The Dark Lord of Derkholm

Mara meanwhile had turned to Shona. “Shona, darling, have you made up your mind yet? I want your help over at Aunt’s house more than ever now, with Querida out of action. I’m going to need lots of silly fashionable clothes – the kind you and Callette are both so good at inventing. What does Callette say?”

“Callette’s on her hundred and nineteenth gizmo,” Shona said. “She’ll need another day at least to do the rest. She says she might come over then. But—” She shot a look at the brooding Derk. “Mum, I don’t think I can come. There’d be no one but Lydda to look after things here.”

“I’ve said I can manage,” Lydda said with her beak full.

“I can help here too,” Elda muttered into a pile of fruit. “Everyone thinks I’m too small.”

“Not so much small as young,” Mara told Elda. “You are only ten, love, and I want you to come over to me with Callette. And why should Lydda do everything here? What’s wrong with you, Don, or you, Blade?”

Don sat with a raw chop halfway to his beak, Blade sat with a cooked one on the end of his fork. They exchanged looks of panic and consternation.

“Or Kit?” added Mara.

“May I consider?” Shona asked rather hectically. “Perhaps I’ll come when Callette’s finished – and there isn’t a piano in Aunt’s house, is there?”

“Yes there is,” said Mara. She got up. “That’s settled then. I’ll expect you and Callette and Elda the day after tomorrow. You’re going to love my pink embroidered hangings!”

Breaking up the family too, Derk thought miserably as Mara rushed away.

Blade, fairly naturally, tried to rush away too as soon as supper was over. But Shona deftly seized him by one arm and dragged him through to the kitchen, where Elda was swilling plates with careless abandon.

“Blade, you really have to help me do something!” Shona whispered. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“Noticed what?” Blade asked.

“Mum and Dad. They’re terminally not getting on.”

“They’re always quarrelling. You worry too much,” Elda said, shoving three wet plates into the rack.

“Wash those again,” Shona said automatically. “No, that’s just the trouble – they’re not quarrelling. Dad should have exploded just now about the money, and he hardly said a word.”

Blade sighed, knowing that his carefree time was over. “I see what you mean.”

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mru’s priestly kingdom was north of Derkholm, adjoining King Luther’s. Derk, riding Beauty, descended over the temple of Anscher towards midday, dazzled by the sun on the huge golden domes. Other domes of other gods caught the sun too, all over the city, but Umru’s temple to Umru’s god was the biggest. Anscher must surely look kindly on a High Priest who had done so much for him, Derk thought. Perhaps Umru could persuade Anscher to show himself to Pilgrims. It was worth a try, anyway.

“Bhrright!” Beauty remarked as she wheeled down towards the main courtyard.

“It surely is,” Derk agreed. “Umru has to find something to do with his money.” He sighed as Beauty descended. He had been trying hard not to think of money, or of how much Mara might have borrowed, or of the mermaid daughter they would never have now. Not thinking of these things left a cold emptiness somewhere in the middle of his mind. I must think of an entirely different creature, he told himself as Beauty’s hooves touched the ground.

Willing, fanatical-looking men rushed to look after Beauty. More of them rushed to conduct Derk to the presence of Umru. He was handed over to a covey of acolytes, who handed him to priests, who handed him in turn to more priests, who led him through long upstairs cloisters painted with gold leaf to where Umru was waiting, smiling, in an empty sun-filled room.

“You could have landed on my balcony, if I had known your horse had wings,” Umru said to him. “Come. Sit.” He led Derk to a couple of throne-like chairs.

This room was only empty after a fashion, Derk thought, settling among carved cedarwood and gold. The floor was a pattern of blocks of wood, variously scented and coloured. Astoundingly beautiful silk rugs lay here and there upon it. The ceiling was a masterpiece of marble carved to resemble a tree in bloom, and the many narrow window frames were like trees too, with fruit. In between, the walls were inlaid with more masterpieces in coloured stone. But it was still an austere room, fit for a priest. Umru was a funny mixture, Derk thought. His vestments looked simple, but the cost of them would buy Derkholm several times over. Derk suddenly noticed that his own boots had not been cleaned after milking. And one of his cuffs was fraying.

“I’ve come to ask you to help me,” he said, tucking the offensive cuff under and doubling his feet back until the boots were under the sumptuous chair.

“And you can help me, my friend,” said Umru. “As you must have seen from your black book and your maps and lists, the battles are scheduled to take place this year just beyond this city of mine, all over my fields and farms – all over this land that I have worked so hard to make prosper. What am I to do?”

“I’m not sure there’s anything you can do,” Derk said.

“One battle a week for the next three months,” Umru added. “Everything will be trampled to mud by next spring.”

“Yes, I’m sorry about that,” Derk said, “but I am good at making things grow. I’ll come back when the tours are over and make sure you have some crops at least.”

“Penury and disaster will ensue,” said Umru. “No seeds will be sown—”

“Oh no, it won’t be that bad,” Derk assured him. “If you tell the people to plant seeds anyway, I’ll make as many grow as I can.”

“My people too will be trampled underfoot, the women raped, the infants slain. There will be no one to sow the seeds,” Umru proclaimed.

“But,” Derk objected, “you must have hundreds of cellars and crypts for people to hide in!”

Umru sighed. “My friend,” he said, in a noticeably more normal manner, “I think you are not following my drift. If the Dark Lord wishes, he can surely oblige a friend by moving the battles a few miles – say, twenty miles, bringing the site south of the mountains that border my country.”

“Not easily,” Derk hastened to explain. “You see the routes have been very carefully interlocked to bring several tours to the same battle—”

Umru sighed again. “How much?”

“Eh?” Derk found his fingers fiddling with the frayed ends of his cuff. He let go quickly. “If you’re saying what I think you are, then the answer’s—” He stopped short. Money would be very welcome, money to pay that fine, money to cover the huge sum Mara had to have borrowed in order to pay everyone in the village. On the other hand, he needed a god, or no one would get any money at all. And he needed Umru’s help for that. “I don’t take bribes,” he said.

Umru’s face dropped forward on to his stack of double chins. He looked so thoroughly depressed that Derk added, “But, as I was going to say, I’ll see if I can shift the battles south for nothing. It won’t be easy, because they’ve got everyone converging on you this year – you’re supposed to hold the final clue to my weakness – and Barnabas is setting up the main camp for me. I’ll have to give him the wrong map reference, tell him I made a mistake or something. But I’ll do what I can.”

Umru raised his face from his chins and looked deeply at Derk. “You’re an honest man.”

“Well, not—” Derk shifted in his carved chair until it creaked.

“And I admire you for it. With sadness,” Umru said. “I really do have a great deal of money. You needn’t do it for nothing.”

“I will. I’ve said I’ll try,” Derk protested. “After all, I may not be able to do it.”

“Very honest,” sighed Umru. “So. You said I could help you. How?”

With an uneasy feeling that Umru might have been readier to help him if he had accepted a bribe, Derk leant forward in the carved chair and explained about Mr Chesney’s idea for a novelty. And it was worse than Derk had expected. As soon as he mentioned Anscher, Umru’s head tilted back and his mouth became a fat, grim line. His large face became more and more stony, the longer Derk talked. “It was in the contract, you see,” Derk explained. “I know the contract was drawn up when both of us were only children, but Mr Chesney regards it as binding. None of us gets any money this year if we don’t get a god to manifest.”

“Not even for money,” Umru said, very upright in his chair. “It is odd how every man has his sticking-point, Wizard Derk. You have told me yours. You have just met mine. I have done many things for Mr Chesney, for money, but this is one thing I will not, cannot do. We do not command the gods. They command us. Any attempt to coerce the gods is vile.”

This man is truly a devout priest after all! Derk thought. He was completely sure Umru meant what he said. “I see. I accept that,” he said hastily. “But perhaps you could give me a hint about some way I could fake—”

“You don’t see at all, wizard,” Umru interrupted, “or you would not ask. No one who has known a god could even speak of faking. Let me tell you. I was not always as you see me now. I was once a slender young boy, the youngest in my family, and my family was not rich. We lived by the mountains, a long way south of this city. My father had a few cows, some goats and a flock of geese. I was only entrusted with the geese. If I lost those geese, you see, the family would not starve, and I was considered too young to watch the animals. And one day I drove my geese out to feed on a certain swelling green hill. I was sitting there as carelessly as you sit in that chair now, thinking of nothing much, rather bored, but with no ambition in the world except perhaps to guard the cows for once, when Anscher appeared to me. As close as I am to you, wizard, Anscher stood before me. And he was a god, wizard. There was absolutely no doubting it, though it is not a thing I can describe. He smiled at me. He never even asked my name. He never asked me to do anything for him. He just stood in front of me and said, ‘I am Anscher, your god,’ and he smiled.”

Umru stared out into the empty room. Derk could see tears in his eyes.

“The glory of that appearance,” Umru said after a moment, “has been with me every moment of every day, of every year of my priesthood, through everything I have done. I have always hoped he would appear again, but he never has, wizard. He never has. When I first became High Priest and started to raise Anscher above other gods, I made that hill where I saw him into a sanctuary to him. I had an altar set up there. Now I think that was presumptuous. By doing that, I tried to command Anscher to appear to me again, and that was wrong. He will not come to me again now. I am too proud, too old, too fat. No, he will not come.”

Umru’s voice faded away and he sat staring, with tears running down his great cheeks. Derk watched uncomfortably. He sat and watched and Umru sat and stared for so long that Derk began to wonder whether he should simply get up and tiptoe away. But Umru suddenly smiled, wiped the tears off with the sleeve of his expensive gown and said, “You know, I think it’s lunchtime. Will you join me in some lunch, Wizard?”