Dark Lord of Derkholm (5 page)

They swept on up the steps. To Blade's disappointment, something seemed to intimidate the orchids. They only made a halfhearted 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 around 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 grayish, mouse-colored, 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 gray 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 slave girl 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 solemnize the frivolous effect of these monsters of yours.”

Perhaps the ant stings 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, et cetera—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 plow 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 around the entire table.

Mr. Chesney's head came up, and his mouth clamped like a man-trap around 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 around 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-colored 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 around 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, practiced 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 Graynash, 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, color-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 Costamaret 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 burned. 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 color-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 around, 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”—Mr. Addis smiled—“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 colored 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 hankie. “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
pig's blood,
there was an instant outcry, squeals, grunts, and yells of protest. Pink bodies surged about up there, and trotters clattered on tiles.