“Lords!” said the horse. “Suppose I was to do that!”
“None of your cheek, Filbert,” Elda said over Derk’s shoulder. “I haven’t seen Dad for a week now. You’ve seen him every day. Dad, what are you doing here?”
“Coming to see how you were, of course,” Derk replied. “I thought I’d give you a week to settle down first. How are things?”
“Wonderful!” Elda said rapturously. “I’m learning so many things! I mean, the food’s awful and one of the main teachers is vile, but they gave me a whole concert hall to sleep in because the other rooms are too small and I’ve got friends, Dad! Come and meet my friends.”
She disentangled herself from Derk and dragged him by one arm across to the statue of Wizard Policant. Derk smiled and let himself be dragged. Filbert, who was a colt of boundless curiosity, clopped across after them and peered round the plinth as Elda introduced the others.
Derk shook hands with Olga, and then with Lukin, whom he knew well. “Hallo, Your Highness. Does this mean your father’s allowed you to leave home after all?”
“No, not really,” Lukin admitted, rather flushed. “I’m financing myself, though. How are your flying pigs these days, sir?”
“Making a great nuisance of themselves,” said Derk, “as always.” He shook hands with Felim. “How do you do? Haven’t I met you before somewhere?”
“No, sir,” Felim said, with great firmness.
“Then you must look like someone else I’ve met,” Derk apologised. He turned to Claudia. “Claudia? Good gods! You were a little shrimp of a girl when I saw you last! Living in the Marshes with your mother. Do you remember me at all?”
Claudia’s face lit with her happiest and most deeply dimpled smile. “I do indeed. You landed outside our dwelling on a beautiful black horse with wings.”
“Beauty. My grandmother,” Filbert put in, with his chin on Wizard Policant’s pointed shoes.
“I hope she’s still alive,” said Claudia.
“Fine, for a twelve-year-old,” Filbert told her. “She doesn’t speak as well as me. Mara mostly rides her these days.”
“No, I remember I could hardly understand her,” said Claudia. “She looked tired. So did you,” she said to Derk. “Tired and worried.”
“Well, I was trying to be Dark Lord in those days,” Derk said, “and your mother’s people weren’t being very helpful.” He turned to Ruskin. “A dwarf, eh? Training to be a wizard. That has to be a first. I don’t think there’s been a dwarf wizard ever.”
Ruskin gave a little bow from where he sat. “That is correct. I intend to be the first one. Nothing less than a wizard’s powers will break the stranglehold the forgemasters have on Central Peaks society.”
Derk looked thoughtful. “I’ve been trying to do something about that. The way things are run there now is a shocking waste of dwarf talents. But those forgemasters of yours are some of the most stiff-necked, flinty-hearted, obstinate fellows I know. I tell you what – you come to me when you’re qualified and we’ll try to work something out.”
“Really?” Ruskin’s round face beamed. “You mean that?”
“Of course, or I wouldn’t have said it,” said Derk. “One thing Querida taught me is that revolutions need a bit of planning. And that reminds me—”
Elda had been towering behind her father, delighted to see him getting on so well with her friends. Now she flung both feathered forelegs round his shoulders, causing him to sag a bit. “You really don’t mind me being here? You’re going to let me stay?”
“Well.” Derk disengaged himself and sat on the plinth beside Filbert’s interested nose. “Well, I can’t deny that Mara and I had a bit of a set-to over it, Elda. It went on some days, in fact. Your mother pointed out that you had the talent and were at an age when everyone needs a life of their own. She also said you were big enough to toss me over a barn if you wanted.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that!” Elda cried out. She thought about it. “Or not if you let me stay here. You will, won’t you?”
“That’s mostly why I’m here,” said Derk. “If you’re happy and if you’re sure you’re learning something of value, then of course you have to stay. But I want to talk to you seriously about what you’ll be learning. You should all listen to this too,” he said to the other five. “It’s important.” They nodded and watched Derk attentively as he went on. “For many, many years,” he said, “forty years, in fact, this University was run almost entirely to turn out Wizard Guides for Mr Chesney’s tour parties. The men among the teachers were very pressed for time, too, because they had to go and be Guides themselves every autumn when the tours began. So they pared down what they taught. After a few years, they were teaching almost nothing but what was needed to get a party of non-magic-users round dangerous bits of country, and these were all the fast, simple things that worked. They left out half the theory and some of the laws, and they left out all the slower, more thorough, more permanent or more artistic ways of doing things. Above all, they discouraged students from having new ideas. You can see their point in that. It doesn’t do for a Wizard Guide with twenty people to keep safe in the Waste to stand rooted to the spot when a monster’s charging at them, because he’s thought of a new way to make diamonds. They’d all be dead quite quickly. Mr Chesney didn’t allow that kind of thing. You can see the old wizards’ point. But the fact remains that for forty years they were not teaching properly.”
“I believe those old wizards have retired now, sir,” Felim said.
“Oh, they have,” Derk agreed. “They were worn out. But you haven’t grasped my point. Six smart students like you ought to see it at once.”
“I have,” Filbert said, chomping his bit in a pleased way. “The ones teaching now were taught by the old ones.”
“Exactly,” said Derk, while the others cried out, “Oh I see!” and “That’s it!” and Olga said, “Then that’s what’s wrong with Wermacht.”
“All that about ‘your next big heading’. So schooly,” said Claudia. “Because that’s all he knows. Like I said, pitiful.”
“Running in blinkers,” Filbert suggested brightly.
“Then it’s all no use!” Elda said tragically. “I might just as well come home.”
From the look of them, the others were thinking the same. “Here now. There’s no need to be so extreme,” Derk said. “Who’s your tutor?”
“Corkoran,” said Elda. The others noticed, with considerable interest, that she did not go on and tell Derk that Corkoran reminded her of a teddy bear.
“He’s the fellow who’s trying to get to the moon, isn’t he?” Derk asked. “That could well force him to widen his ideas a little – though he may not tell them to you, of course. You should all remember that for every one way of doing things that he tells you, there are usually ten more that he doesn’t, because half of them are ways he’s never heard of. The same goes for laws and theory. Remember, there are more kinds of magic than there are birds in the air, and that each branch of it leads off in a hundred directions. Examine everything you’re taught. Turn it upside down and sideways, then try to follow up new ways of doing it. The really old books in the Library should help you, if you can find them – Policant’s Philosophy of Magic is a good start – and then ask questions. Make your teachers think