Dark Lord of Derkholm (Derkholm 1) - Page 84

“If the dwarfs left you any. Into everything, they are,” said Old George.

“Go away!” said Derk.

The dwarfs interrupted nearly as often. There seemed to be swarms of them now, from several different clans, each distinguished by the objects plaited into their braids. They told Derk what each bead and color meant. They seemed to feel that Derk needed to chat. One of them sat and told him stories of ancient dwarf feuds and battles, until Derk implored him not to. All of them seemed to feel Derk ought to eat. They kept bringing him food. Derk had no interest in any of it until the time Dworkin brought him a crispy fowl’s leg.

“Goose?” Derk inquired hopefully.

“No, well, actually it’s one of a flock we found penned up in the hills. Just ordinary hens, you know,” Dworkin explained. “But they seemed to be going begging, so we brought them here the morning before you came back. Lucky, that. They make good, tasty eating. Try it.”

“No, thanks,” said Derk, listlessly wondering whom in the village he owed money to now.

Don ate the chicken leg, as he had eaten all the other food the dwarfs brought to Derk. Derk himself might have starved but for Prince Talithan. Talithan took to appearing, very softly and tactfully, every day. He said nothing, for which Derk was grateful, but simply stood and surveyed Derk and the pigs in the hut. After a while he began to bring a succession of tall, grave elfin ladies along with him, too. Each lady brought something with her—a flask of glowing liquor, a shining fruit, a box of melting biscuits, a plate of enticing shellfish—which she put down beside Derk before bowing and leaving. Everything they brought smelled and tasted so heavenly that Derk often ate or drank it before he had time to think. Possibly it made him feel better.

The demon kept putting in an appearance as well. It would bulge up from between the terrace paving stones, fix all three eyes wonderingly upon Derk, and then subside away downward. It never said anything. But Derk could feel it around much of the time, puzzling over him, and he wished it would go. He had a notion that the demon was being tactful, too, in its way.

There was one other set of people whom the magics surrounding Derkholm would not prevent from appearing, but they had so far not appeared. From time to time Derk wondered what he would do when they did. Mostly he was too miserable to care.

Meanwhile here was Don again, tiptoeing up with a clack of claw and a rattle of feathers that said I am being tactful in a way that made Derk want to scream.

“Dad, Callette’s been in her shed for days now, and she won’t come out. She’s worse than you, even. She hasn’t eaten a thing since we got back.”

Callette was still growing. This was serious. Derk actually got up and shambled down the garden, past the fading, tattered remains of the human monsters, to Callette’s shed. He stood outside it and called.

“Go away,” said Callette.

“You can’t stay there,” said Derk.

“Yes, I can,” said Callette. “I’m not sorry Kit’s dead, and I know I ought to be, so I’m staying here until I am sorry.”

Derk thought of Callette misbehaving when she was small and of himself saying, “Go to your room until you’re sorry.” Oh, dear. “I don’t think it works like that, Callette,” he said helplessly. “I know you didn’t get on with Kit. You can’t help that.” Silence from the shed. “I’m sorry enough for two,” Derk said. “Won’t that do?”

“Go away,” said Callette.

Taste of my own medicine, Derk thought, and went back to his hut on the terrace.

Querida came the next day. To a wizard of her powers, Derk’s defenses were—not exactly child’s play; they nearly defeated her—possible to overcome with a severe struggle. She arrived on the terrace, leaning heavily on the stick she now used instead of crutches and not quite so calm and strong as she would have wished.

Good gracious gods! she thought.

The smell of pig and person from the hut was appalling. Behind it the house was almost as bad. Since Derk had stopped caring about the Citadel magics, parts of it had frayed or fallen off. The house was now a patchwork of dark archways and black half towers mixed in with ordinary windows and walls. Barnabas’s transparent repaired part shone out above the sinister black carvings around the Citadel door. But the door was open, showing an indescribable mess inside, horse droppings and chewed bones, among which dwarfs came and went—more and more dwarfs, as they realized that someone new had arrived. Querida did not blame the big golden griffin sitting protectively beside the hut for looking so unhappy.

“Really, Wizard Derk, this place is like a pigsty!” she said.

Derk settled more comfortably among the pigs. “It is a pigsty,” he said.

An old man wearing clothes far too tight for him arrived on the end of the terrace in a crowd of panting dogs. “You want her thrown out?” he asked.

Really! Querida thought.

“No, no,” said Derk. “She’ll probably go when sh

e’s said what she wants to say.”

“Really!” said Querida. The old man and the dogs settled down on the terrace steps, preparing, like the dwarfs crowding the sinister doorway, to listen to everything she said. Querida sighed in exasperation. “I suppose there’s no chance of anyone bringing me a chair?” Apparently there wasn’t. Nobody moved. “Very well,” Querida said, leaning on her stick. “Wizard Derk, are you aware that there are now thirty-nine Pilgrim Parties waiting outside your gate?”

“They’ll go away in the end,” Derk said.

Querida thumped her stick on the flagstones in exasperation. “But there is no way they can go away except through your Citadel!” When Derk did not reply to this, she added, “And the only reason there aren’t more parties out there is that all the horses have disappeared. Did you know that?”

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Derkholm Fantasy
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