Chapter 33 - Fairydeath

The wind this evening, so eagerly playing Sounds like blades that someone is swinging —

On the instrument of the trees densely growing ..

– Montale, Poems

 

At first Dustfinger didn’t believe Farid when he told him what he had seen and heard in Fenoglio’s room. Even the old man couldn’t be crazy enough to meddle with Death’s handiwork.

But then, that same day, a couple of women buying herbs from Roxane had the same story to tell as the boy: Cosimo the Fair had come back, they said, back from the dead.

“Women say the White Women fell so deeply in love with him that at last they let him go,” said Roxane. “And men say he’d just been hiding from his ugly wife for a while.” Crazy stories, thought Dustfinger, but not half as crazy as the truth.

The women had nothing to say about Brianna. He didn’t like to think of her up at the castle. No one knew what might happen there next. It seemed that the Piper was still in Ombra with half a dozen men-at-arms. Cosimo had sent the rest of them out of the city, and they were waiting outside the walls for their own lord’s arrival. For there was a widespread rumor that the Adderhead would come in person to see this prince who had risen from the dead. He wasn’t going to accept the idea of Cosimo’s taking the throne from his grandson again so easily.

“I’ll ride to Ombra myself and see how she is,” said Roxane. “They probably wouldn’t even let you through the Outer Gate. But there’s something else you can do for me.”

The women had not come just for the herbs and to pass on the gossip about Cosimo. They had brought Roxane an order from Nettle, who was in Ombra treating two sick children in the dyers’

quarter. She needed a root of fairydeath, dangerous medicine that killed as often as it cured. The old woman hadn’t said for what poor devil she needed the root. “Just that it’s a man at the Secret Camp who’s injured, and Nettle is going back there this evening,” said Roxane. “And another thing .. CloudDancer was with her. It seems he’s carrying a message for you.” “A message? For me?”

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“Yes, from a woman.” Roxane looked at him for a moment, and then went into the house to get the root.

“You’re going to Ombra?” Farid was there behind Dustfinger so suddenly that he jumped.

“I am, and Roxane is riding to the castle,” he said. “So you stay here to keep an eye on Jehan.”

“And who’s going to keep an eye on you?” “Me?”

“Yes.” What a look Farid was giving him! And the marten, too.

“To stop it from happening.” Farid spoke so softly that Dustfinger could hardly hear him. “Stop what it says in the book.”

“Oh, that.” The boy was watching him as anxiously as if he might fall down dead any minute.

Dustfinger had to suppress a smile, although it was his own death they were discussing. “Did Meggie tell you about it?”

Farid nodded.

“Very well. Forget it, do you hear me? The words are written. Maybe they’ll come true, maybe not.”

But Farid shook his head so vigorously that his black hair fell over his forehead. “No!” he said.

“No, they won’t come true! I swear it. I swear it by the djinns that howl in the desert and the ghosts that eat the dead, I swear it by everything I fear!”

Dustfinger looked thoughtfully at him. “You crazy boy!” he said. “But I like your oath. We’d better leave Gwin here, then, and you can keep him!”

Gwin did not approve. He bit Dustfinger’s hand when he was put on his chain, snapped at his fingers, and chattered even more angrily when Jink got into his master’s backpack.

“You’re taking the new marten with you and the old one must be put on the chain?” asked Roxane, when she came back to them with the root for Nettle.

“Yes. Because someone said he’d bring me bad luck.” “Since when have you believed that kind of thing?”

Indeed, since when? Since I met an old man who claims to have made up you and me, thought Dustfinger. Gwin was still hissing; he had seldom seen the marten so angry. Without a word he took the chain off Gwin’s collar again. And ignored Farid’s look of alarm.

All the way to Ombra Gwin sat on Farid’s shoulders, as if to show Dustfinger that he hadn’t forgiven him yet. And the moment Jink put his nose out of the backpack, Gwin bared his teeth and snarled so menacingly that Farid had to hold his muzzle shut a couple of times.

The gallows outside the city gates were empty; only a few ravens were perched on the wooden beams. Even though Cosimo was back, Her Ugliness was still administering justice in Ombra, just as she had done in his father’s lifetime, and she did not think well of hangings – perhaps because, as a child, she had seen too many men dangling from a rope with their tongues blue and their faces bloated.

“Listen,” Dustfinger said to Farid as they stopped beneath the gallows, “while I take Nettle the 177

 

root and ask CloudDancer for the message I’m told he has for me, you go and find Meggie. I must talk to her.”

Farid went red, but he nodded. Dustfinger looked at his face with amusement. “What’s all this?

Did something besides Cosimo’s return from the dead happen on the evening when you went to see her?”

“None of your business!” muttered Farid, blushing more deeply than ever.

A farmer, swearing profusely, was driving a cart laden with barrels toward the city gates. The oxen blocked the gateway, and the guards impatiently grabbed the reins. Dustfinger took this chance to get himself and Farid past them. “Bring Meggie here, all the same,” he said as they parted on the other side of the gates. “And don’t get so lovesick you lose your way.”

He watched the boy until he had disappeared among the houses. No wonder Roxane thought Farid was his son. Sometimes he suspected his own heart of thinking the same.

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Chapter 34 – CloudDancers Message

Yes, my love,

This world of ours bleeds

With more pain than just the pain of love.

– Faiz Ahmed Faiz, “The Love I Gave You Once”, An Elusive Dawn

There could hardly be a worse smell in the world than the door rising from the dyers’ vats. The acrid stench rose to Dustfinger’s nostrils even as he was making his way along the alley where the smiths plied their trade – tinkers mending pots and pans, blacksmiths shoeing horses, and on the other side of the road the armorers, who were considered superior to the other smiths and were arrogant as befitted their status. The sound of all the hammers beating on red-hot iron was almost as bad as the smell in the alley. The dyers had their hovels in the most remote part of Ombra; their stinking vats were never tolerated in the better parts of any town. But just as Dustfinger was approaching the gate separating their quarter from the rest of Ombra, a man coming out of an armorer’s workshop collided with him.

The Piper. He was easily recognizable by his silver nose, although Dustfinger could remember the days when he had a nose of flesh and blood. Just your luck again, Dustfinger, he told himself, turning his head aside and trying to slip past Capricorn’s minstrel quickly. Of all the men in this world, that bloodhound has to cross your path. He was beginning to hope that the Piper hadn’t noticed who he had bumped into, but just as he thought he was safely past him the silver-nosed man seized his arm and swung him around.

“Dustfinger!” he said in the strained voice that had once sounded so different. It had always reminded Dustfinger of oversweet cakes. Capricorn had loved to listen to it more than any other voice, and the same was true of the songs it sang. The Piper wrote wonderful songs about fire-raising and murder, so wonderful that they almost made you believe there was no nobler occupation than cutting throats. Did he sing the same songs for the Adderhead – or were they too coarse-grained for the silver halls of the Castle of Night?

“Well, fancy that! I’m inclined to think just about everyone’s coming back from the dead these days,” said the Piper, while the two men-at-arms with him looked covetously at the weapons displayed outside the armorers’ workshops. “I really thought Basta had sliced you up and then buried you years ago. Did you know he’s back, too? He and the old woman, Mortola. I’m sure you remember her. The Adderhead was delighted to welcome her to his castle. You know how highly he always thought of her deadly concoctions.”

Dustfinger hid the fear pervading his heart behind a smile. “Why, if it isn’t the Piper!” he said.

“Your new nose suits you much better than the old one. It tells everyone who your new master is and shows that it belongs to a minstrel who can be bought for silver.”

The Piper’s eyes had not changed. They were pale gray like the sky on a rainy day, and they stared at him with as fixed a gaze as the eyes of a bird. Dustfinger knew from Roxane how he had lost his nose, cut off by a man whose daughter he had seduced with his dark songs.

“You always did have a dangerously sharp tongue, Dustfinger,” he said. “It’s about time someone finally cut it out. Indeed, wasn’t that tried once, and you got away only because the Black Prince and his bear protected you? Are they still looking after you? I don’t see them anywhere.” He 179

 

looked around, his eye searching the scene.

Dustfinger cast a quick glance at the two men-at-arms. They were both at least a head taller than him. What would Farid say if he could see me now? he wondered. That I ought to have had him with me so that he could keep his vow? The Piper had a sword, of course, and his hand was already on the hilt. He obviously thought as little as the Black Prince did of the law forbidding strolling players to carry weapons. A good thing the smiths are hammering so loudly, thought Dustfinger, or no doubt everyone would hear my heart beating with fear.

“I must be on my way,” he said, as casually as possible. “Give Basta my regards when you see him, and as for burying me, he hasn’t done it yet.” He turned – it was worth a try – but the Piper held his arm tightly.

“Of course, and there’s your marten, too!” he hissed.

Dustfinger felt Jink’s damp muzzle against his ear. It’s the wrong marten, he thought, trying to calm his racing heart. The wrong marten. But had Fenoglio ever mentioned Gwin’s name when he staged Dustfinger’s death? With the best will in the world he couldn’t remember. I’ll have to ask Basta to give me back the book so that I can look it up, he thought bitterly. He signaled to Jink to get back into the backpack. Better not think about that.

The Piper was still holding his arm. He wore pale leather gloves, finely stitched like a lady’s. “The Adderhead will soon be here,” he told Dustfinger in an undertone. “He didn’t care at all for the news of his son-in-law’s strange return to life. He thinks the whole business is a wicked masquerade designed to cheat his defenseless grandson of the throne.”

Four guards came down the street wearing the Laughing Prince’s colors: Cosimo’s colors now.

Dustfinger had never in his life been so glad to see armed men. The Piper let go of his arm.

“We’ll meet again soon,” he hissed in his noseless voice.

“I daresay,” was all that Dustfinger replied. Then he quickly pushed between a couple of ragged boys standing there and staring wide-eyed at a sword, made his way past a woman showing her battered cooking pot to one of the smiths, and disappeared through the dyers’ gate.

No one followed him. No one seized him and hauled him back. You have too many enemies, Dustfinger, he thought. He didn’t slow down until he came to the tubs from which the vapors of the liquid muck used by the dyers rose. The same miasma hung over the stream that carried the stinking brew under the city wall and down to the river. No wonder the river-nymphs were found only above the place where it flowed into the main waterway.

In the second house Dustfinger tried, they told him where to find Nettle. The woman he had been sent to had eyes red with weeping and was carrying a baby. Without a word, she beckoned him into her house, if a house it could be called. Nettle was bending over a little girl with red cheeks and glazed eyes. At the sight of Dustfinger she straightened up, looking grumpy.

“Roxane asked me to bring you this!”

She glanced briefly at the root, compressed her narrow lips, and nodded.

“What’s wrong with the girl?” he asked. The child’s mother had sat down by the bed again. Nettle shrugged. She seemed to be wearing the same mossgreen garment as she did ten years 180

 

ago – and obviously she still liked him as little as ever.

“A high fever, but she’ll survive,” she replied. “It’s not half as bad as the one that killed your daughter . . while her father was off jaunting around the world!” She looked him in the face as she said that, as if to make sure that her words went home, but Dustfinger knew how to hide pain. He was almost as good at hiding pain as he was at playing with fire.

“The root is dangerous,” he said.

“Do you think you have to tell me that?” The old woman looked at him as if he had insulted her.

“The wound it’s to heal is dangerous, too. He’s a strong man or he’d be dead by now.”

“Do I know him?”

“You know his wife.”

What was the old woman talking about? Dustfinger glanced at the sick child. Her small face was flushed with fever.

“I heard that Roxane’s let you back into her bed again,” said Nettle. “You can tell her she’s more of a fool than I thought. And now go around behind the house. CloudDancer’s there. He can tell you more about the other woman. She gave him a message for you.”

CloudDancer was standing beside a stunted oleander bush that grew near the dyers’ huts.

“That poor child, did you see her?” he asked as Dustfinger came over to him. “I can’t bear to see them so sick. And the mothers .. you’d think they’d weep their eyes away. I remember how Roxane –” But here he broke off abruptly. “Sorry,” he murmured, putting his hand into the breast of his dirty tunic, “I was forgetting she was your child, too. Here, this is for you.” He brought out a note on fine, pure white paper such as Dustfinger had never seen in this world before. “A woman gave me this for you. Nettle found her and her husband in the forest, in Capricorn’s old fortress, and took them to the Secret Camp. The man’s wounded, quite badly.”

Hesitantly, Dustfinger unfolded the paper. He recognized the writing at once.

“She says she knows you. I told her you can’t read, but –”

“I can read now,” Dustfinger interrupted him. “She taught me.” How did she come to be here?

That was all he could think of as Resa’s words danced before his eyes. The paper was so crumpled that it was difficult to decipher them. Not that reading had ever come easily to him…

“Yes, she said so, too: ‘I taught him,’ she told me.” CloudDancer looked at him curiously. “Where did you get to know the woman?”

“It’s a long story.” He put the note in his backpack. “I must be off,” he said.

“We’re going back this evening, Nettle and I!” CloudDancer called after him. “Shall I tell the woman anything?”

“Yes. Tell her I’ll bring her daughter to her.”

Cosimo’s soldiers were still standing in Smiths’ Alley, assessing the merits of a sword, something an ordinary man-at-arms could never afford. There was no sign of the Piper. Brightly colored 181

 

strips of fabric hung from the windows: Ombra was celebrating the return of its dead prince, but Dustfinger was in no mood to celebrate. The words in his backpack weighed heavily on him, even if he had to admit that it gave him bitter satisfaction to see that Silvertongue obviously had even less luck in this world than he, Dustfinger, had known in Silvertongue’s. Did he know what it felt like to be in the wrong story now? Or hadn’t he had time to feel anything before Mortola shot him? People were thronging the street leading up to the castle as if it were market day.

Dustfinger looked up at the towers, from which black banners still flew. What did his daughter think of the return of her mistress’s husband? Even if you were to ask Brianna, she wouldn’t tell you, he thought, turning back to the gate. It was time to get out of here before he encountered the Piper again. Or even his master . .

Meggie was already waiting with Farid under the empty gallows. The boy whispered something to her, and she laughed. By fire and ashes, thought Dustfinger, see how happy those two look, and you have to be the bearer of bad news yet again! Why is it always you? Simple, he answered himself. Bad news suits your face better than good news.

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Chapter 35 – Ink-Medicine

 

The memory of my father is wrapped up in White paper, like sandwiches taken for a day of work. Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits Out of his hat, he drew love from his small body.

– Yehuda Amichai, “My Father”, Isibongo

Meggie stopped laughing as soon as she saw Dustfinger approaching her. Why was his face so grave? Farid had said he was happy. Was it the sight of her that made him look so grim? Was he angry with her because she had followed him into his story, and her face reminded him of years that he surely wanted to forget? “What does he want to talk to me about?” she had asked Farid.

“Probably Fenoglio,” Farid had said. “And probably Cosimo, too. He wants to know what the old man is planning!” As if she could have told Dustfinger that ..

When he stopped in front of her, there was not a sign on his face of the smile that she had always found so hard to interpret.

“Hello, Meggie,” he said. A marten blinked sleepily out of his backpack, but it wasn’t Gwin. Gwin was sitting on Farid’s shoulders and hissed as the other marten’s nose showed above Dustfinger’s shoulder.

“Hello,” she said awkwardly. “How are you?” It was strange to see him again. She felt both pleased and distrustful.

Behind them, people were flowing ceaselessly toward the city gate: peasants, tradesmen, entertainers, beggars, everyone who had heard of Cosimo’s return. Although there were no telephones or newspapers in this world, and only the rich wrote letters, news traveled fast here.

“Fine! Yes, I’m really fine!” Now he was smiling after all and not in his usual enigmatic way. Farid had told the truth. Dustfinger was happy. It almost seemed to embarrass him. His face looked so much younger, in spite of the scars; but suddenly it turned grave again.

The other marten jumped down on the ground when his master took the backpack off his shoulders and brought out a piece of paper. “I’d meant to talk to you about Cosimo, our prince who has so surprisingly come back from the dead,” he said, unfolding the crumpled piece of paper. “But I think I’d better show you this first.”

Baffled, Meggie took the note. When she saw the handwriting, she looked at Dustfinger with 183

 

incredulity. How had he come by a letter from her mother? Here, in this world?

But all he said was: “Read it.” And Meggie read it. The words were like a noose going around her neck, drawing tighter with every word, until she could scarcely breathe.

“What is it?” asked Farid uneasily. “What does it say?” He looked at Dustfinger, but Dustfinger did not answer.

As for Meggie, she was staring at Resa’s words. “Mortola Mortola shot Mo?”

Behind them, people were pushing forward to see Cosimo, the brand-new Cosimo, but why should she be interested? Nothing else mattered to her now. There was just one thing she wanted to know.

“How .. ” she said, and looked at Dustfinger in desperation, “how come they’re here? And how is Mo? It’s not too bad, is it?”

Dustfinger avoided her eyes. “All I know is what it says there,” he said. “Mortola shot your father, Resa is with him in the Secret Camp, and she asked me to look for you. A friend brought me her note. He’s going back to the camp this morning, with Nettle. She –”

“Nettle? Resa told me about her!” Meggie interrupted him.

“She’s a healer, a very good one. . She’ll make Mo better, won’t she?”

“Of course,” said Dustfinger, but he still didn’t look at her. Farid’s gaze moved from him to Meggie in confusion. “Mortola shot Silvertongue?” he stammered. “Then the root’s for him! But you said it was dangerous!”

Dustfinger cast him a warning glance, and Farid fell silent. “Dangerous?” whispered Meggie.

“What’s dangerous?” “Nothing, nothing at all. I’ll take you to them right away.” Dustfinger slung the backpack over his shoulder. “Go to Fenoglio and tell him you’ll be away for a few days. Tell him Farid and I will be with you. I don’t suppose the news will relieve his mind very much, but that’s too bad. Don’t say where we’re going, and don’t say why! News travels fast in these hills, and it would be better,” he added, lowering his voice, “if Mortola doesn’t find out that your father is still alive. The camp where he is now is known only to the strolling players, and they’ve all had to swear an oath never to let anyone who isn’t one of us know about the place. But all the same. .”

“.. oaths are made to be broken!” Meggie finished his sentence for him.

“You said it.” Dustfinger looked at the city gate. “Go now. It won’t be easy to get through that crowd, but hurry all the same. Tell the old man there’s a minstrel woman who lives on that hill, he –” “He knows who Roxane is,” Meggie interrupted.

“Of course!” This time Dustfinger’s smile was bitter. “I keep forgetting he knows all about me.

Right, tell him to let Roxane know I must be away for a few days. And ask him to keep an eye on my daughter. I suppose he knows who she is, too?” Meggie just nodded.

“Good,” Dustfinger went on. “Then tell the old man something else: If a single one of his accursed words harms Brianna, he’ll rue the day he ever thought up a man who can summon fire.”

“I’ll tell him!” Meggie whispered. Then she ran off, pushing and shoving her way through the 184

 

crowds of people trying to get into the city. Mo, she thought. Mortola shot Mo. And her dream came back to her, her red, red dream.

Fenoglio was standing at the window when Meggie stumbled into his room.

“Good heavens, what do you think you look like?” he exclaimed. “Didn’t I tell you not to go out while all these people are thronging the streets? But that boy only has to whistle and you go running to him like a well-trained puppy!”

“Stop that!” snapped Meggie, so abruptly that Fenoglio actually did fall silent. “You have to write something for me. And fast!”

She hauled him over to his desk, where Rosenquartz was quietly snoring away.

“Write what?” Confused, Fenoglio dropped into his chair.

“It’s my father,” faltered Meggie, taking one of the freshly sharpened quill pens out of the jug with shaking fingers. “He’s here, but Mortola’s shot him. He’s very sick! Dustfinger didn’t want to say so, but I could tell from the way he looked, so please write something, anything that will make him well again. He’s in the forest in the strolling players’ Secret Camp. Please, hurry!”

Fenoglio looked at her in bewilderment. “Shot your father? And he’s here? But why? I don’t understand!”

“You don’t have to understand!” cried Meggie desperately. “You just have to help him.

Dustfinger’s going to take me to him. And I’ll read him better, understand? I mean, he’s in your story now, you can even bring back the dead, so why can’t you heal a wound, too? Please!” She dipped the pen in the inkwell and put it into his hand.

“Heavens, Meggie!” murmured Fenoglio. “This is bad, but .. but with the best will in the world I don’t know what to write. I don’t even know where he is. If at least I knew what the place looks like .. ”

Meggie stared at him. Suddenly, the tears she had been holding back all this time were flowing.

“Please!” she whispered. “Just try! Dustfinger’s waiting. Outside by the gate.” Fenoglio looked at her and gently took the pen from her hand.

“I’ll try, then,” he said hoarsely. “You’re right, this is my story. I couldn’t have helped him in the other world, but perhaps I can here. Go to the window,” he told her, when she had brought him two sheets of parchment. “And look out of it, look at the people in the streets or the birds in the sky, occupy your mind somehow. Just don’t look at me or I won’t be able to write.”

Meggie obeyed. She saw Minerva and her children down in the crowd, and the woman who lived opposite; she watched pigs grunting as they pushed past the people, soldiers with the Laughing Prince’s emblem on their chests – yet she wasn’t really seeing any of it. She just heard Fenoglio dip his pen in the inkwell, heard it scratching over the parchment, pausing, and writing on again.

Please, she thought, please let him find the right words. Please. The pen fell silent for a painfully long time, while down in the street a beggar pushed a child aside with his crutch. Time passed slowly, like a shadow spreading. People thronged the streets, one dog barked at another, trumpets sounded from the castle, ringing out above the rooftops.

Meggie couldn’t have said how much time had passed when, with a sigh, Fenoglio put down his 185

 

pen. Rosenquartz was still snoring, stretched out straight as a ruler behind the sandbox.

Fenoglio reached into the box and sprinkled sand over the wet ink.

“Did you – did you think of something?” Meggie hesitantly asked.

“Yes, yes, but don’t ask me if I got it right.”

He handed her the parchment, and her eyes skimmed the words. There weren’t many of them, but if they were indeed the right words, they would be enough.

“I didn’t make him up, Meggie!” said Fenoglio in a soft voice. “Your father isn’t one of my characters, like Cosimo and Dustfinger and Capricorn. He doesn’t belong here. So don’t hope for too much, will you?”

Meggie nodded as she rolled up the parchment. “Dustfinger wants you to keep an eye on his daughter while he’s gone.”

“His daughter? Dustfinger has a daughter? Did I write that? Oh yes – indeed, weren’t there two of them?”

“You know one of them, anyway. She’s Brianna, Her Ugliness’s maid.”

“Brianna?” Fenoglio looked at her in astonishment.

“Yes.” Meggie picked up the leather bag that she had brought with her from the other world and went to the door. “Look after her. I’m to say that if you don’t, you’ll rue the day you ever thought up someone who can call on fire.”

“He said that?” Fenoglio pushed back his chair and laughed. “You know something? I like him better and better. I believe I’ll write another story about him, a story where he’s the hero, and he doesn’t –”

“Die?” Meggie opened the door. “I’ll tell him, but I think he’s had more than enough of being in one of your stories.”

“But he is in one. He came back into my story of his own free will!” Fenoglio called after her as she hurried down the steps. “We’re all in it, Meggie, up to our necks in it! When are you coming back? I want you to meet Cosimo!”

Meggie did not reply. How was she to know when she’d be coming back?

“You call that hurrying?” asked Dustfinger, when she was standing before him again, out of breath and putting Fenoglio’s parchment in her bag. “What’s that parchment for? Did the old man give you one of his songs for nourishment along the way?”

“Something like that,” replied Meggie.

“Just so long as my name’s not in it,” said Dustfinger, turning toward the road.

“Is it far?” called Meggie, as she hurried after him and Farid.

“We’ll be there by evening,” said Dustfinger, over his shoulder.

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Chapter 36 – Screams

I want to see thirst

In the syllables,

Touch fire

In the sound;

Feel through the dark

For the scream.

– Pablo Neruda, “Word”, Five Decades

The White Women were still there. Resa didn’t seem to see them anymore, but Mo felt their presence like shadows in sunlight. He didn’t tell her about them. She looked so tired. The one thing that still kept her going was her hope that Dustfinger would soon arrive – with Meggie.

“You wait and see, he’ll find her,” Resa kept whispering to him when he shook with fever. How could she be so sure? As if Dustfinger had never let them down, never stolen the book, never betrayed them .. Meggie. The need to see her once again was even stronger than the enticing whispers of the White Women, stronger than the pain in his breast .. and who could say, perhaps this accursed story might yet take a turn for the better? Although Mo remembered Fenoglio’s preference for unhappy endings only too well.

“Tell me what it looks like outside,” he sometimes whispered to Resa. “It’s ridiculous to be in a whole different world and see nothing of it but a cave.” And Resa described what he couldn’t see

– the trees, so much taller and older than any trees he had ever set eyes on, the fairies like swarms of gnats among the branches, the glass men in the tall bracken, and the nameless terrors of the night. Once she caught a fairy – Dustfinger had told her how to do it – and took it to him.

She held the little creature in the hollow of her hands and put it close to his ear, so that he could hear the fairy’s chirping, indignant voice.

It all seemed so real, however often he told himself it was made of nothing but paper and ink.

The hard ground where he lay, the dry leaves that rustled when he tossed and turned in his fever, the bear’s hot breath – and the Black Prince, whom he had last seen in the pages of a book.

Now the man himself sometimes sat beside him, cooling his brow and talking quietly to Resa. Or was it all just a fevered dream?

Death felt real in this Inkworld, too. Very real. It was strange to encounter death here in a world out of a book. But even if the dying was made only of words – even if, perhaps, it was nothing but a game played by the letters on the page – his body thought it was real. His heart felt fear, his flesh felt pain. And the White Women had not gone away, even if Resa couldn’t see them. Mo felt them near him, every minute, every hour, every day, and every night. Fenoglio’s angels of death.

Did they make dying easier than it was in the world he came from? No. Nothing could make it easier. You lost what you loved. That was death, here as well as there.

It was light outside when Mo heard the first scream. At first he thought the fever was taking hold of him again. But then he saw from Resa’s face that she could hear it, too: the clash of weapons and screaming. Cries of fear – death cries. Mo tried to sit up, but the pain pounced on him like an animal digging its teeth into his chest. He saw the Black Prince standing outside the cave, his sword drawn; he saw Resa jump up. Fever made her face blur before his eyes, but then Mo suddenly saw another picture: He saw Meggie sitting in Fenoglio’s kitchen staring at the old man 187

 

in horror as, full of pride, he told her of the fine death scene he had written for Dustfinger. Oh yes, Fenoglio liked sad stories. And perhaps he had just written another.

“Resa!” Mo cursed the way his tongue felt, heavy with fever, “Resa, go and hide – hide somewhere in the forest.”

But she stayed with him as she always had – except for that one day, the day when his own voice had banished her.

188

Chapter 37 – Bloodstained Straw

 

Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be.

– Francis Spufford, The Child That Books Built

 

Meggie had often felt frightened in the Wayless Wood with Farid, but it was different with Dustfinger. The trees seemed to rustle more loudly when he passed them, the bushes seemed to reach their branches out to him. Fairies settled on his backpack like butterflies on a flower, pulling his hair until he brushed them away, talking to them. Other creatures, too, appeared and disappeared, beings whose names Meggie didn’t know either from Resa’s stories or from any other source, some of them no more than a pair of eyes among the trees.

Dustfinger led them as purposefully as if he could see their road laid out like a red guideline before him. He never even stopped to rest, but took them on and on, uphill and downhill, going deeper into the forest every hour. Away from human beings. When at last he stopped, Meggie’s legs were shaking with exhaustion. It must be late in the afternoon. Dustfinger passed his hand over the snapped twigs of a bush, bent down, examined the damp ground, and picked up a handful of berries that had been trodden underfoot.

“What’s the matter?” asked Farid anxiously.

“Too many feet. And above all, too many boots.”

Dustfinger swore quietly and began to go faster. Too many boots .. Meggie realized what he meant when the camp appeared among the trees. She saw tents that had been torn down, a trampled campfire ..

“You two stay here!” Dustfinger ordered, and this time they obeyed. They watched anxiously as he stepped out of the shelter of the trees, looked around, raised tent panels, reached his hand into cold ashes – and turned over two bodies lying motionless near the fireplace. Meggie was going to follow him when she saw the corpses, but Farid held her back. When Dustfinger disappeared into a cave and came out again, pale-faced, Meggie tore herself away and ran to him.

“Where are my parents? Are they in there?” She recoiled as her foot struck another dead body.

“No, there’s no one left in there. But I found this.” Dustfinger held out a strip of fabric. Resa had a dress with that pattern. The fabric was bloodstained. “Do you know it?” Meggie nodded.

“Then your parents really were here. The blood is probably your father’s.” Dustfinger passed a 189

 

hand over his face. “Perhaps someone got away – someone who can tell us what happened here.

I’ll take a look around. Farid!”

Farid hurried to his side. Meggie was going to thrust her way past the two of them, but Dustfinger held her back. “Listen, Meggie!” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “The fact that your parents aren’t here is a good sign. It probably means they’re still alive. There’s a bed in the cave; I expect your mother was nursing your father there. And I’ve found a bear’s paw prints, which means the Black Prince was here. Perhaps all this was a plan to capture him, although I don’t know why they would have taken the others . . no, that I don’t understand.”

Before setting off with Farid in search of survivors, Dustfinger told Meggie to wait in the cave.

The entrance was tall and broad enough for a man to stand in it upright. The cave beyond it led deep into the mountain. The ground was strewn with leaves, and blankets and beds of straw were arranged side by side there, some of them just the right size for a child.

It was not difficult to see where Mo had been lying. The straw in that place was bloodstained, like the blanket beside it. A bowl of water, an overturned wooden mug, a bunch of dried flowers

. . Meggie picked them up and ran her fingers over the petals. She kneeled down and stared at the bloodstained straw. Fenoglio’s parchment was close to her breast, but Mo was gone. How could Fenoglio’s words help him now?

Try, something inside her whispered. You can’t tell how powerful his words are in this world. It’s made of them, after all.

She heard footsteps behind her. Farid and Dustfinger were back, and Dustfinger was holding a child in his arms, a little girl. She stared at Meggie, wide-eyed, as if she were in a bad dream and couldn’t wake up.

“She wouldn’t talk to me, but luckily Farid inspires rather more confidence,” said Dustfinger, carefully putting the child down on her feet. “She says her name is Lianna and she’s five years old. And there were a lot of men: silver men with swords, and snakes on their breasts. Not so very surprising, if you ask me. They obviously killed the guards and some of those who defended themselves, and then took the rest away, even the women and children. As for the wounded” –

he glanced briefly at Meggie – “they were clearly loaded onto some kind of cart. The men had no horses with them. The girl is here only because her mother told her to hide among the trees.”

Gwin scurried into the cave, followed by Jink. The little girl jumped when the martens leaped up at Dustfinger. Then she watched, fascinated, as Farid took Gwin off Dustfinger’s shoulder and put him on his own lap.

“Ask her if there were other children here,” said Dustfinger softly.

Farid held up five fingers and showed them to the girl. “How many children, Lianna?”

The child looked at him and tapped first Farid’s forefinger, then his second and third fingers.

“Merle. Fabio. Tinka,” she whispered.

“Three,” said Dustfinger. “Probably no older than she is.”

Timidly, Lianna put out her hand to stroke Gwin’s bushy tail, but Dustfinger held her fingers in a firm grip. “Better not,” he said gently. “He bites. Try the other one.”

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“Meggie?” Farid came over to her. But Meggie did not answer him. She wound her arms tightly around her knees and buried her face in her skirt. She didn’t want to see the cave anymore. She didn’t want to see any of Fenoglio’s world anymore, not even Farid and Dustfinger or the girl who didn’t know where her own parents were, either. She wanted to be in Elinor’s library, sitting in the big armchair where Elinor liked to read, and she wanted to see Mo put his head around the door and ask what the book on her lap was. But Mo wasn’t here, perhaps he was gone forever, and Fenoglio’s story held her fast in its black, inky arms, whispering terrible things to her – about armed men who dragged away children, old people, the sick . . mothers and fathers.

“Nettle will soon be here with CloudDancer,” she heard Dustfinger say. “She’ll look after the child.”

“What about us?” asked Farid.

“I’ll follow them,” said Dustfinger. “To find out how many are still alive and where they’re being taken. Although I think I know.”

Meggie raised her head. “To the Castle of Night.” “Good guess.”

The girl put her hand out to Jink; she was still small enough to find comfort for her grief in stroking an animal’s fur. Meggie envied her.

“What do you mean, you’ll follow them?” Farid shooed Gwin off his lap and stood up.

“Exactly what I said.” Dustfinger’s face was as uncommunicative as a closed door. “I will follow them while you two wait here for CloudDancer and Nettle. Tell them I’m trying to follow the trail, and CloudDancer is to take you back to Ombra. He’s not fast enough to follow me with his stiff leg. Then tell Roxane what’s happened, so she doesn’t think I’ve vanished again, and Meggie will stay with Fenoglio.” His face was as well controlled as ever when he looked at her, but in his eyes Meggie saw all that she herself was feeling: fear, anxiety, anger . . helpless anger.

“But we have to help them!” Farid’s voice shook.

“How? The Black Prince might have been able to save them, but they’ve obviously caught him, and I don’t know anyone else ready to risk his life for a few strolling players.”

“What about that robber everyone’s talking about, the Bluejay?”

“There’s no such person.” Meggie’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Fenoglio made him up.”

“Really?” Dustfinger looked at her thoughtfully. “I’ve heard otherwise, but still .. well, as soon as you’re in Ombra, get CloudDancer to go to the strolling players and tell them what’s happened. I know the Prince has men at his command, men who are devoted to him and probably well armed as well, but I’ve no idea where they are. Perhaps one of the strolling players may know.

Or CloudDancer himself. He must try to get word to them somehow. There’s a mill in Argenta called the Spelt-Mill, It’s always been one of the few places south of the forest where people can meet or exchange news without the risk that it will come to the Adderhead’s ears at once. The miller is so rich he doesn’t even have to fear the men-at-arms. So if anyone wants to see me, or has any idea of how we can help the prisoners, let him send news there. I’ll drop in now and then to ask if any messages have come. Understand?”

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Meggie nodded. “The Spelt-Mill,” she repeated quietly, unable to look anywhere but at the bloodstained straw.

“Right, Meggie can do all that, but I’m going with you.” Farid’s voice sounded so defiant that the little girl, still kneeling silently beside Meggie, was upset and reached for her hand.

“I’m warning you, don’t start on about looking after me again!” Dustfinger’s voice was so sharp that Farid lowered his eyes. “I’m going alone, and that’s that. You take care of Meggie and the child until Nettle comes, and then get CloudDancer to take you to Ombra.”

“No!” Meggie saw the tears in Farid’s eyes, but Dustfinger just walked toward the cave entrance without another word. Gwin scuttled in front of him.

“If it gets dark before they arrive,” he added, looking over his shoulder at Farid, “then light a fire.

Not because of the soldiers. They have what they came for, but wolves and Night-Mares are always hungry: the wolves for your flesh, the Night-Mares for your fear.”

Then he was gone, and Farid stood there, his eyes blurred with tears. “That bloody bastard!” he whispered. “That thrice accursed son of a bitch! But he’ll soon see. I’m going to follow him. I will look after him! I swore I would.” Abruptly, he kneeled down in front of Meggie and took her hand. “You will go to Ombra, won’t you? Please. I have to go after him. I know you understand!”

Meggie said nothing. What was there to say? That she wasn’t going back any more than he was?

He’d only have tried to persuade her not to go on. Jink rubbed against Farid’s legs, and then scurried outside. The little girl ran after the marten but stopped at the entrance to the cave – a small, forlorn figure, all alone. Like me, thought Meggie.

Without looking at Farid, she took Fenoglio’s parchment out of her belt. The letters could scarcely be made out in the twilight that filled the cave.

“What’s that?” Farid straightened up.

“Words. Only words, but better than nothing.”

“Wait, I’ll give you a light.” Farid rubbed his fingertips together and whispered. A tiny flame appeared on his thumbnail. He blew gently on the little flame, until it grew like the flame of a candle, and then held his thumb above the parchment. The flickering light made the letters shine as if Rosenquartz had retraced them with fresh ink.

Useless, something whispered in Meggie. The words will be useless! Mo isn’t here, he’s far away, he may not even be alive anymore. Shut up! she snapped at this internal voice. I’m not listening. This is all I can do, there’s nothing else, nothing at all! She picked up the bloodstained blanket, placed the parchment on it, and ran her fingers over her lips. The little girl was still standing outside the cave, waiting for her mother to come back.

“Read it, Meggie!” Farid nodded at her encouragingly.

And she read it, her fingers clutching the blanket stained with Mo’s dried blood. “Mortimer felt the pain… ” She thought she felt it herself, in the sound of every letter on her tongue, in every word that passed her lips. “The wound was burning. It burned like the hatred in Mortola’s eyes when she had shot him. Perhaps it was her hatred that was sucking the life out of him, making him weaker and weaker. He felt his own blood wet and warm on his skin. He felt Death reaching out to 192

 

him. But all of a sudden there was something else, too: words. Words that relieved the pain, cooled his brow, and spoke of love, nothing but love. They made his breathing easier again and healed the place where death had been flowing in. He felt the sound of them on his skin and deep in his heart.

They echoed ever louder, ever more clearly through the darkness that threatened to swallow him up, and suddenly he knew the voice speaking the words: It was his daughter’s voice, and the White Women withdrew their pale hands as if they had burned themselves on her love. ”

Meggie buried her face in her hands. The parchment rolled up on her lap of its own accord, as if it had served its purpose. Straw pricked her through her dress, as it had in the shed where Capricorn had once imprisoned her and Mo. She felt someone stroking her hair, and for a moment, a crazy moment, she thought Fenoglio’s words had brought Mo back, back to the cave safe and sound, and everything was all right again. But when she raised her head, it was only Farid standing beside her.

“That was beautiful,” he said. “I’m sure it helped. You wait and see.”

But Meggie shook her head. “No!” she whispered. “No. Those were only beautiful words, but my father isn’t made of Fenoglio’s words. He’s made of flesh and blood.”

“So? What difference does that make?” Farid removed her hands from her tearstained face.

“Perhaps everything’s just made of words. Look at me, for instance. Pinch me. Am I made of paper?”

No, he wasn’t. And Meggie had to smile when he kissed her, although she was still shedding tears.

Dustfinger had not been gone long when they heard footsteps among the trees. Farid had taken Dustfinger’s advice and made a fire, and Meggie was sitting close to him with the little girl’s head on her lap. Nettle said not a word as she emerged from the darkness and saw the wrecked camp.

Silently, she went from one dead body to another, looking for life where none was left, while CloudDancer, his face unmoving, listened to the message Dustfinger had left for him. It was only when Meggie asked CloudDancer to take a message, not just to Roxane and the strolling players but to Fenoglio, too, that Farid fully realized she didn’t intend to go back to Ombra any more than he did. His expressionless face didn’t show whether he was angry or glad.

“I’ve written my message for Fenoglio.” With a heavy heart, Meggie had torn a page for it out of the notebook that Mo had given her. On the other hand, what better use could she put it to than saving him? If it was still possible to save him. “You’ll find Fenoglio in Minerva’s house, in Cobblers’ Alley. And it’s very important that no one else reads the message.”

“I know the Inkweaver!” CloudDancer watched Nettle draw a ragged cloak over the face of another dead man. Then he frowned at the sheet of paper with Meggie’s writing on it. “There’ve been messengers who were hanged for the words they carried. I hope these aren’t that kind? No, don’t tell me!” he said defensively as Meggie was about to answer. “Usually, I ask the sender to tell me the words of any message I carry, but with this one I have a feeling I’d better not know.”

“What do you suppose she’s written?” asked Nettle bitterly. “No doubt she was thanking the old man for writing the songs that will bring her father to the gallows! Or is he to write a dirge for him, the Bluejay’s last song? I scented misfortune the moment I saw that scar on his arm. I always thought the Bluejay was just a legend, like all the noble princes and princesses in other songs. Well, you were wrong there, Nettle, said I to myself, and you’re certainly not the first to 193

 

notice the scar. So the Inkweaver had to go and describe it in detail! Curse the old fool and his silly songs! Men have been hanged before because they were taken for the Bluejay, but now it seems the Adderhead has the right man in his hands, and the game of playing heroes is over.

Protecting the weak, robbing the strong .. Yes, it all sounds very fine, but heroes aren’t immortal except in songs, and your father will find only too soon that a mask doesn’t protect you from death.”

Meggie just sat there and stared at the old woman. What was she talking about?

“Why are you looking at me like that, so surprised?” asked Nettle. “Do you think the Adderhead sent his men here for a few old strolling players and pregnant women, or for the Black Prince?

Nonsense. The Black Prince never hid from the Adder yet. No. Someone slipped off to the Castle of Night and whispered in the Adderhead’s ear that the Bluejay was lying wounded in the strolling players’ Secret Camp and could easily be picked up, along with the poor players who were hiding him.

It will have been someone who knows the camp and has surely been paid good silver for his treachery. The Adderhead will make a great spectacle of the execution, the Inkweaver will write a touching song about it, and perhaps someone else will soon wear the feathered mask, for they’ll go on singing those songs long after your father’s dead and buried behind the Castle of Night.”

Meggie heard her own blood surging through her veins.

“What scar are you talking about?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Why, the scar on his left arm! Surely you must know it? The songs say that the Adderhead’s hounds bit the Bluejay there when he was hunting their master’s White Stags. . ”

Fenoglio. What had he done?

Meggie covered her mouth with her hand. She once again heard Fenoglio’s voice on the spiral staircase as they were going down from Balbulus’s workshop: ” I like to base my characters on real people. Not every writer does that, but in my experience it makes them more lifelike! Facial expressions, gestures, the way someone walks, a voice, perhaps a birthmark or a scar – I steal something here, something there, and then they begin to breathe, until anyone hearing or reading about them thinks they can touch them! I didn’t have a wide choice for the Bluejay… ”

Mo. Fenoglio had taken her father as his model.

Meggie stared at the sleeping child. She, too, had often slept like that, with her head in Mo’s lap.

“Meggie’s father is the Bluejay?” Farid, beside her, uttered an incredulous laugh. “What nonsense! Silvertongue can’t even bring himself to kill a rabbit. You mark my words, Meggie, the Adderhead will soon realize that, and then he’ll let him go. Come on!” He rose to his feet and offered her his hand. “We must start out or we’ll never catch up with Dustfinger!”

“You’re going after him now?” Nettle shook her head at such folly, while Meggie laid the little girl’s head down on the grass. “Keep going south if you miss his trail in the dark,” said CloudDancer. “Due south, and then you’ll reach the road sometime. But beware of wolves. There are many wolves in these parts.”

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Farid just nodded. “I have fire with me,” he said, making a spark dance on the palm of his hand.

CloudDancer grinned. “Well done! Perhaps you really are Dustfinger’s son, as Roxane suspects!”

“Who knows?” was all Farid would reply, and he led Meggie away with him.

She followed him into the dark trees, feeling numb. A robber! She could think of nothing else. He had made Mo into a robber, a part of his story! At that moment she hated Fenoglio just as much as Dustfinger did.

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Chapter 38 – An Audience for Fenoglio

 

“Lady Cora,” he said, “sometimes one has to do things which are unpalatable. When great issues are involved one can’t toy with the situation in silk gloves. No. We are making history.”

– Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

 

Fenoglio was pacing up and down his room. Seven steps to the window, seven back to the door.

Meggie had gone, and there was no one who could tell him if she’d found her father still alive.

What an appalling muddle! Whenever he began to hope he was getting things under control again, something happened that did not remotely suit his plans. Perhaps another man really did exist somewhere – a diabolical storyteller who was continuing his tale, giving it new twists and turns, unpredictable and unpleasant developments, moving his characters as if they were chessmen, or simply placing new ones who had nothing to do with his own story on the chessboard!

And still Cosimo had sent no messenger. Well, I must exercise a little more patience, Fenoglio told himself. He’s only just ascended his throne, and I’m sure he has a great deal to do. All his subjects wanting to see him, petitioners, widows, orphans, his administrators, gamekeepers, his son, his wife .. “Oh, nonsense! I’m the one he should have sent for first of all!” Fenoglio uttered the words so angrily that he was startled by the sound of his own voice. “I, the man who brought him back to life, who made him in the first place!”

He went to the window and looked up at the castle. The Adderhead’s banner flew from the left-hand tower. Yes, the Adderhead was in Ombra and must have ridden like the devil to see in person his son-in-law, newly back from the dead. He hadn’t brought Firefox with him this time; no doubt the man was busy looting or murdering elsewhere on his master’s behalf, but the Piper was still abroad in the streets of Ombra, always with a few men-at-arms in his wake. What did they want here? Did the Adderhead still seriously hope to place his grandson on the throne? No, Cosimo would never allow it.

For a moment Fenoglio forgot his dark mood, and a smile stole over his face. Ah, if he could only have told the Adderhead who had wrecked his fine plans! A writer! How that would have angered him! They had given him an unpleasant surprise – he with his words, Meggie with her voice. .

Poor Meggie .. poor Mortimer . .

How pleadingly she had looked at him. And what a farcical performance he had put on for her!

Yet how could the poor thing have thought for a moment that he could help her father, when he himself hadn’t even brought Mortimer here? Quite apart from the fact that Mortimer wasn’t one 196

 

of his creations in the first place. But that look of hers! He simply had not the heart to let her leave without any hope at all!

Rosenquartz was sitting on the desk with his transparent legs crossed, throwing bread crumbs at the fairies.

“Stop that!” Fenoglio snapped. “Do you want them to grab you by the legs and try throwing you out of the window again? I won’t save you this time, believe you me. I won’t even sweep you up when you’re a little pile of broken glass down there in the pigs’ muck. The garbage collector can shovel you into his barrow instead.”

“That’s right, take your bad temper out on me!” The glass man turned his back on Fenoglio. “It won’t make Cosimo summon you any sooner, though!”

Here, unfortunately, he was right. Fenoglio went to the window. In the streets below, the excitement over Cosimo’s return had died down, and perhaps the Adderhead’s presence had cast a damper on it, too. People were going about their business again, the pigs were rooting about among the trash, children were chasing one another around the close-packed houses, and now and then an armed soldier made his way through the crowd. There were clearly more soldiers around than usual in Ombra now. Cosimo was obviously having them patrol the city, perhaps to prevent the men-at-arms from riding his subjects down again just because they were in the way. Yes, Cosimo will see to everything, thought Fenoglio. He’ll be a good prince, insofar as any princes are good. Who knows, perhaps he’ll even allow the strolling players back into Ombra on ordinary market days soon.

“That’s it. That will be my first piece of advice. To let the players back again,” murmured Fenoglio. “And if he doesn’t send for me by this evening I’ll go to him unasked. What’s the ungrateful fellow thinking of? Does he suppose men get brought back from the dead every day?”

“I thought he’d never been dead at all.” Rosenquartz clambered up to his nest. He was out of reach there, as he very well knew. “What about Meggie’s father, then? Do you think he’s still alive?”

“How should I know?” replied Fenoglio irritably. He didn’t want to be reminded of Mortimer.

“Well, at least no one can blame me for that mess!” he growled. “I can’t help it if they’re all knocking my story around, like a tree that just has to be thoroughly pruned to make it bear fruit.”

“Pruned?” Rosenquartz piped up. “No, they’re adding things. Your story is growing – growing like a weed! And not a particularly pretty one, either, if you ask me.”

Fenoglio was just wondering whether to throw the inkwell at him when Minerva put her head around the door.

“A messenger, Fenoglio!” Her face was flushed, as if she had run too fast. “A messenger from the castle! He wants to see you! Cosimo wants to see you!”

Fenoglio hurried to the door, smoothing down the tunic that Minerva had made him. He had been wearing it for days, it was badly crumpled, but there was no helping that now. When he had tried to pay Minerva for it she had just shaken her head, saying he’d paid already – with the stories he told her children day after day, evening after evening. It was a fine tunic, though, even if fairy tales for children had paid for it.

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The messenger was waiting down in the street outside the house, looking important and frowning impatiently. He wore the black mourning cloak, as if the Prince of Sighs were still on the throne.

Oh well, it will all be different now, thought Fenoglio. It will most definitely be different. From now on I, and not my characters, will be telling this story again.

His guide didn’t even look around at him as he hurried along the streets after the man. Surly oaf!

Fenoglio thought. But this character probably really was a product of his, Fenoglio’s, pen one of the many anonymous people with whom he had populated this world so that his main characters wouldn’t be rattling around it on their own.

A number of men-at-arms were loafing around outside the stables in the Outer Courtyard of the castle. Fenoglio wondered, with annoyance, what they were doing there. Cosimo’s men were pacing back and forth up on the battlements, like hounds set to keep watch on a pack of wolves.

The men-at-arms stared up at them with hostility. Yes, you look at that, thought Fenoglio. There’ll be no leading part in my story for your dark lord, only a death fit for a thoroughgoing villain.

Perhaps he’d invent another one sometime, for stories soon get boring without a proper villain, but it was unlikely that Meggie would lend him her voice to call such a character to life.

The guards at the Inner Gate raised their spears.

“What’s all this?” Fenoglio heard the Adderhead’s voice the moment he set foot in the Inner Courtyard. ‘Are you telling me he’s still keeping me waiting, you lousy fur-faced creature?”

A softer voice answered, apprehensive and scared. Fenoglio saw the Laughing Prince’s dwarfish servant, Tullio, facing the Adderhead. He only came up to the prince’s silver-studded belt. Two of the Laughing Prince’s guards stood behind him, but the Adderhead was at the head of at least twenty heavily armed men: an intimidating sight, even if Firefox wasn’t with them, nor was there any sign of the Piper.

“Your daughter will receive you, sir.” Tullio’s voice shook like a leaf in the wind.

“My daughter? If I want Violante’s company I’ll summon her to my own castle. No, I want to see this dead man who’s come to life! So you will now take me to Cosimo at once, you stinking brownie bastard!”

The unfortunate Tullio began trembling. “The Prince of Ombra,” he began again, in a thread of a voice, “will not receive you!”

These words made Fenoglio stumble back as if he had been struck in the chest – right into the nearest rosebush, where the thorns caught in his new tunic. What was going on? Cosimo wouldn’t receive the Adderhead? Was that part of his own plan?

The Adderhead thrust out his lips as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. The veins at his temples stood out, dark on his blotched and ruddy skin. His lizard-like eyes stared down at Tullio. Then he took the crossbow from the nearest soldier’s hand and, as Tullio ducked like a frightened rabbit, aimed at one of the birds in the sky above. It was a good shot. The bird fell right at the Adderhead’s feet, its yellow feathers red with blood. A gold-mocker: Fenoglio had invented them especially for the castle of the Prince of Sighs. The Adderhead bent and pulled the arrow out of its tiny breast.

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“Here, take that!” he said, pressing the dead bird into Tullio’s hand. “And tell your master that he has obviously left his common sense behind in the realm of the dead. I’ll allow that to be some excuse this once, but should he send you to me with such an outrageous message when next I visit him, he’ll get not a bird back but you with an arrow in your breast. Will you tell him that?”

Tullio stared at the bloodstained bird he was holding and nodded.

As for the Adderhead, he turned on his heel and waved to his men to follow him. Fenoglio’s guide bent his head timorously as they marched past. Look him straight in the eye! Fenoglio told himself as the Adderhead passed so close to him that he thought he could smell his sweat. You invented him! But instead he hunched his head between his shoulders, like a tortoise sensing danger, and did not move until the Inner Gate had closed behind the last of the men-at-arms.

Tullio was still waiting at the door that had shut behind the Adderhead, staring at the dead bird in his hand. “Should I show it to Cosimo?” he asked, looking distressed, as they came up to him.

“Oh, have it roasted in the kitchen and eat it if you like!” Fenoglio’s guide snarled at him. “But get out of my way.”

The throne room hadn’t changed since Fenoglio’s last visit. The windows were still hung with black. The only light came from candles, and the blank eyes of the statues stared at everyone who approached the throne itself. But now their living, breathing model sat on the throne, resembling his stone copies so much that the dark hall seemed to Fenoglio like a house of mirrors.

Cosimo was alone. Neither Her Ugliness nor her son was to be seen. There were only six guards standing in the background, almost invisible in the dim light.

Fenoglio stopped at a suitable distance from the steps up to the throne and bowed. Although it was his opinion that no one in this or any other world deserved to have him – Fenoglio – bow his head to them, certainly not those whom his own words had called to life, nevertheless he, too, had to observe the rules of the game in this world of his own creation. Here it was as natural to bow to nobles dressed in silk and velvet as it had been to shake hands in his old world.

Go on, then, old man, bow, even if it hurts your back, he thought, bending his head a little more humbly. You fixed it this way yourself.

Cosimo examined him as if he were not sure whether he remembered his face. He was dressed entirely in white, which emphasized his likeness to the statues even more.

“You are the poet Fenoglio, also known as the Inkweaver, is that so?” Fenoglio had imagined that the voice would be rather fuller. Cosimo looked at the statues, letting his eyes wander from one to another. “Someone recommended me to summon you. I believe it was my wife. She says you have the cleverest mind to be found between this castle and the Adderhead’s, and she thinks I shall need clever minds. But that’s not why I called for you.”

Violante? Violante had recommended him? Fenoglio tried to hide his surprise. “No? Why then, Your Grace?” he asked.

Cosimo’s eyes rested on him as abstractedly as if he were looking straight through him. Then he glanced down at himself, plucked at the magnificent tunic he wore, and adjusted his belt. “My clothes don’t fit anymore,” he observed. “They’re all a little too long or too wide, as if they’d been made for those statues and not for me.”

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He smiled at Fenoglio rather helplessly. It was the smile of an angel.

“You .. er . . you’ve been through a difficult time, Your Grace,” said Fenoglio.

“Yes. Yes, so I’m told. You see, I don’t remember. There’s very little I can remember at all. My head feels strangely empty.” He passed a hand over his brow and looked at the statues again.

“That’s why I summoned you,” he said. “They say you’re a master of words, and I want you to help me remember. I’m giving you the task of writing down everything there is to say about Cosimo. Get my soldiers to tell you, my servants, my old nurse, my .. wife.” He hesitated for a moment before saying that last word. “Balbulus will write your stories out and illuminate them, and then I’ll have them read to me, to fill the empty space in my head and heart with words and images again. Do you think you can do it?”

Fenoglio hastily nodded. “Oh yes, of course, Your Grace. I’ll write it all down. Stories of your childhood, when your worthy father was still alive, tales of your first rides through the Wayless Wood, everything about the day your wife came to this castle, and the day your son was born.”

Cosimo nodded. “Yes, yes!” he said, and there was relief in his voice. “I see you understand. And don’t forget my victory over the fire-raisers and the time I spent with the White Women.”

“I certainly will not.” Fenoglio examined the handsome face as unobtrusively as possible. How could this have happened? He had been meant not just to believe that he was the real Cosimo, but to share all the dead man’s memories, too. .

Cosimo rose from the throne occupied by his father not so long ago and began pacing up and down. “I’ve already been told several stories myself. By my wife.”

Her Ugliness again. Fenoglio looked around for her. “Where is your wife?”

“Looking for my son. He ran away because I wouldn’t receive his grandfather.”

“If I may make so bold, Your Grace – why wouldn’t you receive him?”

The heavy door opened behind Fenoglio’s back, and Tullio scurried in. He was no longer holding the dead bird as he crouched on the steps at Cosimo’s feet, but fear still lingered on his face.

“I do not intend ever to receive him again.” Cosimo stopped in front of the throne and patted the emblem of his house. “I have told the guards at the gate not to let my father-in-law into this castle another time, or any who serve him.”

Tullio looked up at him in alarm and incredulity, as if he already felt the Adder head’s arrow in his own furry breast.

But Cosimo, unmoved, was continuing. “I have had myself informed of what went on in my realm while I” – and he hesitated for a moment again before going on – “while I was away.

Yes, let’s call it that: away. I have listened to my administrators, head foresters, merchants and peasants, my soldiers, and my wife. In the process I have learned some very interesting things.

Alarming things. And just imagine, poet: My father-in-law had something to do with almost every bad tale that I hear. Tell me, since I believe you go in and out of the strolling players’ tents: What do the Motley Folk say about the Adderhead?”

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“The Motley Folk?” Fenoglio cleared his throat. “Well, what everyone says. They say he’s very powerful, perhaps rather too powerful.”

Cosimo uttered a mirthless laugh. “Oh yes. He is indeed. And?”

What was he getting at? You should know, Fenoglio, he told himself uneasily. If you don’t know what’s going on in his head, then who does? “Well, they say the Adderhead rules with an iron fist,”

he went on hesitantly. “There’s no law in Argenta but his own word and his seal. He is vengeful and vain, he extorts so much from his peasants that they go hungry, he sends rebellious subjects to his silver mines, even children, until they’re spitting blood down in the depths. Poachers caught in his part of the forest are blinded, thieves have their right hands cut off– I am glad to say your father abolished that custom some time ago and the only minstrel who can safely approach the Castle of Night is the Piper – when he’s not plundering villages with Firefox.” Good heavens, did I write all this? thought Fenoglio. I suppose I did.

“Yes, I’ve heard all that, too. What else?” Cosimo folded his arms over his chest and began pacing up and down, up and down. He really was as beautiful as an angel. Perhaps I ought to have made him a little less beautiful, thought Fenoglio. He looks almost unreal.

“What else?” Fenoglio frowned. “The Adderhead was always afraid of death, but as he gets older they say it’s become almost an obsession. He is said to spend the night on his knees, sobbing and cursing, shaking with fear that the White Women will come for him. They also say that he washes several times a day, for fear of sickness and infection, and he sends envoys to distant lands, with chests full of silver to buy him miracle cures for old age. And the women he marries are younger and younger. He hopes that a son will be born to him at long last.”

Cosimo had stopped pacing. “Yes!” he said softly. “Yes, I have heard all that, too. But there are even worse stories. When are you coming to those – or must I tell them myself?” And before Fenoglio could answer he went on. “They say the Adderhead sends Firefox over the border by night to extort goods from my peasants. They say he claims the whole Wayless Wood for himself, he has my merchants plundered when they come ashore in his harbors, demands high tolls from them for the use of his streets and bridges, and pays footpads to make my roads unsafe. They say he has the timber for his ships chopped down in my part of the forest and keeps his informers in this castle and in every street in Ombra. They say he even paid my own son to tell him everything my father discussed with his councillors in this hall. And finally” – Cosimo paused for effect before he went on – “I am assured that the messenger who warned the fire-raisers of my forthcoming attack on them was sent by my father-in-law. I’m told he ate quails covered in silver leaf to celebrate my death, and sent my father a letter of sympathy on parchment so cleverly painted with poison that every character on it was deadly as snake’s venom. So do you still wonder why I wouldn’t receive him?”

Poisoned parchment? Good heavens, who’d think up something like that? thought Fenoglio. Not I, for one!

“Are you at a loss for words, poet?” asked Cosimo. “Well, I can tell you I felt the same when I was told all these terrible things. What can one say of such a neighbor? What do you think of the rumor that the Adderhead had my wife’s mother poisoned because she liked listening to a minstrel too much? What do you think of his sending Firefox his own men-at-arms as reinforcements, to make quite sure that I never returned from the fire-raisers’ fortress? My father-in-law tried to do away with me, poet! I have forgotten a year of my life, and everything before it is as vague in my mind as if someone else had lived it. They say I was dead. They say the 201

 

White Women took me away. They ask: Where have you been, Cosimo? And I don’t know the answer! But now I know who wanted my death, and I know who to blame for the way I feel now: empty like a gutted fish, younger than my own son. Tell me, what’s the appropriate punishment for crimes of such a monstrous kind against both me and others?”

But Fenoglio could only look at him. Who is he? he asked himself. For heaven’s sake, Fenoglio, you know what he looks like, but who is he? “You tell me!” he replied at last, hoarsely.

And Cosimo gave him that angelic smile again. “Why, there’s only one appropriate punishment, poet!” he said. “I will go to war. I’ll wage war against my father-in-law until the Castle of Night is razed to the ground and his name is forgotten.”

Fenoglio stood there in the darkened hall, hearing his own blood roaring in his ears. War? I must have misheard, he thought. I never wrote anything about war. But a voice began whispering inside him: ” A great new age, Fenoglio! Didn’t you write something about a great new age? ”

“He has the impudence to ride to my castle with men in his retinue who have already pillaged and burned for Capricorn; he’s made Firefox, whom I rode out to defeat, his herald; he’s sent the Piper here as protector of my son! The audacity of it! Perhaps he could deride my father in that way, but not me. I’ll show him he’s not dealing with a prince who’s either shedding tears or overeating now.” A faint flush had risen to Cosimo’s face. Anger made him even more handsome.

War. Think, Fenoglio. Think. War! Is that what you wanted? He felt his old knees beginning to tremble.

As for Cosimo, he laid his hand almost lovingly on his sword. He slowly drew it from the scabbard. “It was for this alone that death spared me, poet,” he said, cutting the air with the long, slender blade. “So that I could bring justice to this world and turn the Devil himself off his throne. That’s worth fighting for, don’t you think? Even worth dying for.” He was a fine sight standing there with the drawn sword in his hand. And yes, wasn’t he right? Perhaps war really was the only way to put the Adder head in his place.

“You must help me, Inkweaver! That’s what they call you, don’t they? I like the name!” Cosimo gracefully sheathed the sword again. Tullio, who was still sitting on the steps at his feet, shuddered as the sharp blade scraped the leather scabbard. “You will write a speech for me, calling my people to arms. You will explain our cause to them, you’ll plant enthusiasm for that cause and hatred for our enemy in every heart. And we’ll use the strolling players, too – you’re a friend of theirs. Write them fiery songs, poet! Songs that will make men want to fight. You forge the words, I’ll have the swords forged. Many, many swords.”

He stood there like an avenging angel, lacking nothing but the wings, and for the first, the very first time in his life Fenoglio felt something like affection for one of his inky creations. I’ll give him wings, he thought. I will indeed. With my words.

“Your Highness!” When he bowed his head this time it wasn’t difficult, and for a wonderful moment he felt almost as if he had written himself the son he’d never had. Don’t go turning sentimental in your old age, he told himself, but this warning made no difference to the unaccustomed softening of his heart.

I ought to ride with him, he thought. Yes, indeed. I’ll go to war against the Adderhead with him, old as I may be. Fenoglio, a hero in the world of his own creation, a poet and a warrior, too. It was a 202

 

role he’d like. As if he had written himself the perfect part to play. Cosimo smiled again. Fenoglio would have bet everything he had that there was no more delightful smile in this or any other world. Tullio seemed to have succumbed to Cosimo’s charm, too, despite the fear the Adderhead had put into his heart. Enchanted, he stared up at the master who had come back to him, his little hands in his lap as if they were still holding the bird with the bloody breast.

“I hear your words already!” said Cosimo, returning to the throne. “My wife loves written words, you know, words that stick to parchment and paper like dead flies, and it seems my father felt the same – but I want to hear words, not read them! Remember that, when you’re looking for the right words: You must ask yourself what they sound like! Glowing with passion, dark with sorrow, sweet with love, that’s what I want. Write words quivering with all our righteous anger at the Adderhead’s evil deeds, and soon that anger will be in every heart. You will write my accusation, my fiery accusation, and we’ll have it read out in every marketplace and spread abroad by the strolling players: Beware, Adderhead! Let it be heard all the way to his own side of the forest. Your wicked days are numbered! And soon every peasant will want to fight under my banner, every man young or old, your words will bring them flocking here to the castle! I’ve heard that when the Adderhead doesn’t like what books say he’ll sometimes have them burned in the fireplaces of his castle, but how will he burn words that everyone is singing and speaking?”

He could always burn the man who speaks them, thought Fenoglio. Or the man who wrote them.

It was an uncomfortable thought that cooled the ardor of his heart slightly, but Cosimo seemed to have picked it up.

“I shall, of course, take you under my personal protection immediately,” he said. “In the future you will live here at the castle, in apartments suitable for a court poet.”

“At the castle?” Fenoglio cleared his throat, so awkward did this offer make him feel. “That ..

that’s very generous of you. Yes, indeed.” New times were coming, new and wonderful times. A great new age ..

“You will be a good prince, Your Grace!” he said, his voice much moved. “A good and great prince. And my songs about you will still be sung in centuries to come, when the Adderhead is long forgotten. I promise you that.”

Footsteps sounded behind him. Fenoglio turned, annoyed by the interruption at such an emotional moment. Violante came hurrying through the hall, holding her son’s hand, with her maid behind her.

“Cosimo!” she cried. “Listen to him. Your son wants to say he’s sorry.”

Fenoglio didn’t think that Jacopo looked at all sorry. Violante was having to drag him along behind her, and his face was dark as thunder. He didn’t seem particularly pleased by his father’s return. His mother, on the other hand, was radiant as Fenoglio had never seen her before, and the mark on her face was not much darker than a shadow cast by the sun.

“The birthmark on Her Ugliness’s face faded.” Oh, thank you, Meggie, he thought. What a pity you’re not here…

“I won’t say sorry!” announced Jacopo, as his mother propelled him none too gently up the steps to the throne. “He’s the one who ought to say sorry to my grandfather!” Unobtrusively, Fenoglio 203

 

took a step back. Time for him to go.

“Do you remember me?” he heard Cosimo ask. “Was I a stern father?”

Jacopo merely shrugged.

“Oh yes, you were very stern!” Her Ugliness replied on the child’s behalf. “You took away his hounds when he acted like this. And his horse.”

She was clever, cleverer than Fenoglio had expected. He went quietly toward the door. It was a good thing he’d soon be living at the castle. He must keep an eye on Violante, or she’d soon be filling the blank of Cosimo’s memory to her own liking – as if stuffing a newly prepared turkey.

When the servants opened the great door he saw Cosimo abstractedly smiling at his wife. He’s grateful to her, thought Fenoglio, grateful to her for filling his emptiness with her words, but he doesn’t love her.

And of course that’s another thing you never thought of, Fenoglio, he told himself reproachfully as he walked through the Inner Courtyard. Why didn’t you write a word about Cosimo loving his wife? Didn’t you tell Meggie the story, long ago, about the flower maiden who gave her heart to the wrong man? What are stories for if we don’t learn from them? Well, at least Violante loved Cosimo. You only had to look at her to see it. That was something, after all. .

On the other hand .. Violante’s maid, the girl with the beautiful hair, Brianna, who Meggie said was Dustfinger’s daughter – hadn’t she seemed equally enraptured when she looked at Cosimo?

And Cosimo himself – hadn’t he looked at the maid more often than at his wife? Oh, never mind, thought Fenoglio. There’ll soon be more important matters at stake than love. Far more important matters ..

204

Chapter 39 – Another Messenger

 

The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink.

– Chinese proverb

 

The Adderhead and his men-at-arms had disappeared when Fenoglio came out of the gate of the Inner Castle. Good, thought Fenoglio. He’ll be fuming with rage on his long ride home! The thought of it made him smile. A number of men were waiting in the Outer Courtyard. It was easy to guess their trade from their blackened hands, even though no doubt they had scrubbed them thoroughly for their prince. The entire population of Smiths’ Alley in Ombra seemed to have come up to the castle. You forge the words, I’ll have the swords forged. Many, many swords. Had Cosimo’s preparations for his war begun already? If so, it’s time I set to work on my words, Fenoglio told himself.

As he turned into Cobblers’ Alley he thought for a moment that he heard steps behind him, but when he turned there was only a one-legged beggar hobbling laboriously past him. At every other step the beggar’s crutch slipped in the filth lying among the houses – pig dung, vegetable refuse, stinking puddles of whatever fluids people tipped out of their windows. Well, there’ll soon be cripples enough, thought Fenoglio as he walked on toward Minerva’s house. You could call war a cripple factory. .

What kind of idea was that? Were doubts of Cosimo’s plans stirring in his elated mind? Oh, let it alone. .

By all the letters of the alphabet, I’m certainly not going to miss this climb once I’m living in the castle, he thought as he toiled up the stairway to his room. I must just remember to ask Cosimo not, on any account, to give me quarters in one of the towers. The climb up to Balbulus’s workshop was bad enough! “Oh, so these few steps are too steep for you, but you trust yourself to go to war in your old age, do you?” said a quiet, mocking voice inside him. It always spoke up at the most inappropriate moments, but Fenoglio had plenty of practice in ignoring it.

Rosenquartz wasn’t there. Presumably he had climbed out of the window again to visit the glass man working for the scribe who lived over the road in Bakers’ Alley. The fairies all seemed to have flown away, too. It was quiet in Fenoglio’s room, unusually quiet. He sat down on his bed, sighing. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help thinking of his grandchildren and the way they used to fill his house with noise and laughter. So what? He thought, feeling angry with himself.

Minerva’s children make just the same kind of noise, and think how often you’ve sent them packing down to the yard because it was too much for you!

Footsteps came up the stairs. Well, speak of the devil. . ! He didn’t feel like telling stories, not at 205

 

the moment. He had to pack his things and then break the news gently to Minerva that she must look around for a new lodger.

“Go away!” he called to whoever was at the door. “Go and tease the pigs or chickens in the yard!

The Inkweaver doesn’t have time just now. He’s moving to the castle.”

The door swung open all the same, but not to reveal two children’s faces. A man stood there – a man with a blotched face and slightly protuberant eyes. Fenoglio had never seen him before, yet he seemed strangely familiar. His leather trousers were patched and dirty, but the color of his cloak made Fenoglio’s heart beat faster. It was the Adderhead’s silvery gray.

“What’s the idea?” he asked brusquely, getting to his feet, but the stranger was already through the doorway. He stood there with his legs spread, his grin as ugly as his face itself, but it was the sight of his companion that made Fenoglio’s old knees feel weak. Basta was smiling at him like a long-lost friend. He, too, wore the silver of the Adderhead.

“Bad luck again! Talk about terrible luck!” said Basta, looking around the room. “The girl’s not here. And there we go stalking you all the way from the castle, quiet as cats, thinking we’ll catch two birds with one stone, and now it’s just one ugly old raven in our trap. Never mind, at least one is something. Can’t expect too much of Lady Fortune, can we? After all, she sent you to the castle at just the right time. I recognized your ugly tortoise face at once, but you didn’t even see me, did you?”

No, Fenoglio hadn’t seen him. Should he have looked closely at every man standing behind the Adderhead? Yes – if you’d had your wits about you, Fenoglio, he told himself, that’s exactly what you’d have done! How could you forget that Basta’s back? Wasn’t what happened to Mortimer warning enough?

“Well, what a surprise! Basta! How did you escape the Shadow?” he said out loud, moving unobtrusively backward until he could feel the bed behind him. Ever since a man in the house next door had his throat cut in his sleep, he had slept with a knife under his pillow, although he wasn’t sure if it was still there.

“Sorry, but he must have overlooked me, shut up in that cage as I was,” purred Basta in his catlike voice. “Capricorn wasn’t so lucky, but Mortola is still around, and she’s told our old friend the Adderhead about the three birds we’re after. Dangerous sorcerers who kill with words.”

Basta slowly came toward Fenoglio. “Who do you think those birds are?”

The other man kicked the door shut with his boot.

“Mortola?” Fenoglio tried to make his voice mocking and supercilious, but it sounded more like the croak of a dying raven. “Wasn’t it Mortola who had you put in the cage to be fed to the Shadow?”

Basta just shrugged his shoulders and flung back his silvergray cloak. Of course, he had his knife.

A brand-new one, it seemed, finer than any he’d ever had in the other world and undoubtedly just as sharp.

“Yes, not very nice of her,” he said as his fingers caressed the handle of the knife. “But she’s really sorry. Come on, then, do you know what birds we’re after? Let me help you a little. We’ve already wrung the neck of one of them–the one that sang loudest.”

206

Fenoglio let himself drop onto the bed, without – or so he hoped – any expression on his face. “I assume you mean Mortimer,” he said, slowly pushing his hand under the pillow.

“Quite right!” Basta smiled. “You should have been there when Mortola shot him. Just the way she used to shoot the crows who stole the seed from her fields.” The memory made his smile even nastier. How well Fenoglio knew what was going on in his black heart! After all, he had made up Basta, just as he had made up Cosimo and his angelic smile. Basta had always liked describing his own and other people’s abominable deeds in detail. His companion didn’t seem to be so talkative. He was looking around Fenoglio’s room with a bored expression. A good thing the glass man wasn’t there; it was so easy to smash him.

“But we’re not going to shoot you.” Basta came a little closer to Fenoglio, his face as intent as that of a stalking cat. “We’ll probably hang you until your tongue is sticking out of your poor old mouth.”

“How very imaginative!” said Fenoglio, moving his fingers farther and farther under the pillow.

“But you know what will happen then. You’ll die, too.”

Basta’s smile disappeared as suddenly as a mouse scurrying into its hole. “Oh yes!” he hissed unpleasantly, as his hand instinctively went to the amulet at his throat. “I almost forgot. You believe you made me up, right? And what about him?” He pointed to the other man. “That’s Slasher. Did you make him up, too? He sometimes worked for Capricorn, after all. Many of the old fire-raisers wear the Adder’s silver now, although some of us think it was more fun under Capricorn. All those fine folk in the Castle of Night. . !” He spat scornfully at Fenoglio’s feet. “It’s no coincidence that the Adderhead has a snake on his coat of arms. He wants you to crawl on your belly to him, that’s what our noble lord and master likes. But never mind, he pays well! Hey, Slasher!” he addressed his still-silent companion. “What do you think, does the old fellow look as if he made you up?”

Slasher’s ugly face twisted. “If so, he made a bad job of it, eh?”

“You’re right there.” Basta laughed. “I’d say he deserves a taste of our knives just for the face he gave you, right?”

Slasher. Yes, indeed, he’d invented Slasher, too. Fenoglio felt sick to his stomach when he remembered why he’d given the man that name.

“Out with it, old man!” Basta leaned so close that Fenoglio smelled his peppermint-scented breath. “Where’s the girl? Tell us and we may let you live a little longer. We’ll send the child after her father first. I’m sure she’s longing to see him. They were so fond of each other, those two.

Come on, where is she? Spit it out!” He slowly drew the knife from his belt. Its blade was long and slightly curved. Fenoglio swallowed as if to force down his fear. He pushed his hand yet farther under the pillow, but all his fingertips met was a piece of bread, probably hidden there by Rosenquartz. Just as well, he thought. What good would a knife have done? Basta would have run me through before I even got a proper hold on it, not to mention Slasher. He felt the sweat running into his eyes.

“Hey, Basta, I know you like the sound of your own voice, but let’s get going and take him with us.” Slasher spoke in croaking tones, like the toads in the hills by night. Of course, that was how Fenoglio had described him: Slasher, the man with the voice of a toad. “We can question him later. We have to follow the others now,” he urged Basta. “Who knows what this dead prince will 207

 

do next? Suppose he doesn’t let us out of his accursed gate? Suppose he sends his soldiers after us? The others must be miles ahead by now!”

With a regretful sigh, Basta put the knife back in his belt. “Yes, very well, you’re right,” he said in surly tones. “I need to take my time with this sort of thing. Questioning people is an art, a real art.” He roughly seized Fenoglio’s arm, pulled him to his feet, and pushed him toward the door.

“Just like old times, eh?” he snarled in his ear. “I took you out of your own house once before, remember? Put on as good an act as you did then and you’ll go on breathing a little longer. And if we pass that woman feeding pigs in the yard, tell her we’re taking you to see an old girlfriend of yours, understand?”

Fenoglio just nodded. Minerva wouldn’t believe a word of it, but perhaps she might fetch help.

Basta’s hand was already on the door handle when footsteps came upstairs again. The old wood creaked and groaned. The children. For heaven’s sake! But it was not a child’s voice that spoke outside the door.

“Inkweaver?”

Basta cast an anxious glance at Slasher, but Fenoglio had recognized the voice: It was CloudDancer, the former tightropewalker, who had brought him messages from the Black Prince many times before. He’d be no help, not with his stiff leg! But what news brought him here? Had the Black Prince heard anything of Meggie?

Basta waved Slasher over to the left of the door and stationed himself to the right. Then he gave Fenoglio a sign and drew the knife from his belt again.

Fenoglio opened the door. It was so low that he always had to duck his head coming in. There stood CloudDancer, rubbing his knee. “Bloody stairs!” he swore. “Steep and falling apart. I’m just glad you’re in and I don’t have to climb them again. Here.” He looked around as if the old house had ears and reached into the leather bag that had carried so many letters from place to place. “The girl who’s staying with you sends you this.” He held out a piece of paper folded several times. It looked like a page from Meggie’s notebook. Meggie hated to tear pages out of a book, and she’d have been reluctant to take one out of this notebook in particular; her father had bound it for her. So the message must be very important – and Basta would take it from him at once.

“Well, here you are, then!” CloudDancer impatiently held the folded paper in front of his nose.

“Any idea how fast I hurried to bring you this?”

Reluctantly, Fenoglio put out his hand. He knew just one thing: Basta must not see Meggie’s message. Never. His fingers closed around the paper so tightly that none of it was visible.

“And listen!” CloudDancer went on quietly. “The Adderhead has attacked the Secret Camp.

Dustfinger –”

Fenoglio shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “Fine. Thank you very much, but the fact is I have visitors just now,” he said, desperately trying to convey what he couldn’t say in words with his eyes. He rolled them to right and left, as if they could act as fingers pointing to where Basta and Slasher were waiting behind the door.

CloudDancer took a step back.

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“Run!” cried Fenoglio and leaped out of the doorway. CloudDancer almost fell downstairs as Fenoglio made his way past him, but then he stumbled. Fenoglio was sliding, rather than running, down the stairs. He didn’t turn until he had reached the bottom. He heard Basta cursing behind him, and Slasher’s croaking voice. He heard the children in the yard screaming with fright, and from somewhere came Minerva’s voice, but by then he was running past the sheds and the lines where her freshly washed laundry hung. A pig ran between his legs, making him stumble and fall in the mud, and when he got up he saw that CloudDancer hadn’t been as fast as he was. How could he be, with his stiff leg? Basta had taken him by the collar, while Slasher pushed Minerva aside as she tried to bar his way with a rake. Fenoglio ducked down, first behind an empty barrel, then behind the pigs’ trough, and crawled over to one of the sheds on all fours.

Despina.

She was staring at him in astonishment. He laid his finger on his lips, crawled on, forced his way past a couple of planks, and squeezed into the place where Minerva’s children had their hideout.

He only just fitted in – the place wasn’t meant for old men who were beginning to put on weight around the hips. The two children came here when they didn’t want to go to bed or weren’t keen to work. They hadn’t shown their hiding place to anyone but Fenoglio, as proof of friendship –

and in return for a good ghost story.

He heard CloudDancer scream, he heard Basta roaring something, and Minerva weeping. He almost crawled back to them, but fear paralyzed him. And what could he do against Basta’s knife and the sword that hung from Slasher’s belt? He leaned against the wooden wall of the shed, heard the pigs grunting and rooting about in the ground. Meggie’s message swam before his eyes; the sheet of paper was dirty with the mud he’d crawled through, but he could still decipher what she had written.

“I don’t know!” he heard CloudDancer scream. “I don’t know what she wrote on it. I can’t read!”

Brave CloudDancer. He probably did know, all the same. He usually had people tell him what their messages said.

“But you can tell me where she is, can’t you?” That was Basta’s voice. “Out with it. Is she with Dustfinger? You whispered his name to the old man!”

“I don’t know!” He screamed again, and Minerva wept louder than ever and shouted for help, her voice echoing back from the narrow houses.

“The Adderhead’s men have taken them all away, my parents and the strolling players, ”

Fenoglio read. “D ustfinger is following .. the Spelt-Mill .. ” The letters blurred as he looked at them. Yet again he heard screaming out there. He bit his knuckles so hard that they began to bleed. ” Write something, Fenoglio. Save them. Write .. “It was as if he could hear Meggie’s voice.

Another scream. No. No, he couldn’t just sit here. He crawled out, on and on, until he could rise to his feet.

Basta was still holding CloudDancer in a firm grip, pressing him back against the wall of the house. The old tightropewalker’s shirt was slit and bloody, and Slasher was standing in front of him with a knife in his hand. Where was Minerva? She was nowhere to be seen, but Despina and Ivo were there, in hiding near the sheds, watching what one man can do to another. With a smile on his lips.

“Basta!” Fenoglio took a step forward. He put all his rage and all his fear into his voice and held 209

 

Meggie’s close-written sheet of paper up in the air.

Basta turned with assumed surprise. “Oh, there you are!” he called. “With the pigs. I might have known it. You’d better bring us that letter before Slasher finishes slicing up your friend here.”

“You’ll have to fetch it yourselves.”

“Why?” Slasher laughed. “You can read it to us, can’t you?” Yes. He could. Fenoglio stood there at his wits’ end. Where were all the lies, the clever lies that usually sprang to his lips so easily?

CloudDancer was staring at him, his face twisted with pain and fear – and suddenly, as if he couldn’t stand the fear a moment longer, he tore himself away from Basta and ran toward Fenoglio. He ran fast in spite of his stiff knee, but Basta’s knife was faster – so much faster. It went straight into CloudDancer’s back, just as the Adderhead’s arrow had pierced the gold-mocker’s breast. The tightropewalker fell in the mud, and Fenoglio, standing there, began to tremble. He was trembling so much that Meggie’s letter slipped out of his hand and fluttered to the ground. But CloudDancer lay there unmoving, his face in the dirt. Despina came out of hiding, hard as Ivo tried to haul her back, and stared wide-eyed at the motionless figure lying before Fenoglio’s feet. It was quiet in the yard, very quiet. “Read it out, scribbler!”

Fenoglio raised his head. Basta stood there in front of him, holding the knife that had been sticking into CloudDancer’s back just now. Fenoglio stared at the blood on the bright blade and at Meggie’s message. In Basta’s hand. Without thinking, he clenched his fists. He struck Basta in the chest as if neither the knife nor Slasher existed. Basta staggered back, anger and astonishment on his face. He fell over a bucket full of weeds that Minerva had been pulling out of her vegetable plots. Cursing, he got to his feet. “Don’t do that again, old man!” he spat. “I’m telling you for the last time, read that out!”

But Fenoglio had snatched Minerva’s pitchfork from the dirty straw piled up outside the pigsty.

“Murderer!” he whispered, pointing the crudely forged prongs at Basta. What had happened to his voice? “Murderer, murderer!” he repeated, louder and louder, and he thrust the pitchfork at the place in Basta’s breast where his black heart beat.

Basta retreated, his face distorted with rage.

“Slasher!” he roared. “Slasher, come here and get that damn fork away from him!”

But Slasher had gone beyond the houses, sword in hand, and was listening. Horses’ hooves were clattering along the alley outside. “We must go, Basta!” he called. “Cosimo’s guards are on their way!”

Basta stared at Fenoglio, his narrowed eyes full of hate. “We’ll meet again, old man!” he whispered. “And next time you’ll be lying in the dirt in front of me, like him.” He stepped heedlessly over the motionless CloudDancer. “As for this,” he said, tucking Meggie’s letter under his belt, “Mortola will read it to me. Who’d have thought that the third little bird would write telling us where to find her in her own fair hand? And we’ll pick up the fire-eater for free into the bargain!”

 

“Come on, quickly, Basta!” Slasher beckoned impatiently.

“What are you bothered about? You think they’ll string us up because there’s one less strolling player in the world?” replied Basta calmly, but he turned away from Fenoglio. He waved to him 210

 

one last time before disappearing among the houses.

Fenoglio thought he heard voices, the clink of weapons, but perhaps it was something else. He kneeled down beside CloudDancer, turned him gently on his back, and put his ear to his chest –

as if he hadn’t seen death in his face some moments ago. He sensed the two children coming up beside him. Despina put her hand on his shoulder. It was slim and light as a leaf.

“Is he dead?” she whispered.

“You can see he is,” said her brother.

“Will the White Women come to fetch him now?”

Fenoglio shook his head. “No, he’s going to them of his own accord,” he answered quietly.

“You can see that. He’s gone already. But they’ll welcome him to their White Castle. It’s built of bones but very beautiful. There’s a courtyard in that castle, full of fragrant flowers, with a tightrope made of moonlight stretched across it just for CloudDancer… ” The words came easily: beautiful, comforting words, but were they really true? Fenoglio didn’t know. He had never taken any interest in what came after death, either in this world or the other one.

Probably just silence, silence without a single word of comfort.

Minerva came stumbling back from the alley, a cut on her forehead. The physician who lived on the corner was with her, and two other women, their faces pale with fear. Despina ran to her mother, but Ivo stayed beside Fenoglio.

“No one would come.” Minerva sobbed as she fell to her knees beside the dead man. “They were all afraid. Every one of them!”

“CloudDancer,” murmured the physician. Bone-knitter, he was often called, Stonecutter, Piss-Prophet, and sometimes, when he had lost a patient, Angel of Death. “Only a week ago he was asking if I knew anything that would do the pain in his knee good.”

Fenoglio remembered seeing the physician with the Black Prince. Should he tell him what CloudDancer had said about the Secret Camp? Could he trust him? No, it was better to trust no one.

Nothing and no one. The Adderhead had many spies. Fenoglio straightened up. Never before had he felt so old, so very old that it seemed as if he couldn’t survive another single day. The mill that Meggie had mentioned in her letter, where the devil was it? The name had sounded familiar…

Well, of course it did; he himself had described it in one of the last chapters of Inkheart. The miller was no friend to the Adderhead, even though his mill stood near the Castle of Night, in a dark valley south of the Way less Wood.

“Minerva,” he asked, “how long does it take a mounted man to get from here to the Castle of Night?”

“Two days for sure, if he’s not going to ruin his horse,” replied Minerva quietly.

Two days, if not less, before Basta found out what was in Meggie’s letter. If he rode to the Castle of Night with it, that was. But he’s sure to do that, thought Fenoglio. Basta can’t read, so he will take the letter to Mortola, and the Magpie is sure to be at the Castle of Night. Yes, there were probably two days to go before Mortola would read what Meggie had said and send Basta to the mill. Where Meggie might already be waiting… Fenoglio sighed. Two days. Perhaps that would be 211

 

enough to get a warning to her, but not to write the words she hoped he would send – words to save her parents.

Write something, Fenoglio. Write ..

As if it were so simple! Meggie, Cosimo, they all wanted words from him. It was easy for them to talk. You needed time to find the right words, and enough time was exactly what he didn’t have!

“Minerva, tell Rosenquartz I have to go to the castle,” said Fenoglio. Suddenly, he felt dreadfully tired. “Tell him I’ll fetch him later.”

Minerva stroked Despina’s hair – the girl was sobbing into her skirt – and nodded. “Yes, you go to the castle!” she said huskily. “Go and tell Cosimo to send soldiers after those murderers. By God, I’ll be in the front row to watch them hang!”

“Hang? What are you talking about?” The physician ran a hand through his sparse hair and looked sadly down at the dead man. “CloudDancer was one of the strolling players. No one gets hanged for stabbing a strolling player. There’s a harsher penalty for killing a hare in the forest.”

Ivo looked incredulously at Fenoglio. “Will they really not punish them?”

What was he to tell the boy? No, it was a fact. No one would punish them. Perhaps the Black Prince might someday, or the man who had taken to wearing the Bluejay’s mask, but Cosimo wouldn’t send a single soldier after Basta. The Motley Folk were all outlaws, in Lombrica and Argenta alike. Subject to none, protected by none. But Cosimo will give me a horseman if ask him, thought Fenoglio, a fast horseman who can warn Meggie of Basta. “Write something, Fenoglio.

Save them! Write something that will set them all free and kill the Adderhead.. . “Yes, by God, he would. He’d write rousing songs for Cosimo and powerful words for Meggie. And then her voice could help this story to find a good ending at last.

212

Chapter 40 – No Hope

The mustard-pot got up and walked over to his plate on thin silver legs that waddled like the owl’s… “Oh, I love the mustard-pot!” cried the Wart. “Wherever did you get it?”

– T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone

 

Luckily, Darius was a good cook, or Orpheus would probably have locked up Elinor in the cellar again after the very first meal and read himself food to eat out of her books. Thanks to Darius’s cooking, however, they were able to spend time upstairs more often – although under the watchful eye of Sugar – for Orpheus liked his food, and plenty of it, and he enjoyed what Darius cooked.

Fearing that otherwise Orpheus might let only Darius upstairs, they pretended that Elinor had concocted all those delicacies with their appetizing aromas and Darius was just her assistant, tirelessly chopping, stirring, and tasting; but as soon as Sugar, getting bored, left the kitchen to stare at the bookshelves, Darius took over the wooden spoon and Elinor the chopping not that she was much better at chopping than cooking.

Now and then some bewildered figure, looking around as if lost, stumbled into the kitchen.

Sometimes the visitor was human, sometimes furry or feathered, once it was even a talking mustard-pot. Elinor could usually work out, from the appearance of each one, which of her poor books Orpheus had in his pale hands at that moment. Tiny men with old-fashioned hairstyles were presumably from Gulliver’s Travels. The mustard-pot was very probably from Merlin’s cottage, and the enchanting and extremely confused faun who tripped in one lunchtime on delicate goat’s hooves must have come from Narnia.

Naturally, Elinor wondered anxiously if all these creatures were in her library when they didn’t happen to be standing glassy-eyed in the kitchen, and finally she asked Darius to go and find out, on the pretext of asking what Orpheus wanted to eat. He came back with the reassuring news that her Holy of Holies was still in dreadful disorder, but apart from Orpheus, his horrible dog, and a rather pale gentleman who looked to Darius suspiciously like the Canterville Ghost, no one was pawing, soiling, sniffing, or otherwise damaging Elinor’s books.

“Thank God!” she sighed, relieved. “He obviously makes them all disappear again. I must say that appalling man really does know his trade. And it looks as if he can read them out of a book by now without making someone else disappear into it!”

“No doubt about that,” remarked Darius – and Elinor thought she heard a trace of envy in his gentle voice.

“He’s a monster all the same,” she said, in a clumsy attempt to console him. “It’s just a pity this house is so well stocked with provisions, or he’d have had to send the wardrobe-man shopping, and then he’d be alone facing the two of us.”

As it was, however, days passed by, and there was nothing they could do about either their own imprisonment or the fact that Mortimer and Resa were probably in deadly danger. Elinor tried not even to think of Meggie. And Orpheus, the one person who could obviously have put everything right with such ease, sat in her library like a pale, fat spider, playing with her books and the characters who populated them, as if they were toys to be taken out and put away again.

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“How much longer is he planning to go on like this, I ask myself?” she said for about the hundredth time as Darius was putting rice in a serving dish – rice cooked just long enough, of course, so that it was soft but the grains were all separate. “Is he planning to keep us cooking and cleaning for him as unpaid servants for the rest of his life, while he amuses himself with my poor books? In my house? ”

Darius did not reply. Instead, and without a word, he piled food onto four plates – this was a meal that certainly wasn’t going to send Orpheus out of the house.

“Darius!” whispered Elinor, putting a hand on his thin shoulder. “Won’t you just have a try? I know he always keeps the book close to him, but perhaps we can get our hands on it somehow.

You could put something in his food. . ”

“He gets Sugar to taste everything he’s going to eat.”

“Yes, I know. Right, so we must try something else, anything, and then you can read us into the book! If this repulsive creature won’t bring them out for us, then we’ll simply go after them!”

But Darius shook his head, as he had done every time Elinor had suggested the same thing, although in slightly different words. “I can’t do it, Elinor!” he whispered, and his glasses clouded over, whether with the steam of cooking or tears rising to his eyes she thought it better not to inquire. “I’ve never read anyone into a book, only out of it, and you know what happened then.”

“Oh, all right, then read someone here, someone strong and heroic who’ll chase those two out of my house! Who cares if his nose has been flattened or he’s lost his voice like Resa, just so long as he has plenty of muscles!”

As if on cue, Sugar put his head around the door. Elinor was constantly amazed to see that it was not much wider than his neck. “Orpheus wants to know where dinner is.”

“Just ready,” replied Darius, handing him one of the steaming plates. “Rice again?” growled Sugar.

“Yes, sorry about that,” said Darius, as he pushed past him with Orpheus’s plate.

“And you see about the dessert!” Sugar ordered Elinor as she was about to put the first forkful into her own mouth.

No, this just couldn’t go on. Acting the kitchen maid in her own house, with a horrible man in her library throwing her books on the floor, treating them like boxes of chocolates, nibbling something from one book here, another there.

There must be a way to do it, she thought, spooning walnut ice cream into two dishes with a gloomy expression on her face. There must. There must. Why couldn’t her stupid brain work it out?

214

Chapter 41 – The Captives

“Then you don’t think he’s dead, then?”

He put on his hat. “Now I may be wrong, of course, but I think he’s very alive. Shows all the symptoms of it. Go have a look at him, and when I come back we’ll get together and decide.”

– Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

 

Night had fallen long ago when Meggie and Farid set out to follow Dustfinger. Go south, keep going south, Cloud Dancer had told them, but how did you know you were going south when there was no sun to show you the way, no stars shining through the black leaves? The darkness seemed to have devoured everything: the trees, even the ground before their feet. Moths fluttered into their faces, attracted by the fire that Farid was nursing in his fingers like a little animal. The trees seemed to have eyes and hands, and the wind carried voices to their ears, soft voices whispering words to Meggie that she didn’t understand. On any other night a point would probably have come when she just stopped or ran back to where CloudDancer and Nettle might still be sitting by the fire; but tonight she knew only that she must find Dustfinger and her parents, for neither night nor the forest could hold any terrors for her greater than the fear that had taken root in her heart when she saw Mo’s blood on the straw.

At first, and with the fire to help him, Farid kept finding traces: a print left by one of Dustfinger’s boots, a broken twig, a marten’s trail. . but the time came when he stood there at a loss, not sure which way to go. Tree grew beside tree in the pale moonlight whichever way you looked, so close together that you couldn’t make out any path between their trunks, and Meggie saw eyes: eyes above her, behind her, beside her . . hungry eyes, angry eyes, so many of them that she wished the moon wouldn’t shine so brightly through the leaves.

“Farid!” she whispered. “Let’s climb a tree and wait for sunrise. We’ll never find Dustfinger’s trail again if we just go on like this.”

“My own opinion exactly!” Dustfinger appeared among the trees without a sound, as if he had been standing there for some time already. “I’ve been able to hear you plowing through the forest behind me like a herd of wild boar for the last hour,” he said, as Jink pushed past his legs.

“This is the Way less Wood, and not the safest part of it, either. You can think yourselves lucky I managed to convince the elves in the ash trees that you weren’t breaking their branches just for fun. And how about the Night-Mares? Do you think they don’t pick up your scent? If I hadn’t sent them packing you’d probably be lying stiff as dead wood among the trees by now, caught in bad dreams like two flies in a spider’s web.”

“Night-Mares?” whispered Farid, as the sparks at his fingertips went out. Night-Mares. Meggie came closer to him. She was remembering a story that Resa had told her. What a good thing it hadn’t come into her mind earlier…

“Yes, did I never tell you about them?” Jink ran to Dustfinger as he walked toward them and greeted Gwin with a delighted chatter. “They may not eat you alive like those desert ghosts you kept telling me about, but they’re not exactly friendly, either.”

“I’m not going back,” said Meggie, looking at him resolutely. “Whatever you say I’m not going 215

 

back.”

Dustfinger looked at her. “No, I know,” he said. “Your mother all over.” That was all.

All night they followed the broad track left by the men-at-arms as they had marched through the forest – all night and the following day. Dustfinger let them stop for a brief rest only when he saw that Meggie was staggering with exhaustion. When the sun was once again so low in the sky that it touched the treetops they reached the crest of a hill, and Meggie saw the dark ribbon of a road running through the green of the forest down below. A collection of buildings stood beside it: a long, low house, with stables around a yard.

“The only inn close to the border,” Dustfinger whispered to them. “They probably left their horses there. You can move considerably faster on foot in the forest. Everyone who wants to go south and down to the sea stops to rest at this inn: couriers, traders, even a few of the strolling players, though everyone knows that the landlord is one of the Adderhead’s spies. If we’re lucky we’ll be there before the party we’re following, because they won’t be able to get down the slopes with the handcart and the prisoners. They’ll have to go the long way around, but we can take the direct route and wait for them at the inn.”

“And then what?” For a moment Meggie thought she saw the same anxiety in his eyes that had driven her into the woods by night. But who was he anxious about? The Black Prince, the other strolling players .. her mother? She still clearly remembered that day in Capricorn’s crypt when he had begged Resa to escape with him and leave her daughter behind. .

Perhaps Dustfinger had remembered it, too. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she murmured, bending her head. “I’m just worried.”

“And for good reason,” he said, abruptly turning his back on her.

“But what are we going to do when we’ve caught up with them?” Farid was hurrying unsteadily after him.

“I don’t know,” was all Dustfinger said as he began looking for a way down the slope, keeping in the cover of the trees. “I thought one of you might have some idea, since you were so keen to come along.”

The route he took led downhill so steeply that Meggie could hardly keep her footing, but then she suddenly saw the road stony and rutted with channels where water had once flowed down from the hills. On the other side were the stables and the house she had seen from the top of the hill. Dustfinger waved her over to a place by the roadside where the undergrowth would shield her from curious eyes.

“No, they don’t seem to be here yet, but they must arrive soon!” he said quietly. “They may even stay the night, fill their bellies, and get drunk to forget the terrors of the forest. I can’t show my face over there while it’s still light. Given my luck, one of Capricorn’s fire-raisers who’s working for the Adderhead now will cross my path. But you,” he said, placing a hand on Farid’s shoulder,

“you can go over there safely. If anyone asks where you’re from, just say your master’s sitting in the inn drinking. Count the soldiers, count the prisoners, and see how many children are among them. Understand? Meanwhile I’ll take a look farther along the road. I have a kind of idea.”

Farid nodded and lured Gwin over to him.

216

“I’ll go with him!” Meggie expected Dustfinger to forbid her to go with Farid, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

“As you like. I can’t keep you here. I just hope your mother doesn’t give herself away when she recognizes you. And another thing!” He took hold of Meggie’s arm as she was about to follow Farid.

“Don’t take it into your head that we can do anything for your parents. Perhaps we can free the children, even a few of the adults if they run fast enough. But your father won’t be able to run, and your mother will stay with him. She won’t leave him on his own, any more than she would leave you behind that other time. We both remember it, don’t we?”

Meggie nodded and turned her face away, so that he wouldn’t see her tears. But Dustfinger gently turned her around and wiped them from her cheeks. “You really are very like your mother,” he said softly. “She never wanted anyone to see her cry, either however good her reasons for tears.” His face looked strained as he scrutinized the two of them again. “Well, you’re dirty enough,” he commented. “Anyone would take you for a stable boy and a kitchen maid. We’ll meet behind the stables as soon as it’s dark. Now, off you go.”

They didn’t have long to wait.

Meggie and Farid had been hanging around the stables for barely an hour when they saw the procession of prisoners come down the road – women, children, old men, hands tied behind their backs and soldiers on both sides of them. These men were not armed, no helmets hid their sullen features, but they all wore their master’s snake emblem on their breasts, silvergray cloaks, and swords at their belts. Meggie recognized their leader at once: It was Firefox. And judging by his face, he didn’t seem to like traveling on foot very much.

“Don’t stare at them like that!” whispered Farid, as Meggie stood there rooted to the spot. He dragged her behind one of the carts standing around the yard. “Your mother’s not hurt. Did you see her?” Meggie nodded. Yes, Resa was walking between two other women, one of them pregnant. But where was Mo?

“Hey!” bellowed Firefox, as his men drove the prisoners into the yard. “Whose are those carts?

We need more room.”

The soldiers pushed the carts aside, handling one of them so roughly that its load of sacks slipped off. A man hurried out of the inn – probably the cart’s owner – a protest already on his lips, but when he saw the soldiers he bit it back and shouted at the grooms, who quickly righted the cart again. Traders, farmers, servants – more and more people came crowding out of the stables and the main building to see the cause of all the noise in the yard. A fat, perspiring man made his way through the turmoil to Firefox, faced him with a hostile expression, and let fly a torrent of angry words.

“All right, all right!” Meggie heard Firefox growl. “But we need space. Can’t you see we have prisoners with us? Would you rather we drove them into your stables?”

“Yes, yes, use one of the stables!” cried the fat man in relief, beckoning to a couple of his servants who were standing there staring at the prisoners, some of whom had fallen to their knees just where they were, their faces pale with exhaustion and fear.

“Come on!” Farid whispered to Meggie, and side by side they pushed their way past the 217

 

muttering farmers and traders, past the servants still clearing the burst sacks out of the yard, past the soldiers casting hopeful glances at the inn. No one seemed to be taking very much notice of the prisoners, but it was hardly necessary: None of them looked as if they still had the strength to escape. Even the children, whose legs might have been fast enough for them to run, were clinging to their mothers’ skirts, empty-eyed, or staring in fear at the armed men who had brought them here. Resa was supporting the pregnant woman. Yes, her mother was uninjured; Meggie could see that much, although she avoided coming too close to her, in case Dustfinger was right to fear that Resa would give herself away if she recognized her. How desperately she was looking around! She took the arm of a soldier, whose beardless face made him look only a boy, and then

“Farid!” Meggie couldn’t believe it. Resa was talking. Not with her hands but with her mouth. Her voice could hardly be heard in all this noise, but it was her voice. How could it be possible? The soldier didn’t listen to her but pushed her roughly away, and Resa turned. The Black Prince and his bear were pulling a cart into the yard. They had been harnessed to it like oxen. A chain was wound around the bear’s black muzzle, another around his throat and chest. But Resa had eyes for neither the bear nor the Prince – she kept looking at the cart, and Meggie immediately realized what that meant.

Without a word, she took off. “Meggie!” Farid called after her, but she wasn’t listening. No one could stop her. The cart was a ramshackle thing. First she saw only the man with the injured leg, one of the strolling players holding a child on his lap. Then she saw Mo.

She thought her heart would never beat again. He was lying there with his eyes closed, under a dirty blanket, but all the same Meggie saw the blood. His shirt was soaked in it, the shirt he liked best to wear, although the sleeves had worn thin. Meggie forgot everything: Farid, the soldiers, Dustfinger’s warning, where she was, why she was here. She just stared at her father and his still face. The world was suddenly an empty place, very empty, and her heart was a cold, dead thing.

“Meggie!” Farid reached for her arm. He hauled her away with him, ignoring her resistance, and held her close when she began to sob.

“He’s dead, Farid! Did you see him? Mo .. he’s dead!” She kept stammering that terrible word.

Dead. Gone. Forever.

She pushed Farid’s arm away. “I must go to him.” Bad luck clings to this book, Meggie, nothing but bad luck, even if you don’t believe me. Hadn’t he told her that in Elinor’s library? How much every one of those words hurt now. Death had been waiting in the book. His death.

“Meggie!” Farid was still holding her firmly. He shook her as if he had to wake her up. “Meggie, listen. He’s not dead! Do you think they’d be dragging him along with them if he was?” Would they? She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

“Come with me. Come on!” Farid pulled her away with him. He pushed his way casually through the crowd, as if none of the hurry and bustle interested him. Finally, with an indifferent expression on his face, he stopped by the stable into which the soldiers were herding the prisoners. Meggie wiped away her tears and tried to look equally indifferent, but how could she when her heart, coming back to life, felt as if someone had cut it in two?

“Do you have enough for us to eat there?” she heard Firefox ask. “We’re ravenous after our journey through that accursed forest.”

218

Meggie saw them push Resa into the dark stable with the other women, while two soldiers released the Black Prince and his bear.

“Of course I have enough!” said the fat landlord indignantly. “And you won’t recognize your horses, their coats are so glossy!”

“So I should hope,” replied Firefox. “Otherwise the Adderhead will make sure you’re not landlord of this hovel much longer. We ride at daybreak tomorrow. My men and the prisoners can stay in the stable, but I want a bed – and a bed to myself, too, not one I have to share with a crowd of snoring, farting strangers.”

“Of course, of course!” The landlord nodded eagerly. “But what about that monster?” He pointed anxiously at the bear. “He’ll scare the horses. Why didn’t you kill him and leave him in the forest?”

“Because the Adderhead wants to hang him along with his master,” replied Firefox, “and because my men believe all the nonsense they hear about him – folk say he’s a Night-Mare who likes to take the shape of a bear, so it’s a bad idea to fire an arrow into his coat.”

“A Night-Mare?” The landlord chuckled nervously. He obviously seemed to think the story not impossible. “Never mind what he is, he’s not going into my stable. Tie him up) behind the bakehouse if you like. Then perhaps the horses won’t smell him.” The bear growled in a low tone as one of the soldiers pulled him along on his chain, but as they were forced away behind the main building the Black Prince spoke to him soothingly, in a quiet voice, as if comforting a child.

The cart with Mo and the injured old man on it was still in the yard. A few servants were standing around, gossiping to one another, presumably trying to work out exactly who had been captured on the Adderhead’s orders. Was the rumor already spreading that the man lying as if dead on the cart was the Bluejay? The soldier with the beardless face shooed away the servants, took the child off the cart and pushed him toward the stable, too. “What about the wounded prisoners?” he called to Firefox. “Do we just leave those two on the cart where they are?”

“And find that they’re dead in the morning, or gone? What are you thinking of, you fool? One of them’s the reason why we went into that damned forest, right?” Firefox turned to the landlord again. “Is there a physician among your guests?” he asked. “I have a prisoner who must be kept alive because the Adderhead plans a magnificent execution for him. It’s no real fun with a dead man, if you see what I mean.”

Must be kept alive .. Farid pressed Meggie’s hand and smiled triumphantly at her.

“Oh yes, of course, of course!” The landlord looked curiously at the cart. “It’s a nuisance, for sure, if condemned men die before their execution. I hear that’s happened twice this year already.

However, I can’t offer you a physician. I do have a moss woman helping out in the kitchen, though. She’s set many of my guests to rights in her time.”

“Good! Send for her!”

The landlord impatiently beckoned to a snotty-nosed boy leaning by the stable door. Firefox called two of his soldiers to him. “Go on, get the wounded men into the stable, too!” Meggie heard him say. “Double guards outside the door, and four of you keep watch on the Bluejay tonight, understand? No wine, no mead, and anyone who falls asleep will be sorry for it!”

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“The Bluejay?” The landlord stared in amazement. “You have the Bluejay on that cart?” When Firefox cast him a warning glance, he quickly put his fat fingers to his mouth. “Not a word!” he uttered. “No one will hear a word of it from me.”

“I should hope not,” growled Firefox, and looked around as if to make sure that no one else had heard what he said.

When the soldiers lifted Mo off the cart, Meggie instinctively took a step forward, but Farid dragged her back. “Meggie, what’s the matter with you?” he hissed. “If you carry on like this they’ll shut you up, too. Do you think that will help anyone?”

Meggie shook her head. “He really is still alive, Farid, isn’t he?” she whispered. She was almost afraid to believe it.

“Yes, of course. I told you so. Don’t look so sad. Everything will turn out all right, you wait and see!” Farid caressed her forehead and kissed the tears from her eyelashes.

“Hey, you two lovebirds, get away from the horses!”

The Piper was standing before them. Meggie bent her head, although she was sure he wouldn’t recognize her. She had been just a girl in a dirty dress when he almost rode her down in the Ombra marketplace. Today he was once again more splendidly clothed than any of the strolling players Meggie had yet seen. His silken garments shimmered like a peacock’s tail, and the rings on his fingers were genuine silver, like the nose on his face. Obviously, the Adderhead paid well for songs that pleased him.

The Piper looked hard at them again, and then strolled over to Firefox. “Well, so you’re back from the forest!” he called from some way off. “And with rich booty, so I’ve heard. Looks as if one of your spies wasn’t lying for a change. Good news for the Adderhead at last.”

Firefox replied, but Meggie wasn’t listening. The snotty-nosed boy came back with the moss-woman, a short little creature who hardly came up to his shoulder. Her skin was gray as beech bark, her face as wrinkled as a shriveled apple. Moss-women, healers . . Before Farid realized what she meant to do, Meggie had slipped away from him. The moss-woman would know how Mo really was. She made her way as close as she could to the little woman, until only the boy stood between them. The moss-woman’s smock was stained with meat juices from the spit, and her feet were bare, but she inspected the men standing around her with fearless eyes.

“Sure as I live, a genuine moss-woman,” growled Firefox, while his men retreated from the tiny woman as if she were as dangerous as the Black Prince’s bear. “I thought they never came out of the forest. But yes, apparently they know something about healing. Don’t folk say that old witch Nettle’s mother was a moss-woman?”

“Yes, but her father was useless.” The little woman scrutinized Firefox as intently as if she were trying to find out what kind of blood flowed in his veins. “You drink too much,” she observed.

“Just look at your face. Carry on like this and your liver will soon burst like an overripe pumpkin.”

A ripple of laughter ran through the onlookers, but a glance from Firefox silenced them. “Listen, you’re not here to give me advice, she-gnome!” he snapped at the moss-woman. “I want you to look at one of my prisoners. He has to reach the Adderhead’s castle alive.”

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“Yes, I know all that,” replied the moss-woman, still examining his face with disapproval. “So that your master can kill him by all the rules of the executioner’s trade. Fetch me water. Hot water and clean towels. And I want someone to help me.” Firefox nodded to the boy. “If you want a helper, pick one for yourself,” he growled, and surreptitiously felt his stomach, where he presumably supposed his liver was located.

“One of your men? No, thank you.” The moss-woman wrinkled up her little nose scornfully and looked around until her eye fell on Meggie. “That one will do,” said the little creature. “She doesn’t look too stupid.”

And before Meggie knew it, one of the soldiers took her roughly by the shoulder. The last thing she saw before she stumbled into the stable after the moss-woman was the expression of alarm on Farid’s face.

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Chapter 42 – A Familiar Face

Believe me. Sometimes when life looks to be at its grimmest, there’s a light hidden at the heart of things.

– Clive Barker, Abarat

 

Mo was conscious as the moss-woman kneeled down beside him. He sat leaning back against the damp wall, his eyes searching all the prisoners crouching in the dimly lit stable, looking for Resa’s face. He didn’t see Meggie until the little woman impatiently beckoned her over. Of course he realized at once that even a smile would have given her away, but it was so hard for him not to take her in his arms, so hard to hide the joy and fear that struggled for his heart at the sight of her.

“What are you standing around for?” the old woman snapped at Meggie. “Come here, you stupid thing!” Mo could have shaken her, but Meggie just kneeled down quickly beside her and took the bloodstained bandages that the old woman was none too gently cutting away from his chest.

Don’t stare at her, thought Mo, forcing his eyes to look anywhere else: at the old woman’s hands, at the other prisoners, not at his daughter. Had Resa seen her, too? She’s all right, he thought.

Yes, definitely. She wasn’t any thinner than usual, and she didn’t seem to be sick or injured, either. If only he could at least have exchanged a word with her!

“By fairy spit, what’s the matter with you?” asked the little woman roughly as Meggie almost spilled the water she was handing her. “I might just as well have taken one of the soldiers.” She began feeling Mo’s injuries with her bark-like fingers. It hurt, but he clenched his teeth so that Meggie wouldn’t notice.

“Are you always so hard on her?” he asked the old woman.

The little moss-woman muttered something incomprehensible without looking at him, but Meggie ventured a quick glance, and he smiled at her, hoping she wouldn’t notice the concern in his eyes, his alarm at seeing her again in this of all places, among all the soldiers. Be careful, Meggie, he tried to tell her with his eyes. How her lips were quivering, probably with all the words that she couldn’t say aloud, any more than he could! But it was so good to see her. Even in this place. In all those days and nights of fever, he had so often felt sure that he would never see her face again!

“Hurry up, can’t you?” Suddenly, Firefox was standing right behind Meggie, and at the sound of his voice she quickly bowed her head and held out the bowl of water to the little old woman again.

“This is a nasty wound!” remarked the moss-woman. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

“Yes, strange, isn’t it?” Mo was as much aware of Meggie’s glance as if it were the pressure of her hand. “Perhaps the fairies whispered a few words of healing in my ear.”

“Words of healing?” The moss-woman wrinkled up her nose. “What kind of words would those be? Fairies’ gossip is as stupid and useless as fairies themselves.”

“Well, then someone else must have whispered them to me.” Mo saw how pale Meggie turned as she helped the moss woman rebandage his wound, the wound that hadn’t killed him. It’s 222

 

nothing, Meggie, he wanted to say, I’m fine – but all he could do was look at her again, only in passing, as if her face meant no more to him than any other.

“Believe it or not,” he told the old woman, “I did hear the words. Beautiful words. At first I thought it was my wife’s voice, but then I realized it was my daughter’s. I heard her voice as clearly as if she were sitting here beside me.”

“Yes, yes, folk hear all kinds of things in a fever!” replied the moss-woman brusquely. “I’ve heard of those who swore the dead spoke to them. The dead, angels, demons .. A fever will summon up whole troops of them.” She turned to Firefox. “I have an ointment that will help him,” she said,

“and I’ll brew up something for him to drink. I can’t do any more.” When she turned her back on them, Meggie quickly put her hand on Mo’s fingers. No one noticed, nor did they notice the gentle pressure he gave her hand in return. He smiled at her again, and only when the moss-woman turned again did he quickly look aside. “You ought to look at his leg, too!” he said, nodding toward the strolling player lying asleep beside him on the straw, exhausted.

“No, she oughtn’t!” Firefox interrupted. “It’s all one to me whether he lives or dies. You’re different.”

“Oh, I see! You still think I’m that robber.” Mo leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment. “I suppose it’s no good if I tell you yet again that I’m not?”

By way of answer, Firefox just cast him a contemptuous glance. “Tell the Adderhead. Perhaps he’ll believe you,” he said. Then he pulled Meggie roughly to her feet. “Go on, off with you both!

That’ll do!” he shouted at her and the moss-woman. His men pushed them both toward the stable door. Meggie tried to look around again, her eyes searching for her mother, sitting somewhere among the other prisoners, and looking toward Mo yet again, but Firefox grabbed her arm and forced her out of the door – leaving Mo wishing he had words at his command, words like those that had killed Capricorn. His tongue longed to taste them, longed to send them after Firefox and see him fall in the dust like his former master. But there was no one here to write the words for him. Only Fenoglio’s story was everywhere, surrounding them with horror and darkness – and presumably his own death was already planned for one of the next chapters.

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Chapter 43 – Paper and Fire

 

“Good, well, if that’s decided,” came a weary voice from the opposite end of the dank hold.

It was the gnokgoblin, still manacled and quite forgotten. “Then will someone please release me.”

– Paul Stewart, Midnight Over Sanctaphrax

Dustfinger saw the windows of the inn glowing like dirty yellow eyes as he stole across the road.

Jink scurried ahead of him, little more than a shadow in the darkness. There was no moon tonight, and it was so dark in the yard and around the stables that even his own scarred face would just look like a pale patch.

There were guards outside the stable where the prisoners had been shut up, four guards, but they didn’t notice him. They were staring into the night, their faces bored, hands on their sword hilts, looking longingly again and again at the lighted windows opposite. Loud, drunken voices came from the inn – and then the sound of a lute, its strings well plucked, followed by singing in a curiously strained voice. Ah, so the Piper was back from Ombra, too, and singing one of his songs, drunk with blood and the intoxication of killing. The presence of the man with the silver nose was yet another reason why he had to stay out of sight. Meggie and Farid were waiting behind the stables, as agreed, but they were arguing in such loud voices that Dustfinger came up behind the boy and put his hand over his mouth.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he said angrily, his voice low. “Do you want them to put you two in with the others?”

Meggie bowed her head. She had tears in her eyes again.

“She wants to go into the stable!” Farid whispered. “She thinks they’ll all be asleep! As if–”

Dustfinger closed the boy’s mouth with his hand again.

Voices rang out over the yard. Obviously, someone had brought the guards outside the stable something to eat. “Where’s the Black Prince?” he whispered, when all was still again.

“Between the bakehouse and the main building. Tell her she can’t go back into that stable! There are at least fifteen soldiers in there.”

“How many guarding the Prince?”

“Three.”

Three. Dustfinger glanced up at the sky. No moon. It was hidden behind the clouds, and the 224

 

darkness was black as a cloak.

“Are you going to free him? Three aren’t many!” Farid sounded excited. Not a trace of fear in his voice. That fearlessness would be the death of him yet. “We can cut their throats before they make a sound. It’ll be easy.” He often said such things. Dustfinger kept wondering if it was just talk, or if he’d actually done something of the kind in the past.

“I can tell you’re ready for anything!” he said softly. “But you know very well I’m no good at cutting throats. How many prisoners are there?”

“Eleven women, three children, nine men not counting Silvertongue.”

“How is he?” Dustfinger looked at Meggie. “Have you seen him? Can he walk?” She shook her head.

“What about your mother?” She cast him a quick glance. She didn’t like it when he mentioned Resa. “Come on, is she all right?”

“I think so.” She put one hand to the stable wall, as if she could feel her parents behind it. “But I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. Please!” How pleadingly she was looking at him! “I’m sure they’re all asleep. I’ll be very careful!”

Farid cast a despairing glance up at the stars, as if such stupidity would make them break their eternal silence.

“The guards won’t sleep,” said Dustfinger. “So think up a good lie for them. Do you have anything to write with?”

Meggie looked at him incredulously, and for a moment Dustfinger saw her mother’s eyes. Then she quickly put her hand into the bag that she carried with her. “I have some paper with me,” she whispered, hastily tearing a page out of her little marbled notebook.

Like mother, like daughter. Never without the means of writing.

“You’re letting her do it?” Farid looked at him in astonishment.

“Yes.”

Meggie looked at him expectantly.

“Write that there’ll be a fallen tree lying across the road they take tomorrow. When it catches fire, everyone strong and young enough must run into the forest to the left. To the left: That’s important! Write that we’ll be waiting there to hide them. Did you get that down?”

Meggie nodded. Her pencil hurried over the paper. He could only hope that Resa would be able to decipher the tiny handwriting in the darkness of the stable, because he wouldn’t be there to make fire for her.

“Have you thought what you’re going to tell the guards?” he asked.

Meggie nodded. For a moment she looked almost like the little girl she had still been not much more than a year ago, and Dustfinger wondered whether it was a mistake, after all, to let her go –

but before he could change his mind she was off. She raced over the yard and disappeared into 225

 

the inn. When she came back, she was carrying a jug.

“Please, the moss-woman sent me!” they heard her clear voice telling the guards. “I’m to take the children milk.”

“Look at that. Clever as a jackal!” whispered Farid as the guards moved aside. “And brave as a lioness.” There was so much admiration in his voice that Dustfinger couldn’t help smiling. The boy was definitely in love.

“Yes, she’s probably cleverer than both of us put together,” he whispered back. “And certainly braver, at least as far as I’m concerned.”

Farid just nodded. He was staring at the open stable door and smiled with relief when Meggie came out again.

“See that?” she whispered to him when she was back beside Farid. “It was perfectly easy.”

“Good!” said Dustfinger, beckoning Farid over to his side. “Then let’s cross our fingers and hope that what we have to do now is as easy. What about it, Farid? Do you feel like playing with fire?”

The boy carried out his task with as cool a head as Meggie. Apparently lost to the world but in a spot where the men guarding the Prince had a clear view of him, he began making fire dance as naturally as if he were standing in some peaceful marketplace, not in front of an inn that sheltered Firefox and the Piper. The guards nudged each other, laughed, glad of something to pass the time this sleepless night. Seems that I’m the only one here whose heart is beating faster, thought Dustfinger, as he stole past heaps of stinking offal and rotting vegetables. It looked as if the fat landlord’s cooks simply threw everything they couldn’t serve to the guests out here behind the house. A few rats scurried off when they heard Dustfinger’s footsteps, and the hungry eyes of a brownie glowed among the bushes. They had tied up the Prince next to a mountain of carcasses, and his bear just far enough away to keep him from reaching the bones. He squatted there, snorting unhappily through his muzzle, which was bound, now and then uttering a miserably muted howl.

The guards had stuck a torch in the ground not far away, but the flame went out at once when the wind carried Dustfinger’s quiet voice to it. Nothing was left but a faint glow – and the Black Prince raised his head. He knew at once who must be slinking around in the dark when the fire so suddenly died down. A few more quick and silent steps, and Dustfinger took cover behind the bear’s furry back.

“That boy’s really good!” whispered the Prince without turning around. A sharp knife would soon deal with the ropes binding him.

“Yes, very good. And afraid of nothing, unlike me.” Dustfinger examined the padlocks on the bear’s chains. They were rusty but not particularly difficult to open. “What do you say to a little walk in the forest? But the bear must be quiet, quiet as an owl. Can he do it?” He ducked when one of the guards turned, but the man had obviously just heard the maid who was coming out of the kitchen to tip a bucket of refuse onto the garbage heaps behind the building. She disappeared again, with a curious look at the bound Prince – and took with her the noise that had come spilling out of the doorway.

“What about the others?”

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“Four guards outside the stable, another four told off by Firefox to guard Silvertongue, and there must be ten more guarding the other prisoners. It’s unlikely that we can distract the attention of all of them, certainly not for long enough to get the injured and crippled to safety.”

“Silvertongue?”

“Yes, the man they were looking for in your camp. What do you call him?” A padlock sprang open. The bear growled; perhaps Jink was making him uneasy. The second chain had better stay where it was for now, or he’d probably eat the marten. Dustfinger set about cutting the ropes tying up the Black Prince. He had to hurry, for they must be gone before Farid’s arms tired. The second padlock clicked. Another quick glance at the boy .. By the fire of the elves! thought Dustfinger. He throws the torches almost as high as I do now! But just as the Prince was throwing off his ropes, a fat man marched up to Farid with a maid and a soldier behind him. He shouted at the boy and pointed indignantly to the flames. Farid just smiled, skipped back while Gwin leaped around his legs, and went on juggling the burning torches. Oh yes, he was as clever as Meggie!

Dustfinger signed to the Prince to go with him. The bear groped his way along after them, following his master’s low voice. A pity he really was only a bear and not a Night-Mare. There’d have been no need to tell one of those to keep quiet. But at least he was black, as black as his master, and the night swallowed them up as if they were a part of it.

“We’ll meet down on the road by the fallen tree.” The Prince nodded and disappeared into the darkness. As for Dustfinger, he set off in search of the boy and Resa’s daughter.

The soldiers were all shouting in confusion in the yard now that it was clear that the Black Prince had escaped; even the Piper had come out of the inn. But neither Farid nor the girl could be seen. The soldiers began searching the outskirts of the forest and the slope behind the house, carrying torches. Dustfinger whispered words into the night until the fire felt sleepy, and torch after torch was extinguished as if the slight breeze had blown them out. The men stopped in the middle of the road, feeling uneasy, and looked around with eyes full of fear – fear of the dark, fear of the bear, fear of everything else that roamed the woods by night.

None of them dared go as far as the place where the fallen tree was blocking the road. The forest and the hills were as quiet as if no human foot had ever trodden there. Gwin was perched on the tree trunk, and Farid and Meggie were waiting on the other side under the trees. The boy had a bleeding lip, and the girl had laid her head wearily against his shoulder. Embarrassed, she straightened up as Dustfinger emerged in front of them.

“Is he free?” asked Farid.

Dustfinger put a hand under his chin and looked at the split lip. “Yes. Whatever happens tomorrow, the Prince and his bear will lend us a hand. How did you do that?” The two martens scurried past him and disappeared into the forest side by side.

“Oh, it’s nothing. One of the soldiers tried to grab me, but I got away. Well, tell me, was I good?”

As if he didn’t know the answer.

“So good that I’m beginning to worry. If you carry on like this I’ll soon be out of a job.”

Farid smiled. How sad Meggie looked, though. She seemed as lost as the child they had found in the looted camp. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how she was feeling, even if, like Dustfinger himself, you had never known your parents. Acrobats, some of the women among the strolling 227

 

players, a traveling physician .. he had had many substitutes for them. Any of the Motley Folk who looked after abandoned children were like their parents. Well, say something to her, Dustfinger, anything, he thought. You often used to cheer up her mother. Though usually it was just for a short time .. stolen time.

“Listen.” He kneeled down in front of Meggie and looked at her. “If we really manage to free some of them tomorrow, the Black Prince will take them to safety – but the three of us will follow the others.”

She looked at him as distrustfully as if he were a worn tightrope that she must walk high in the air.

“Why?” she asked quietly. When she spoke in a low tone you didn’t guess at the power that her voice could exert. “Why do you want to help them?” She didn’t have to spell it out: Last time you didn’t. Back in Capricorn’s village. What could he say? That it was easier to stand by and watch in a strange world than in your own?

“Let’s say I may have something to make up for,” he said at last. He knew he didn’t have to explain what he meant. They both remembered that night, in another tale, when he had betrayed her to Capricorn. And there’s something else, too, he almost added, I think your mother has been a captive long enough. But he didn’t say that. He knew that Meggie wouldn’t have liked it.

A good hour later the Black Prince joined them, uninjured and with his bear.

228

Chapter 44 – The Burning Tree

Do you see the tongues of fire Darting, flickering higher and higher? Do you see the flames all dancing, Flaring, off the dry wood glancing?

– James Kriiss, “Fire”

 

Resa’s feet were bleeding. The road was stony and wet with .the morning dew. They all had their hands bound again, except the children. She had been terrified that the soldiers wouldn’t let them walk with the other prisoners but would load them onto the cart instead. “Cry if they try to make you get up there!” she had whispered to the little ones. “Cry and scream until they let you walk with us.” But luckily that hadn’t been necessary. How scared the three children looked –

two girls and a boy, not counting the baby still inside Mina’s belly.

The elder girl, who was just six, was walking between Resa and Mina. Whenever Resa glanced at her she wondered what Meggie had looked like at that age. Mo had shown her photographs, wonderful photographs taken in all the years she herself had missed, but those weren’t her own memories but his. And Meggie’s.

Brave Meggie. Resa’s heart still contracted when she remembered how her daughter had passed her the sheet of paper in the stable. Where was she now? Was she watching them from somewhere in the forest?

Only when the hue and cry over the Black Prince had broken out had she been able to read the note, by the light of the torch left burning overnight in the stable. None of the others could read, so she had been able to pass on Dustfinger’s news to the women sitting near her only in whispers. After that, there had been no chance to tell the men, too, but the ones who could walk would run, anyway. Resa was to look after the children, and they knew what they were to do.

The other girl and the boy were walking between their mother and the woman with claw like fingers who had wanted to take Mo back to Capricorn’s fortress. Resa had said nothing to her about Dustfinger’s news, and every glance the woman cast her said: I was right, too! But Mina smiled when she looked at Resa, Mina with her round belly, who could have thought she had good reason to hate her for what had happened. Perhaps the flowers she gave Resa in the cave really had brought luck. Mo was better, much better – after she had thought for so many endless hours that every breath he drew would be his last. Now that the Prince had escaped, a horse was pulling the cart with Mo on it. The bear had set the Prince free, they whispered, which finally proved that he was indeed a Night-Mare. His ghostly glance had made the chains disappear, and he had turned himself into a human being and cut his master’s bonds. Resa wondered whether that human being had a scarred face.

When all the noise had begun in the night she had been so scared for Dustfinger, Meggie, and the boy, but next morning the fury on the soldiers’ faces told her that they had gotten away. But where was the fallen tree Meggie had mentioned in her note?

The little girl beside her was clinging to her dress. Resa smiled at the child – and sensed the Piper looking down at her from his horse. She quickly turned her head away. Luckily, neither he nor Firefox had recognized her. She had often enough listened to the Piper’s bloodthirsty songs in Capricorn’s fortress – the minstrel still had a human nose on his face in those days – and she had polished Firefox’s boots, but fortunately he had not been one of those who chased her and 229

 

the other maids.

Up above the prisoners’ heads the soldiers were describing, at the tops of their voices, what their master would do to the Black Prince once he’d caught him and his enchanted bear again.

Now that they were on horseback once more their tempers had clearly improved. From time to time the Piper turned in his saddle and contributed some particularly cruel idea. Resa would have liked to put her hands over the ears of the little girl beside her. The child’s mother was not among the prisoners but was wandering the country with some of the other strolling players, happy in the belief that her daughter was safe in the Secret Camp.

The girl would run. So would the other children with their mother. The claw-fingered woman would probably try to escape, too, and Sootbird and most of the other men. The minstrel with the injured leg who was on the cart with Mo would stay, like Twofingers, because he was afraid of the soldiers’ crossbows, and so would the old stilt-walker, who no longer trusted his legs.

Benedicta, who could hardly see where she was going, would stay behind, too, and Mina, whose child would soon be coming into the world .. and Mo.

The road went ever more steeply downhill. Overhead, the branches of the trees were intertwined. It was a still, windless morning, cloudy and damp, but Dustfinger’s fires burned even in rain. Resa peered past the horses. How close together the trees stood, nothing but darkness showing between them even in broad daylight. The plan was for them to run to the left.

Did Meggie expect her to try and escape, too? How often she had asked herself that – and she always came to the same conclusion: No, Meggie knows that I won’t leave her father alone. She loves him just as much.

Resa’s pace slowed. There it was, the fallen tree, its trunk green with moss. The little girl looked up at her, wide-eyed. They had feared that one of the children would talk, but they had been silent as the grave all morning.

Firefox swore when he saw the tree. He reined in his horse and told the first four horsemen to dismount and clear the obstacle out of the way. They obeyed, looking sullen, handed their horses’ reins to other men and strode toward the tree trunk. Resa dared not look at the roadside, for fear that any glance of hers might give away Dustfinger or Meggie. She thought she heard fingers snapping and then a whisper, barely audible. Not human words, but fire-words.

Dustfinger had once spoken them for her in the other world, where they didn’t work, where fire was deaf and dumb. “They sound much better when I say them there,” he had said, and he told her about the fire-honey he took from the elves. She remembered the sound very well, all the same – as if flames were biting their way through black coal, as if they were hungrily devouring white paper. No one else heard the whisper through the rustle of the leaves, the steady rain, the twittering of birds, and the chirping of crickets.

The fire licked up from beneath the bark of the tree like a nest full of snakes. The men didn’t notice. Only when the first flame shot up, hot and greedy, rising so high that it almost brought down the leaves of the trees, did they stumble back in alarm and disbelief. The riderless horses reared and tried to break free as the fire hissed and danced.

 

“Run!” whispered Resa, and the little girl ran for it, fleetfooted as a fawn. Children, women, men, they all ran toward the trees – Sootbird, the claw-fingered woman – past the shying horses they ran, and into the shelter of the dark forest. Two soldiers shot arrows after them, but their own 230

 

horses were rearing in fear of the fire, and the arrows buried themselves in the bark of trees instead of in human flesh. Resa saw fugitive after fugitive disappear among the trees while the soldiers shouted at one another, and it hurt her to stay standing there, it hurt badly.

The tree went on burning, its bark turned black… Run, thought Resa, run, all of you! Yet she herself still stood there although her feet longed to run, too, run away, run to her daughter waiting somewhere in the trees. Yet she stayed there. She stood still. There was just one thing she must not think of: that they would shut her up again. For if she did she would run in spite of Mo. She’d run and run and never stop again. She had been a prisoner too long, she had lived on nothing but memories too long, memories of Mo, memories of Meggie .. She had fed on them all those years when she served first Mortola, then Capricorn.

“Don’t get any silly ideas, Bluejay!” she heard one of the soldiers call back. “Or I’ll put an arrow through you!”

“What kind of ideas did you have in mind?” replied Mo. “Do I look stupid enough to run away from your crossbow?” She could almost have laughed. He’d always been able to make her laugh so easily.

“What are you waiting for? Fetch them back!” roared the Piper. His silver nose had slipped out of place, and his horse was still shying hard as he pulled on the reins. Some of the men obeyed, stumbling half-heartedly into the forest but retreating again as a shadow stirred in the undergrowth, growling.

“The Night-Mare!” one of them shouted, and the next moment they were all back in the middle of the road, pale-faced and with trembling hands, as if the swords they held could do nothing to defend them from the horror lurking in the trees.

“Night-Mare? This is broad daylight, you fools!” Firefox yelled at them. “That’s a bear, nothing but a bear!”

Hesitantly, they moved toward the forest again, keeping close together like a brood of chicks hiding behind their mother. Resa heard them swearing as they used their swords to cut a path through the twining wild vines and brambles, while their horses stood in the road snorting and trembling. Firefox and the Piper put their heads together, while the soldiers still standing in the road to guard the remaining prisoners stared at the forest wide-eyed, as if the Night-Mare that looked so deceptively like a bear would leap out at any moment and swallow them up, skin and hair and all, in the usual manner of ghosts.

Resa saw Mo glance at her, saw the relief in his face when he saw her – and his disappointment that she was still there, too. He was still pale, but no longer as pale as if the hand of Death had touched his face. She took a step toward the cart, wanting to go to him, take his hand, see if it was still hot with the fever, but one of the soldiers roughly pushed her back.

The tree was still burning. The flames crackled as if they were singing a mocking song about the Adderhead, and when the men who had gone into the forest came back, they brought not a single one of the escaped prisoners with them.

231

Chapter 45 – Poor Maggie

“Hello,” said a soft, musical voice, and Leonardo looked up. In front of him stood the most beautiful young girl he had ever seen, a girl who might have frightened him but for the sad expression in her blue eyes. He knew about sadness.

– Eva Ibbotson, The Mystery of the Seventh Witch

Meggie did not say a word. However hard Farid tried to cheer her up she just sat there among the trees, her arms wrapped around her legs, perfectly silent. Yes, they had set many of the captives free, but her parents were not among them.

Not one of those who managed to escape had been injured. One of the children had twisted his ankle, that was all, and he was small enough for the grown-ups to carry him. The forest had swallowed them up so quickly that after only a few steps the Adderhead’s men had found themselves chasing shadows. Dustfinger hid the children inside a hollow tree, the women crawled underneath a thicket of wild vine and nettles, while the Prince’s bear kept the soldiers at a distance. The men had climbed trees and perched high up among the leaves; Dustfinger and the Prince were the last to hide, after leading the soldiers astray in different directions.

The Black Prince advised the freed captives to go back to Ombra and, for the time being, to join the strolling players still encamped there. He himself had other plans. Before he left he spoke to Meggie, and she did not look quite so hopeless after that.

“He said he won’t let anyone hang my father,” she told Farid. “He says he knows that Mo is not the Bluejay, and he and his men will make the Adderhead realize that he’s caught the wrong man.” And she looked so hopeful as she said this that Farid just nodded and murmured, “That’s great!” – although he could think only that the Adderhead would execute Silvertongue all the same.

“What about the informer the Piper mentioned? Will the Prince look for him?” he asked Dustfinger, as they set out again.

“He won’t have to look for long,” Dustfinger said. “He just has to wait until one of the strolling players suddenly has his pockets full of silver.”

Silver. Farid had to admit that he was curious to see the silver towers of the Castle of Night. Even the battlements were said to be lined with silver. But they would not choose the same route as Firefox. “We know where they’re going,” said Dustfinger, “and there are shorter and safer ways to the Castle of Night than the road.”

“What about the Spelt-Mill?” asked Meggie. “The mill in the forest that you mentioned? Aren’t we going there first?”

“Not necessarily. Why?”

Meggie didn’t answer at once. Obviously, she guessed that the reply would not please Dustfinger.

“I gave CloudDancer a letter for Fenoglio,” she said at last, reluctantly. “I asked him to write something to save my parents and to send it to the mill.”

“A letter?” Dustfinger’s voice was so cutting that Farid instinctively put his arm around Meggie’s 232

 

shoulders. “Oh, wonderful! And suppose the wrong eyes read it?”

Farid ducked his head, but Meggie did not. Instead, she returned Dustfinger’s glance. “Nobody but Fenoglio can help them now,” she said. “You know that. You know it perfectly well.”

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Chapter 46 – A Knock on the Door

Lancelot considered his cup.

“He is inhuman,” he said at last. “But why should he be human? Are angels supposed to be human?”

– T. H. White, The Ill-Made Knight

The horseman Fenoglio had sent after Meggie had been gone for days now. “You must ride like the wind,” he had told the man, saying that the life or death of a young and, of course, beautiful girl was at stake. (After all, he wanted to be sure that the man would really do his best.) “But I’m afraid you won’t be able to persuade her to come back with you. She’s very obstinate,” he had added, “so decide on a new meeting place with her – a safe one this time – and tell her you’ll be back as soon as possible with a letter from me. Can you remember that?”

The soldier, a fresh-faced youth, had repeated his instructions without any trouble and galloped away, saying he would be back in three days’ time at the latest. Three days. If the lad kept his word, he’d soon be back – but Fenoglio would have no letter for him to take to Meggie. For the words that were to put the whole story right again – save the good, punish the bad simply would not come.

Fenoglio sat day and night in the room that Cosimo had given him, staring at the sheets of parchment that Minerva had brought him, in the company of the terrified Rosenquartz. But there seemed to be a jinx on it: Whatever he began to write seeped out of his head like ink running on damp paper. Where were the words he wanted? Why did they stay as dead as dry leaves? He argued with Rosenquartz, told him to send for wine, roast meat, sweetmeats, different ink, a new pen – while the smiths were hammering and forging metal out in the castle courtyards, the castle gates were reinforced, the pans for pitch were cleaned and spears sharpened. Preparing for war was a noisy business. Particularly when you were in a hurry.

And Cosimo was in a great hurry. The words for him had almost written themselves: words full of righteous anger. Cosimo’s criers had already gone out proclaiming them in. every marketplace and every village. Ever since then volunteers had been flocking to Ombra, soldiers recruited for the fight against the Adderhead. But where were the words with which Cosimo’s war would be won and Meggie’s father saved from the gallows at the same time?

How he racked his old brains! But nothing occurred to him. The days went by, and despair entered Fenoglio’s heart. Suppose the Adderhead had hanged Mortimer long ago? Would Meggie still read what he had written then? If her father was dead, wouldn’t what happened to Cosimo and this world itself be a matter of indifference to her? “Nonsense, Fenoglio,” he muttered, as he crossed out sentence after sentence after hours of work. “And I tell you what: If you can’t think of any words, they’ll have to do without them for once. Cosimo will just have to rescue Mortimer!”

” Oh yes? Suppose they storm the Adderhead’s castle, and everyone in the dungeons dies as the building burns? ” a voice inside him whispered. ” Or suppose Cosimo s troops are dashed to pieces on the steep and towering walls of the Castle of Night? ”

Fenoglio put down his pen and buried his face in his hands. It was dark again outside, and his head was as empty as the parchment in front of him. Cosimo had sent Fenoglio an invitation, 234

 

brought by Tullio, to dine at his table – but he had no appetite, although he liked to watch Cosimo listening with shining eyes to the songs he had written about him. Her Ugliness claimed that their words bored her husband, but this version of Cosimo loved what Fenoglio wrote for him: wonderful fairy tales about his heroic deeds in the past, the time he had spent with the White Women, and the battle at Capricorn’s fortress.

Yes, he was in high favor with the handsome prince, just as he himself had written – while Her Ugliness was more and more often refused admittance to her husband’s presence. So Violante spent even more time in the library than she had before Cosimo’s return. Since her father-in-law’s death, she no longer had to steal into it secretly or bribe Balbulus with her jewels, for Cosimo didn’t mind whether or not she read books. All that interested him was whether she was writing letters to her father or trying to make contact with the Adderhead in some other way. As if she ever had!

Fenoglio felt sorry for Violante, lonely as she was, but he consoled himself by remembering that she had always been solitary by nature. Even her son hadn’t changed that. And yet she had probably never before wanted any human being’s company as much as she wanted Cosimo’s.

The mark on her face had faded, but something else burned there now – love, just as pointless as the birthmark, for Cosimo did not return her love. On the contrary, he was having his wife watched. For some time Violante had been followed by a sturdy, bald-headed man who used to train the Laughing Prince’s hounds. Now he shadowed Her Ugliness as if he had turned himself into a dog, a sniffer dog trying to pick up the scent of all her thoughts. Apparently, Violante asked Balbulus to write letters to Cosimo, pleading letters assuring him of her loyalty and devotion, but people said he didn’t read them. One of his courtiers even claimed that Cosimo had forgotten how to read.

Fenoglio took his hands away from his face and looked enviously at the sleeping Rosenquartz, lying beside the inkwell and snoring peacefully. He was just picking up his pen again when there was a knock at the door.

Who could it be so late at night? Cosimo usually went out riding at this hour.

It was his wife standing at the door. Violante was wearing one of the black dresses she had put away when Cosimo returned. Her eyes were reddened, as if sore with weeping, but perhaps she was just using the beryl too often.

“Cosimo has taken Brianna with him again!” she said in a broken voice. “She’s allowed to ride with him, eat with him, she even spends the nights with him. She tells him stories now instead of me, she reads to him, sings for him, dances for him the way she once did for me. And I’m left alone.”

Fenoglio rose from his chair. “Come in!” he said. “Where’s your shadow?”

“I bought a litter of puppies and told him to train them, as a surprise for Cosimo. Since then he disappears on occasion.”

She was clever, oh yes, in fact very clever. Had he known that? No, he hardly even remembered making her up.

“Sit down!” He gave her his own chair – there was no other and sat on the chest under the window where he kept his clothes. Not his old, moth-eaten garments but the new ones that 235

 

Cosimo had given him, magnificent clothes made for a court poet.

“Can’t you talk to her?” Violante passed nervous hands over her black dress. “Brianna loves your songs, she might listen to you! I need her. I have no one else in this castle except for Balbulus, and all he wants is for me to give him gold to buy more pigments.”

“What about your son?”

“He doesn’t like me.”

Fenoglio did not reply, for she was right. Jacopo didn’t like anyone except his sinister grandfather, and no one liked Jacopo, either. He wasn’t easy to like.

Night came in from outside, and the hammering of the smiths. “Cosimo is planning to reinforce the city walls,” Violante went on. “He’s going to fell every tree from here to the river. They say Nettle cursed him for it. They say she said she’d go to the White Women and tell them to fetch him back again.”

“Don’t worry. The White Women don’t do as Nettle says.”

“Are you sure?” She rubbed her sore eyes. “Brianna is supposed to read to me! He has no right to take her away. I want you to write to her mother. Cosimo has all my letters read, but you can ask her to come. He trusts you. Write and tell Brianna’s mother that Jacopo wants to play with her son, and say she’s to bring him to the castle about midday. I know she used to be a minstrel woman, but I’m told she grows herbs now; all the physicians in the city go to her. I have some very rare plants in my garden. Write and tell her she can take anything from the garden that she likes: seeds, root runners, cuttings, anything at all if only she will come.”

Roxane. She wanted Roxane to come here.

“Why do you want to talk to her mother and not Brianna herself? She’s not a little girl anymore.”

“I tried! She won’t listen. She just looks at me in silence, murmurs excuses – and goes back to him. No, I have to speak to her mother.”

Fenoglio said nothing. From all he knew of Roxane, he wasn’t sure that she would come. After all, he himself had given her a proud nature and a dislike of royal blood. On the other hand hadn’t he promised Meggie to keep an eye on Dustfinger’s daughter? If he couldn’t keep any other promise, because his words had failed him so pitifully, perhaps he should at least try with this one. . Heavens, he thought. I wouldn’t like to be anywhere near Dustfinger when he hears that his daughter is spending her nights with Cosimo!

“Very well, I’ll send Roxane a messenger,” he said. “But don’t expect too much. I’ve heard that she isn’t particularly happy to have her daughter living at court.”

“I know!” Violante rose and glanced at the paper waiting on his desk. “Are you writing a new story? Is it about the Bluejay? You must show it to me first!” For a moment she was very much the Adderhead’s daughter.

“Of course, of course,” Fenoglio hastily assured her. “You’ll get it before even the strolling players. And I’ll write it the way you like a story best: dark, hopeless, sinister…” Cruel, too, he added silently. For Her Ugliness loved stories full of darkness. She didn’t want to be told tales of 236

 

good fortune and beauty, she liked to hear about death, ugly things, secrets heavy with tears. She wanted her very own world, and it had never heard of beauty and good fortune.

She was still gazing at him, with the same arrogant look that her father turned on the world.

Fenoglio remembered the words he had once written about her kindred: Noble blood –for centuries the Adderhead’s kin firmly believed that the blood flowing in their veins made them bolder, cleverer, stronger than all who were their subjects. The same look in their eyes for hundreds and hundreds of years, even in those of Her Ugliness, whom her noble family would happily have drowned at birth in the castle moat, like a puppy born deformed.

“The servants say Brianna’s mother can sing even better than she does. They say her mother knew how to make stones weep and roses blossom with her voice.” Violante patted her face, just where the birthmark had been such a fiery red only a short time ago.

“Yes, I’ve heard much the same.” Fenoglio followed her to the door.

“They even say she sang in my father’s castle, but I don’t believe that. My father never let any strolling players though his gate. The nearest they came was to be hanged outside it.” Yes, because there was once a rumor that your mother betrayed him with a minstrel, thought Fenoglio as he opened the door for her.

“Brianna says her mother doesn’t sing anymore because she believes her voice brings great misfortune to everyone she loves. It seems that happened to Brianna’s father.”

“I’ve heard that story, too.”

Violante went out into the corridor. Even at close quarters her birthmark was barely visible now. “You’ll send the messenger to her tomorrow morning?”

“If that’s what you want.”

She looked down the dark corridor. “Brianna will never talk about her father. One of the cooks says he was a fire-eater. The way that cook tells the story, Brianna’s mother was deeply in love with him, but then one of the fire-raisers fell in love with her himself and slashed the fire-eater’s face.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that one as well!” Fenoglio looked at her thoughtfully. Dustfinger’s bittersweet story was certainly very much to Violante’s taste.

“She took him to a physician, the cook says, and stayed with him until his face was healed.” How far away her voice sounded, as if she had lost herself among the words. Fenoglio’s words. “But he left her all the same.” Violante turned her face away. “Write that letter!” she said abruptly.

“Write it tonight.” Then she hurried away in her black dress, in such haste that it looked as if she were suddenly ashamed of coming to see him.

“Rosenquartz,” said Fenoglio, closing the door behind her. “Do you think I’m only any good at making up characters who are sad or bad?”

But the glass man was still asleep beside the quill, from which ink dripped onto the empty sheet of parchment.

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