Querida shuddered. “Unconventional is a kind word for it. I was senior instructor then. Of all the things he did wrong, my worst memories are of being dragged up in the middle of the night to deal with that vast blue demon that Derk had called up and couldn’t put down. You remember?”
Barnabas nodded and bit his lip in order not to laugh. “Nobody knew its name, so none of the usual exorcisms worked. It took the entire staff of the University to get rid of it in the end. All through the night. Derk was never much good at conventional wizardry, I admit. But you use him a lot, don’t you, Reverend?”
Umru smiled sweetly, his fat, comfortable, cool self again. “I pay for Wizard Derk’s services almost every time my temple has a tour party through. No one but Wizard Derk can make a convincing human corpse out of a dead donkey.” Regin stared. Umru smiled ever more sweetly. “Or a sheep,” he said. “We are always chosen as an evil priesthood, and the Pilgrims expect us to have a vilely tortured sacrifice to display. Wizard Derk saves us the necessity of using people.”
“Oh,” said Regin. He turned to where King Luther was trudging grimly in the rear. “And you, Your Majesty? You know this wizard, too?”
“We use him for hangings and heads on spikes occasionally,” King Luther said. “But I hire him most often for the feast when the damn Pilgrims have gone. He has performing animals. Pigs mostly.”
“Pigs?” said Regin.
“Yes, pigs,” said King Luther. “They fly.”
“Oh,” Regin said again. As he said it, they arrived back on the flagstone in the council room again. Regin’s teeth chattered; Barnabas was
shivering; Umru was juddering all over. Querida was unaffected. So was King Luther, whose northern kingdom was never warm.
“What is the matter?” Umru cried out. People turned from reading the heaps of letters on the table to stare at him. He held his hands out piteously. “Look. Blue!”
“Oh. Um,” said Barnabas. “It’s young Blade’s fault, I’m afraid. Boys of that age never know their own strength. I’ll do what I can, but it may take an hour or so.”
Read on for an excerpt from Archer’s Goon
Chapter One
The trouble started the day Howard came home from school to find the Goon sitting in the kitchen. It was Fifi who called him the Goon. Fifi was a student who lived in their house and got them tea when their parents were out. When Howard pushed Awful into the kitchen and slammed the door after them both, the first person he saw was Fifi, sitting on the edge of a chair, fidgeting nervously with her striped scarf and her striped leg warmers.
“Thank goodness you’ve come at last!” Fifi said. “We seem to have somebody’s Goon. Look.”
Howard looked the way Fifi’s chin jerked and saw the Goon sitting in a chair by the dresser. He was filling most of the rest of the kitchen with long legs and huge boots. It was a knack the Goon had. The Goon’s head was very small, and his feet were enormous. Howard’s eyes traveled up a yard or so of tight faded jeans, jerked to a stop for a second at the knife with which the Goon was cleaning the dirty nails of his vast hands, and then traveled on over an old leather jacket to the little, round fair head in the distance. The little face looked halfdaft.
Howard was in a bad mood anyway. That was Awful’s fault. Awful had made him meet her coming out of school because, as she said, he was her big brother and supposed to look after her. When Howard got there, there was Awful racing out of the gates, chased by twenty angry little girls. Awful was shouting, “My big brother’s here to hit you! Hit them, Howard!” Howard did not know what Awful had done to the other little girls, but knowing Awful, he suspected it was something bad. He objected to being used as Awful’s secret weapon, but he did not feel he could let her down. He swung his bag menacingly, hoping that would frighten the little girls off. But there were so many of them and they were so angry that it had ended by being quite a fight. And the little girls called names. It was being called names that had put Howard in a bad mood. And now he came home to find it full of Goon.
He banged his bag down on the kitchen table. The Goon did not look up. “Who is he supposed to be?” Howard asked Fifi.
Fifi jittered nervously. “He just walked in and sat there,” she said. “He says he’s from Archer, whoever that is.”
Howard was big for his age. On the other hand, so was the Goon big for whatever age he was. And the Goon had that knife. Howard thumped his bag on the table again. “Well, he can just go away,” he said. It did not come out as fierce as he had hoped.
Here Awful put her word in. “You go away, Goon,” she said. “Howard’s bag’s covered with the blood of little girls.”
This seemed to interest the Goon. He stopped cleaning his nails and gave the bag a wondering look. He spoke, in a strong, daft voice. “Don’t see any blood.”
“And we don’t know anyone called Archer!” Howard snapped.
The Goon grinned, a daft, placid grin. “Your dad does,” he said, and went back to cleaning his nails.
“He smells,” said Awful. “Make him go. I want my tea.”
The Goon did smell rather, a faint smell of gasoline and rotten eggs, which came in whiffs whenever he moved. Howard and Fifi exchanged helpless looks.
“I want my tea!” Awful yelled, in the way that had earned her her name. Her real name was Anthea, but she had been Awful from the moment she was born and first opened her mouth.
The piercingness of Awful’s yell seemed to get to the Goon. A slight quiver ran through the length of him, though it stopped before it got to his face. “Shut up,” he said.
“Shan’t,” said Awful. The Goon’s little face and daft round eyes turned to look at Awful. He seemed amazed. Awful looked back. She drew a deep, careful breath, opened her mouth, and screamed. Dad always said that scream had cleared clinics and emptied buses since Awful was a month old. Now she was eight it was truly horrible.
The Goon cocked his small head and listened to it, almost appreciatively, for a second. Then he grinned. “Aw, shut up,” he said, and threw his knife at Awful.