The Dark Lord of Derkholm. Diana Wynne Jones

don’t see at all, wizard,” Umru interrupted, “or you would not ask. No one who has known a god could even speak of faking. Let me tell you. I was not always as you see me now. I was once a slender young boy, the youngest in my family, and my family was not rich. We lived by the mountains, a long way south of this city. My father had a few cows, some goats and a flock of geese. I was only entrusted with the geese. If I lost those geese, you see, the family would not starve, and I was considered too young to watch the animals. And one day I drove my geese out to feed on a certain swelling green hill. I was sitting there as carelessly as you sit in that chair now, thinking of nothing much, rather bored, but with no ambition in the world except perhaps to guard the cows for once, when Anscher appeared to me. As close as I am to you, wizard, Anscher stood before me. And he was a god, wizard. There was absolutely no doubting it, though it is not a thing I can describe. He smiled at me. He never even asked my name. He never asked me to do anything for him. He just stood in front of me and said, ‘I am Anscher, your god,’ and he smiled.”

      Umru stared out into the empty room. Derk could see tears in his eyes.

      “The glory of that appearance,” Umru said after a moment, “has been with me every moment of every day, of every year of my priesthood, through everything I have done. I have always hoped he would appear again, but he never has, wizard. He never has. When I first became High Priest and started to raise Anscher above other gods, I made that hill where I saw him into a sanctuary to him. I had an altar set up there. Now I think that was presumptuous. By doing that, I tried to command Anscher to appear to me again, and that was wrong. He will not come to me again now. I am too proud, too old, too fat. No, he will not come.”

      Umru’s voice faded away and he sat staring, with tears running down his great cheeks. Derk watched uncomfortably. He sat and watched and Umru sat and stared for so long that Derk began to wonder whether he should simply get up and tiptoe away. But Umru suddenly smiled, wiped the tears off with the sleeve of his expensive gown and said, “You know, I think it’s lunchtime. Will you join me in some lunch, Wizard?”

      Derk was thoroughly unnerved. “I – I’d be honoured,” he managed to say.

      Umru clapped his chubby hands. Instantly a group of young boys, who had obviously been waiting outside for the signal, came hurrying in with a folding table, beakers, jugs, plates and trays of food. The trays were probably gold. The glassware was exquisite crystal. The food smelt wonderful. Derk had forgotten that the worshippers of Anscher never ate meat, but the various dishes were so beautifully cooked that he hardly noticed they were all made of vegetables. He slipped a particularly fine pasty into his pocket to show Lydda. And when the boys raced in again with bowls heaped with fruit, Derk wanted to take the strangest sort for Elda, but he did not quite like to, not after the pasty.

      “Try one of these, Wizard,” Umru said. “You won’t have met this fruit before. I bought them off one of Mr Chesney’s tour agents – we often do little deals on the side, you know. She called them oranges, I believe.”

      “They are,” said Derk. “Orange, I mean.”

      Umru laughed. “You peel the outside off,” he explained. “Like this. Then the inside splits into pieces, just as if one of their gods had designed them for people to eat. Remarkable, aren’t they?”

      “Mm.” Derk was not sure he liked the sharp, definite taste, but he was sure Elda would.

      “Take another home with you,” Umru said generously. “I have two dozen. I only paid four gold for them, too.” While Derk weighed the orange globe in his hand, thinking the thing was rather like one of Callete’s early gizmos, Umru added, “They have pips. The young woman told me that they grow well in warm, dry conditions. I think they grow like apples, on trees.”

      “Ah.” Derk looked up to see Umru smiling meaningly.

      “I would buy as many as you could grow,” Umru said. He clapped his hands again and the boys brought water and cloths. As Derk washed the pungent juice off his fingers, he realized that he would only need a couple of trees, at two gold for a dozen fruit, to earn the money for that fine. But they might take years to grow. Umru looked sideways at him as they dried their hands, almost uncertainly. “I – er – have another small favour to ask, Wizard, something more along the lines of what you usually do for me.”

      “Ask away,” said Derk.

      “I need forty or so newly severed heads to go on stakes all over the city when the tours come through,” Umru explained. “This year I am the kind of priest who beheads heretics. Could you—?”

      “No trouble at all,” said Derk.

      Umru looked so relieved that Derk saw the man had been truly worried in case his refusal to help with the god had annoyed Derk into refusing to work magic for him.

      “I promise to move the battles if I can,” Derk assured him.

      Umru heaved himself to his feet. “As I said, every man has his sticking-point,” he said, showing Derk he was right.

      He led Derk outside and down steep stairs. It was almost like Derk’s usual visits. Up to now, Derk had been feeling quite out of his depth. No one had tried to bribe him before, nor did he know how to deal with Umru’s religious experiences; but there was no uncertainty when it came to putting a spell on a sheep’s head or so. Then he saw what Umru had waiting for him, piled in a small courtyard below. Derk stared at the heap of old yellowy-brown human skulls and swallowed.

      “Where—?”

      Umru smiled. “We fetched them up from the catacombs. They were all priests once. I hope they don’t worry you.”

      “Not at all,” Derk lied.

      He took a deep breath and began. It was the sort of thing he was good at and so used to that he could have done it with his eyes shut. Before long, he did have his eyes shut most of the time. The skulls, under his hands, turned back into the people they had once been, but without their bodies. None of them seemed to like the experience. Most of them stared at Derk reproachfully. If he looked away, he saw Umru nodding and smiling cheerfully. Even with his eyes shut, he felt quite ill by the end.

      “Nice quantities of blood,” Umru said. “Splendid. Let us hope the weather stays chilly. The usual fee?”

      For a second, Derk was tempted to ask for a hundred gold. He felt he had earned it. Umru could afford it. But he could not bear to stand beside the heap of bleeding heads, most of which were still staring at him from half-shut resentful eyes, and bargain. “Usual fee,” he agreed hastily.

      He took the money and fled to the main courtyard, where the fanatical men were waiting with Beauty. “This horse is for sale?” one of them asked him greedily.

      “No!” Derk snapped. He was still feeling ill as Beauty took off. The surge when she leapt into the air was almost too much for him.

      “Home nhow?” Beauty asked hopefully.

      Derk swallowed. “No. Take a bit of a swing eastwards. I need to look at the battlefield.” And to calm down, he thought. This had not been a good day.

      Beauty obediently swerved out beyond the domes of the city and flapped high above the countryside there. They flew above orderly rows of orchard trees, vines and vegetables that followed the shape of the ground, green fields and stubbled ones, and some fields rich brown and already ploughed, woods, meadows, hedges. Everything was bronze-green and a little hazy in the afternoon light. Everything was beautifully kept. Through it all swung the river in prosperous curves that reminded Derk of Umru’s belly, of his dragon-dolphin and then of his not-to-be mermaid daughter. He told himself sternly that Shona’s idea of an intelligent carrier pigeon was a much more practical one and began to feel a little better. He could see why Umru was anxious not have the battles here. This was some of the best farmland he had ever seen. He would have to move the battlefield. That was one good thing to come out of today – and he had gained a new fruit. But he still had no god and no demon. He sighed.

      “Better turn for home,” he told Beauty.