“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.