“There wasn’t much any of us could stop it doing,” Don said.
“None of this was in the dragonlore I learned at the University,” Mara said firmly.
But this failed to stop Fran and Old George remembering a host of other things that were not in University dragonlore either. Most of it suggested Derk was as good as dead, and it upset Elda badly. After supper she raced upstairs and opened all the bedroom windows. The pigs flew eagerly in, followed by the owls. Elda spent the night huddled on Derk’s bedroom carpet among the entire herd, anxiously listening to Derk’s difficult breathing, while the owls sat in a row on Derk’s bedhead.
Blade had a miserable night, too. When he was not dreaming, over and over, of the dragon blasting smoke at Derk—which Blade knew how to stop, except that in the dream he had forgotten how—he was dreaming of being inside the magical camp full of men in shiny black. Everyone in there was trying to kill everyone else. When Blade tried to stop them, they came for him with their swords. For once, he was quite grateful when Shona woke him early and told him to exercise the dogs.
Later that morning Kit called a council in his shed. Kit had been very busy. Strewn on the cushions of his bed were the pink pamphlet, the green one, the yellow one, the tour map, Derk’s black book, Blade’s black book, and piles and piles of Derk’s untidy, hectic notes. On the floor was spread a large map of the continent with the routes of the various Pilgrim Parties carefully marked on it, and pinned on the wall was an even bigger timetable, in seven colors. Kit had done the map and the timetable himself in that beautiful clear penmanship which only griffins seemed to be capable of. Blade thought Kit must have worked most of the night.
“I wondered where that was!” Blade said, spotting his black book.
Shona arrived last, meaningly carrying her violin. “What’s all this about?”
Kit’s tail slashed. He was crouched in a vast black hump in the corner beyond his map. “I’ve been trying to work out what we ought to be doing,” he said, “and who needs to be where, and when. We’ve got to reckon on Dad being laid up for at least two weeks, and not too well for a month after that. It would be nice if we could have everything running smoothly for him when he’s better. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” Shona said, looking soberly down at the map. “I do.”
Everyone else sighed with relief. Confrontations between Kit and Shona could be terrible. Lydda quietly helped herself to a pen and some of the stack of paper Derk had made for Kit, ready to take notes.
“Right,” said Kit. “Three Pilgrim Parties come through today, three tomorrow, and three the next day, and so on for the next six weeks. They each have their first confrontation with the Forces of Dark five days later—”
“Leathery-winged avians,” Elda said, checking the timetable with one careful talon.
“That’s right,” said Kit. “And the Wild Hunt three days after that. They pick up their first clue a day later. Does anyone know whether Dad planted the clues?”
Faces and beaks turned anxiously this way and that, mostly toward Elda, who usually knew what Derk was doing. “He did some,” said Elda, “but I don’t think he’d finished.”
“He hasn’t finished,” said Callette. “He said my gizmos needed a different set of clues for each one, and he was going to rack his brains.”
“We’d better check on that,” Kit said.
While Lydda wrote it down in large and beautiful script: “Clues. 126 × 10,” Don looked over her wing and exclaimed, “But that’s one thousand, two hundred, and sixty clues! That’s an awful job!”
“In thirty different places,” said Callette. “I’ll do it.”
“Then I’ll invent clues,” said Shona. “It seems a proper bardic activity. What else is urgent, Kit?”
“Most of it. We’re going to be really busy,” Kit said somberly. “At three tours a day, by the end of three weeks there are going to be sixty-two parties of offworlders—”
“Sixty-three,” Don corrected him.
“Sixty-three then,” said Kit, “spread out over most of the continent, all needing to have adventures with the Dark Lord at least once a week, and a week after that, some of them might even be coming up for their Final Encounters. We may find ourselves having to provide a Dark Lord for the first ones to kill, depending on how Dad is. But the two most urgent things to work out are: How are we going to provide all the right adventures on time? and How do we get Derkholm converted into a Citadel? There’s no way Dad’s going to be fit enough to transform the house.”
“Yeeps!” Don said.
“Can’t Barnabas do the house?” Blade asked.
“Yes, if you want him to know Dad can’t,” Shona said crushingly. “Kit, Mum can change the house. She’s been loving converting Aunt’s house. We should have asked her before she went back there.”
“She’d only have time if she did it right now,” Kit pointed out. “Look at the timetable. She gets a party through her Lair every day after this first week. Lydda, make a note to fetch her back.”
“She won’t come,” Callette said.
“She’ll have to,” Kit insisted. “Even if Blade or I could do it, we’d be trying to be in three places at once while we do. Can anyone see how we can get to all the places the adventures are supposed to be or do things like the Wild Hunt without Dad’s magic? I can’t.”
&n
bsp; Shona giggled. “Only if we dash across the country chasing Pilgrims with the dogs and the Friendly Cows!”