Dark Lord of Derkholm (21 page)

“Nobody bothers to practice, that's all,” said the dragon. “It used to be one of the first things they made you do when you started to learn magic. You could do it, Wizard, if you'd been properly taught. And be thankful that I was properly taught. I've been lying here learning things about you and about your household that I wouldn't otherwise know. If I hadn't, I might have killed most of your little cat-birds—certainly the brown one. She was most insulting. But the other two were quite rude, too.”

“What, Lydda and Elda as well?” said Derk. He was impressed that they had had the courage to insult a dragon. Callette was big enough to think she might get away with it—though she had seen what happened to Kit—but Lydda was only about the size of one of the mayor's cows, and Elda was smaller than that. And the dragon had eaten at least half the mayor's herd. I must pay the mayor back! Derk thought. Where do I find any
money?
“I apologize for my griffin daughters,” he said.

“They were worried about you,” the dragon explained, “and they rightly blamed me. They took out their temper on me. And it was the same with the two very thin people—though no doubt they hoped I would not think them worth eating. I saw my own behavior in theirs. It is impressive the way all your people have such great regard for you, Wizard. But the skinny small boy, your son, is the one who troubles me most—”

“Did Blade insult you, too?” Derk groaned.

“He was entirely polite,” the dragon said. “But it was partly on his account I called you here. It seems that he and three others are engaged in marching six hundred murderers across the country.”

What a mess! Derk groaned again. Apart from the danger, there should surely have been more than six hundred soldiers. Barnabas said there were to be a thousand. “Yes, I'd better see about that at once,” he said. He tried to scramble up, but his feet slipped in the wet grass, and his knees refused to hold him.

“Wait and hear me out!” The dragon puffed out a cloud of steam. The steam surrounded Derk in moist warmth, smelling grassy and sweet and quite unlike the smokes it had tried to kill Derk with. “I was about to say that this is where I should make reparation. Speaking as something of a murderer myself, I would say your other fledglings are in trouble.”

“I
know
they are!” Derk said faintly.

“Then I suggest that if you will give me your authority, I go and try intimidating these murderers.”

“Willingly,” said Derk. “Any authority you want.”

“While you go back to your house and continue to heal,” said the dragon.

“I'm well enough,” Derk lied.

“You are not. I have been healing you as you sat here,” said the dragon. “This was my other reparation. But you will need at least one more day in which to recover your strength. Meanwhile I should perhaps tell you that you have six members of the Elder Race, as they wrongly call themselves—dragons are
much
older—waiting in your house upon some footling errand of honor which they regard as hugely important.”

“Oh,” said Derk. “Bother, I'd forgotten those elves. I'd better see them now.”

He stood up again. This time his knees seemed stronger, although they showed a tendency to forget they had kneecaps and to try to bend the wrong way. He steadied himself with one hand on the soaking hillside and watched the dragon stand up, too. It stood by stages, front legs first and then, with a roaring grunt and a long puff of steam, heaving its back legs under it. The mayor's cows belled with terror. “I know how you feel,” the dragon remarked, with its huge face now level with Derk's. “I'm off for a practice flight to see if I still need the stitches in this wing. If all goes well, I shall glide gently in pursuit of your fledglings. Expect to find me with them.”

Derk nodded and managed to translocate himself home as far as the terrace. While he hung on to the outdoor table there for a moment, wild cackling from Big Hen and squeals from the pigs alerted him to the fact that the dragon was now in the air. He looked up and saw it pass above the house, dwarfing everything with its huge wingspread, grass green and glittering under the rain. It was a magnificant sight, even though it did fly rather slowly and stiffly.

“And this house has to be turned into a Citadel! Gods! The things I still have to do!” Derk groaned. He let go of the table and tottered to the dining room.

The six lordly elves there sprang up from behind after-dinner cups of coffee and bowed gracefully. “My liege lord,” said the one with the golden circlet. “Greetings.”

They were all nearly seven feet tall. Derk found them a bit much. He hurriedly pulled forward a chair and sank down on it, and it was just as well that he did. The pigs had scented Derk while they scented the dragon. With a frenzied drumming of trotters and much excited squealing, the whole herd swept in through the open front door and on into the dining room, where they threw themselves delightedly upon Derk. The youngest porker jumped painfully into his lap. The rest stood on hind trotters to bunt him with their snouts, or surged against his knees, while Ringlet, being the oldest and the cheekiest of the sows, fluttered up onto the table, where she could look soulfully into Derk's eyes. Derk busily rubbed backs or scratched at the bases of stumpy wings and bawled at Ringlet to “Get down off there, pig!”

The effect on the elves was peculiar. The one with the circlet gaped and stood like a statue. His right hand was out, with its long, long index finger pointing stiffly at Ringlet. Derk would have been afraid he was trying to turn Ringlet to stone or something, except that the other five elves were falling about with laughter, crowing joyfully, slapping their elongated thighs, and hugging one another, as pleased as the pigs were. Finally, the laughing five swung the elf with the circlet around and hugged him, too, at which he joined in their laughter and began slapping the others on their backs. Old George, coming in hot pursuit of the pigs, skidded to a stop in the doorway and stared. Elves just did not behave like this normally.

“Forgive us, oh my lord!” gasped one of the five lesser elves. “Talithan, my prince, has this moment seen his prophecy come true, and we are witness to it.”

“Yes, truly, my lord,” said Prince Talithan. He was panting with emotion, and tears were running from his great greenish eyes. “Pray forgive me. I must tell you that my brother long ago went adventuring to our neighbor world, where Mr. Chesney has him a prisoner, thus forcing all elves to do his will. And when my father lately was sorrowing at this and saying that surely one day my brother must escape and come home to us, I answered him bitterly and scoffingly, saying, ‘Yea, that day will come when pigs do fly!' for which reason my father grew angry and sent me to you, to become the Dark Lord's minion. And here, where I come, behold! Pigs fly!” He pointed again at Ringlet, who was still on the table.

“Well, I've been breeding them with wings for years now,” Derk said. “Perhaps you shouldn't build your hopes on it.”

“I do. It was spoken as a prophecy,” Talithan replied.

“Have it your own way,” Derk said. “What actually brings you here? I thought I'd made all the arrangements with your people.”

Prince Talithan blotted away his tears on his green silken sleeve and bowed again. “That was when others were to lead your Dark Elves, my lord. I must now pay my respects as the new leader of Dark Elves, with these my captains, Gwithin, Loriel, Damorin, Fandorel, and Beredin.”

They were all names famous in elflore. Derk did his best to bow respectfully while sitting in a chair under a heap of pigs. The Elfking, he thought, must have been very angry, if he sent people like this to be Dark Elves. It was considered a great disgrace. And this made it all the odder that Prince Talithan seemed so eager to pay his respects. Derk suspected there was more to this than the matter of flying pigs. “I am honored,” he said as he bowed.

“And I am distressed, my lord,” said Talithan, “that you seem not quite to be well.”

“I had a little disagreement with a dragon,” Derk said, “but I am honored at your concern, Your Highness.” And now let's cut the cackle, he thought, and find out what they've really come for. “Indeed, you honor me too much. What is it you were waiting here for?”

“I do, in truth, my lord,” Talithan admitted, “require a boon of you.”

Ah, thought Derk. “You want to be released from having to be a Dark Elf, I imagine?”

“No, no, my lord!” Talithan protested. “To be allowed to serve you, obeying your every whim for a year and a day, is all I ask!”

“What?” Derk began to wonder if the elf prince was mad. Maybe this was why his father had sent him to Derkholm. “Why would you want to do that?”

Talithan smiled, as only elves could smile, heartrendingly, brilliantly. “You have a small wonder horse with striped wings,” he said, “that can talk and has the power to visit the secret home of the elves.”

“Pretty?” said Derk. “Can Pretty do that?”

“He can indeed, my lord,” one of the other elves—Loriel, Derk thought—assured him. “We found the small horse, all of us, astray in our hidden places, crying out that he was lost.”

“That was probably a lie if I know Pretty,” Derk murmured. “And?”

“I crave the small horse, Pretty,” said Prince Talithan. “Give him to me, of your bounty, and I will serve you in any way you wish.”

“No,” said Derk.

To Derk's consternation, Talithan vaulted the dining table, dislodging Ringlet in the process, and went down on one knee among the pigs at Derk's feet. “I beg you!” he said, amid Ringlet's irritated grunting. “My lord, I implore you! Never, for three hundred years, have I felt such joy in or longing for a living creature! Life would have meaning for me once again were I only to own this horse and train him and ride him in the sky! I would treat him better than I treat myself. You have my word.”

“Oh, do get up,” said Derk. “I said no. Pretty isn't a year old yet.”

“That I know,” Talithan said, still kneeling. “That is why I said I would serve you a year and a day for him. I will most faithfully serve you, lord, if you will only let me have Pretty at the end of that time.” He stood up, towering over Derk. “This I swear to, in front of these thirty witnesses.”

Thirty? Derk looked round at the pigs, each, even Ringlet, with his or her snout turned wonderingly up to Talithan, then at Old George, looking quite as wondering, and then over at the five elves, who each had a hand over his heart, swearing witness. Finally Derk looked over at the kitchen door, where Lydda, Elda, and Fran were squeezed together, staring at him accusingly.

“I was hoping to breed more winged horses with Pretty,” Derk said weakly.

“That can be arranged,” Talithan suggested.

“We would like winged horses, too,” said one of the other elves, Gwithin, Derk thought.

“
Herds
of them!” Damorin said raptly.

Talithan glanced across at him, rather coldly. “But none to match Pretty,” he said. “Well, my lord?”

There was always the other winged foal Pretty's grandmother would give birth to, Derk thought. “Look,” he said, “you may regret this. Pretty can be a dreadful handful.”

“He is a colt of infinite spirit,” Talithan said.

Besotted, Derk thought. But this was one way of ensuring that Querida could not get her hands on Pretty. Pretty would be far happier being doted on by an elf prince than shut in a pen at the University. “You could put it that way,” he told Talithan. “Oh, all right. After a year and a day then, Your Highness.”

“Witnessed!” chorused the five captains.

Talithan flung himself down on both knees and kissed Derk's hand. “My liege! Command me as you will!”

“Command him to leave so that you can go back to bed,” Lydda murmured, not quite quietly.

Derk glowered at her. “Then please go and take up your tour position,” he said to the elves. “Tour number two has an expendable whom one of you has to kill in a surprise attack tomorrow, and after that you had better look at the ten cities you'll be besieging.”

“This shall be done!” Prince Talithan said, joyously leaping up. “Let us go, my captains.”

They bowed deeply and filed out of the house. Old George began shooing the pigs out after them. Derk sat watching, feeling gray, the way elves made you feel when they left.

“Upstairs, Dad. Bed,” said Lydda.

Derk was just getting up to obey Lydda when Callette stuck her large brown head in through the open window. “Why did we have six soppy men in a green haze out here just now?”

Lydda spread her wings and bounded straight up from the floor, tail lashing. “
Damn
you, Callette! Why do you have to turn up and stick your beak in
now?
We'd almost got him to go back to bed!”

“I need several hundred more clues,” said Callette. “Five hundred and seventy-three, in fact. And I'm exhausted. I'm mean. I'm horrible. Don't argue with me.”

Derk shunted his chair across the floor so that he could lean against the wall by the window. “Just a short word,” he said soothingly to Lydda. “Elda, you'll find the right number of clues in a package in the top right-hand drawer of my desk. Yellow envelope.”