The only thing Blade could think of was to play stupid. “I don’t understand,” he panted. “What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Chesney had to have an agent this side,” Barnabas said, “and he chose me. Or did you mean the earth mining?”

“That,” gasped Blade. “Just earth. I mean—”

“It’s full of magic,” Barnabas said. “Everything in this world is.” And while Blade was thinking, I was right! Barnabas went on, “But it doesn’t endure very long in the world it goes to. It does marvels while it does last, of course. I believe they market it as the new superfuel and use it to run all their machines, but they have to keep getting more.”

“Don’t they pay for it at all?” Blade asked.

“Why should they? It’s just earth,” Barnabas said. “They pay me and the overseers rather well for our help, naturally, but who else would they pay?”

“Then why do you keep it secret?” Blade demanded.

“Patriotic people like Querida or your father would be b

ound to object,” said Barnabas. “I suppose there may even come a time when this world gets short of magic, but that won’t be in our time. It won’t be for hundreds of years. Meanwhile you wouldn’t deny Mr. Chesney and his world all the obvious benefits of massive amounts of cheap power, would you?”

Why is he explaining to me like this? Blade wondered. As he wondered, he realized that Barnabas was keeping his jolly, crinkled, bloodshot eyes entirely on Blade’s face. As if Barnabas was carefully not looking at something behind Blade. Blade whirled around. But it was too late. The overseer behind him reached around with a long arm and jammed a pad with something smelly on it against Blade’s nose and mouth. Then he held Blade’s head hard against his chest until Blade was forced to breathe the smelly stuff in. Blade did not even manage to put his cold spell on Barnabas, although he tried.

TWENTY-FOUR

WHEN PRINCE TALITHAN’s green haze swung outward and let Derk and his companions out into the garden of Derkholm, Derk almost understood how it was done. At any other time he would have been fascinated, but now, when Talithan asked gravely, “Do you require anything more, Lord?” Derk said, “Only to be left completely alone, thank you.” Prince Talithan understood and stepped away into the haze again.

Derk had only vague memories of what he did for some while after that. He supposed he must have put the dogs, the pigs, and the Friendly Cows in the right places and given them food. But maybe Old George did that. Derk recalled Old George jogging beside him like a skeleton out for a run, protesting, while Derk was sealing Derkholm off from the rest of the world, but Derk was putting out his full power to do that, and he had no attention to spare just then, even for Don, who galloped anxiously at his other side, saying, “Won’t you even let Mum in then?”

“She won’t be coming here,” Derk said, and almost lost his magics in the terrible, bitter grief at the way Mara had left him. “Go away, Don.”

“Shona then?” said Don.

Shona, Derk remembered, was probably on her way here. “All right. I’ll leave the back gate,” he said, and made a small, almost invisible passage to it, that you could only find if you knew where the back gate was. Lydda, if Lydda was still alive, could come in that way, too. The rest of the grounds Derk sealed with a strength he did not know he had. Then, as far as he remembered, he went and camped on the terrace. He must have put out the balefire and filled in the trench when he made himself a hut out of the tables. But he did nothing else. He simply could not be bothered to take the rest of the Dark Lord scenery away. He sat in the hut. After a while, cautiously and kindly, the pigs came along and settled in with him. Derk scratched between wings and rubbed backs from time to time. It was the only comfort there seemed to be.

Blade was gone. Mara was gone. Lydda was gone. Kit would not be coming back.

It was wrong to have let Kit have charge of the battles. Kit had been too young, just like Blade and Lydda. And the soldiers had hated Kit. And I knew they hated him, Derk thought, and I still let him fly up there where they could take a shot at him, merely because I was finding it all so difficult being the Dark Lord. It should have been me they shot.

He did not know how many times he relived that awful moment when Kit dwindled and tumbled in the air with three arrows sticking in him. He relived himself staring at the surging ripples in the lake where his first, best, cleverest, most successful griffin had gone down. He knew exactly where Kit’s body would be, under the water. He would go and fetch it up when he had got over hurting about it so much.

But the hurt went on. Derk sat in his hut on the terrace and hurt and wished people would leave him alone. There were constant interruptions. Everyone came on tiptoe and terribly kindly, which irritated Derk. Don came at least once an hour. Don was growing, Derk noticed after a vague number of days, bidding fair to be nearly as big as Kit. Seeing Don made the hurt worse, even though Don usually just looked at him and then went away. Old George always came with some gloomy news or other.

“Quite a crowd outside the gates by now. Wizards with them look pretty impatient.”

“Go away,” said Derk.

Next time he came, Old George said, “Bigger crowd still. Been trying to get in, but the wizards can’t seem to manage it.”

“Go away,” said Derk, and he reinforced the magics around Derkholm.

“Never seen a Dark Lord they can’t get at before,” Old George said another time. “Don’t seem to know what to do. Must be several hundred tourists out there now.”

“Go away!” sighed Derk.

“Them dwarfs,” Old George said, reappearing sometime after, “got their beady eyes on your cows. You can’t expect me to keep them off single-handed.”

“Get Don to help you guard them then,” said Derk. He was so irritated that he took the emaciation off Old George.

Old George was not grateful. “Now I haven’t got a rag to my name that fits me!”

“Borrow mine. Upstairs somewhere,” Derk said.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Derkholm Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net