru's country, so that we can park them there while we do the Wild Hunt and so on. But they won't move. Today they just sat down and wouldn't come out of the dome.”

“Leave them there then,” said the dragon.

“We
can't,
” said Blade. “There's a timetable, there's a whole set of battles they have to fight in. Besides, if we did leave them, they'd probably all escape and start murdering everyone.”

“I thought murdering was what soldiers and battles did,” said the dragon. “Why have they got to go and murder people in a particular place at a particular time?”

“Because,” Blade said patiently, “Mr. Chesney has arranged for the tours to have a battle each.”

There was silence. All Blade could hear was the stream racing over stones. The dragon barely moved. A wisp of smoke blew from its great jaws and melted among the hairs of the carcass under its paw. There was a tinge of red in the one huge eye Blade could most clearly see. Somehow the wings above him seemed to be in sharper, crueler points, and Blade had a sense of muscles tensing all over the enormous body. He saw that the dragon had been having a joke with him, dragon fashion, but something Blade had said was not funny anymore, and he had made it very angry. He got ready to translocate in a hurry.

“Someday,” the dragon remarked in a croon, deep in its smoky throat, “I must meet this Mr. Chesney of yours. I ought to pay my respects to the one who rules the dragons of this world, ought I not? Very well then. I shall come and pay my debt to your father tomorrow at dawn.”

Blade relaxed. “Couldn't you come today?” he asked pleadingly.

“I am not ready to travel today,” the dragon said. “I am still healing. Look for me after sunrise tomorrow. Are you and your murderers easy to find?”

“Awfully,” said Blade. “We leave a mile-wide trail the whole way. Thank you for agreeing—er—Mr.—er—Scales, I mean.”

The dragon snorted a big gobbet of blue smoke. “I won't say it's my pleasure. It sounds like a chore. I won't even agree that I owe you. It's just the only way I'm likely to get any peace here. Do you mind going away now and letting me finish my breakfast?”

“Yes, of course,” Blade agreed, and found himself very nearly calling the dragon sir, the way he used to have to call his grandfather sir. Mara's father had been a tetchy old wizard with very old-fashioned ways. This dragon reminded Blade of his grandfather rather a lot.

He went away down the valley. Now he had time to think, he was highly surprised at how easily the dragon had agreed to help them. He hoped it was enough like Grandfather to keep its word. Grandfather always said, “A wizard's word is his bond. He should die rather than break his word, child.” But the dragon could just have been trying to get rid of him. Grandfather hadn't liked being disturbed either.

D
ERK WOKE UP QUITE
suddenly the afternoon of the fifth day, with a feeling that somebody was calling his name. He sat up, amazed to be so weak and breathless. His face felt sore. When he touched it, he found he had almost a beard and a large weeping burn on his cheek. That brought everything back to him.

“Gods and demons!” he exclaimed. “How long did they put me to sleep for?”

He got up. His legs tried to fold. He strengthened them sternly with a spell and floundered across to the bathroom, hanging on to chairs, doorknobs, walls, and finally the washbasin, where he grimly set about shaving. Elda came galloping upstairs a few minutes later to find him with his face covered with lather and smeary bandages hanging off all over him.

“Oh,
please
get back to bed, Dad!” she squawked. “Lydda's got you some broth.”

“No. How long have I been asleep?” Derk said, swaying a little.

“Nearly five days,” said Elda. “But you mustn't worry. Shona's gone with the boys to keep them sensible, and they're seeing to the soldiers for you. Please go back to bed.”

Derk pulled a loose bandage free and used it to cover the burn on his face while he scraped hair and lather away from beside it. “Where's your mother?”

“In her Lair,” said Elda. “The first tour gets to her tomorrow, and the second one goes around by the sacked nunnery and arrives as soon as the first one leaves.” Elda was good at learning things. She had learned Mara's entire program while she sat on the end of Derk's bed, guarding him from Fran. She could have told Derk about it at some length.

Derk sighed. It had been too much to hope that Mara had been looking after him while he was ill. Probably she did not want to. “Then who is that calling me?” he interrupted, raising his chin to scrape his neck. A bristle pulled. “Ouch!”

“I don't hear anyone,” said Elda.

“Magically,” said Derk.

“It could be the elves,” Elda said.

“What elves?” said Derk, grimly shaving away.

Elda sighed, too. She could see Derk was in his most obstinate mood, and she never could deal with him when he was like that. She hopped into the empty bath and couched there while she told him everything that had been going on. Derk meanwhile hung on to the basin with one hand and then the other and managed first to shave and then to strip off most of his bandages and sponge off the ointment to see how bad the burns were. They were still quite bad.

“And Callette came back just after the elves came, and she screamed at the dragon and then went over to see Mum,” Elda said. “You ought to
leave
that salve, Dad. The healer
said!
”

“What does Callette think she's up to?” asked Derk.

“Finding out what clues you'd put out,” Elda explained. “She says you'd hardly done half of them.”

“Then who's feeding the animals, if anyone?” Derk asked.

“Half of them are with Shona and the boys,” Elda explained. “Mum got Old George in to do the rest. And she got Fran to do you—only I don't like Fran. She called me an
animal.
”

“Tell Fran she's one, too,” said Derk. “Gods! What a mess this is!” He left the bathroom and tottered back to his bedroom to find his clothes. Elda bounded out of the bath and rushed to get her back under his weaving right hand. Derk leaned on her gratefully, even though she kept trying to steer him back to bed. At least she knew what Fran had done with his clothes. He made her fetch them and sat on the bed to get into them.

“Do let Lydda bring you the broth,” Elda pleaded while he dressed. “You must be starving!”

“Not really. No messages have come through from my stomach,” Derk said. He was worried about whoever was calling him. They sounded urgent. He put his boots on and stood up. “Help me get downstairs, Elda. Where are these elves?”

“In the dining room eating godlike lunch,” said Elda. “You could wait.”

Derk knew that if he waited, he would crawl into bed again and the mess would only get worse. “No,” he said, and tottered toward the stairs.

Lydda had heard the activity overhead. In its present state the house creaked mightily whenever anyone walked about upstairs. She met Derk with a mug of broth halfway downstairs and sat herself squarely in his way. “Sit down and drink this, Dad, or I'll peck your burns.”

Derk sat heavily, with one arm over Elda's back. Lydda had left him nowhere else to go. He meekly took the mug. The broth in it smelled wonderful. He sipped. It was beautiful. “A poem in liquid,” he told Lydda; she was sitting spread over the next four steps with her wings out to make sure he came down no further. Derk managed to grin. “Everyone should have griffin daughters to keep them in order,” he said. Elda moved around to the stair above him so that he could lean against her. Derk leaned into her warm feathers and sat comfortably sipping, staring out at the greenness of the garden and the valley beyond, through the magic wall Finn and Barnabas had made. “When all this is over, I think we'll keep this front wall transparent,” he said. “The stairs always used to be too dark. So what else has happened since Callette left?”

“Blade came,” said Lydda, “but not for long. He was soaked through because it was raining in their camp. He went and looked at you.”

“He said you were much better,” Elda protested, “but you look
awful,
Dad. Your cheeks are all droopy and thin.”

“Sometimes,” Derk said, “Blade talks good sense. I could do with another cup of this wonderful broth, Lydda.”

Lydda took the mug but did not budge. “I'll get you more when you're back in bed.”

Derk smiled, sighed, and shook his head at her. Then he translocated to the person who was calling him so urgently.

Squawks of dismay were still ringing in his ears as he landed, heavily, not in the dining room, where he had expected to be, but somewhere outside. It was beginning to rain here, too. Derk sat for a moment, sore and winded and getting wet, staring at steep green hillside and wishing he did not make so many mistakes in translocating. A cow bellowed nearby.

“Curses! I keep forgetting how fragile humans are!” rumbled a huge voice. Derk recognized it as the one that had been calling him. “Are you badly hurt?” the voice asked him.

Derk scrambled slowly around on his knees to stare at the enormous green dragon lying by the stream just below him. It glistened healthily in the rain. At first he thought it was a complete stranger. Then he saw the stitches in the nearest vast peaked wing. “Oh,” he said, “it's you.”

“And if I had not specifically called you, I would not have known you either,” the dragon rumbled. “My apologies. I asked you here to make amends. Once your wife had explained the situation to me, I saw that I had acted hastily and stupidly. I should never have burned you.”

“Er, thanks. Very decent of you,” Derk answered.

“Not decent,” boomed the dragon. “Ashamed. It was not you I should have attacked. But I was angry, very angry and shamed. I had been asleep—possibly I had settled down to die—when I was suddenly woken to find the world a different place. Dragons I had known as infants were now not only full grown but—of all things!—kowtowing to humans, taking part in a ridiculous
game
. And when I asked them their reasons, all they would do was stare into distance and pretend to be immeasurably wise.”

“Yes, they do that, the modern dragons,” Derk said. “I thought it was the dragon way.”

“I don't hold with it,” said the great green dragon. “No living creature has the right to claim wisdom. There is always more to find out. I should know that. I imagine you know it, too, Wizard.”

“I've never ever felt wise,” Derk said frankly. “But I suppose it
is
a temptation, to stare into distance and make people
think
you are.”

“It's humbug,” said the dragon. “It's also stupid. It stops you learning more. I went away from the adults and asked the fledgling dragons. There are only two of them. That's bad. Dragon numbers are badly down. They said the adults are too busy with those Pilgrim Parties to breed these days. So I asked about the Pilgrim Parties, and they told me that a Mr. Chesney is responsible for them and that the dragons side with this Mr. Chesney because he is the chief evil in the world. Foolishness. Dragons are never on anyone's side. And they told me also that the Dark Lord represents Mr. Chesney in our world. I was very angry and very shamed for my people, and I came here directly, intending, I am afraid, to kill the Dark Lord. You were lucky, Wizard, that I was tired and feeble and had no real fire.”

“It was bad enough as it was,” Derk admitted. “What woke you up?”

“I wish I could remember,” said the dragon. “It's been puzzling me. At my age, in my condition, I should simply have slept until I died. Of course I didn't know how bad I was. Your wife and that little healer woman had to tell me. But I should have been too feeble to wake. All I know is that something did wake me, something that struck me like blue lightning—maybe it
was
lightning, though how it reached my cave I can't think—and that I was awake and learning from the minds around me that this world had become a small, bad place.”

Derk had a notion what the blue lightning might have been. So I brought this on myself by trying to conjure a demon! he thought. But that was a small, fleeting thought beside his eager delight at discovering this dragon could read minds. It was something he had hoped the griffins would be able to do, and he had always been disappointed that they couldn't. I'm ridiculous, he thought. Here I am on a wet hillside, getting soaked in this rain and feeling too ill to get up, and all I can think of is that there truly is a creature who can read minds. “I'm quite excited to know you read minds,” he told the dragon. “There aren't many who can these days.”