“Gods!” she said. “I had a dream about him!”
“Oh, don’t go and be soppy!” Kit snapped.
“I wasn’t,” Shona said. “It wasn’t a nice dream. There were dwarfs in it, too, and you’d been drowned and there was something wrong with Dad. I just couldn’t believe it when he turned out to be real.”
“We thought you were smitten,” Blade explained.
“Of course not. He’s five hundred years old and married to Malithene,” Shona retorted. “I do know my elflore, but I didn’t know it was him in my dream, and it was a scary dream.”
Kit prowled swiftly back to the soldiers and commenced shaking the magic reins to get the procession moving again, obviously in a very bad temper indeed. Blade thought he knew how Kit felt. Elves, when they went away, had the effect of leaving you feeling flat and ordinary and ugly. Everything seemed unpleasant. Blade found himself really noticing the way they were leaving a broad trampled trail across perfectly good farmland, littered with things dropped by the soldiers. They had no idea where the soldiers found all the rubbish they dropped, but drop it they did, all the time—papers, packets, pieces of cloth, fragments of black armor, keys, bad fruit, crusts—and after them the Friendly Cows dropped cowpats on top of that. Blade found it disgusting suddenly.
But there was more to Kit’s bad temper than this. Later, when they had made it to the next camp and shut the soldiers inside, Kit said to Blade, “I never knew there were griffins on the other continent.”
“Dad must have got the idea from somewhere,” Blade said glumly. He felt desolated. He knew Kit was going to go away across the ocean to look for wild griffins the first opportunity he got. “It’s too far to fly there,” he said despairingly. “You’d drown.”
“What are boats invented for?” Kit demanded.
There was a sharp frost that night. The soldiers, warm inside their camp, jeered and shouted and sang half the night, while their four supervisors shivered. At dawn the frost melted and the rain began. The soldiers sat down inside the transparent walls of the camp, snug and dry, and refused to come out. This was when Blade began truly wishing the dragon had died before it got to Derkholm.
“Now what are we to do?” Shona asked. She had a tarpaulin wrapped over her head, and rain was hitting it like a drum.
“Seal them in again and let them rot,” Don suggested angrily. “I’ve had quite enough of hauling them along anyway.” He shook water out of fur and feathers in gouts. It did no good. The rain was so steady and heavy that he was dark brown with it.
“No, we damn well won’t seal them in again!” Kit said. He was still extremely irritable. Everyone was trying to please him without letting him know they were, because that always made Kit worse. The animals were all keeping out of his way, even Pretty. “My timetable,” Kit snarled, raking marks in the wet earth with one long wet talon, “means that we have to be up near Umru’s land inside a week, or we mess up at least fifty Pilgrim Parties, the gods damn them all!”
“There’s no way we’re going to get there by then, even if they came out now,” Shona told him. “I don’t think they’ll move until they’ve eaten all the food in there.”
“But we can’t get to half the places in time from here!” Kit snarled.
“We can get to the first lots,” Blade said soothingly. “They all have avians up in the coastal hills, and I can translocate there easily. Just close the camp up again. I have a sort of idea about something I can do.”
“What can you do?” Kit said rudely.
“It may not work,” Blade admitted. “But I’ll tell you if it does. Just shut the camp up while I’m away.”
“Oh, all right.” Kit sprang up in a whirl of wetness and stalked off toward the open front of the camp. “And you’d better make it work,” he added, beak turned over shoulder.
The last Blade saw as he translocated was Kit spreading vast black wings and shaking wet out of them like claps of thunder. The nearest soldiers scooted warily back from him. They knew a bad temper when they saw one, just like everyone else.
But it was hard work translocating. Blade had always done it before with no trouble. He had not realized the effort it took. Now that he was tired from four days of travel and constant crisis, wet, and sore from riding and from a night spent mostly awake and shivering, moving himself was suddenly immensely hard work. His first effort only got him to the inn where the demon had been, where the rain was simply a light drizzle in a warm wind. Blade stood in the empty innyard for a moment, panting, wondering if he dared go on with his idea. Without Kit looming over him like a storm cloud to push him on, Blade found things looked far less safe and certain.
“But the dragon owes us,” he said aloud. “This mess is all its fault.”
That might be true from a human-griffin point of view, but Blade was not so sure now that dragons saw things the same way. The trouble was, they needed those soldiers moved, and about the only creature that might get them to move was a large dragon. Blade took a deep breath and translocated onward. He lost his nerve at the last moment. He took himself home first. He told himself he wanted to see how Dad was, anyway. But he fell short even there and landed in the garden, in the midst of a large bush. The first thing he saw was Prince Talithan and his five companions, sitting in a patient row on the terrace, leaning against the wall of the house in the least ruined part. They could sit there quite comfortably because it was not raining at Derkholm at all.
“Oops!” Blade muttered, and took himself to the kitchen at once, while the elves were still turning to see what the noise in the bush was.
Lydda looked up from the stove in a resigned way. “Oh. It’s you now.”
“Those elves—” Blade began.
“They came last night,” Lydda said wearily. “They want to see Dad, but they can’t, not when he’s asleep. I don’t think Dad should see anyone until he’s properly better anyway. So I told them he was in conference with Mr. Chesney, but they just said they’d wait. And,” Lydda added fiercely, “I told thin Fran I’d peck her if she told those elves Dad was ill. She’s up seeing to Dad now, if Elda will let her near him. She might not.”
Lydda was obviously having a fairly harassing time, too. “How is Dad?” Blade asked.
“I don’t know!” Lydda squawked distressfully. “I can’t tell anymore! You go and look and see if you think he’s any different. And tell Elda she’s got to let Fran put ointment on his burns this time, because I can’t. I’m cooking for those elves.”
“Godlike snacks?” Blade said.
“Godlike dinner,” said Lydda. “And if they stay until Dad’s better, that’s godlike supper, dinner, supper, dinner, supper, dinner—I’m going mad, Blade!”
“Where’s Mum?” Blade asked, prudently retreating toward the door.
“Back at her Lair,” Lydda snapped. “Tour through any day now. She’d left before those elves turned up. At least she’s not expecting Callette and Elda anymore, and Callette’s been away for three days now. At least I don’t have to feed her.”
Lydda was clearly not in the mood to let people hang around in the kitchen. Blade hurried away upstairs to Derk’s bedroom. There Elda was standing protectively on the end of Derk’s bed, hackles, wings, and crest raised, glaring at skeletal Fran. Fran was tidying away pots of ointment and bandages with her mouth pursed in a way that showed that if she had a crest and hackles, she would have had them raised, too. The room was full of hostile silence. Blade crossed the room and looked down at his father.
Some of the reason for the silence was that Derk was now breathing normally. He was almost the right color again, and most of the burns seemed to have gone, apart from a messy-looking place on one cheek. But he had gone very thin, with the beginnings of a dark beard. The black bristles hollowed his face and made him look very frail and worried.
“But he’s much better!” Blade exclaimed.
“Do you think so?” Elda and Fran said eagerly, in unison, and then avoided looking at one another.
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“Yes, I do,” Blade said. “Tell Lydda. And give him my love when he wakes up.”
The bedroom was not a place to linger in, any more than the kitchen was. Blade translocated himself again, rather carefully, to a place just outside the gates, where the elves could not see him. From there he walked slowly up into the side valley. He was not going to risk alarming the dragon by appearing suddenly under its nose. He wished he knew how to surround himself in a fireproof shield, but then he remembered how easily the dragon had brushed aside his attempts to help Derk and decided that any shield would be brushed aside, too. The only thing to do was to translocate at the first sign of trouble. Fast. If that was fast enough.
Blade found he was going more and more slowly. He was—he admitted it—scared stiff. There seemed no reason why the dragon should agree it owed Derk’s family some help and every reason why it should eat Blade on the spot. From what Mara had said, it was an old, wild dragon, from the days when dragons and humans were natural enemies. Or it might simply be too ill and grumpy to help. But Blade could not think of any other way to get those soldiers moving, and he remembered the dragon had been prepared to listen to Mara, and he kept going. He rounded the crag that hid the side valley.
He had forgotten how big the dragon was. It filled half the valley. It was lying alongside the stream, with its head and huge talons not far from Blade, with one of the mayor’s cows clasped between those talons. It was peacefully munching on that cow. Beyond, by the stream, the bent coronet and the broken chain had been carefully laid out on a flat stone. Above Blade, the dragon’s wings came to two towering peaks, green as the surrounding hills. Behind those wings, Blade had glimpses of the huge body and then the spiked tail, tapering away nearly as far as the terrified huddle of the mayor’s remaining cows. There were a lot fewer cows than there had been.
The thing that impressed Blade most, however, was the way the dragon had changed since he last saw it. It glistened now, green all over, and the scales that had looked so loose and ragged had healed flat and whole again. The unhealthy white of its underside had turned a pale green. The great peaks of its wings were no longer tattered—Blade could see dark green veins in them, healthily pulsing—and the talons that were gripping the mayor’s cow had been trimmed back to the proper, lethally hooked shape. Mum had been right. This dragon had been ill when it first arrived.
The dragon looked up and saw Blade. Its eyes had lost their filmy look. They were now bright green-gold. And enormous. Blade felt he could drown in one. As it saw him, the dragon put one clawed paw protectively over the remains of the cow and reached out quickly with the other paw to drag the broken chain and the bent coronet safely under its green belly.
“What do you want?” it said. Its voice rumbled the ground under Blade’s boots and set the rest of the cows yelling with fear. “Do you people think I’m on show at a fair or something?”
“What do you mean?” said Blade. Oddly enough, he had forgotten how frightened he was. He still knew this dragon was the most dangerous creature in the world—if you didn’t count the blue demon or Mr. Chesney—but all he was thinking of was how best to talk to it.
“I mean the way people keep coming to stare at me,” the dragon rumbled. “I’ve had two little yellow cat-birds and one bigger brown one, and a stick-man and a stick-woman, and a little woman with yellow hair, and now you. Haven’t any of you ever seen a dragon before?”
“I’ve come to talk to you, not stare,” Blade said.
“That’s what they all said,” boomed the dragon. “And then they scolded me for roasting the wizard. If you’ve come to tell me off for that, too, consider it done.”
“Well, no, actually, I’ve come to ask you for help, Mr.—er—Scales,” Blade said boldly.
“Scales will do,” said the dragon. “What do you mean, help?”
“You owe me. You roasted my father,” said Blade.
“There. You see? You’re scolding,” the dragon rumbled.
“No, I’m not. I’m starting to explain.” Blade braced his feet and stared up into the dragon’s huge eyes. Despite the things Fran and Old George had said, this seemed the right thing to do. It had worked for Mara. “You see, because you roasted my father, we’re having to do his Dark Lord work for him. We’ve got his army—they’re six hundred murderers really, pretending to be soldiers—out in the middle of nowhere near the wastes, and we’re supposed to be moving them to a base camp in Umru’s country, so that we can park them there while we do the Wild Hunt and so on. But they won’t move. Today they just sat down and wouldn’t come out of the dome.”
“Leave them there then,” said the dragon.
“We can’t,” said Blade. “There’s a timetable, there’s a whole set of battles they have to fight in. Besides, if we did leave them, they’d probably all escape and start murdering everyone.”
“I thought murdering was what soldiers and battles did,” said the dragon. “Why have they got to go and murder people in a particular place at a particular time?”
“Because,” Blade said patiently, “Mr. Chesney has arranged for the tours to have a battle each.”
There was silence. All Blade could hear was the stream racing over stones. The dragon barely moved. A wisp of smoke blew from its great jaws and melted among the hairs of the carcass under its paw. There was a tinge of red in the one huge eye Blade could most clearly see. Somehow the wings above him seemed to be in sharper, crueler points, and Blade had a sense of muscles tensing all over the enormous body. He saw that the dragon had been having a joke with him, dragon fashion, but something Blade had said was not funny anymore, and he had made it very angry. He got ready to translocate in a hurry.
“Someday,” the dragon remarked in a croon, deep in its smoky throat, “I must meet this Mr. Chesney of yours. I ought to pay my respects to the one who rules the dragons of this world, ought I not? Very well then. I shall come and pay my debt to your father tomorrow at dawn.”
Blade relaxed. “Couldn’t you come today?” he asked pleadingly.
“I am not ready to travel today,” the dragon said. “I am still healing. Look for me after sunrise tomorrow. Are you and your murderers easy to find?”
“Awfully,” said Blade. “We leave a mile-wide trail the whole way. Thank you for agreeing—er—Mr.—er—Scales, I mean.”
The dragon snorted a big gobbet of blue smoke. “I won’t say it’s my pleasure. It sounds like a chore. I won’t even agree that I owe you. It’s just the only way I’m likely to get any peace here. Do you mind going away now and letting me finish my breakfast?”
“Yes, of course,” Blade agreed, and found himself very nearly calling the dragon sir, the way he used to have to call his grandfather sir. Mara’s father had been a tetchy old wizard with very old-fashioned ways. This dragon reminded Blade of his grandfather rather a lot.
He went away down the valley. Now he had time to think, he was highly surprised at how easily the dragon had agreed to help them. He hoped it was enough like Grandfather to keep its word. Grandfather always said, “A wizard’s word is his bond. He should die rather than break his word, child.” But the dragon could just have been trying to get rid of him. Grandfather hadn’t liked being disturbed either.
ELEVEN
DERK WOKE UP QUITE suddenly the afternoon of the fifth day, with a feeling that somebody was calling his name. He sat up, amazed to be so weak and breathless. His face felt sore. When he touched it, he found he had almost a beard and a large weeping burn on his cheek. That brought everything back to him.
“Gods and demons!” he exclaimed. “How long did they put me to sleep for?”
He got up. His legs tried to fold. He strengthened them sternly with a spell and floundered across to the bathroom, hanging on to chairs, doorknobs, walls, and finally the washbasin, where he grimly set about shaving. Elda came galloping upstairs a few minutes later to find him with his face covered with lather and smeary bandages hanging off all over him.
“Oh, ple
ase get back to bed, Dad!” she squawked. “Lydda’s got you some broth.”
“No. How long have I been asleep?” Derk said, swaying a little.
“Nearly five days,” said Elda. “But you mustn’t worry. Shona’s gone with the boys to keep them sensible, and they’re seeing to the soldiers for you. Please go back to bed.”
Derk pulled a loose bandage free and used it to cover the burn on his face while he scraped hair and lather away from beside it. “Where’s your mother?”
“In her Lair,” said Elda. “The first tour gets to her tomorrow, and the second one goes around by the sacked nunnery and arrives as soon as the first one leaves.” Elda was good at learning things. She had learned Mara’s entire program while she sat on the end of Derk’s bed, guarding him from Fran. She could have told Derk about it at some length.
Derk sighed. It had been too much to hope that Mara had been looking after him while he was ill. Probably she did not want to. “Then who is that calling me?” he interrupted, raising his chin to scrape his neck. A bristle pulled. “Ouch!”
“I don’t hear anyone,” said Elda.
“Magically,” said Derk.
“It could be the elves,” Elda said.
“What elves?” said Derk, grimly shaving away.
Elda sighed, too. She could see Derk was in his most obstinate mood, and she never could deal with him when he was like that. She hopped into the empty bath and couched there while she told him everything that had been going on. Derk meanwhile hung on to the basin with one hand and then the other and managed first to shave and then to strip off most of his bandages and sponge off the ointment to see how bad the burns were. They were still quite bad.