Dark Lord of Derkholm Read Online Free PDF Page A

snacks.”
    â€œAnd I must get us organized,” said Mara. “Let me see, there’ll be eighty-odd wizards, plus two people with Mr. Chesney, and us. Blade, come and help me see if we can turn the dining room into a Great Hall. And there’s your father’s clothes—”
    From then on it was all a mighty bustle. Derk, for the most part, strode through it muttering, “There must be a way out!” and doing all his usual things, like feeding and exercising the animals, turning the sprinkler on his coffee bushes, milking the Friendly Cows, and checking his experiments, while everyone else raced about. Blade thought rather angrily that Dad seemed to have taken Shona’s offer of help far too literally. Derk did not come near the house until Blade and Mara were trying to move the garden.
    It was almost dark by then. Before that, Blade and Mara had tried to stretch the house out to make room for a Great Hall in the middle. Shona decided that they needed marble stairs, too, leading into the hall, and sat on the ordinary wooden stairs making drawings of sculptured banisters and sketches of the sort of clothes Derk should wear. But before the house was even half long enough, there were alarming creakings and crunchings from all over it. Kit roared a warning, and Don and Elda dashed indoors to say the middle of the roof was dipping downward, spreading the tiles like scales on a fir cone. At the same time Lydda shrieked that the kitchen was falling in and Shona shouted that the new marble stairs were swaying . Blade and Mara had to prop the house up and think again.
    â€œPut everyone out on the terrace,” Kit suggested, “and make sure it doesn’t rain. That way the griffins can help hand round the food.”
    This was almost the only help Kit had offered, Blade thought morosely, and he knew it was only because Kit was far too big to be comfortable indoors these days. At least Don and Elda were helping in the kitchen. Or no, Blade knew he was being unfair to Kit really. After Blade and Mara had expanded the terrace into a large stone platform reaching halfway to the front gates, Kit got busy hauling all the tables and chairs in the house out there. Blade’s annoyance with Kit was because he knew the griffins were up to something. He had seen all five of them, even Lydda— and Callette, who almost never, on principle, did anything Kit wanted—gathered in a secretive cluster around Kit in the twilight. It made Blade feel hurt and left out. The griffins were, after all, his brothers and sisters. Most of the time, it worked like that. But there were times—like this, and almost always under Kit’s leadership—when the griffins shut the rest of them out. Blade hated it.
    So much for family solidarity! he thought, and turned to help Mara to bend and push the shrubberies and all the flower beds into some kind of shape around the new, huge terrace. “If we shunt the little forest up to this corner—” Mara said to him. “No, even if we do, we’ll have to straighten the drive. I know your father hates straight lines in a garden, but there simply isn’t room. ”
    Here Don backed out onto the terrace, carrying one end of the piano stool, with Shona attached to the other end of it, screaming, “I said give it back! I need it to do my practice on!”
    Kit slammed down the kitchen table and gave voice like six out-of-tune bugles. “LET HIM TAKE IT. WE NEED IT. YOU CAN PRACTICE AT COLLEGE.”
    â€œNo, I can’t! I’m not going to college until this is over! I promised Dad!” Shona shrilled.
    â€œYou’re still going to give it here.” Kit dropped to all fours, tail slashing, and advanced on Shona. Even on all fours, he towered over her.
    â€œYou big bully,” Shona said, not in the least impressed. “Do you want me to poke you in the eye?”
    â€œI think I’d better break that up,” Mara