pushing a trolley loaded with wine, glasses and mugs. She had been in the kitchen with him for half an hour and nothing would possess her to utter a word. He supposed it was something to do with Kit’s plan. Stupid. He felt tired and nervous. And he had been woken far too early this morning by groanings and creakings from the overstretched roof. No one had had time to put it right. And there was no time now. Blade’s job was to make sure that every one of the eighty or so wizards round the table had the drinks they preferred. They did look tired, he thought, as he went his rounds with coffee pot and trolley. The fact that they were all in formal robes, red or white or black, made their faces look really pale and tired. And the beards did not help. Wizards he had met without beards had suddenly got them now.
“Oh, it’s the rules,” one of the younger ones, a wizard called Finn, told him. “Mr Chesney won’t hear of a wizard guiding a Pilgrim Party without a beard. Coffee, please. How do you come by your coffee? I can only get it from the tours. I asked to be paid in coffee last year, I love it so much.”
“My father grows it,” Blade said.
“Really?” Finn said eagerly. “Will he sell me any?”
“I should think so,” said Blade. “Look – does that mean I’ll have to wear a beard? I’m supposed to be a Wizard Guide.”
Finn gave him a startled look. “We-ell,” he said. “You’d look a bit odd – see what Mr Chesney says.”
I can’t wait! thought Blade. You’d think Mr Chesney rules the universe.
Once every wizard was in a seat and supplied with a drink, Shona stepped out through the windows at the end of the terrace, carrying her violin and wearing her green bardic robes. They made her look lovely. Shona’s hair was darker than Mara’s, dark, glossy and wavy. Otherwise she had inherited her mother’s good looks. Several wizards made admiring noises as she set the violin under her chin. Shona’s colour became lovelier than ever. She struck an attitude and, very conscious of admiring stares, began to play divinely.
“Can’t you stop her showing off?” Derk murmured to Mara as he went round with a bottle of wine.
“She’ll grow out of it,” Mara whispered back.
“She’s seventeen!” Derk hissed angrily. “It’s about time she did.”
“She’s beautiful. She plays wonderfully. She’s entitled!” Mara whispered forcefully.
“Bah!” said Derk. Another disagreement already. What kind of animal would he create when this was over? He hadn’t done much with insects up to now.
As he considered insects, he felt the magics of Derkholm reacting with someone else’s. It felt like Barnabas. He gave Barnabas a puzzled look.
“It’s all right,” Barnabas said. “I made Mr Chesney a horseless carriage – thing with a sort of motor in front – years ago. He always uses it to get around in. That’ll be him coming now.”
Here we go then, Derk thought. He stared, along with everyone else, anxiously at the gates. You could see nothing but sky beyond the gates from the terrace, but he felt the other magics travel up the valley towards Derkholm, and then stop. Shortly Lydda and Don came pacing up the driveway, tails sedately swinging, and behind them strode a gaggle of purposeful-looking people, four of them, in tight dark clothes. Four! Derk looked anxiously at Mara and Mara hastily stood up, leaving an extra chair free. She picked up a bottle of wine and joined Blade by the trolley.
“Go and get the snacks now,” she whispered.
“In a second.” Blade was frankly fascinated by the people striding up the drive. All had their hair cut painfully short, even the one at the back, who was a woman in a tight striped skirt. The smallest man strode in front, not carrying anything. The other two men were large and they both carried little cases. The woman carried both a case and a board with papers clipped to it. On they came, looking neither right nor left, busy expressions on their faces. Blade, suddenly and unexpectedly, found he was hurt and quite angry that they did not bother even to glance at the garden that his father had worked so hard on last night. Derk had got it looking marvellous. They were not bothering to notice Don and Lydda, either, and they were looking quite as marvellous. Their coats shone with brushing and their feathers gleamed gold against the reds and greens and blues lining the drive.
Perhaps I have got some family solidarity after all! Blade thought, and he hoped the orchids would take a bite out of one of these people. He could tell Shona was feeling much the same. She was playing a marching tune, harshly, in time to the four pairs of striding feet.
They swept on up the steps. To Blade’s disappointment, something seemed to intimidate the orchids. They only made a half-hearted snap at the woman, and she did not notice. She just followed the others. The man in front behaved as if he had eighty wizards waiting for him round a huge table every day. He marched straight to the empty seat at the head of the table and sat in it, as if it was obvious where he would sit. The two other men took chairs on either side of him. The woman took Mara’s empty chair and moved it back so that she could sit almost behind the first man. He put out a hand and she put the little case into it without his needing to look. He slapped the case down on the table and clicked the locks back with a fierce snap.
“Good afternoon,” he said, in a flat, chilly voice.
“Good afternoon, Mr Chesney,” said nearly every wizard there.
Shona changed from a march to a sentimental ballad, full of treacly swooping.
Mr Chesney had greyish mouse-coloured lank hair and a bald patch half hidden by the lank hair combed severely across it. His face was small and white and seemed ordinary, until you noticed that his mouth was upside-down compared with most people’s. It sat in a grim downward curve under his pointed nose and above his small rocklike chin, like the opening to a man-trap. Once you had noticed that, you noticed that his eyes were like cold grey marbles.
Widow spiders, Derk thought desperately, if I gave them transparent green wings.
Lydda loped past Blade before he could observe any more, glaring at him. He and Elda both jumped guiltily and hurried away to the kitchen. They came back carrying large plates fragrantly piled with Lydda’s godlike snacks, in time to hear Mr Chesney’s flat voice saying, “Someone silence that slavegirl with the fiddle, please.”
There was a loud twang as one of Shona’s strings snapped. Her face went white and then flooded bright red.
Ants, thought Derk, with all sorts of interesting new habits. “You mean my daughter, Mr Chesney?” he asked pleasantly.
“Is she?” said Mr Chesney. “Then you should control her. I object to noise in a business meeting. And while I’m on the subject of control, I must say I am not at all pleased with that village at the end of your valley. You’ve allowed it to be far too prosperous. Some of the houses even look to have electric light. You must order it pulled down.”
“But—” Derk swallowed and thought the ants might have outsize stings. He did not say that he had no right to pull down the village, or add that everyone there was a friend of his. He could see there was no point. “Wouldn’t an illusion do just as well?”
“Settle it how you want,” said Mr Chesney. “Just remember that when the Pilgrim Parties arrive there, they will expect to see hovels, abject poverty and heaps of squalor, and that I expect them to get it. I also expect you to do something about this house of yours. A Dark Lord’s
