Shona watched him struggling. Before long she had both hands over her mouth to stop herself giggling. Finally, she took pity on him and went upstairs for her scissors. “Hold still,” she said, and carved him a hole in the beard for his mouth. After that Blade could eat—though he still found himself chewing hair from his chin from time to time—and when he had finished, Shona made him stand on a chair while she cut the robes down to the right size. She prized the spoon out of his hand and fetched him a walking stick someone had left in the inn hat stand. “There,” she said. “Wasn’t it lucky I decided to come with you? Come upstairs, and I’ll hem the edges.”
Hemming the robes took awhile. Shona was only halfway done when they heard confused rhythmic shouting out in the street. Blade wrestled open the window, and they both leaned out. The main street below was lined with people, mostly women and children. As far as they could hear, some of them were shouting, “Go home, Pilgrims!” while the rest chanted, “Ban the tours!”
“There really is strong feeling!” Shona remarked.
Blade could not be bothered with that. Between the crowds he could just see the heads of other people coming up the middle of the street. His stomach did some strange diving about as he realized he was about to meet his first live Pilgrims. His Pilgrims. He snatched up his list and ran for the door. Shona was only just in time to grab the back of his shirt.
“Don’t be silly! I haven’t finished your robes. Anyway, you should give them time to get settled in their rooms. Then go down to the taproom and meet them. Remember you’re a wise and stately wizard, and you don’t need to run after them.”
Blade supposed she was right. Besides, it was soon clear that not all the Pilgrims arrived at once. Every so often there was a new outbreak of chanting in the street, and when Blade craned from the window, he saw another few heads moving slowly up the middle. He sat nervously twisting his list and watching Shona sew.
Shona had just bitten off the last thread when the landlord knocked at the door. Blade jumped up again, and Shona hastily got him into the shortened robes. “Man from the tours to speak to the wizard at the kitchen door,” the landlord said when Shona opened the door.
Rather puzzled, Blade followed the landlord down the back stairs and through the kitchen, which was now full of the smell of onions being chopped for tonight’s stew. The man waiting at the back door wore a casual version of the kind of clothes Mr. Chesney and his people had worn. “Sorry about this, Wizard,” he said. “I oughtn’t to be here, really, but there’s a bit of a crisis at the portal. We’re ten parties of dwarfs short. Only one lot came through. You didn’t happen to see any others on your way here, did you?”
“Er—with ponies and baskets?” Blade asked.
“That’ll be them!” the man said, obviously relieved. “How far off were they?”
“Quite a long way,” Blade said truthfully. “They grumbled about the way they were delayed.” He felt so dishonest that he was forced to stroke his beard and look wise.
The tour man pulled his own chin in a worried way. “I don’t know what to do then. The last pair of Pilgrims just came through, and the portal’s due to be closed in an hour. There’ll be a right stink if the dwarfs aren’t here by then. I could lose my job. Look, if you see them on your route, better tell them to make for the Dark Lord’s Citadel instead and we’ll take the lot through from there. And I’ll ask the other Wizard Guides to tell them the same. All right?”
“All right,” Blade agreed, and he went upstairs again, rather sobered to think that someone was going to be out of work just because he and Don had rescued six dwarfs.
“Nothing’s ever simple,” Shona said when he told her. “Wait another hour, and then go to the taproom.”
Blade could not wait that long. He went down after half an hour. By that time at least half the twenty people on his list were sitting about on the benches awkwardly drinking tankards of beer and getting to know one another. “I know it’s expensive,” a woman was saying as Blade came in. “Dad and I sold our house to come on this tour. But we wanted to do something really interesting before we got too old to enjoy it.”
“That’s right, Mother,” agreed the man beside her. “Nothing ventured.”
They both looked immensely old to Blade, and rather fat. He wondered if they would survive the tour, let alone enjoy it. At that, he realized that his nervousness had vanished, and he was simply interested. All the Pilgrims had their hair cut in a way he was not used to and carried foreign looks on their faces. This made them seem to be wearing fancy dress, even though they were dressed in the sort of clothes Blade thought of as normal himself. One of the rules was that Pilgrims should dress in the clothes of Blade’s world. He went toward them with his list.
“Ooh!” shrieked a small fair girl. “It’s our wizard! Look, bro, a real wizard! Isn’t he small!”
“I have dwarven ancestry,” Blade lied, rather crossly, as he looked for the girl on his list. Why couldn’t he grow, the way Kit did?
The girl was Susan Sleightholm on the list, and down as a late entry. She had big blue eyes, and her hair hung in masses of not quite real curls, like wood shavings. She squealed excitedly and hung on to Blade’s newly hemmed sleeve. “Call me Sukey,” she said, staring fixedly up into Blade’s eyes. She was even shorter than he was. “I’m Sukey, and this is my brother, Geoffrey.”
Sukey was about Shona’s age, Blade thought. She was wearing a baby blue tunic and trousers. He did not like her at all. He pitied her brother for having to put up with her. Geoffrey was tallish and fairish, and he looked nice. Blade dragged his sleeve away from Sukey’s spiky fingers—she had red nails, like Don’s talons when he was eating meat—and went to the people who had sold their house. They were Mr. and Mrs. Poole, but they insisted that he call them Dad and Mother.
More Pilgrims were coming downstairs all the time now. As they sat down and the landlord brought them tankards, Blade went among them, trying to fit them all to the names on his list. It was bewildering. Although they were young, old, fat, serious, jolly, dark, mid-brown, and fair, they all had that foreign look, and he could not tell them apart. For a start, there were six intense-looking younger women with long, straight hair, four men with rugged, faraway gazes wrinkling their eyes, and two more couples just like Dad and Mother Poole. One of them must be supposed to report back to Mr. Chesney, Blade thought, but he simply could not tell which. He was polite to all of them, in case.
Almost the last Pilgrim to arrive was a shortish, fair-haired young man, who came sauntering down the stairs with an air. He was obviously rich, rich enough not to have to sell anything to afford the tour. Blade could tell he was, both from his air and from his clothes, which were stylish and made of very good cloth. And he was almost the only Pilgrim who wore those clothes as if they were not fancy dress. Blade looked at him with relief because he knew he would remember this man. In fact, as he hurried over to him, Blade had a feeling that he did remember the man, as if he had seen him before somewhere. But that was obviously a stupid idea.
“I’m Blade, your Wizard Guide,” he said. “I’m small because I have dwarven ancestry. And your name is—?”
The man smiled charmingly. “I’m Reville Townsend.”
I like him, Blade thought, as he hunted for the
name on his list. He missed it somehow, but as he started at the beginning again, he was distracted by the arrival of the last two Pilgrims. The woman came first, pushing past Blade and Reville and marching toward the nearest free bench. She was very tall and rather lean, and she wore glasses. Her hair was white, cut in a sort of scalloped helmet. It looked more like a majestic hat than hair. But the most notable thing about her sent Blade scurrying after her, forgetting his list.
“Excuse me, lady. Excuse me! You’re not supposed to be wearing those kind of clothes!”
The lady smoothed her neat maroon-colored trousers and patted the pearls around the neck of her fluffy white sweater before she looked at Blade. It was a totally immovable look. “Young man, I see no reason at all to masquerade in silly clothing like yours. What I have on is respectable and practical, and I shall continue to wear it.” She looked past Blade and called out, “Come along, Eldred. Don’t dawdle.”
The man with her came forward vaguely. He was tall and thin, too, with deep creases down his cheeks and deep, hollow eyes, and he had a lot of fine white fluffy hair. As Shona said later, he looked like a dandelion seeding. And he was wearing otherworld clothes as well, though his were tweedy and shabby. Blade looked for his list to see who these people were. Reville Townsend came up with a smile and handed him the folder. “You left me with this.”