The Dark Lord of Derkholm

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.