LITMIR.BIZ

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all marked down on our map,” said Mr Addis. “Here.” He picked up the top one of his papers, a cream one, and handed it to Derk. Barnabas made a tired, practised gesture on the other side of the table, and there was a map in front of everyone. There was even one for Blade, on top of the plate of snacks he was holding. He put the plate on the table and unfolded the map. To his slight alarm, it meant nothing to him.

      “Oh, I see,” said Derk. “You mean Greynash, Billingham and Sleane.”

      “We like to rename our places, Mr Dark Lord, to give the right exotic touch,” Mr Addis explained kindly. “Now, as you’ll see, in order to get the Pilgrim Parties through all their scheduled adventures, we have to route them in a number of ways, colour-coded on your map. Note that some of you will have your temple episode early, some in the middle and some late, and that the same applies to the exotic eastern adventure. We then split the tours into two for the enslavement episode. Half of you will go north to be captured by pirates and half south to Costamara to be taken as gladiators. Because of this division, we have selected ten cities for sacking this year. Mr Dark Lord, please negotiate with your Dark Elves on this point and make sure they allow the Pilgrims to escape before the cities are burnt. And after this, all Pilgrim Parties come together again for the regular weekly battle in Umru’s lands. Wizard Guides must take care here that each party is unaware of the presence of other parties. We like our customers to believe that their own tour is unique. You’ll find all the tour-plans laid out in the pink schedule.”

      He picked up a pink pamphlet. Barnabas made another gesture, and everyone had one of those too. Blade unfolded page after page of lists and swallowed unhappily. “And here are your colour-coded copies,” said Mr Addis. This time, Blade received a green paper that looked slightly simpler. The other wizards got blue or yellow or green lists.

      In a fuzz of bewilderment, Blade heard Mr Addis continue, “Please take note that this year’s tour is choreographed around the one weakness of the Dark Lord. Each party will pick up clues to the Dark Lord’s weak point as it goes round, ending in the retrieval of an object that contains this weakness – this is to be guarded by a dragon in the north – and then going on, after the battle, to kill the Dark Lord. Mr Dark Lord, I’m sure I can count on you to lay one hundred and twenty-six clues at each spot marked with an asterisk on the map. And you will, of course need the same number of objects for the dragon to guard.”

      Derk thought vehemently of ants crawling between people’s toes to spread disease. Otherwise, he thought he might cry. “What kind of objects have you in mind?” he asked.

      “Any object, at your discretion,” smiled Mr Addis, “though we tend to prefer something with a romantic bias, such as a goblet or an orb. But basically it should be capable of containing the weakness of your choice.”

      “Athlete’s foot?” asked Derk, with his mind on ants.

      “We prefer it to be a magical weakness, or even a moral one,” Mr Addis corrected him, with a kindly smile.

      Derk stared at him, unable to concentrate. It was not just that he was thinking of ants while being deluged with instructions and coloured papers. Mara was up to something. He could feel her working magic and it worried him acutely. “Moral weakness?” he said. “You mean sloth or something? Callette likes making objects. I suppose I could ask—”

      And here was Callette herself, with her back talons grating the terrace as she heaved along another beer barrel. She set it down with an enormous thump, in the wrong place, between Mr Chesney and the woman with the clipboard. Whump. The top was open. Bright red stuff splashed in all directions, smelling rather nasty.

      Chairs scraped as everyone but Mr Chesney got out of the way. The woman sprang up with a scream. “Oh, Mr Chesney! It’s blood!”

      Blood was running down one side of Mr Chesney’s face and dripping on his suit. He turned and stared reprovingly at the barrel while he got out his handkerchief.

      Derk wondered how Callette had come to be so stupid. Callette’s mind was always a mystery to him, but still—! “Callette,” he said. “That’s not beer.”

      Callette’s huge head pecked forward. She stared down into the rippling red liquid in the utmost surprise. Every innocent line of her said How is it not beer?

      “It just isn’t,” Derk told her. “It’s one of the vats from my workroom and I know it was sealed by a stasis spell. I can’t think why it’s open. I’m terribly sorry,” he said to the woman. She was still standing up, whimpering and dabbing at red spots on her tight pin-striped skirt with a paper hanky. “I’ll get it off for you – for both of you. It’s only pigs’ blood.”

      The pigs on the roof heard him. At the words pigs’ blood, there was an instant outcry, squeals, grunts and yells of protest. Pink bodies surged about up there and trotters clattered on tiles.

      “Oh, shut up!” Derk yelled up at them. “It’s a pig from the village. Your ancestors came from the marshes.”

      This did nothing to soothe the pigs. They continued to surge about, yelling their protest, until Ringlet, one of the larger sows, slipped, overbalanced, and toppled off the roof. As her heavy round body came plummeting down, squealing fearsomely, she looked certain to land splat in the middle of the table. Half the wizards prudently ducked underneath. Several vanished. Chairs fell over, and cups and mugs. Even Mr Addis put his hands nervously over his head. But Ringlet, still squealing mightily, struggled about in the air and managed to right herself in time to spread her stubby little white wings. Violently flapping, and squealing hysterically, she got control inches from the table and flew screaming down the length of it, just rising in time to miss Mr Chesney, and then rising again to swoop up to the roof. The whole herd took off from the tiles joyfully to meet her, flapping, grunting and bawling like a disturbed pink rookery.

      Shona dashed past Blade and fled in through the front door. He could see her there, and Elda with her, inside the hall, clutching one another and shaking with laughter. He marvelled that Callette could sit there on her haunches looking so solemnly innocent – he took his hat off to her. He wanted badly to giggle himself, until he looked at Mr Chesney. Mr Chesney had not moved, except to wipe the blood off himself. He was just sitting there, waiting for the interruption to stop.

      “Take it away and get a proper barrel of beer,” Derk told Callette. She heaved the vat up and tramped away with it without a word. “I’m sorry,” Derk said, as wizards began cautiously reappearing from under the table or out of thin air and setting chairs upright again.

      “Accepted, but don’t let it occur again,” said Mr Chesney. “Mr Addis.”

      “Right.” Mr Addis switched on his friendly smile again. “I’m now going on to the update of our rules, which you will find in this black book.” He passed a heavy little volume to Barnabas.

      Barnabas raised his hand. Then he paused, puffing a little from his recent dive under the table. “I think,” he said, “that as we have a new Dark Lord this year, I’d better appoint myself his Chief Minion, as the most experienced wizard here. Is that agreed?”

      A sigh ran round the table as the wizards saw the favourite job go out of their reach, but most of them nodded. “It won’t be the usual cushy post this year anyway,” someone murmured.

      Barnabas smiled ruefully and gestured. Blade and Derk each found themselves holding a thick shiny book labelled in gold, Wizards’ Bible.

      “Keep this by you and consult it at all times,” Mr Addis said, “and please note that the rules are here to be kept. We had a few slip-ups last year, which have resulted in changes. This year, we require all Wizard Guides to make sure that a healer stays within a day’s trek of them. Healers have been instructed about this. And Wizard Guides are now officially required to ensure that all Pilgrims marked expendable on their list meet with a brave and honourable end and have that end properly witnessed by other Pilgrims. Last year we had someone return home alive. And in another case, lack of witnesses caused searching enquiries from the Missing Persons Bureau. Let’s do better

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