Diana Jones - The Dark Lord of Derkholm

“And I admire you for it. With sadness,” Umru said. “I really do have a great deal of money. You needn’t do it for nothing.”

“I will. I’ve said I’ll try ,” Derk protested. “After all, I may not be able to do it.”

“ Very honest,” sighed Umru. “So. You said I could help you. How?”

With an uneasy feeling that Umru might have been readier to help him if he had accepted a bribe, Derk leant forward in the carved chair and explained about Mr Chesney’s idea for a novelty. And it was worse than Derk had expected. As soon as he mentioned Anscher, Umru’s head tilted back and his mouth became a fat, grim line. His large face became more and more stony, the longer Derk talked. “It was in the contract, you see,” Derk explained. “I know the contract was drawn up when both of us were only children, but Mr Chesney regards it as binding. None of us gets any money this year if we don’t get a god to manifest.”

“Not even for money,” Umru said, very upright in his chair. “It is odd how every man has his sticking-point, Wizard Derk. You have told me yours. You have just met mine. I have done many things for Mr Chesney, for money, but this is one thing I will not, can not do. We do not command the gods. They command us. Any attempt to coerce the gods is vile.”

This man is truly a devout priest after all! Derk thought. He was completely sure Umru meant what he said. “I see. I accept that,” he said hastily. “But perhaps you could give me a hint about some way I could fake—”

“You 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.