Dark Lord of Derkholm (50 page)

Almost everyone on the terrace was forced to roll, dive, or dodge out of the way of the stampede. The demon did not move. It just let all the animals flow through it. Mr. Chesney did not move either. Blade watched him being shoved this way and that by the racing crowd of animals and trying to pretend, just as he had before, that nothing was happening. While Blade was shoving himself and Kit aside to make room for Ringlet and the dogs, he kept his eye on Mr. Chesney and saw a blur beside him and then the same blur again beside Querida. The hammering of paws and hooves and trotters had been too much for Querida. She had drawn herself up into a crouch on the wall, with her face hidden. As the Friendly Cows thundered past, Blade saw the blur become Reville. While the ponies streamed across the terrace, Reville nudged Querida and handed her what looked like a paperweight filled with yellowish fog. Blade found himself impressed by Reville's skill.

The Horselady gave up the struggle and let Beauty chase the rest on her own. “I was only bringing her
back,
” she explained to Derk. “When I call, they
all
come, you see.”

As the stampede went rushing away around the house and Don and Elda came loping back to the terrace, grinning, Querida sat up on her wall and waved the paperweight.

“I've got your demon here, Mr. Chesney!” she called.

Mine,
said the demon Tripos, snaking down a luminous blue hand thing.

“No, mine,” Scales said, grabbing for it with an enormous clawed foot.

Mr. Chesney strode toward Querida, holding out his hand imperiously. “I'll have that here, if you please.”

Querida clung to the glass globe with all the might of her withered arms and all the strength of her magic. This was going to be difficult.

Then a great stillness came over everything. This was followed by a faint stirring in the air which gave the feeling of music. Everyone looked up and saw that Anscher was there.

Blade thought the gods probably came out through the front door, but perhaps they came from somewhere else entirely. There was absolutely no doubt they were the gods. They all had such a strong stillness about them that it almost gave you the feeling they were in violent motion, and there was a faint light on them that came from somewhere where the rules were different.

Blade had no doubt who was Anscher. He was the same person as the man he had met fishing. Beside Blade, Kit stirred and muttered, “He's the one who told me to learn—”

No one had any doubt. Prince Talithan and his brother went down on one knee to a tall goddess with dark hair. The Horselady bowed almost to the paving stones to another goddess with an arched neck and flowing hair. Wizards and some of the Pilgrims knelt to others. Reville bowed deeply and elegantly to a small, smiling god. Even Scales bent his crowned head to a mighty dragon in the background.

Anscher smiled and came forward. The rest of the geese came stepping proudly around his feet, as smug as if they had brought him themselves—as maybe they had.

“Why have you waited until now to manifest some gods?” Mr. Chesney asked Derk. “There have been quite a few complaints, Wizard. I want an explanation.”

“You shall have one,” said Anscher. “We manifest by our will, not yours.”

He still seemed to be only a step or so beyond the front door, but he reached down and plucked the paperweight from among the hands and talons reaching for it at the other side of the terrace. The demon Tripos gave a soundless scream that made everyone's mind throb.

“Be quiet,” Anscher said mildly. “You shall have your mate back shortly.” The noiseless noise stopped at once. “The gods have been forced to wait, too,” Anscher continued, “until people of this world asked to be able to rule their own affairs. The gods need to be asked. And for forty years the people of this world found it easier to do what Roland Chesney told them than to ask for this world for themselves. Roland Chesney, you have not used this world well. We now remove it from you. We give the wizard Querida the task of making this world into its own place.”

“But,” Querida whispered, “won't that take ages?” Her dry little voice could hardly be heard.

“At least another forty years,” said Anscher. Querida, assured by this of a very long life, sat up straight and seemed much less frail. “And, as the Oracles warned you,” Anscher said, “it will not be easy. Slaves have to learn freedom. But we give you the children of Wizards Derk and Mara to help you in this. And for the same forty years, while this world mends, Roland Chesney shall live as he forced this demon to live.”

Anscher held up the smoky paperweight. It was now clear glass. Small as it was, everyone could clearly see the little dark figure of a person inside it. Mr. Chesney was no longer standing on the terrace. Anscher stowed the paperweight in the fisherman's pouch at his belt. He smiled in a way that struck everyone as if he were smiling personally at them. “Do well,” he said.

Derk sighed as Anscher smiled at him. It seemed hard, he thought, that High Priest Umru had not happened to be here. But later, when he heard that Umru had died at almost that precise moment of a massive stroke, with a look of intense delight on his face, it seemed to him that Umru had indeed seen Anscher just once more. He always hoped so, anyway.

Everyone was distracted then by all the dragons on the hills hastily jumping or flapping out of the way of two madly zigzagging demons, one luminous blue, the other smoky yellow, who shot along the hills and around the hills and finally streaked over the top and out of sight. There were no gods anymore by then. The dragons were already crawling and winging down to Kit's shed, where each of them seized at least two baskets of treasure.

“Hey!” said Galadriel to Scales. “We didn't come all this way to pay tribute to
dragons!
”

“Then take it back from them,” suggested Scales.

“Doh!” said Galadriel. And all the dwarfs tried angrily to get Derk's attention.

Derk was with Querida, surrounded by angry Wizard Guides. “How are my Pilgrims supposed to get home now?” demanded Finn.

“Easily.” Querida looked over their heads at the steady stream of grubby, footsore Pilgrims coming through the gates and edging around Scales. “There are over a hundred wizards here, male and female—enough to riddle the place with portals, now there's no demon to keep them closed. Go and open one yourself.”

“I don't know how,” Finn confessed.

Querida sighed. “Very well. I'll do it myself.”

Blade, interested, watched her stand up on the wall and do it. It didn't seem very difficult. Derk waited until the weary, travel-stained people were climbing eagerly through and then went to talk to Shona. She was with Geoffrey, Reville, and Sukey, talking with Miss Ledbury and the Pooles. Neither Geoffrey nor Sukey seemed at all bothered to be without Mr. Chesney. In fact, Derk thought they both looked relieved.

“We'll be taking this tour business apart on the other side,” Dad Poole was saying, “and all the subsidiaries.”

“You won't have much when you get home,” Miss Ledbury said. “I take it you are coming home really?”

Sukey and Geoffrey both shook their heads. “No. We're staying.”

While they were talking, Derk took hold of Shona's arm. “I'm going to Bardic College tomorrow,” he said. “I'll make them take you back even if I have to bespell the lot of them.”

“No need, sir,” Geoffrey said, swinging around from Miss Ledbury. “
I'm
going to do that. They'll do it.”

Derk had to admit that if Geoffrey told the bards, they were likely to stay told, but he felt the smallest bit hurt all the same. Shona was still his daughter.

Here they were all shoved out of the way by the mauve dragon, who came crawling up onto the terrace to drop a chinking bundle by Callette's front feet. “Here,” she said, towering over Callette. “I didn't let the Pilgrims have any of the good ones. I thought you'd want them back.”

In the bundle were more than half Callette's gizmos, including the fabulous 109th. Callette bent over them, entranced. “Thanks!”

“You're welcome. I've got real treasure now,” the mauve dragon said, and snaked around off the terrace, causing another stumbling rush of people trying to get out of the way.

“My goodness!” Querida said, standing on her wall and gazing down at the gizmos. “I'll buy those from you. I'd like to exhibit them at the University.”

“Not till I've finished admiring them,” Callette said.

Blade looked up from the gizmos to find himself, and Kit, being beckoned by one of Scales's massive talons. They looked at one another and went to the edge of the terrace, about level with the talon. “I'm going to be living in your side valley for the next decade or so,” Scales told them. “I've taken a fancy to it. While I'm there, I'm going to teach you both wizardry if it kills us all. We'll start with mind reading. Turn up there tomorrow morning, both of you. Boy, cat-bird, got that?”

“My name's Kit,” Kit said. “Is this because of what the god said?”

“Only partly,” said Scales. “Mostly it was the sight of the pair of you in that sandpit, with all the ability to get out of it and not knowing how to. That irritated me.” He turned himself slowly around, causing Pilgrims to scamper right and left, and marched away through what used to be garden, trampling false walls, real bushes, and fraying monsters as he went.

Kit looked at Blade. They both had mixed feelings. “Let's have some fun first,” Kit said. He called out, “Griffin dance, anybody?”

All the other griffins, even Callette, bounded to join the dance.

“Do it in the garden then!” Mara bawled. She was distractedly counting dwarfs, elves, wizards, and stray Pilgrims and healers. “Hundreds,” she said. “Must get rid of the cowpats first. And then there's us. Call it three hundred?”

The dwarfs had descended on Derk and were arguing with him. “Then if they've left seven baskets, you can give them to us,” Galadriel was saying.

Derk was distracted, too, thinking of how you made unicorns. But he had been counting on those seven baskets of treasure to stay solvent with after all this. “I don't think I owe you quite that much,” he protested.

“You don't owe them nothing!” Old George said, rather red and breathless after chasing animals. “They ate the little monkeys and the big hen and had a try nibbling your nylon plants. And ask Fran what they did in the kitchen. She's got supper started,” he added.

“Oh, tell her not to bother,” Mara said. “I'm going to be conjuring a feast.”

“Can you do that?” Derk asked her, wishing it were something he had the knack of. He meant to go on to ask her what she thought of a unicorn in the family, but instead, the perfect idea came to him at last. “Mara, what do you think to us having a winged human?”

“Derk!” said Mara. “Oh, yes, well, why not?”