Dark Lord of Derkholm (Derkholm 1)

Sulkily Kit surged upright. Perhaps he meant to fly down to the terrace. Derk thought it more likely that Kit intended to take off for the hills, and he wondered if bringing him back with a catch spell would damage Kit’s pride too badly. But he never got a chance to cast it, any more than Kit had a chance to fly. As Kit braced his powerful hind legs for takeoff, the roof fell in beneath him. And Kit fell with it. He simply vanished inward, along with the center part of the house. With him went tiles, a chimney, broken rafters, crumpled wall, and smashed windows, in a billow of plaster dust and old cobwebs. The crash was tremendous.

“Oh, ye gods!” said Mara. “He never even had time to spread his wings!”

“Be glad he didn’t. He’d have broken them for sure,” Derk said. He dashed for the house, followed by the ever-helpful Bertha, followed by Finn and Barnabas.

“Derk, Derk!” Mara cried out. “The other children! They were all indoors!”

“I’ll go and look,” said Shona. “Mum, you look ready to faint. Sit down.”

“Not indoors! Look through the windows,” said Mara. “We stretched the house. Any of it might come down! Be careful!”

“Yes, yes,” Shona said soothingly as Derk scrambled in through the front door. In some mad way, the front door was still standing. A mound of rubble had shot out through it and past it on either side. Bertha went bounding in ahead of Derk. As Derk climbed carefully through a chaos of fallen beams and bricks, he heard her start barking in short, triumphant bursts.

From further inside the chaos, Kit’s voice said distinctly, “Shut up, you stupid dog.”

Poor Bertha. It was not her day. Derk heaved a sigh of relief.

“Lucky we’re all wizards here,” Barnabas said behind him. “Finn, you make sure the side walls don’t fall in, while Derk and I see what we can do ahead.”

As Derk crawled on through a crisscross of rafters draped with cobwebs and sheets from the second-floor linen cupboard, he felt the walls on either side groan a little and then steady under Finn’s spell. They found Kit a yard or so further on, dumped in a huge black huddle and coated with plaster and horsehair, in a sort of cage of splintered roof beams and broken marble slabs. Out of it, his eyes stared enormous, black and wild.

“Have you broken anything?” said Derk.

Kit squawked. “Only the new marble stairs.”

“Wings and legs and things, he means, you stupid griffin,” Barnabas said.

“I’m … not sure,” answered Kit.

“Good. Then we’ll get you out,” said Barnabas. “Where’s the dog?”

“She went squirming out at the back,” said Kit. “She smelled the kitchen.”

“Oh, gods!” said Derk. “Lydda was probably in there!”

“One thing at a time,” Barnabas said. “This is going to take a separate levitating spell for each beam and most slabs, I think. Finn, can you join us?”

Finn came crawling through, white with dust and very cheerful. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I see. Can do. Derk, you’ll now get to see some of the techniques we use when we put cities back together after the tours leave. You take the left side, Barnabas.”

Derk crouched against a piece of timber and watched enviously. It was like a demonstration for students. Neatly and quickly, with only a murmur here and there, the two wizards inserted their spells under each balk of wood or stone and then around Kit. After a mere minute Barnabas said, “Right. Now activate.” And the entire tangle of beams and marble slabs unfolded like a clawed hand and went to rest neatly stacked against the walls. “Can you move?” Barnabas asked Kit.

Kit said, “Umph. Yes.” And then, as he rose to a crouch and started to crawl forward: “Yeeow-ouch!” Derk watched him struggle forward across the rubble that had been the hall. At least all Kit’s limbs seemed to be working.

“Look on the bright side,” Finn said. “You’re halfway to a ruined Citadel already. Want us to stabilize it?”

“Yes, but how do we get up to the bedrooms?” Derk said, looking up at the ragged hole in the roof. “And Shona’s piano was up on the second floor.”

“It’s still up there,” said Barnabas, “or we’d have met it by now. Better reassemble the stairs, Finn, and slap some kind of roof on, don’t you think? Derk, you’re going to owe us for this.”

“Fine. Thanks,” said Derk. His mind was on Kit.

Kit squeezed out through a gap beside the front door and flopped down on his stomach with his head bent almost upside down between his front claws. “My head aches,” he said, “and I hurt all over.” He was a terrible sight. Every feather and hair on him was gray with dust or cobwebs. There was a small cut on one haunch. Otherwise he seemed to have been lucky.

Derk looked anxiously around for some sign of the others. Mara had gone, too, but he could hear her voice somewhere. In the chorus of voices answering, he could pick out Elda, Blade, Lydda, Don, and Callette. “Thank goodness,” he said. “You don’t seem to have killed any of the others.”

Kit groaned.

“And you could have done,” added Derk. “You know how heavy you are. Come along to your den, and let me hose you down with warm water.”