“Sootbird?”

“Yes. It’s bad news. You ride back to Ombra and see to Jehan and Brianna. I’ll go and look for the Black Prince and warn him of this cuckoo in the nest.”

“And how are you going to find him?” Roxane smiled, as if she could see his baffled face. “Shall I take you to him?” “You?”

“Yes.” Up above, the guards called something to one another.

Dustfinger drew Roxane even closer to the wall. “The Prince cares for his Motley Folk very well,”

she whispered. “And as I’m sure you can imagine, he doesn’t always earn the money he needs for cripples and old folk, widows and orphans, by doing tricks in marketplaces. His men are skillful poachers and the terror of tax gatherers, they have hiding places all over the forest, in Argenta and Lombrica alike, and there are often sick or wounded men there. . Nettle will have nothing to do with robbers, nor will the moss-women, and they don’t trust most physicians. So some time ago they began coming to me. I’m not afraid of the forest, I’ve been in its darkest corners with you. Arrow wounds, broken bones, a bad cough – I know how to cure all those, and the Prince trusts me. I was always Dustfinger’s wife to him, even when I was married to another man.

Perhaps he was right.”

“Was he?” Dustfinger spun around. Someone was clearing his throat in the darkness.

“Didn’t you say we must be gone before the sun rises?” Farid’s voice sounded reproachful.

By fire and fairies, he’d forgotten the boy! And Farid was right. Morning couldn’t be far away, and the shadow of the Castle of Night was not the best place to discuss dead husbands.

“Very well. Catch the martens!” Dustfinger whispered into the night. “But don’t, for heaven’s sake, scare me to death like that again, understand? Or I’ll never let you make yourself invisible again.”

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Chapter 63 – The Badger’s Earth

 

“Oh, Sara. It is like a story.”

“It is a story … everything is a story. You are a story – I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.”

– Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Little Princess

Farid followed Dustfinger and Roxane through the night with an expression that must surely be as dark as the sky above them. It hurt to leave Meggie behind in the castle, however sensible it was. And now here was Roxane coming with them, too. Although he had to admit that she seemed to know exactly where she was going. They soon came upon the first hiding place, well concealed behind thorny undergrowth, but it was deserted. In the next they found two men who distrustfully drew their knives and did not put them back in their belts until Roxane had spoken to them at length. Perhaps they sensed the presence of Dustfinger and Farid, in spite of their invisibility. Fortunately, Roxane had once cured a nasty ulcer for one of them, and he finally told her where she would find the Prince.

The Badger’s Earth. Farid thought he heard those words twice. “Their main hideout,” was all that Roxane said. “We must be there by daybreak. But they warned me that there are said to be soldiers on the move, a great many of them.”

From then on Farid sometimes thought he heard the clink of swords in the distance, the snorting of horses, voices, marching footsteps – but perhaps he was only imagining it. Soon the first rays of sunlight penetrated the leaf canopy above them, gradually turning their bodies visible again, like reflections on dark water. It was good not to have to keep looking for his own hands and feet, and to see Dustfinger again. Even if he was walking beside Roxane.

Now and then Farid sensed her looking at him, as if she were still searching his dark face for some similarity to Dustfinger. At her farm she had once or twice asked him questions about his mother. Farid would have liked to tell her that his mother had been a princess, much, much more beautiful than Roxane, and that Dustfinger had loved her so dearly that he stayed with her for ten years until death took her from him, leaving him only with their son, their dark-skinned, black-eyed son who now followed him like a shadow. But his age wasn’t quite right for this tale, and moreover Dustfinger would probably have been furious if Roxane had asked him for the truth behind it, so in the end Farid told her only that his mother was dead – which was probably correct. If Roxane was stupid enough to think Dustfinger had come back to her only because he had lost another woman, all the better. Every glance that Dustfinger cast her filled Farid’s heart to the brim with jealousy. Suppose he decided to stay with her forever, at the farm with the fragrant fields of herbs? Suppose he stopped wanting to go from one marketplace to the next but preferred to live with her, kissing her and laughing with her as he already did only too often, forgetting fire and Farid?

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The forest became denser and denser, and the Castle of Night might have been only a bad dream, when they suddenly saw more than a dozen men standing among the trees around them. Armed men in ragged clothes. They appeared so silently that even Dustfinger hadn’t heard them. They surrounded them with hostile expressions on their faces, knives and swords in their hands, and stared at the two figures who were still almost transparent around the chests and arms.

“Hey, Snapper, don’t you know me?” asked Roxane, going up to one of them. “How are your fingers doing?”

The man’s face cleared. He was a heavily built fellow with a scar on his neck. “Ah, the herb-witch,” he said. “Of course. Why are you roaming the forest here so early? And what are those ghosts with you?”

“We’re not ghosts. We’re looking for the Black Prince.” As Dustfinger moved to Roxane’s side all the men’s weapons turned his way.

“What are you doing?” Roxane asked the men angrily. “Look at his face. Did you never hear of the fire-dancer? The Prince will set his bear on you if he hears that you threatened him.”

The men put their heads together and scrutinized Dustfinger’s scarred face uneasily.

“Three scars as pale as cobwebs,” whispered Snapper. “Oh yes, we’ve all heard about him, but only in songs. . ”

“Who says songs can’t be believed?” Dustfinger breathed into the cool morning air and whispered fire-words until a flame consumed his steaming breath. The robbers flinched back and stared at him, as if this only reinforced their certainty that he was a ghost. However, Dustfinger raised both hands in the air and put the flame out between them as if nothing could be easier. Then he bent down and cooled the palms of his hands on the dewy grass.

“Did you see that?” Snapper looked at the others. “That’s just what the Prince has always told us about him – he catches fire as you might catch a rabbit; he speaks to it like a lover.”

The robbers took the three into their midst. Farid looked uneasily at the men’s faces as he walked along beside them. They reminded him of other faces, faces from an earlier life, from a world that he did not like to remember, and he stayed as close as he could to Dustfinger’s side.

“Are you sure these are the Prince’s men?” Dustfinger asked Roxane in an undertone.

“Oh yes,” she whispered back. “He can’t choose who will follow him.”

Farid did not think this answer very reassuring.

The robbers in Farid’s old life had claimed caves full of treasure as their own, caverns more magnificent than the halls of the Castle of Night. The hideout where Snapper took them could not be compared with those caves. Its entrance, hidden in a crevice in the ground among tall beech trees, was so narrow that you had to squeeze your way in, and even Farid had to duck his head in the passage beyond it. The cave it led to was not much better. Other passages branched off, obviously leading even deeper underground. “Welcome to the Badger’s Earth!” said Snapper, while the men sitting on the floor of the cave looked at them suspiciously. “Who says that only the Adderhead can dig deep into the ground? There are several men among us who toiled in his mines for years. They found out how you can nest far down in the earth and not have it fall on 305

 

your head.”

The Prince was alone in a cave to one side of the others, only the bear was with him, and he looked tired. But at the sight of Dustfinger his face brightened, and the news they brought was not so much of a surprise to him as they had expected.

“Ah yes, Sootbird!” he said, and Snapper drew a finger across his throat at the mention of that name. “I ought to have asked myself much sooner how he could afford the alchemists’ powders he uses in his fire-eating shows. The few coins he earns in marketplaces wouldn’t pay for it. But unfortunately I didn’t have him watched until after the attack on the Secret Camp. He soon parted from the other prisoners we freed and met the Adderhead’s informers on the border.

While those he betrayed are in the dungeons of the Castle of Night, and there’s nothing I can do for them! Here I am stuck in a forest swarming with soldiers. The Adderhead is assembling them up on the road that leads to Ombra.”

“Cosimo?” It was Roxane who spoke the name, and the Prince nodded.

“Yes. I sent him three messengers with three warnings. One came back, but only to say that Cosimo laughed in his face. I’ll admit I don’t remember him as being quite so stupid. The year he spent away seems to have robbed him of his reason. He’s planning to make war on the Adderhead with an army of peasants. It’s as if we were to march against the Adderhead ourselves.”

“We’d have a better chance,” said Snapper.

“Yes, I expect we would.” The Black Prince sounded so discouraged that Farid’s heart failed him.

Secretly, he had always put far more trust in the Prince than in Fenoglio’s words, but what could this troop of ragged men digging themselves holes in the forest like rabbits do against the Castle of Night?

The men brought them something to eat, and Roxane looked at Dustfinger’s leg. She treated the wound with an ointment that made it smell like spring in the cave for a moment. And Farid couldn’t help thinking of Meggie. He remembered a story that he had heard by a fire on a cold night in the desert. It was the tale of a thief who fell in love with a princess; he still remembered it very well. The two were so deeply in love that they could speak to each other over a distance of many miles. Each could hear the other’s thoughts even if walls separated them, each knew whether the other was sad or happy .. but intently as Farid listened to his own feelings, he could sense nothing. He couldn’t even have said whether Meggie was still alive. She seemed to have gone away, gone away from his heart, from the world. When he brushed the tears from his eyes, he felt Dustfinger looking at him.

“I’ll have to rest this wretched leg or it will never heal,” he said quietly. “But we’ll go back. When the time comes .. ”

Roxane frowned, but she said nothing. The Prince and Dustfinger began talking so quietly that Farid had to move close to them to make out anything. Roxane put her head on Dustfinger’s lap and was soon asleep. But Farid curled up like a puppy beside him, closed his eyes, and listened to the two men.

The Black Prince wanted to know all about Silvertongue whether the day of the execution was fixed, where he was held prisoner, how his wound was doing. Dustfinger told him what he knew.

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And he told him about the book that Meggie had offered the Adderhead as a ransom for her father.

“A book to hold Death prisoner?” The Prince laughed incredulously. “Has the Adderhead taken to believing in fairy tales?”

Dustfinger did not reply to that. He said nothing about Fenoglio, he did not say they were all part of a story that an old man had written. In his place Farid wouldn’t have said so, either. The Black Prince probably wouldn’t believe there were words that could decide even his own fate, words like invisible paths from which you could not turn aside. The bear grunted in his sleep, and Roxane turned her head restlessly. She was holding Dustfinger’s hand as if she wanted to take him into her dreams.

“You told the boy you’d go back,” said the Prince. “You can come with us.”

“Are you going to the Castle of Night? Why? Do you plan to storm it with these few men? Or tell the Adder head that he’s caught the wrong man? With this on your nose?” Dustfinger put his hand among the blankets lying on the floor and brought out a bird mask. Blue jay feathers sewn to cracked leather. He put the mask on his scarred face.

“Many of us have worn that mask before,” said the Prince. “And now they’re going to hang another innocent man for the deeds we’ve done. I can’t allow that! This time it’s a bookbinder.

Last time, after we attacked one of the silver transports, they hanged a charcoal-burner just because he had a scar on his arm. His wife is probably still mourning him.”

“It’s not just the deeds you did. Fenoglio invented most of them!” Dustfinger sounded irritated.

“Damn it, Prince, you can’t save Silvertongue. You’ll only die, too. Or do you seriously think the Adderhead will let him go just because you’ve turned yourself in?”

“No, I’m not such a fool as that. But I must do something.” The Prince put his hand in his bear’s mouth, as he so often did, and as always that hand, as if miraculously, came back intact from between the bear’s teeth.

“Yes, yes, very well.” Dustfinger sighed. “You and your unwritten rules. You don’t even know Silvertongue! How can you want to die for someone you don’t know?”

“Who would you die for?” the Prince asked in return.

Farid saw Dustfinger look at Roxane’s sleeping face – and then turn to him. He quickly closed his eyes.

“You’d die for Roxane,” he heard the Prince say.

“Perhaps,” said Dustfinger, and through his lashes Farid saw him trace Roxane’s dark brows with his finger. “Or perhaps not. Do you have many informers in the Castle of Night?”

“Yes, indeed. Kitchen maids, stable boys, even a few of the guards – although they come very expensive – and most useful of all, a falconer who sends me a message now and then by one of his clever birds. I shall hear at once when they’ve fixed the day of the execution. You know the Adderhead doesn’t have such things done in a marketplace or in front of the common people in the castle courtyard anymore, not since you spoiled my punishment so thoroughly for him. He was never a friend of such spectacles, anyway. An execution is a serious matter to the 307

 

Adderhead. The gallows outside the castle will do for a poor minstrel, there’ll be no trouble about that, but the Bluejay will die inside the gate.”

“Yes. If his daughter’s voice doesn’t open that gate for him,” replied Dustfinger. “Her voice and a book – a book full of immortality.”

Farid heard the Black Prince laugh. “That sounds almost like some new song by the Inkweaver!”

“Yes,” replied Dustfinger in a husky voice. “It sounds just like him, doesn’t it?”

308

Chapter 64 – All Is Lost

 

‘Tis war! ‘Tis war! God’s angel stand by ye

And guide your hand.

‘Tis war, alas, and guiltless I would be

Of what betides this land.

– Matthias Claudius, “War Song”

 

After a few days’ rest, Dustfinger’s leg was much better, and Farid was just telling the two martens how they’d soon all be stealing into the Castle of Night to rescue Meggie and her parents when bad news came to the Badger’s Earth. One of the men who had been watching the road to Ombra brought it. His face was covered with blood and he could hardly keep on his feet.

“They’re killing them!” he kept stammering over and over again. “They’re killing them all.”

“Where?” asked the Prince. “Where exactly?”

“Not two hours from here,” the messenger managed to say. “Keep going north.”

The Prince left ten men at the Badger’s Earth. Roxane tried to persuade Dustfinger to stay, too.

“You must spare your leg, or it will never heal,” she said. But he would not listen to her, so she, too, came on the fast, silent march through the forest.

They heard the sound of battle long before they could see anything. Screams reached Farid’s ears, cries of pain, and the whinnying of horses, shrill with fear. A moment came when the Prince signaled to them to go more slowly. A few more paces, bending low, and the ground in front of them dropped steeply to the road that ended, many miles farther on, at the gates of Ombra.

Dustfinger made Farid and Roxane get down on the ground, although no one was looking their way. Hundreds of men were fighting among the trees down below, but there were no robbers among them. Robbers do not wear shirts of chain mail, breastplates, and helmets decked with peacock feathers, they seldom have horses, and never coats of arms embroidered on silken surcoats.

Dustfinger held Roxane close when she began to sob. The sun was sinking behind the hills as the Adderhead’s soldiers cut down Cosimo’s men one by one. It looked as if the battle had been raging for a long time; the road was covered with dead bodies lying side by side. Only a small troop was still on horseback amid all this death. Cosimo himself was among them, his beautiful face distorted by rage and fear. For a moment it looked almost as if those few mounted men would be able to carve themselves a breach in the enemy ranks, but then Firefox came among them with a company of men gleaming like deadly beetles in their armor. They mowed down Cosimo and his retinue like dry grass as the sun sank right behind the hills, as red as if all the 309

 

blood that had been shed was reflected in the sky. Firefox himself struck Cosimo from his horse, and Dustfinger buried his face in Roxane’s hair, as if he were tired of seeing Death at work. But Farid did not turn his head away. His face unmoving, he looked at the slaughter and thought of Meggie – Meggie, who perhaps still believed that a little ink could cure anything in this world.

Would she believe it if her eyes saw what his were seeing now?

Few of Cosimo’s men survived their prince. Barely a dozen fled into the trees. No one went to the trouble of pursuing them. The Adderhead’s soldiers broke into cries of triumph and began plundering the corpses like a flock of vultures in human form. They did not get Cosimo’s body, however. Firefox himself drove his soldiers off and had that beautiful corpse loaded onto a horse and taken away.

“Why are they doing that?” asked Farid.

“Why? Because his corpse is the proof that he really is dead this time,” said Dustfinger bitterly.

“Yes, he is indeed,” whispered the Black Prince. “I suppose you think yourself immortal if you’ve come back from the dead once. But he wasn’t, any more than his men, and now almost all the people of Lombrica will be widows and orphans.”

It was many hours before the Adderhead’s soldiers finally moved away, laden with what they could rob from the dead. Darkness was coming on again when silence fell at last among the trees, the silence that is felt only in the presence of Death.

Roxane was the first to find a way down the slope. She was no longer weeping. Her face was fixed and rigid, but whether with anger or pain Farid could not have said. The robbers hesitated before following her, for the first White Women were already standing there among the dead.

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Chapter 65 – Lord of the Story

Iron helmets will not save

Even heroes from the grave.

Good men’s blood will drain away

While the wicked win the day.

– Heinrich Heine, “Valkyries”

 

Fenoglio was wandering among the dead when the robbers found him. Night fell, but he did not know what night it was. Nor could he remember how many days had passed since he rode out of the gates of Ombra with Cosimo. He knew only one thing: They were all dead. Minerva’s husband, his neighbor, the father of the boy who had so often begged him for a story. All dead.

And he himself would very likely have been dead, too, if his horse hadn’t shied and thrown him.

He had crawled away into the trees, to hide there like an animal and watch the slaughter.

Since the departure of the Adderhead’s soldiers he had been stumbling from one corpse to the next, cursing himself, cursing his story, cursing the world he had created. When he felt the hand on his shoulder he actually thought for a moment that Cosimo had risen from the dead yet again, but it was the Black Prince standing behind him.

“What are you doing here?” he snarled at him and the men with him. “Do you want to die, too?

Go away and hide, and leave me in peace.” He struck his brow. His damned head that had invented them all, and with them all the misfortune they were wading through like black, stinking water! He fell on his knees beside a dead man whose open eyes were staring at the sky, and blamed himself furiously – himself, the Adder head, Cosimo and his haste – and then suddenly fell silent when he saw Dustfinger standing next to the Prince.

“You!” he stammered and got to his feet again, swaying. “You’re still alive! You’re not dead yet, even though I wrote it that way.” He took Dustfinger’s arm and clutched it tightly.

“Yes, disappointing, isn’t it?” replied Dustfinger, shaking off Fenoglio’s hand roughly. “Is it any comfort to you that no doubt, but for Farid, I’d have been lying as dead and cold as these men?

After all, you didn’t foresee him.”

Farid? Oh yes, the boy plucked by Mortimer from his desert story. He was standing beside Dustfinger and staring at Fenoglio with murder in his eyes. No, the boy really did not belong here. Whoever had sent him to protect Dustfinger, it hadn’t been him, Fenoglio! But that was the wretched part of the whole business! With everyone interfering in his story, how could it turn out well?

“I can’t find Cosimo!” he muttered. “I’ve been looking for him for hours. Have any of you seen him?”

“Firefox has had his body taken away,” the Prince replied. “I expect they’ll put it on public display so that this time no one can claim he’s still alive.”

Fenoglio stared at him until the bear began to growl. Then he shook his head again and again. “I don’t understand it!” he stammered. “How could it happen? Didn’t Meggie read what I wrote for her? Didn’t Roxane find her?” He looked despairingly at Dustfinger. How well he remembered 311

 

the day he had described his death! A good scene, one of the best he’d ever written.

“Oh yes, Roxane gave Meggie the letter. Ask her yourself if you don’t believe me. Although I don’t think she’ll feel much like talking at the moment.” Dustfinger pointed to the woman walking among the corpses. Roxane. The beautiful Roxane. She bent over the dead, looked into their faces, and finally kneeled down beside a man whom a White Woman was approaching. She quickly put her hands over his ears, bent over his face, and gestured to the two robbers who were following her with torches in their hands. No, she would certainly not feel much like talking just now.

Dustfinger looked at him. Why that reproachful expression? Fenoglio wanted to snap at him.

After all, I invented your wife, too! But he bit back the words. “Very well. So Roxane gave Meggie the letter,” he said instead. “But did Meggie read it?”

Dustfinger looked at him with great dislike. “She tried to, but the Adderhead had her taken to the Castle of Night that very evening.”

“Oh God!” Fenoglio looked around. The dead faces of Cosimo’s men stared at him. “So that’s it!”

he cried. “I thought all this had happened only because Cosimo wanted to set off too soon, but no! The words, my wonderful words .. Meggie can’t have read them, or everything would have been all right!”

“Nothing would have been all right!” Dustfinger’s voice was so cutting that Fenoglio involuntarily flinched. “Not a man of all these lying here would be dead if you hadn’t brought Cosimo back!”

The Prince and his men stared at Dustfinger, unable to make anything of this. Of course, they had no idea what he was talking about. But obviously Dustfinger knew only too well. Meggie had told him about Cosimo. Or had it been the boy?

“Why are you staring at him like that?” Farid challenged the robbers, ranging himself at Dustfinger’s side. “It was exactly as he says! Fenoglio brought Cosimo back from the dead. I was there myself.”

How the fools flinched away! Only the Black Prince looked thoughtfully at Fenoglio.

“What nonsense!” Fenoglio said. “No one comes back to this world from the dead! Think what a crowd there’d be! I made a new Cosimo, a brand-new one, and everything would have turned out well if Meggie hadn’t been interrupted while she read! My Cosimo would have been a wonderful ruler, a –”

Before he could say any more, the Prince’s black hand came down over his mouth. “That’s enough,” he said. “Enough talking while the dead lie here around us. Your Cosimo is dead, wherever he came from, and the man they take for the Bluejay because of your songs may well be dead soon, too. You seem to enjoy playing with Death, Inkweaver.”

Fenoglio tried to protest, but the Black Prince had already turned to his men. “Go on looking for the wounded!” he told them. “And hurry! It’s time we got off this road.”

They found barely two dozen survivors. Two dozen among hundreds of dead. When the robbers set off again with the wounded men, Fenoglio staggered after them in silence without asking where they were going. “The old man is following us!” he heard Dustfinger tell the Prince.

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“Where else would he go?” was all the Prince replied – and Dustfinger said nothing. But he kept well away from Fenoglio, as if he were Death itself.

313

Chapter 66 – Blank Paper

We make for your sake such things as stand fast,

Through the ages these pages forever will last.

On blank paper the printer sets down what is heard,

Giving life to what’s rife with the power of the word.

– Michael Kongehl, “On the White Art”, Die Weisse und die Schwarze Kunst

 

When Mortola had Mo’s cell unlocked, Meggie was just telling him about the Laughing Prince’s festivities, the tightrope-walker and the Black Prince and Farid’s juggling with the torches. Mo put his arm protectively around her as the bolts outside were shot back and Mortola came into the cell, flanked by Basta and the Piper. The sunlight falling into the room made Basta’s face look like boiled lobster.

“Look at that, what an idyll! Father and daughter reunited,” sneered Mortola. “Truly touching!”

“Hurry up!” the guard told her through the door, low-voiced. “If the Adderhead hears that I let you in to see him, they’ll put me in the pillory for three days!”

“And if they do I’ve paid you well enough, haven’t I?” was all Mortola replied, while Basta went up to Mo with a vicious smile.

“Well, Silvertongue,” he purred, “didn’t I say you’d all fall into our trap yet?”

“You look more as if it was you who fell into Dustfinger’s trap,” replied Mo, quickly putting Meggie behind him when, by way of answer, Basta snapped open his knife.

“Basta! Stop that!” Mortola snapped at him. “We don’t have time for your games.”

Meggie came out from behind Mo’s back as Mortola moved toward her. She wanted to show the old woman that she wasn’t afraid of her (even if, of course, that was only a brave lie).

“Those were interesting words that you had hidden in your clothing,” Mortola said to her, low-voiced. “The Adderhead was particularly interested in the part about three very special words.

Oh, see how pale she’s gone around her pretty little nose! Yes, the Adderhead knows about your plans, little pigeon, and he knows now that Mortola isn’t as stupid as he thought. But unfortunately he still wants the book you promised him. The fool really does believe that you two can keep his death imprisoned in a book.” The Magpie wrinkled her nose at such princely stupidity and came yet closer to Meggie. “Yes, he’s a gullible fool, like all princes!” she whispered.

“We both know that, don’t we? For the words you carried with you also say that Cosimo the Fair will conquer this castle and kill the Adderhead, with the aid of the book your father is to bind for him. But how can that be so? Cosimo is dead, and for good this time. Oh, how alarmed you look, you little witch!” Her bony fingers pinched Meggie’s cheeks hard. Mo went to strike her hand away, but Basta faced him with the knife. “Your tongue has lost its magic power, my little darling!” said the Magpie. “The words are only words. The book your father is to bind for the Adderhead will be nothing but a blank book – and once the Silver Prince finally realizes that, nothing will save you two from the hangman. And Mortola will be avenged at last.”

“Leave her alone, Mortola!” Mo reached for Meggie’s hand in spite of Basta’s knife, and Meggie clasped his fingers firmly in hers as thoughts raced through her mind in confusion. Cosimo was 314

 

dead? For the second time? What did that mean? Nothing, she thought. Nothing at all, Meggie.

Because you never read the words that were to protect him.

Mortola seemed to notice her relief, for the Magpie’s eyes became as narrow as her lips. “Ah, so that doesn’t trouble you? Do you think I’d lie to you? Or do you believe in that book of immortality yourself? Let me tell you something.” The Magpie’s thin fingers dug into Meggie’s shoulder. “It’s a book, no more, and I am sure you and your father remember what my son used to do with books! Capricorn would never have been fool enough to entrust his life to one, even if you’d promised him immortality for it! And furthermore .. those three words that it seems must not be written in the book . . I know them now, too.”

“What do you mean by that, Mortola?” asked Mo quietly. “Do you by any chance dream of putting Basta here on the Adderhead’s throne? Or even yourself?”

The Magpie cast a quick glance at the guard outside the cell door, but he had his back to them, and she turned to Mo again, her face expressionless. “Whatever I intend to do, Silvertongue,” she hissed at him, “you won’t live to see it. This story is over for you. Why isn’t he in chains?” she snapped at the Piper. “He’s still a prisoner, isn’t he? At least tie his hands while you move him.”

Meggie was about to protest, but Mo cast her a warning glance.

“Believe me, Silvertongue,” said Mortola in a low voice as the Piper roughly tied Mo’s hands behind his back, “even if the Adderhead sets you free after you’ve made him his book, you won’t get far. And Mortola’s word is worth more than the words of a poet. Take the pair of them to the Old Chamber!” she ordered as she went to the door again. “But watch them closely, and make sure that not a single book falls into their hands.”

The Old Chamber lay in the most remote part of the Castle of Night, far from the halls where the Adderhead held court. The corridors down which Basta and the Piper led them were dusty and deserted. No silver adorned the columns and doors here, there was no glass in the draughty windows. The room whose door the Piper finally opened, with a mocking bow to Mo, seemed to have been unoccupied for a long time. The pink fabric of the bed hangings was moth-eaten. The bunches of flowers standing in pitchers in the window niches were long dried up; dust was caught in the withered blossoms, and lay thick and dirty white on the chests that stood under the windows. In the middle of the chamber there was a table: a long wooden surface laid on trestles. A man stood behind it, as pale as paper, with white hair and ink stains on his fingers. He gave Meggie only a quick glance, but he studied Mo as thoroughly as if someone had asked him to deliver an expert opinion on him.

“Is this the man?” he asked the Piper. “He looks as if he’d never held a book in his hand in his life, let alone had the faintest idea how to bind one.”

Meggie saw a smile steal over Mo’s face. Without a word he went over to the table and examined the tools lying on it.

“My name is Taddeo, and I am the librarian here,” the stranger went on, sounding annoyed. “I don’t suppose that a single one of these objects means anything to you, but I can assure you that the paper you see there alone is worth more than your wretched robber’s life. The finest product of the best paper mill for a thousand miles around, enough to bind more than two books of five hundred pages. Although a genuine bookbinder, of course, would prefer parchment to any paper, however good.”

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Mo held out his bound hands to the Piper. “There could be two opinions about that,” he said, as the silver-nosed minstrel, his expression sullen, undid his bonds. “You should be glad I asked for paper. Parchment for this book would cost a fortune. Quite apart from the hundreds of goats that would have to give their lives for it. And as for the quality of these sheets, it’s by no means as good as you claim. The texture is coarse, but if there’s no better available it will have to do. I hope at least it’s well sized. As for the rest of this” – Mo’s expert fingers passed over the tools lying ready – “it looks serviceable.”

Knives and bone folders, hemp, strong thread and needles to stitch the pages, glue and a pot to heat it in, beech wood for the back and front covers, leather to go over them – Mo picked them all up, as he did in his own workshop, before he set to work. Then he looked around. “What about the press and the sewing frame? And what am I going to heat the glue with?”

“You .. you’ll have everything you need before evening,” replied Taddeo, in some confusion.

“The clasps are all right, but I shall need another file, and leather and linen for the tapes.”

“Of course, of course. Anything you say.” The librarian nodded, very ready to oblige now, while an incredulous smile spread over his pale face.

“Good.” Mo leaned on the table, supporting himself with both hands. “I’m sorry, but I’m not very strong on my legs yet. I hope the leather is more flexible than the parchment, and as for the glue,” he added, picking up the pot and sniffing, “well, we’ll see if it’s good enough. And bring me some paste, too. I’ll use glue only for the covers. Bookworms like the flavor too much.”

Meggie relished the sight of the surprised faces. Even the Piper was staring at Mo in disbelief.

Only Basta remained unmoved. He knew that he had brought the librarian a bookbinder, not a robber.

“My father needs a chair,” said Meggie, with an imperious glance at the librarian. “Can’t you see he’s injured? Is he supposed to work standing up?”

“Standing up? No .. no, of course not! By no means. I’ll have an armchair brought at once,”

answered the librarian distractedly. He was still staring at Mo. “You .. er . . you know a remarkable amount about books for a highwayman.”

Mo gave him a smile. “Yes, don’t I?” he said. “Perhaps the highwayman was once a bookbinder?

Don’t they say that all kinds of professions are to be found among the outlaws? Farmers, cobblers, physicians, minstrels –”

“Never mind what he once was,” the Piper interrupted. “He’s a murderer, anyway, so don’t fall for his soft voice, bookworm. He kills without batting an eyelid. Ask Basta if you don’t believe me.”

“Yes, very true!” Basta rubbed his burned skin. “He’s more dangerous than a nest of vipers. And his daughter’s no better. I hope those knives won’t give you any silly ideas,” he said to Mo. “The guards will be counting them regularly, and they’ll cut off one of your daughter’s fingers for every knife that goes missing. And the same applies to any other stupid tricks you try. Do you understand?”

Mo did not answer him, but he looked at the knives as if to count them for safety’s sake. “Oh, do get him a chair!” said Meggie to the librarian impatiently as Mo leaned on the table again.

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“Yes, of course! At once!” Taddeo hurried away, but the Piper gave an ugly laugh.

“Listen to the little witch! Ordering people around like a prince’s brat! Well, not surprising, is it, since she claims to be the daughter of a man who can keep Death a prisoner between two wooden covers! What about you, Basta? Do you believe her story?”

Basta put his hand to the amulet hanging around his neck. It was not a rabbit’s paw, as he had worn in Capricorn’s service, but something that looked suspiciously like a human finger bone.

“Who knows?” he muttered.

“Yes, who knows?” agreed Mo, without turning to look at the two of them. “But I can summon Death, anyway, can’t I, Basta? So can Meggie.”

The Piper cast Basta a swift glance.

Basta had pale blotches on his burned skin. “All I know,” he growled, his hand still on his amulet,

“is that you should have been dead and buried long ago, Silvertongue. And the Adderhead would do better to listen to Mortola instead of your witchy daughter. He ate out of her hand, did the Silver Prince. He fell for her lies.”

The Piper straightened his back, as ready to attack as the viper on his master’s coat of arms. “Fell for her lies?” he said, in his curiously strained voice. He was a good head taller than Basta. “The Adderhead falls for nothing anyone says. He is a great ruler, greater than any other. Firefox sometimes forgets that, and so does Mortola. Don’t go making the same mistake. And now get out. The Adderhead’s orders are that no one who ever worked for Capricorn is to be on guard in this room. Could that mean that he doesn’t trust you?”

Basta’s voice turned to a hiss. “You worked for Capricorn once yourself, Piper!” he said through compressed lips. “You’d be nothing but for him.”

“Oh yes? You see this nose?” The Piper stroked his silver nose. “I once had a nose like yours, an ordinary nose of flesh and blood. It hurt losing it, but the Adder head had a better one made for me, and since then I don’t sing for drunken fire-raisers, I sing only for him – a real prince whose family is older than the towers of this castle. If you don’t want to serve him, then go back to Capricorn’s fortress. Maybe his ghost is haunting those burned-out walls – oh, but you’re afraid of ghosts, aren’t you, Basta?”

The two men were standing so close that the blade of Basta’s knife wouldn’t have fitted between them.

“Yes, I am afraid of ghosts,” he hissed. “But at least I don’t spend every night on my knees, whimpering because I’m afraid the White Women might fetch me away, like your fine new master.”

The Piper struck Basta in the face so hard that his head hit the door frame. Blood ran down his burned cheek in a trail of red. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Take care to avoid dark corridors, Piper!” he whispered. “You don’t have a nose anymore, but one can always find something else to cut off.”

When the librarian came back with the chair Basta had gone, and the Piper left, too, after posting two guards outside the door. “No one comes in or goes out except the librarian!” Meggie heard him ordering brusquely before he left. “And check up regularly to make sure the Bluejay is 317

 

working.”

Taddeo smiled awkwardly at Mo as the Piper’s footsteps died away outside, as if he felt he should apologize for the soldiers guarding the door. “Excuse me,” he said quietly, placing the chair at the table for him, “but I have a few books that are showing strange signs of damage.

Could you maybe take a look at them?”

Meggie had to suppress a smile, but Mo acted as if the librarian had asked him the most natural question in the world. “Of course,” he said.

Taddeo nodded and glanced at the door. One of the guards was pacing up and down outside, looking sullen. “But Mortola mustn’t know, so I’ll come back when it’s dark,” he whispered to Mo. “Luckily, she goes to bed early. There are wonderful books in this castle, but sad to say no one here can appreciate them. It was different in the past, but the past is over and forgotten. I’ve heard matters aren’t much better at the Laughing Prince’s castle these days, but at least they have Balbulus there. We were all very sorry when the Adder head gave his daughter our best illuminator to take with her as her dowry! Since then I’m not allowed to employ more than two scribes and one illuminator of only average talent. The only copies I can commission are of manuscripts about the Adderhead’s ancestors, the mining and working of silver, or the art of war. Last year, when wood ran short again, Firefox even heated the small banqueting hall with my finest books.” Tears came to Taddeo’s clouded eyes.

“Bring me the books whenever you like,” said Mo.

The old librarian passed the hem of his dark blue tunic over his eyes. “Oh yes!” he murmured.

“Oh yes, I will. Thank you.”

Then he was gone. Sighing, Mo sat down in the chair that Taddeo had brought him. “Very well,”

he said. “Let’s get down to work. A book to keep Death at bay – what an idea! It’s just a pity it’s for this butcher. You’ll have to help me, Meggie, with the folding and stitching, the pressing. . ”

She just nodded. Of course she would help him. There were few things she liked doing better.

It felt so familiar, watching Mo at work again – setting the paper straight, folding it, cutting and stitching it. He worked more slowly than usual, and his hand kept going to his chest and the place where Mortola had wounded him. But Meggie could tell that carrying out the familiar movements did him good, even if some of the tools were not like those he was used to. The actions had been the same for hundreds of years, in both this world and the other one.

After only a few hours the Old Chamber had something curiously familiar about it, like a refuge and not just another prison. When twilight began to fall outside, the librarian and a servant brought them a couple of oil lamps. The warm light almost made the dusty room look full of life, for the first time in ages.

“It’s a long while since any lamps were lit in this room,” said Taddeo, putting a second one on the table for Mo.

“Who lived in this room last?” asked Mo.

“Our first princess,” replied Taddeo. “Her daughter Violante married the Laughing Prince’s son. I wonder if Violante knows that Cosimo has died for the second time.” He looked sadly out the window. A moist wind was blowing in, and Mo weighted the paper down with a piece of wood.

“Violante came into the world with a birthmark that disfigured her face,” the librarian went on, 318

 

in an abstracted voice, as if he were telling this story not to them but to some distant hearer.

“Everyone said it was a punishment, a curse from the fairies because her mother had fallen in love with a minstrel. The Adderhead had her mother banished to this part of the castle as soon as the baby was born, and she lived here with her daughter until she died .. died very suddenly.”

“That’s a sad story,” said Mo.

“Believe me,” replied Taddeo bitterly, “if all the sad stories these walls have seen were written down in books, we could fill every room in the castle with them.”

Meggie looked around as if she could see all those books of sad stories. “How old was Violante when she was betrothed to Cosimo and sent to Ombra?” she asked.

“Seven. And the daughters of our present princess were only six when they were betrothed and sent away. We all hope she’ll have a son this time!” Taddeo let his eyes linger on the paper that Mo had cut to size, the tools .. “It’s good to see life in this room again,” he said quietly. “I’ll come back with the books as soon as I’m sure that Mortola is asleep.”

“Six, seven years old – my God, Meggie,” said Mo when Taddeo had gone, “here you are, thirteen already, and I still haven’t sent you away, let alone betrothed you to anyone!”

It felt good to laugh, even if the sound echoed strangely in this high-ceilinged room.

Taddeo did not come back until hours later. Mo was still working, although he put his hand to his chest more and more often, and Meggie had already tried persuading him once or twice to lie down and sleep. “Sleep?” was all he said. “I haven’t slept properly for a single night in this castle.

And anyway, I want to see your mother again, and I won’t be able to do that until this book is finished.”

The librarian brought him two volumes. “Look at this!” he whispered, pushing the first over to Mo. “See those places where the binding is eaten away? And inside it looks almost as if the ink were rusting. These are holes in the parchment. You can hardly read some of the words now.

What can have caused it? Worms, beetles? I never used to concern myself with these things. I had an assistant who knew all about these sicknesses that books suffer, but one morning he disappeared. They say he joined the robbers in the forest.”

Mo picked up the book, opened it, and passed his hand over the pages. “Good heavens!” he said.

“Who painted this? I’ve never seen such beautiful illuminations.”

“Balbulus,” replied Taddeo. “The illuminator who was sent away with Violante. He was very young when he painted this book. Look, his script was still a little awkward, but now his mastery is impeccable.”

“How do you know?” asked Meggie.

The librarian lowered his voice. “Violante has a book sent to me now and then. She knows how much I admire the craftsmanship of Balbulus, and she knows there’s no one else left in the Castle of Night who loves books. Not since her mother died. Do you see the chests there?” He pointed to the heavy, dusty wooden chests by the door and under the windows. “Violante’s mother kept her books in them, hidden among her clothes. She would take them out only in the evening and show them to the little girl, although I suppose the child hardly understood a word of what her mother read her at the time. But then, soon after Capricorn had disappeared, Mortola came here. The 319

 

Adderhead had asked her to train the maids in the kitchen – no one said what exactly they were to be trained to do. Then Violante’s mother asked me to hide her books in the library, because Mortola had her room searched at least twice a day – she never found out what for. This,” he said, pointing to the book that Mo was still leafing through, “was one of her favorites. The little girl would point to a picture and then her mother told her a story about it. I was going to give it to Violante when they sent her away, but she left it behind in this room. Perhaps because she didn’t want to take any memories of this sad place to her new life with her. All the same, I’d like to save it as a memento of her mother. You know, I think that a book always keeps something of its owners between its pages.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” said Mo. “I’m sure of it.”

“And?” The old man looked at him hopefully. “Do you know how it can be preserved from further harm?”

Mo carefully closed the book. “Yes, but it won’t be easy. Woodworm, the corrosive effect of the ink, who knows what else. . Does the second book look the same?”

“Oh, that one” – the librarian cast another nervous look at the door – “Well, it’s not in such a bad way yet. But I thought you might like to see it. Balbulus completed it not long ago, for Violante. It contains,” he said, looking uncertainly at Mo, “it contains all the songs that the strolling players sing about the Bluejay. As far as I know there are only two copies. Violante owns one, and the other is before you and is a copy that she had specially made for me. They say the man who wrote the songs didn’t want them written down, but any minstrel will sing them to you for a few coins. That was how Violante collected them and had them written out by Balbulus. The strolling players, you see – well, they’re like walking books here, where real books are so few and far between! You know,” he whispered to Mo as he opened the volume, “I sometimes think this world would have lost its memory long ago but for the Motley Folk. Unfortunately, the Adderhead is only too fond of hanging them! I’ve often suggested sending a scribe to see them before they’re executed, to get all those beautiful songs written down before the words die with them, but no one in this castle listens to an old librarian.”

“No, very likely not,” murmured Mo, but Meggie could tell from his voice that he hadn’t been listening to anything Taddeo had said. Mo was immersed in the letters, the beautiful written characters flowing over the parchment in front of him like a delicate river of ink.

“Forgive my curiosity.” Taddeo cleared his throat, embarrassed. “I’ve heard that you deny being the Bluejay . but if you will allow me . . ” He took the book from Mo’s hand and opened it at a page that Balbulus had illuminated lavishly. A man stood between two trees, so wonderfully painted that Meggie thought she could hear the rustle of the leaves. He wore a bird mask over his face. “That’s how Balbulus painted the Bluejay,” whispered Taddeo, “just as the songs describe him, dark-haired, tall .. doesn’t he look like you?”

“I don’t know,” said Mo. “He’s wearing a mask, isn’t he?”

“Yes, yes, indeed.” Taddeo was still looking intently at him. “But did you know that they say something else about the Bluejay? They say he has a very beautiful voice, not at all like the bird that shares his name. It’s said that he can tame bears and wolves with a few words. Forgive me for being so forward, but” – he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone – ” you have a very beautiful voice. Mortola tells strange tales of it. And then, when you have the scar, too . . ” He stared at Mo’s arm.

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“Oh, you mean this, don’t you?” Mo placed his finger under a line beside which Balbulus had painted a pack of white dogs, and read: ” ‘High on his left arm he will bear the scar to his dying day.’ Yes, I do have a scar like that, but I didn’t get it from the dogs in this song.” He put his hand to his arm, as if remembering the day when Basta had found them in the tumbledown hut full of broken pots and tiles.

However, the old librarian took a step back. “So you are him!” he breathed. “The hope of the poor, the terror of butchers, avenger and robber, as much at home in the forest as the bears and wolves?”

Mo shut the book and pressed the metal clasps into the leather-covered binding. “No,” he said.

“No, I’m not, but thank you very much for the book, all the same. It’s a long time since I had one in my hands, and it will be good to have something to read again, won’t it, Meggie?”

“Yes,” was all she said, taking the book from his hand. Songs about the Bluejay. What would Fenoglio have said if he’d known that Violante had had them written down in secret? And they might offer so much help! Her heart leaped as she thought of the possibilities, but Taddeo immediately dashed her hopes.

“I’m very sorry,” he said, taking the book gently but firmly from her hands again. “But I can’t leave either of the books here with you. Mortola has been talking to me – to everyone who has anything to do with the library. She’s threatened to have anyone who so much as brings a book into this room blinded. Blinded, imagine it! What a threat, when only our eyes reveal the world of words to us! I’ve already risked far too much coming here with them at all, but I love those books so much that I had to ask your advice. Please, tell me what I must do to save them!”

Meggie was so disappointed that she would have turned down his request point blank, but of course Mo saw things differently.

Mo thought only of the sick books. “Of course,” he said to Taddeo. “I’d better write it down for you. It will take time weeks, months – and I don’t know if you’ll be able to get all the materials you need, but it’s worth a try. I’m not happy about suggesting this, but I’m afraid you’ll have to take apart at least the first book, because if you’re to save it, the pages must bleach in the sun. If you don’t know how to go about it – and it must be done with the utmost care – I’ll be happy to do it for you. Mortola can watch if she wants, to make sure I’m not doing anything dangerous.”

“Oh, thank you!” The old man bowed deeply as he put the two books firmly under his thin arm.

“Many, many thanks. I really do most fervently hope the Adderhead will let you live, and if he doesn’t that he grants you a quick death.”

Meggie would very much have liked to give him the answer this remark deserved, but Taddeo scurried away too fast on his grasshopper legs.

“Mo, don’t you help him!” she said when the guard outside had bolted the door again. “Why should you? He’s a miserable coward!”

“Oh, I can understand him,” said Mo. “I wouldn’t like to do without my eyes, either, even though we have useful inventions like Braille in our own world.”

“All the same, I wouldn’t help him.” Meggie loved her father for his strangely soft heart, but her own could not summon up any sympathy for Taddeo. She imitated his voice. ‘“I hope he grants 321

 

you a quick death!’ How can anyone say such a thing?”

But Mo wasn’t listening. “Have you ever seen such beautiful books, Meggie?” he asked, lying down on the bed.

“You bet I have!” she said indignantly. “Any book I’m allowed to read is more beautiful, right?”

But Mo did not reply. He had turned his back to her and was breathing deeply and peacefully.

Obviously, sleep had found its way to him at last.

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Chapter 67 – Kindness and Mercy

 

Here are we five or six strung up, you see,

And here the flesh that all too well we fed,

Bit by bit eaten and rotten, rent and shred,

And we the bones grow dust and ash withal.

– Francjois Villon, “Ballade of the Hanged Men”

 

“When are we going back?” Farid asked Dustfinger this VV question several times a day, and every time he got the same answer: “Not yet.”

“But we’ve been here so long.” It was almost two weeks since the bloodbath in the forest, and he was sick and tired of hanging around in the Badger’s Earth. “What about Meggie? You promised we’d go back!”

All Dustfinger said to that was, “If you go on pressing me so hard I shall forget that promise.”

Then he went to Roxane. She was busy day and night, nursing the wounded they had found among the dead, in the hope that at least these few would return to Ombra, but some of them she tended in vain. He will stay with her, thought Farid every time he saw Dustfinger sitting beside her. And I’ll have to go back to the Castle of Night alone. The thought hurt like fire biting him.

On the fifteenth day, when Farid felt he would never be able to wash the smell of mouse droppings and pale mushrooms off his skin, two of the Black Prince’s informers brought identical news: The Adderhead’s wife had borne him a son. To celebrate this event, so his criers were announcing in every marketplace, in exactly two weeks’ time he would show his great kindness and mercy by setting free all the prisoners held in the dungeons of the Castle of Night.

Including the Bluejay.

“Nonsense!” said Dustfinger, when Farid told him about it. “The Adderhead has a roast quail where other people have a heart. He would never set anyone free out of mercy, however many sons were born to him. No, if he really intends to let them go it’s because Fenoglio wrote it that way, and for no other reason.”

Fenoglio seemed to share this opinion. Ever since the bloodbath he had spent most of his time sitting in some dark corner of the Badger’s Earth, looking gloomy and scarcely saying a word, but now he started defiantly announcing to anyone who would listen that the good news was due solely to him. No one took any notice of him, no one knew what he was talking about –

except for Dustfinger, who was still avoiding him like the plague in human form. “Listen to the old man! How he boasts and brags!” he said to Farid. “Cosimo and his men are hardly cold in the 323

 

ground and he’s forgotten them already. I hope he drops dead himself!”

The Black Prince, of course, believed in the Adderhead’s mercy as little as Dustfinger did, in spite of Fenoglio’s assurances that exactly what the informers had said would really happen. The robbers sat together until late into the night, discussing what to do. They would not let Farid join this council, but Dustfinger was with them.

“What’s their plan? Tell me!” Farid asked him, when he finally came back from the cave where the robbers had been putting their heads together for hours on end.

“They’re going to set out in a week’s time.”

“Where for? The Castle of Night?”

“Yes.” Dustfinger didn’t seem half as pleased as he was. “Good heavens, you’re fidgeting like fire when the wind blows into it,” he snapped at Farid irritably. “We’ll see if you’re still so happy once we get there. We’ll have to crawl underground like worms, and go much deeper there than here.”

“Even deeper?”

But of course. Farid pictured Mount Adder before him: There wasn’t anywhere to hide, not a bush, not a tree.

“There’s an abandoned mine at the foot of the north slope.” Dustfinger made a face, as if the mere thought of the place turned his stomach. “Some ancestor of the Adderhead must have dug too deep there, and several galleries fell in, but that’s so long ago that obviously not even the Adderhead himself remembers the mine. Not a pleasant place, but a good hideout, and the only one on Mount Adder. The bear found the entrance.”

A mine. Farid swallowed. The thought of it left him struggling for air. “Then what?” he asked.

“What do we do when we get there?”

“Wait. Wait to see if the Adderhead really keeps his promise.”

“Wait? Is that all?”

“You’ll learn everything else soon enough.”

“Then we’re going, too?”

“Did you have anything else in mind?”

Farid hugged him more tightly than he had for a long time. Even though he knew that Dustfinger did not particularly like to be hugged.

 

*

 

“No,” said Roxane when the Black Prince offered to have her escorted back to Ombra by one of his men before they set out. “I’m coming with you. If you can spare a man, then send him to my children to tell them I’ll be home soon.”

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Soon! Farid wondered exactly when that was going to be, but he said nothing. Although the time when they would set out was now fixed, the days still passed terribly slowly, and almost every night he dreamed of Meggie. Those were bad dreams, full of darkness and fear. When the day of their departure finally came, half a dozen robbers stayed in the Badger’s Earth to go on tending the wounded. The rest set out on the road to the Castle of Night: thirty men in ragged clothing, but well armed. And Roxane. And Fenoglio.

“You’re taking the old man, too?” Dustfinger asked the Prince in astonishment when he saw Fenoglio among the men. “Are you crazy? Send him back to Ombra. Take him anywhere else, straight to the White Women for preference, but send him away!”

However, the Prince wouldn’t hear of it. “What do you have against him?” he asked. “He’s a harmless old man. And don’t start telling me again how he can bring the dead to life! Even my bear likes him. He’s written us some fine songs, and he can tell wonderful stories, even if he has no appetite for them just now. And he doesn’t want to go back to Ombra, anyway.”

“I’m not surprised, considering all the widows and orphans he’s made there,” said Dustfinger bitterly, and when Fenoglio looked his way he cast him so icy a glance that the old man quickly turned his head again.

It was a silent march. The trees whispered above their heads, as if warning them not to take a step farther south, and once or twice Dustfinger had to summon fire to chase away beings that none of them could see, although they sensed them. Farid was tired, tired to death, his face and his arms all scratched with thorns, by the time the silver towers finally appeared above the treetops. “Like a crown on a bald head!” whispered one of the robbers, and for a moment Farid felt he could physically grasp the fear that these ragged men felt at the sight of the mighty fortress. No doubt they were all glad when the Prince led them to the north slope of Mount Adder, and the tops of the towers disappeared again. The earth fell in folds like a crumpled garment on this side of the hill, and the few trees cowered low, as if they heard the sound of axes too often. Farid had never seen such trees before. Their leaves seemed as black as night itself, and their bark was prickly like a hedgehog. Red berries grew on the branches. “Mortola’s berries!” Dustfinger whispered to him as he picked a handful in passing. “She’s said to have scattered them everywhere at the foot of this hill, until they were sprinkled all over the ground.

The trees grow very fast, they shoot up from the earth like mushrooms and keep all other trees away. Bitterberry trees, they’re called. Everything about them is poisonous – their berries and their leaves. And their bark burns the skin worse than fire.” Farid dropped the berries, and wiped his hand on his trousers.

A little later, when it was pitch dark, they almost ran into one of the patrols that the Adderhead regularly sent out, but the bear warned them in time. The mounted men appeared among the trees like silver beetles. Moonlight was reflected on their breastplates, and Farid hardly dared to breathe as he ducked down into a crevice in the ground with Dustfinger and Roxane, waiting for the hoofbeats to die away. They stole on, like mice under the eyes of a cat, until they had finally reached their goal.

Wild vines and rubble hid the entrance. The Prince was the first to force his way down into the bowels of the earth. Farid hesitated when he saw how steep the climb down into the darkness looked. “Come on!” whispered Dustfinger impatiently. “The sun will soon rise, and the Adder’s soldiers aren’t going to mistake you for a squirrel.”

“But it smells like a burial vault,” said Farid, and he looked longingly up at the sky.

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“The boy has a good nose!” said Snapper, before pushing his way past him, grim-faced. “Yes, there are many dead men down there. The mountain devoured them because they dug too deep.

You don’t see them, but you smell them. People say they stop up the galleries like a cargo of dead fish.”

Horrified, Farid looked at him, but Dustfinger just pushed him in the back. “Look, how often do I have to tell you it’s not the dead but the living you should fear? Come on, make a few sparks dance on your fingertips to give us a light.”

The robbers had settled in those galleries that were not buried in rubble. They had given the roofs and walls additional props, but Farid didn’t trust the beams now braced against the stone and the ground. How could they support the weight of a whole mountain? He thought he heard it sighing and groaning, and while he made himself as comfortable as he could on the dirty blankets that the robbers had spread on the hard ground, he suddenly remembered Sootbird again. But the Prince only laughed when he anxiously asked about him. “No, Sootbird doesn’t know about this place or any of our hideouts. He’s often tried to get us to take him along, but who’s going to trust such a wretched fire-eater? The only reason he knew about the Secret Camp was because he’s one of the strolling players.”

All the same, Farid did not feel safe. Almost a week yet to go before the Adderhead freed his prisoners! It would be a long wait. He was already wishing himself back among the mouse droppings in the Badger’s Earth. During the night he kept staring at the rubble closing off the galleries where they were sleeping. He thought he heard pale fingers scraping at the stones. “Put your hands over your ears, then!” was all Dustfinger said when Farid shook him awake to say so, and he put his arms around Roxane again. Dustfinger was having bad dreams, the kind he had often had in the other world, but now it was Roxane who calmed him and whispered him back to sleep. Her quiet voice, soft with love, reminded Farid of Meggie’s, and he missed Meggie so much that he felt ashamed of his weakness. In this darkness, surrounded by the dead, it was difficult to believe that she was missing him, too. Suppose she had forgotten him, the way Dustfinger often forgot him now that Roxane was here? Only Meggie had made him forget his jealousy, but Meggie wasn’t with him now.

On the second night a boy came to the mine. He worked in the stables of the Castle of Night and had been spying for the Black Prince ever since the Piper had his brother hanged. He said that the Adderhead would let the prisoners go along the road leading down to the harbor, on condition that they boarded a ship there and never returned.

“The road to the harbor. Ah,” was all the Prince said when the informer had gone again – and he set out with Dustfinger that same night. Farid didn’t ask if he could go, too. Fie simply followed them.

The road was little more than a footpath leading through the trees. It ran straight down Mount Adder, as if in a hurry to slip under the canopy of leaves. “The Adderhead pardoned a troop of prisoners once before and let them go along this road,” said the Prince, when they were under the trees at the roadside. “And they did reach the sea without mishap, just as he had promised, but the ship waiting for them was a slave ship, and they say the Adderhead got a particularly fine silver bridle for those prisoners, a scant dozen of them.”

Slaves? Farid remembered markets where people were sold, and buyers gaped at them and felt them as if they were cattle. Girls with blonde hair had been in great demand.

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“Don’t look as if Meggie had been sold already!” said Dustfinger.

“The Prince will think of something – won’t you?” The Black Prince tried to smile, but he couldn’t conceal the fact that he was eyeing the road with great concern. “They must never reach that ship,” he said. “And we can only hope that the Adderhead doesn’t send too many soldiers to escort them. We must hide them quickly – in the mine at first, that will be best, until everything’s quieted down again. And very likely,” he added almost as an afterthought, “we shall need fire.”

Dustfinger blew on his fingers until flames as delicate as butterfly wings were dancing there.

“What do you think I’m still here for?” he asked. “Fire there shall be. But I will not take a sword in my hand, in case that’s what you’re hoping. You know I ‘m no good with such things.”

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Chapter 68 – A Visit

“If I cannot get me forth out of this house,” he thought, “I am a dead man!”

– Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow

 

When Meggie woke, she didn’t know for a moment where she was. In Elinor’s house? she wondered. With Fenoglio? But then she saw Mo bending low over the big table, binding a book.

The book. Five hundred blank pages. They were in the Castle of Night, and Mo was to have the book finished tomorrow… A flash of lightning illuminated the soot-blackened ceiling, and the thunder that followed sounded menacingly loud, but it wasn’t the storm that had woken Meggie.

She had heard voices. The guards. There was someone at the door. Mo had heard it, too.

“Meggie, he mustn’t work such long hours. It could bring back the fever,” the Barn Owl had told her that very morning, before they took him down to the dungeons again. But what could she do about it? Mo sent her to bed the moment she began yawning too often. (“That was the twenty-third yawn, Meggie. Go on, bed for you, or you’ll be dead on your feet before this damned book is finished.”) Then it would be ages before he went to sleep himself. He stayed up cutting, folding, and stitching until it was nearly dawn. He’d done that tonight as well.

When one of the guards opened the door, Meggie thought for a dreadful moment that Mortola had come to kill Mo after all, before the Adderhead let him go. But it was not the Magpie. The Adderhead stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. Two servants stood behind him, their faces pale with exhaustion, carrying silver candelabras from which wax dripped to the floorboards.

Their master, treading heavily, approached the table at which Mo worked and stared at the book. It was almost finished.

“What are you doing here?” Mo still had the paper knife in his hand. The Adderhead stared at him. His eyes were even more bloodshot than on the night when Meggie had made her bargain with him.

“How much longer?” he demanded. “My son is crying. He cries all night. He feels the White Women coming close, just as I do. Now they want to fetch him away, too, him and me at the same time. Folk say they’re particularly hungry on stormy nights.”

Mo put down the knife. “The book will be finished tomorrow, as agreed. It would have been ready sooner, but the leather to cover it was full of tears and holes made by thorns, so that held us up, and the paper wasn’t as good as it might have been, either.”

“Yes, yes, very well, the librarian has passed on your complaints!” The Adderhead’s voice sounded as if he had been shouting himself hoarse. “If Taddeo had his way, you’d spend the rest of your life in this room, rebinding all my books. But I will let you go – you, your daughter, your wife, and those good-for-nothing strolling players. They can all go, I just want the book! Mortola has told me about the three words that your daughter so cunningly failed to mention, but never mind that – I shall take good care that no one writes them in its pages! I want to be able to laugh in the Cold Man’s face at last – laugh at him and his pale women! Another night like this and I shall be beating my head against the wall, I shall kill my wife, I shall kill my child, I shall kill all of you. Do you understand, Bluejay or whatever your name is? You must finish the book before dark falls again! You must!”

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Mo stroked the wooden boards that he had covered with leather only the day before. “I’ll be finished by the time the sun rises. But you must swear to me on your son’s life that then you will let us go at once.”

The Adderhead looked at him as if the White Women were there standing behind him. “Yes, yes, I swear by whomever and whatever you like! By sunrise, that sounds good!” He walked ponderously over to Mo and stared at his chest. “Show me!” he whispered. “Show me where Mortola wounded you. With the magic weapon that my master-at-arms took apart so thoroughly that now no one can put it together again. I had the fool hanged for that.”

Mo hesitated, but finally he opened his shirt.

“So close to the heart!” The Adderhead put his hand on Mo’s chest as if to make sure that the heart in it was really still beating. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, you must indeed know a way to cheat death or you wouldn’t be alive now.”

He turned abruptly and waved the two servants over to the door. “Very well, I shall have you fetched soon after sunrise, you and the book,” he said over his shoulder.

“Now get me something to eat in the hall!” Meggie heard him shouting outside the door as the guards bolted it again. “Wake the cooks, wake the maids and the Piper. Wake them all! I want to eat and listen to a few dark songs. And the Piper must sing them so loudly that I don’t hear the child crying.”

Then his footsteps retreated, and only the rolling of the thunder remained. A flash of lightning made the pages of the almost finished book shine as if they had a life of their own. Mo had gone over to the window. He stood there motionless, looking out.

“By sunrise! Can you do it?” asked Meggie anxiously.

“Of course,” he said, without turning. Lightning was flickering over the sea like a distant light being switched on and off by someone – except that no such light existed in this world. Meggie went over to Mo, and he put his arm around her. He knew she was afraid of thunderstorms.

When she was very small and had crept into bed with him, he always told her the same story: Thunderstorms were because the sky longed to be united with the earth, and reached out fiery fingers to touch it on such nights.

But Mo didn’t tell that story today.

“Did you see the fear in his face?” Meggie whispered to him. “Exactly as Fenoglio described it.”

“Yes, even the Adderhead must play the part that Fenoglio has written for him,” replied Mo. “But so must we, Meggie. How do you like that idea?”

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Chapter 69 – The Night Before

True, I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,

Which is as thin of substance as the air.

– William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

 

It was the last night before the day when the Adderhead would show his clemency. In a few hours, just before dawn, they would all be in position by the road. None of the informers had been able to say exactly when the prisoners were to come down it they knew only that this would be the day. The robbers were sitting together, telling one another tales of old adventures in loud voices. Presumably that was their means of keeping fear at bay, but Dustfinger did not feel like either talking or listening. He kept waking suddenly from sleep, but not because of the voices that came to his ears. Pictures in his mind woke him, terrible pictures that had been robbing him of sleep for days.

This time they had been particularly bad, and so real that he started up as if Gwin had jumped on his chest. His heart was still thudding hard as he sat there staring into the dark. Dreams – in the other world they had often kept him from sleeping, too, but he couldn’t remember any of them as bad as this one. “It’s the dead. They bring bad dreams,” Farid always said. “They whisper terrible things to you, and then they lie on your breast to feel your racing heart. It makes them feel alive again!”

Dustfinger liked this explanation. He feared death but not the dead. But suppose it was quite different, suppose the dreams were showing him a story already waiting for him somewhere?

Reality was a fragile thing; Silvertongue’s voice had shown him that once and for all.

Roxane stirred in her sleep beside him. She turned her head and murmured the names of her children, the dead as well as the living. There was still no news from Ombra. Even the Black Prince had heard nothing for a long time, either from the castle or the city, no word of what had happened after the Adderhead sent Cosimo’s body back to his daughter, with the news that hardly any of the men who had followed him would come back, either.

Roxane whispered Brianna’s name again. Every day she stayed here with him cut her to the heart, Dustfinger knew that only too well. So why didn’t he simply go back with her? Why not turn his back on this infernal hill and return at last to a place where you didn’t have to hide underground like an animal? Or like a dead man, he added in his thoughts.

You know why, he told himself. It’s the dreams. The accursed dreams. He whispered fire-words to banish the darkness in which dreams put forth such dreadful blossoms. A flame licked up sleepily from the ground beside him. He held out his hand and let it dance up his arm, lick his fingers and his forehead, in the hope that it would simply burn away the horrible pictures. But even the pain did not rid him of them, and Dustfinger extinguished the flame with the flat of his hand. His skin was sooty and hot afterward, as if the fire had left its black breath behind, but the dream was still there, a terror in his heart, too black and strong even for the fire.

How could he simply go away when he saw such images by night – pictures of the dead, again and again, nothing but blood and death? The faces changed. Sometimes it was Resa’s face he 330

 

saw, sometimes Meggie’s, then at other times the face of the Barn Owl. He had seen the Black Prince, too, with blood on his breast. And today – today it had been Farid’s face. Just like the night before.

Dustfinger closed his eyes when the pictures came back, so plain and clear… Of course he had tried to persuade the boy to stay with Roxane tomorrow, when he set off with the robbers along the road they were to come down, Resa and Silvertongue, Meggie, the Barn Owl, and all the others. (Just how many there would be, even the Prince’s informers could not say.) But it was hopeless.

Dustfinger leaned back against the damp stone into which hands long gone had cut the narrow galleries, and looked at the boy. Farid had curled up like a small child, knees drawn up against his chest, with the two martens beside him. They slept at Farid’s side more and more often when they came back from hunting, perhaps because they knew that Roxane did not like them.

How peacefully the boy lay there, not at all as Dustfinger had just seen him in his dreams. A smile even flickered across his dark face. Perhaps he was dreaming of Meggie, Resa’s Meggie, as like her mother as one flame is like another and yet so different. “You do think she’s all right, don’t you?” Farid asked that question heaven knows how many times a day. Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.

A cold wind blew through the galleries, and Dustfinger saw the boy shivering in his sleep. Gwin raised his head when he rose and took the cloak off his shoulders, covering Farid with it. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he whispered to the marten. “He’s crept into your heart just as he crept into mine. How could it happen to us, Gwin?”

The marten licked his paw and looked at him from dark eyes. When he dreamed it was surely only of hunting, not of dead boys.

Suppose the old man was sending the dreams? The idea made Dustfinger shudder as he lay down beside Roxane on the hard ground again. Yes, Fenoglio could be sitting in some corner, as he had often done these last few days, spinning bad dreams for him. That was exactly what he had done with the Adderhead’s fears! Nonsense, thought Dustfinger angrily, putting his arm around Roxane. Meggie isn’t here. Without her, the old man’s words are nothing but ink. Now try to get some sleep, or you’ll be nodding off as you wait among the trees with the others tomorrow.

But it was a long time before he could close his eyes.

He just lay there and listened to the boy’s breathing.

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Chapter 70 – The Pen and The Sword

 

“Of course not,” said Hermione. “Everything we need is here on this paper.”

– J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Mo worked all night, while the storm raged outside as if Fenoglio’s world could not accept that soon immortality would arrive in it. Meggie had tried to stay awake, but finally she had nodded off again, head on the table, and he had put her to bed as he had done so many times before.

Marveling yet again to see how big she was now. Almost grown-up. Almost.

Meggie woke as he snapped the clasps shut. “Good morning,” he said as she raised her head from the pillow – and hoped it would really be a good morning. Outside, the sky was turning red like a face with the blood streaming back into it. The clasps held well. Mo had filed them so that no part of them pricked or dug into the fingers. They held the blank pages together as firmly as if Death were already between them. The leather he had been given for the binding had a reddish tinge, and it surrounded the wooden boards of the covers like their natural skin. The back was gently rounded, the stitching firm, the quires carefully planed. But the fact was that none of that mattered with this book. No one would read it. No one would keep it beside his bed to leaf through its pages again and again. The book was eerie for all its beauty, even Mo felt that, although it was the work of his own hands. It seemed to have a voice that whispered barely perceptible words, words that were not to be found on its blank pages. But they existed.

Fenoglio had written them, in a place far away, where women and children now wept for their dead husbands and fathers. Yes, the clasps were important.

Heavy footsteps echoed along the corridor outside the door. Soldiers’ footsteps. They came closer and closer. Outside, the night was fading. The Adderhead was taking Mo at his word. By the time the sun rises ..

Meggie quickly got out of bed, passed her hand over her hair, and smoothed down her creased dress.

“Is it finished?” she whispered.

He nodded and took the book from the table. “Do you think the Adderhead will like it?”

The Piper opened the door, with four men following him. His silver nose sat on his face as if it had grown from the flesh.

“Well, Bluejay? Have you finished?”

Mo inspected the book from all sides. “Yes, I think so,” he said, but when the Piper put out his 332

 

hand he hid it behind his back. “Oh no,” he said. “I’m keeping this until your master has kept his side of the bargain.”

“You are?” The Piper smiled in derision. “Don’t you think I know ways of taking it from you? But hold on to it for a while. Fear will make you weak at the knees soon enough.”

It was a long way from the part of the Castle of Night where the ghosts of forgotten women lived to the halls where the Adderhead held court. The Piper walked behind Mo all the way with his curiously arrogant gait, stiff as a stork, so close behind that Mo felt his breath on the nape of his neck. Mo had never been in most of the corridors along which they marched, yet he felt as if he had walked down them all before – in the days when he read Fenoglio’s book over and over again as he tried to bring Resa back. It was a strange feeling to be here himself, behind the words on the page – and looking for her again.

He had read about the hall whose mighty doors opened for them, too, and when he saw Meggie’s look of alarm he knew only too well what other dreadful place it reminded them both of.

Capricorn’s red church had not been half as magnificent as the Adderhead’s throne room, but thanks to Fenoglio’s description Mo had recognized the model at once. Red-washed walls, column ranged beside column on both sides, except that, unlike those in Capricorn’s church, these were faced with scales of silver. Capricorn had even taken the idea of a statue from the Adderhead, but the sculptor who immortalized the Silver Prince clearly knew his trade better.

Capricorn had not tried to imitate the Adderhead’s throne. It was in the shape of a nest of silver vipers, two of them rearing up with their mouths fixed and wide open, so that the Adderhead’s hands could rest on their heads. The lord of the Castle of Night was magnificently clad, despite the early hour, as if to welcome his immortality with due honor. He wore a cape of silvery-white heron feathers over garments of black silk. Behind him, like a flock of birds with bright plumage, stood his court: administrators, ladies’ maids, servants – and among them, dressed in the ashen gray of their guild, a number of physicians.

Mortola was there, too, of course. She stood in the background, almost invisible in her black dress. If Mo had not been looking out for her he would have missed her. There was no sign of Basta, but Firefox was standing next to the throne, arms crossed under his fox-fur cloak. He was staring their way with hostility, but to Mo’s surprise his dark looks were aimed not at him but mainly at the Piper.

It’s a game, thought Mo as he walked past the silver columns. Fenoglio’s game. If only it hadn’t felt so real. How quiet it was in the red hall, in spite of all the people. Meggie looked at him, her face so pale under her fair hair, and he gave her the most encouraging smile his lips could manage – feeling thankful that she couldn’t hear how fast his heart was beating.

The Adderhead’s wife sat beside him. Meggie had described her perfectly: an ivory porcelain doll. Behind them stood the nurse with the eagerly awaited son. Mo had never wanted a son, only a daughter. Resa had teased him about it when they didn’t yet know what their baby would be. The child’s crying sounded strangely lost in the great hall. Even the rain beating against glazed windows high above them drowned out the shrill little voice.

It’s a game, thought Mo once more when he was standing before the steps of the throne, only a game. If only he’d known more about the rules. There was someone else present whom they knew. Taddeo the librarian, head humbly bent, stood right behind the Adderhead’s throne and gave Mo an anxious smile.

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The Adderhead looked even more exhausted for lack of sleep than he had on their last meeting.

His face was blotched and full of shadows, his lips colorless. Only the rubies in the corners of his nostrils shone red. Who could say how many sleepless nights he had spent? For a moment it seemed to Mo as if all his life had gone into the rubies at the corners of his nose.

“Good, so you have really finished,” he said. “Of course, you’re in a hurry to see your wife again, I’m sure. I’ve been told she asks about you every day. That’s love, I expect, isn’t it?”

A game, only a game . . It didn’t feel like that. Nothing had ever seemed more real than the hatred that Mo felt at this moment, as he looked at that coarse and arrogant face. And he felt something else beating in his breast again: his new, cold heart. Or was it just his old heart, burned out with hatred?

The Adderhead made a sign to the Piper, and the silver -nosed man stepped commandingly toward Mo. He found it hard to put the book into the man’s gloved hands. After all, there was nothing else that could save them now. The Piper noticed his reluctance, smiled scornfully at him – and took the book up the steps to his master. Then, with a brief glance at Firefox, he stationed himself right beside the throne with an arrogant air, as if there were no more important man in the hall.

“Beautiful. Beautiful indeed!” The Adderhead caressed the white pages of the book. “Whether or not he’s a robber, he knows something about bookbinding, don’t you agree, Firefox?”

“There are men of many trades among the robbers,” was all that Firefox replied. “Why not an accursed bookbinder, too?”

“How true, how true. Did you all hear that?” The Adderhead looked at his colorfully clad retinue, inviting approval. “It seems to me that my herald still thinks I’d have let a little girl trick me. Yes, he believes I’m a credulous fool by comparison with his old master, Capricorn.”

Firefox was about to protest, but the Adderhead silenced him with a gesture. “Do not speak!”

was all he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “In spite of my very obvious folly, I have thought of a way to prove which of the two of us is wrong.” With a nod of the head, he summoned Taddeo to his side. Eager to oblige, the librarian approached him, taking pen and ink from the folds of his flowing robe.

“It’s perfectly simple, Firefox!” You could tell that the Adderhead liked the sound of his own voice. “You, and not I, will be the first to write your name in this book! Taddeo here has assured me that the letters can be removed again with a scraper that Balbulus once designed specially for that purpose, leaving no trace. No one will be able to see even a shadow of your writing on the pages. So you write your name – which I know you are able to do – we give the Bluejay a sword, and he runs it through your body. Isn’t that a fabulous idea? Won’t it prove beyond doubt whether or not this book can do what his daughter promised me?”

A game. Mo saw fear spread over Firefox’s face like a rash.

“Well, come along!” the Adderhead derided him, opening the book and leafing through the blank pages, as if lost in thought. “Why do you suddenly look so pale? Isn’t such a game precisely to your taste? Come along, write your name in it. Not the name you’ve given yourself, but the one you were born with.”

Think. Mo saw one of the guards surrounding him and Meggie draw his sword. What are you 334

 

going to do? What? He felt Meggie’s horrified gaze, felt her fear like a chill beside him.

Firefox looked around as if searching for a face that might offer help, but no one stepped forward, not even Mortola. She stood there with her lips compressed so tightly that they were almost white, and if her glance could have killed as her poisons often did, the book would not have helped the Adderhead. As it was, however, he just smiled at her and put the pen in his herald’s hand. Firefox stared at the sharpened quill as if he were not sure what to do with it.

Then he dipped it ceremoniously in the ink – and wrote.

“Excellent!” The Piper took the book from his hand the moment he had finished. The Adderhead waved to one of the servants waiting with dishes full of fruit and cakes at the foot of the silver columns. “Well, what are you waiting for, Firefox? Try your luck!” Honey dripped from his fingers as he pushed one of the cakes between his lips.

Firefox, however, stood there, still staring at the Piper, whose long arms were wound around the book as if he were holding a baby. He responded to Firefox’s glance with a nasty smile. Firefox abruptly turned his back to him and the Adderhead and came down the steps.

Mo removed Meggie’s hand from his arm and pushed her gently aside, although she resisted.

The men-at-arms standing around retreated, with incredulity on their faces, as if clearing a stage. Except for the one who had drawn his sword and now held it out to Mo. Was this still Fenoglio’s game? It would be like him. When Mo had entered the hall just now he’d have given one of his eyes for a sword, but he didn’t want this one. He wanted it as little as the roles some other people wanted him to play, whether Fenoglio or the Adderhead. He had always hated games like this, games played by the strong with someone weaker, the cat with the helpless mouse. . He hated them, even when the mouse was a murderer and fire-raiser.

When Firefox stopped at the foot of the steps, hesitating as if he were wondering whether there might not be some way out for him after all, one of the men-at-arms went up to him and took his sword from its sheath.

“Here, Bluejay, take it.” The soldier who was holding his sword out to Mo was getting impatient, and Mo remembered the night when he had picked up Basta’s sword and chased him and Capricorn out of his house. He still remembered just how heavy the weapon had felt in his hand, how the bright blade caught the light. .

“No, thank you,” Mo said, stepping back. “Swords are not among the tools of my trade. I thought I’d proved that with the book.”

The Adderhead wiped the honey off his fingers, removed a few cake crumbs from his lips, and looked him up and down. “Oh, come on, Bluejay!” he said in a tone of mild surprise. “You heard.

We don’t expect any great skill in swordplay. All you have to do is run it through his body. It really isn’t difficult!”

Firefox was staring at Mo. His eyes were clouded with hatred. Look at him, you fool, Mo told himself. He’d run you through with that sword on the spot, so why don’t you do it to him? Meggie understood why not. He saw it in her eyes. Perhaps the Bluejay might take that sword, but not her father.

“Forget it, Adder,” he said out loud. “If you have an account to settle with your bloodhound, see to it yourself. Ours is a different agreement.”

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The Adderhead looked at him with as much interest as if some exotic animal had wandered into his hall. Then he laughed. “I like your answer!” he cried. “Indeed I do. And do you know something? It finally shows me I’ve caught the right man. You are the Bluejay, without any doubt. He’s said to be a sly fox. But all the same I’ll keep my bargain.”

And so saying, he nodded to the man-at-arms who was still offering Mo the sword. Without hesitation, the man turned and thrust the long blade through the body of his master’s herald, so fast that Firefox did not even manage to flinch back.

Meggie screamed. Mo drew her close and hid her face against his chest. But Firefox stood there, staring in bewilderment at the sword sticking out of his body as if it were a part of him.

With a self-satisfied smile, the Adderhead looked around, enjoying the silent horror in the hall around him. Firefox took the sword sticking out of his body and pulled out the blade very slowly, his face distorted, but without swaying on his feet. And the great hall became as still as if all present had stopped breathing.

As for the Adderhead, he applauded. “Well, look at that!” he cried. “Is there anyone here in this hall who thinks he could have survived that sword stroke? He’s just a little pale, that’s all – am I right, Firefox?”

His herald did not reply, but just stood there staring at the bloodstained sword in his hands.

But the Adderhead went on, in a voice of high good humor, “Well, I think that proves it! The girl wasn’t lying, and the Adderhead is not a gullible fool who fell for a child’s fairy tale, is he?”

He placed his words as carefully as a beast of pre)’ places its paws. Nothing but silence answered him. Even Firefox, his face white with pain, said not a word as he wiped his own blood from the sword blade.

“Excellent!” remarked the Adderhead. “That’s done, then and now I have an immortal herald. It’s time I was able to say the same of myself. Piper,” he said, turning to the man with the silver nose.

“Empty the hall for me. Get everyone out – servants, women, physicians, clerks, all of them. I want just ten men-at-arms to stay, the librarian, you and Firefox, and the two prisoners. You go away, too!” he snapped at Mortola, who was about to protest. “Stay with my wife and get that baby to stop crying at last.”

“What’s he going to do, Mo?” whispered Meggie as the hall emptied around them. But he could only shake his head. He didn’t know, either. He only felt that the game was far from over yet.

“What about us?” he called to the Adderhead. “My daughter and I have fulfilled our part of the bargain, so fetch the prisoners from your dungeons and let us go.”

But the Adderhead only raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Yes, of course, of course, Bluejay,” he graciously replied. “As you have kept your word, I keep mine. The Adder’s word of honor. I’ve already sent men down to the dungeons, but it’s a long way from there to the gate, so give us the pleasure of your company a little longer. Believe me, we shall provide you with entertainment.”

A game. Mo looked around and saw the huge doors close behind the last servants. Once empty, the hall only seemed larger.

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“Well, how are you doing, Firefox?” The Adderhead ran a cool eye over his herald. “What does it feel like to be immortal? Fabulous? Reassuring?”

Firefox said nothing. He was still holding the sword that had run him through. “I’d like my own sword back,” he said hoarsely, without taking his eyes off his master. “This one is no good.”

“Nonsense. I’ll have a new sword forged for you, a better one, in gratitude for the service you’ve done me today!” replied the Adderhead. “But first we have one small thing to do so that we can remove your name from my book without any damage.”

“Remove it?” Firefox’s eyes wandered to the Piper, who opened the book again and held it out to the librarian.

“Remove it, yes. You remember that originally the book was to make me immortal, not you, and for that to happen the scribe must write three more words in it.”

“What for?” Firefox wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

Three words. Poor devil. Did he hear the trap snapping shut? Meggie reached for Mo’s hand.

“To make room, one might say. To make room for me,” replied the Adderhead. “And do you know what?” he went on, as Firefox looked at him uncomprehendingly. “As a reward for your unselfish proof of how reliably this book really does protect one from death, as soon as the scribe has written those three words you may kill the Bluejay. If he can be killed, that is. Well, is it a fair offer?”

“What? What are you talking about?” Meggie’s voice was shrill with fear, but Mo quickly put his hand over her mouth. “Meggie, please!” he said, low-voiced. “Have you forgotten what you said about Fenoglio’s words? Nothing will happen to me. Do you hear me?”

But she wouldn’t listen. She sobbed and held him tightly until two men-at-arms roughly dragged her away.

“Three words!” Firefox was advancing on him. And hadn’t he just been feeling sorry for him?

You’re a fool, Mortimer, thought Mo.

“Three words! Count them well, Bluejay!” said Firefox, raising his sword. “On four I shall strike, and it will hurt, I promise you, even if it may not kill you. I know what I’m talking about.”

The sword blade shone like ice in the candlelight. It looked long enough to run three men through at once, and here and there Firefox’s blood still clung to the bright metal like rust.

“Come now, Taddeo,” said the Adderhead. “You remember the words I told you? Write them one by one, but don’t say them aloud. Just count them for us.”

The Piper opened the book and held it out to the old man.

With trembling fingers, Taddeo dipped his pen in the jar of ink. “One,” he whispered, and the pen scratched over the parchment. “Two.”

Firefox, smiling, set the point of the sword against Mo’s chest.

Taddeo raised his head, dipped his pen in the ink again, and looked uncertainly at the 337

 

Adderhead.

“Have you forgotten how to count, old man?” he asked.

Taddeo just shook his head and lowered the pen to the paper again. “Three!” he whispered.

Mo heard Meggie call his name and stared at the point of the sword. Words, nothing but words protected him from that sharp, bright blade. .

In Fenoglio’s world, words were enough.

Firefox’s eyes widened in mingled astonishment and horror. Mo saw him try with his last breath to thrust the sword into him, to take him to wherever pen and ink were sending him, too, but the sword dropped from his hands. Firefox collapsed like a bundle of empty clothes and fell at Mo’s feet.

The Piper stood there staring down at the dead man in silence, while Taddeo lowered his pen and retreated from the book in which he had just been writing as if it might kill him as well, with a quiet voice, with a single word.

“Take him away,” ordered the Adderhead. “Before the White Women come to fetch him from my castle. Get on with it!”

Three men-at-arms carried Firefox out. The foxtails on his cloak dragged on the tiles as they hauled him away, and Mo stood there staring at the sword lying at his feet. He felt Meggie put her arms around him. Her heart was beating like a frightened bird’s.

“Who wants an immortal herald?” remarked the Adderhead as the dead Firefox was removed. “If you’d been a little cleverer you’d have seen that for yourself.” The jewels that adorned his nostrils looked more than ever like drops of blood.

“Shall I remove his name, Your Grace?” Taddeo’s voice was so hesitant that it was barely audible.

“Of course. His name and the three words, you understand. And do a thorough job of it. I want the pages white as newly fallen snow again.”

The librarian obediently set to work. The scraping sound was curiously loud in the empty hall.

When Taddeo had finished, he passed the flat of his hand over the parchment, which was blank again now. Then the Piper took the book from his hands and offered it to the Adder head.

Mo saw the man’s stout fingers shaking as they dipped the pen in the ink. And before he began to write, the Adderhead looked up once more. “I am sure you weren’t stupid enough to bind any kind of extra magic into this book, were you, Bluejay?” he asked warily. “There are ways of killing a man – and not just a man, but his wife and daughter, too – that make dying a very long and very painful business. It can take days – many days and many nights.”

“Magic? No,” replied Mo, still staring at the sword at his feet. “I don’t know anything about magic.

Let me say it again: Bookbinding, and nothing else, is my trade. And all I know about it has gone into that book. No more and no less.”

“Very well.” The Adderhead dipped the pen in the ink again – and stopped once more. “White,”

he murmured, staring at the blank pages. “See how white they are. White as the women who bring death, white as the bones the Cold Man leaves behind when he’s had his fill of flesh and 338

 

blood.”

Then he wrote. Wrote his name in the blank book and closed it. “That’s done!” he cried triumphantly. “That’s done, Taddeo! Lock him in the book, the soul-swallower, the enemy who can’t be killed. Now he can’t kill me, either. Now we’re equals. Two Cold Men ruling the world together, for all eternity.”

The librarian obeyed, but as he was engaging the clasps he looked at Mo. Who are you? his eyes seemed to ask. What’s your part in this game? But even if Mo had wanted to, he couldn’t have given him the answer.

The Adderhead, however, seemed to think he knew it. “You know, I like you, Bluejay,” he said, never taking his lizard-like gaze off Mo. “Yes, you’d make a good herald, but that’s not the way the parts are shared out, is it?”

“No, indeed not,” said Mo. But you don’t know who shares them out, and I do, he added in his thoughts.

The Adderhead nodded to the men-at-arms. “Let him go,” he ordered. “And the girl, and anyone else he wants to take.” They stepped aside, if reluctantly.

“Come on, Mo!” whispered Meggie, pressing his hand.

How pale she was. Pale with fear, and so defenseless. Mo looked past the men-at-arms and thought of the walled courtyard waiting for them out there, the silver vipers staring down, the openings for boiling pitch above the gate. He thought of the crossbows of the guards on the battlements, too, the spears of the guards at the gate – and the soldiers who had pushed Resa down in the dirt. Without a word, he bent down and picked up the sword that had fallen from Firefox’s hand.

“Mo!” Meggie let go of his hand and looked at him in horror. “What are you doing?”

But he just pulled her close to him without a word, while the men-at-arms all drew their weapons. Firefox’s sword weighed heavy, heavier than the one he had used to chase Capricorn out of his house.

“Well, fancy that!” said the Adderhead. “You don’t seem to trust my word, Bluejay!”

“Oh, I trust it,” said Mo, without lowering the sword. “But everyone here except me has a weapon, so I think I’ll keep this masterless sword. You keep the book, and if we’re both lucky we’ll never see each other again after this morning.”

Even the Adderhead’s laughter sounded as if it were made of silver – dark, tarnished silver.

“Well, now,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to play games with you, Bluejay. You’re a good opponent.

Which is why I’ll keep my word. Let him go,” he told the men-at-arms again. “Tell the guards at the gate the Adderhead is letting the Bluejay go because he need never fear him! again. For the Adderhead is immortal!”

The words echoed in Mo’s ears as he took Meggie’s hand. Taddeo was still holding the book, holding it as if it might bite him. Mo thought he could still feel its paper between his fingers, the wood of the boards, the leather covering it, the thread stitching the pages. Then he saw Meggie’s gaze. She was staring at the sword in his hand as if it made a stranger of him.

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“Come on,” he said. “Let’s join your mother!”

“Yes, go, Bluejay, take your daughter and your wife and all the others,” the Adderhead called after them. “Before Mortola reminds me how stupid it is to let you go free!”

Only two men-at-arms followed them on their long journey through the castle. The courtyard was almost empty at this early hour of the morning. The sky above the Castle of Night was gray, and fine rain was falling like a veil before the face of the dawning day. The few servants already at work retreated in alarm from the sight of the sword in Mo’s hand, and the men-at-arms waved them aside without a word.

The other prisoners were already waiting at the gate, a forlorn little troop guarded by a dozen soldiers. At first Mo couldn’t see Resa, but suddenly one figure moved away from the others and ran toward him and Meggie. No one stopped her. Perhaps the soldiers had heard of Firefox’s fate. Mo felt their eyes on him, full of horror and fear – the man who bound Death between white pages and was a robber in the bargain! Didn’t the sword in his hand prove that for all time? He didn’t care what they thought. Let them be afraid of him. He had felt more than enough fear for one lifetime in all those days and nights when he thought he had lost everything – his wife, his daughter – and there was nothing left for him but a lonely death in this world made of words.

Resa hugged him and Meggie in turn, she almost crushed them, and his face was wet with her tears when she let go of him again.

“Come on, let’s go through the gate, Resa!” he urged in a low voice. “Before the lord of this castle changes his mind! We all have a great deal to tell one another, but for now let’s go!”

The other prisoners joined them in silence. They watched incredulously as the gate opened for them, as its ironbound wings swung open and let them go free. Some of them stumbled over their own feet in their haste as they crowded out. But still no one from the castle followed them.

The guards just stood there, swords and spears in their hands, staring as the prisoners stumbled uncertainly away, their legs stiff from weeks in the dungeons. Only one man-at-arms came out of the gate with them, wordlessly indicating the path they should take. Suppose they shoot at us from the battlements? Mo thought, when he saw that there was not a single tree or bush to give them cover as they followed the road down the bare slope. He felt like a fly on the wall ready to be swatted. But nothing happened. They walked through the gray morning, through the rain now pouring down, with the castle crouched menacingly behind them like a monster – and nothing happened.

“He’s keeping his promise!” Mo heard the others whispering these words more and more often.

“The Adderhead is keeping his word.” Resa asked anxiously about his wound, and he replied quietly that he was all right, while he waited to hear footsteps behind them, soldier’s footsteps.

But all was still. It seemed as if they had been going down the bare hillside for an eternity when trees suddenly appeared in front of them. The shade that their branches cast on the road was as dark as if night itself had taken refuge under them.

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Chapter 71 – Only A Dream

One day a young man said, “This tale about everybody having to die doesn’t sit too well with me. I will go in search of the land where one never dies.”

– Italo Calvino, “The Land Where One Never Dies,” Italian Folk Tales

 

Dustfinger was lying among the trees, drenched to the skin by the rain, with Farid beside him.

The boy’s black hair clung to his forehead, and he kept shivering. The others were certainly in no better shape. They had been waiting for hours; they’d taken up their positions before sunrise, and it had been raining ever since. It was dark under the trees, as dark as if day had never dawned. And quiet, as quiet as if the waiting men were not alone in holding their breath. Only the noise of the rain splashed and dripped onto the trees and branches, falling and falling. Farid wiped his wet nose on his sleeve, and someone sneezed somewhere. Stupid fool, hold your nose, thought Dustfinger – then started when he heard something rustling on the other side of the road. But it was only a rabbit scuttling out of the thickets. It stopped in the middle of the road, sniffing the air, ears twitching, eyes wide open. It’s probably not half as scared as I am, thought Dustfinger, wishing himself back with Roxane in the dark underground galleries of the mine.

They smelled like a crypt, but at least they were dry.

He was pushing his dripping hair back from his forehead for about the hundredth time when Farid, beside him, suddenly raised his head. The rabbit raced away among the trees, and footsteps sounded through the rushing of the rain. Here they came at last, a forlorn little troop, almost as wet as the robbers waiting for them. Farid was going to jump up, but Dustfinger seized him and pulled him roughly back to his side. “Stay where you are, understand?” he hissed. “I didn’t leave the martens with Roxane only to have to catch you instead!”

Silvertongue led the way, with Meggie and Resa behind him. He was holding a sword in his hand, as he had on the night when he turned Capricorn and Basta out of his house. The pregnant woman he had seen in the dungeon was stumbling down the road beside Resa. She kept looking back, up to the Castle of Night, which still towered menacing and huge behind them, even though it was so far away now. There were more prisoners than he had seen at the inn in the forest.

Obviously, the Adderhead really had emptied his dungeons. Some were swaying as if they could hardly keep on their feet, others blinking as if even the dim light of this dark day was too much for their eyes. Silvertongue seemed to be all right, in spite of his bloodstained shirt, and Resa did not look quite as pale as in the dungeon, but perhaps that was just his imagination.

He had just seen the Barn Owl among the others – how old and fragile he looked! – when Farid clutched his arm in sudden fright and pointed at the men who had appeared on the road. They emerged so soundlessly that they might have been growing out of the rain, more and more of them, and at first Dustfinger thought the Black Prince had managed to get reinforcements after all. But then he saw Basta.

He was holding a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, and bloodlust was written all over his scorched face. None of the men with him wore the Adderhead’s coat of arms, but that meant nothing. Perhaps Mortola had sent them, perhaps the Adderhead wanted to be able to protest innocence when his prisoners were found dead in the road. There were a great many men; that was all that mattered. Dozens and dozens of them. Far more than the robbers lying in wait in the trees with the Black Prince. Basta raised a hand, smiling, and they advanced down the road with 341

 

drawn swords, going at a comfortable pace as if they wanted to enjoy the fear on the prisoners’

faces for a while before they struck.

The Black Prince was the first to leap out of the trees, with the bear at his side. The two of them took up their position in the road as if they alone could stop the slaughter. But his men were quick to follow, silently forming a wall of bodies between the prisoners and the men who had come to kill them. Cursing quietly, Dustfinger rose to his feet, too. This was going to be a day of bloodshed. The rain wouldn’t fall fast enough to wash all the blood away, and he would have to provoke the fire to great anger, for it didn’t like rain. Damp made it sleepy – and it would have to bite hard, very hard.

“Farid!” He breathed the boy’s name and was just in time to haul him back by the arm. He wanted to go to Meggie, of course, but he would have to take fire with him. They would need to make a circle of it – a ring of flames around those who had nothing but their hands against all those swords. He picked up a strong branch, enticed fire from its damp bark – hissing, steaming fire – and threw the burning wood to the boy. The barrier of human flesh wouldn’t hold for long; it was fire that must save them.

Basta’s voice came through the gloom, derisive, bloodthirsty, while Farid made sparks rain down on the ground. He scattered them over the wet earth like a farmer sowing his seed, while Dustfinger followed him and made them grow. The flames were flaring up as Basta’s men attacked. Sword clashed against sword, screams filled the air, bodies collided as Dustfinger and Farid lured fire into being and nursed it until it almost surrounded the company of prisoners.

Dustfinger left only a narrow path free, a way of escape into the forest in case the flames stopped obeying even him and their anger finally made them bite everyone, friend and foe alike.

He saw Resa’s face and the fear in it, he saw Farid leap over the flames to join the freed prisoners, in line with their plan. A good thing Meggie was there, or very likely Farid would not have left his side. Dustfinger himself still stood outside the fire. He drew his knife – it was always better to have a knife in your hand when Basta was around – and whispered to the fire, insistently, almost lovingly, to keep it from doing what it wanted and becoming an enemy instead of a friend. As the robbers were forced farther and farther back, they came closer and closer to the troop of freed prisoners. Among them all, only Silvertongue had a weapon.

Three of Basta’s men were attacking the Prince, but the bear was protecting his master with teeth and claws. Dustfinger felt almost sick at the sight of the wounds those black paws inflicted.

The fire crackled at him, wanted to play, wanted to dance, didn’t understand anything about the fear all around, neither smelled nor tasted it. Dustfinger heard cries, one as clear as a boy’s voice.

He pushed his way through the fighting bodies and picked up a sword lying in the mud. Where was Farid?

There, thrusting about him with his knife, swift as an adder striking. Dustfinger seized his arm, hissing at the flames to let them pass, and dragged him away. “Damn it all! I ought to have left you with Roxane,” he shouted as he pushed Farid through the fire. “Didn’t I tell you to stay with Meggie?” He could have wrung the boy’s thin neck, but he was so relieved to see him uninjured.

Meggie ran to Farid and took his hand. They stood there side by side, staring at the blood and the turmoil, but Dustfinger tried to hear nothing, see nothing. The fire alone was his concern. The rest was up to the Prince.

Silvertongue was striking out well with his sword, far better than Dustfinger himself could have 342

 

managed, but his face looked exhausted and wet with rain. Dustfinger glanced at Resa. She was standing beside Meggie, and she was still unhurt. For now. The damned rain was running down his face and the back of his neck, drowning out his voice with its rushing. The water was singing a lullaby to the flames, an ancient lullaby, and Dustfinger raised his voice, called louder and louder to wake it again, to make it roar and bite. He went very near the ring of fire, saw the fighting men come closer and closer. Some were already almost stumbling into the flames.

Farid, too, had seen what the rain was doing. He ran nimbly to where the flames were dying down, and Meggie ran after him. A man fell dead in the ring of fire where the boy was standing, extinguishing the flames there with his lifeless body, and a second man stumbled over him.

Cursing, Dustfinger made for the deadly breach in the ring, called Silvertongue to help – and saw Basta appear among the flames. Basta, with his face singed and hatred in his eyes – hatred and fear of the fire. Which would prove stronger? He was staring through the flames, blinking at the smoke, as if in search of one particular face; Dustfinger could well imagine whose. Instinctively, he took a step back. Another man fell dead in the flames; two more, swords drawn, leaped over his body and attacked the prisoners. Screams rang in Dustfinger’s ears. He saw Silvertongue place himself in front of Resa, while Basta set a foot on the dead men as if they were a bridge.

More flames were needed. Dustfinger was making for the fire, so that it could hear him better at close quarters, but someone seized his arm and swung him around. Twofingers. “They’ll kill us!”

he stammered, his eyes wide with fear.

“They were going to kill us all along! And if they don’t get us, the flames will burn us alive!”

“Let me go!” Dustfinger shouted at him. The smoke was stinging his eyes and making him cough.

Basta. He was staring at him through the smoke as if an invisible bond united them. The flames licked up at him in vain, and he raised his knife. Who was he aiming at? And why was he smiling like that? The boy.

Dustfinger pushed the two-fingered man aside. He shouted Farid’s name, but the noise all around drowned out his voice. The boy was still holding Meggie’s hand with one of his own, while his other held the knife, the knife that Dustfinger had given him in another life, in another story.

“Farid!” The boy did not hear him – and Basta threw. Dustfinger saw the knife go into that thin back. He caught the boy before he fell to the ground, but he was already dead. And there stood Basta with his foot on another dead body, smiling. Why not? He had hit his target, and it was the target he had been aiming for all along: Dustfinger’s heart, his stupid heart. It broke in two as he held Farid in his arms, it simply broke in two, although he had taken such good care of it all these years. He saw Meggie’s face, heard her sobbing Farid’s name, and put the boy’s body into her arms. His legs were trembling so much that he had difficulty straightening up. Everything about him was trembling, even the hand holding the knife that he had pulled out of the boy’s back. He wanted to get at Basta, through the fire and the fighting men, but Silvertongue was faster. Silvertongue, who had plucked Farid from his own story and whose daughter sat there weeping as if her own heart had had a knife driven into it, like the boy. .

Mo ignored the flames moving toward him. He thrust his sword through Basta’s body as if he had never done anything else in his life, as if from now on his trade was killing. Basta died with an expression of surprise still on his face. He fell into the fire, and Dustfinger stumbled back to Farid, who was still held in Meggie’s arms.

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What had he expected – that the boy would come back to life just because his killer was dead?

No, the black eyes were still empty, empty as a deserted house. There was none of the joy in them now that had always been so difficult to banish. And Dustfinger kneeled there on the trodden earth, while Resa comforted her weeping daughter, and men were fighting, killing, and being killed around them, and he no longer had any idea what he was doing here, what was going on, why he had ever come beneath these trees, the same trees that he had seen in his dream. In the worst of all dreams. And now it had come true.

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Chapter 72 – An Exchange

The blue of my eyes was extinguished tonight The red gold of my heart

– Georg Trakl, “By Night”, Poems

 

They almost all escaped. The fire saved them, the fury of the bear, the Black Prince’s men – and Mo, who practiced killing that gray morning as if he meant to become a master of the craft. Basta was left dead under the trees, along with Slasher and so many of their men that the ground was covered with their corpses as if with dead leaves. Two of the strolling players had been killed, too – and Farid.

Farid.

Dustfinger himself was pale as death when he carried him back to the mine. Meggie walked beside him all the long, dark way. She held Farid’s hand, as if that could help, feeling as sore inside herself as if it would never get better.

She was the only one whom Dustfinger did not send away when he had laid Farid down on his cloak in the most remote of the galleries. No one dared approach him as he bent over the dead boy and wiped the soot from his brow. Roxane did try to talk to him, but when she saw the expression on his face she left him alone. He allowed only Meggie to sit beside Farid, as if he had seen his own pain in her eyes. So they both sat with him in the depths of Mount Adder, as if they had come to the end of all stories. Without a single word still left to say.

Perhaps night had fallen outside by the time Meggie heard Dustfinger’s voice. It came to her as if from far away, through the fog of pain that enveloped her as if she would never find her way out.

“You’d like him back, too, wouldn’t you?”

It was difficult for her to turn her eyes away from Farid’s face. “He’ll never come back,” she whispered, and looked at Dustfinger. She didn’t have the strength to speak any louder. All her strength was gone, as if Farid had taken it away with him. He had taken everything away with him.

“There’s a story.” Dustfinger looked at his hands, as if what he was talking about was written there. “A story about the White Women.”

“What kind of story?” Meggie didn’t want to hear any more stories ever again. This one had broken her heart for all time.

Nonetheless, there was something in Dustfinger’s voice. .

He bent over Farid and wiped some soot from his cold forehead. “Roxane knows it,” he said.

“She’ll tell it to you. Just go to her and .. and tell her I’ve had to go away. Tell her I’m going to find out if the story is true.” He spoke with a strange kind of hesitation, as if it were infinitely difficult to find the right words. “And remind her of my promise – that I’ll always find a way back to her, wherever I am. Will you tell her that?”

What was he talking about? “Find out?” Meggie’s voice was husky with tears. “Find out what exactly?”

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“Oh, people say this and that about the White Women. Much of it’s just superstition, but there’s sure to be some truth in it somewhere. Stories are always like that, aren’t they? No doubt Fenoglio could tell me more, but to be honest I don’t want to ask him. I’d rather ask them in person.”

Dustfinger straightened up. He stood there looking around him, as if he had forgotten where he really was.

The White Women. “They’ll be coming soon, won’t they?” Meggie asked him anxiously. “Coming for Farid.”

But Dustfinger shook his head, and for the first time since Farid’s death he smiled, that strangely sad smile that Meggie had never seen on any face but his, and that she had never entirely understood. “No, why should they? They’re sure of him already. They come only if you’re still clinging to life, if they have to lure you to them with a look or a whispered word. Everything else is superstition. They come while you’re still breathing, but very close to death. They come when your heart is beating more and more faintly, when they can smell fear, or blood, as in your father’s case. If you die as quickly as Farid you go to them entirely of your own accord.”

Meggie caressed Farid’s fingers. They were colder than the stone where she was sitting. “Then I don’t understand,” she whispered. “If they aren’t coming at all, how will you ask them anything?”

“I shall summon them,” replied Dustfinger. “But you had better not be here when I do it, so will you go to Roxane and tell her what I have said to you?”

She was going to ask more questions, but he put a finger on his lips. “Please, Meggie!” he said. He didn’t often call her by her name. “Tell Roxane what I have told you – and say .. say I’m sorry.

Now, off you go.”

Meggie sensed that he was afraid, but she did not ask him what of, because her heart was asking other questions. How could it be true that Farid was dead, and how would it feel to have him dead in her heart forever? She caressed his still face one last time before she got to her feet.

When she looked back once more at the entrance to the gallery, Dustfinger was looking down at Farid. And, for the first time since she had known him, his face showed all that he usually hid: affection, love – and pain.

Meggie knew where to look for Roxane, but she lost her way twice in the dark galleries before she finally found her. Roxane was tending the injured women, while the Barn Owl was looking after the men. Many of them had been hurt, and although the fire had saved their lives it had burned many of them badly. Mo was nowhere to be seen, and nor was the Prince; they were probably on guard at the entrance to the mine, but Resa was with Roxane. She was just bandaging an arm that had suffered burns, and Roxane was treating a cut on an old woman’s forehead with the same ointment she had once used on Dustfinger’s wounds. Its spring like fragrance did not suit this place.

When Meggie came out of the dark passage, Roxane raised her head. Perhaps she had been hoping it was Dustfinger’s footsteps that she had heard. Meggie leaned back against the cold wall of the gallery. This is all a dream, she thought, a terrible, terrible dream. She felt dizzy with weeping.

“What’s that story?” she asked Roxane. “A story about the White Women .. Dustfinger says 346

 

you’re to tell me. And he says he has to go away because he wants to find out if it’s true.”

“Go away?” Roxane put down the ointment. “What are you talking about?” Meggie wiped her eyes, but there were no tears left in them.

She supposed she had used them all up. Where did so many tears come from? “He says he’s going to summon them,” she murmured. “And he says you’re to remember his promise. That he’ll always come back, he’ll find a way wherever he is. . ” The words still made no sense to her when she repeated them. But they obviously meant something to Roxane.

She straightened up, and so did Resa.

“What are you talking about, Meggie?” asked her mother, with concern in her voice. “Where’s Dustfinger?”

“With Farid. He’s still with Farid.” it hurt so much to speak his name. Resa took her in her arms.

But Roxane just stood there, staring at the dark gallery from which Meggie had come. Then she suddenly pushed Meggie aside, made her way past her, and disappeared into the darkness. Resa hurried after her, without letting go of Meggie’s hand. Roxane was only a little way ahead of them. She trod on the hem of her dress, fell over, picked herself up again, and ran on. Faster and faster. But still she came too late.

Resa almost stumbled into Roxane, for she was standing rooted to the spot at the entrance of the gallery where Farid lay. Roxane’s name burned on the wall in fiery letters, and the White Women were still there. They withdrew their pale hands from Dustfinger’s breast as if they had torn out his heart. Perhaps Roxane was the last thing he saw. Perhaps he just had time to see Farid move before he himself collapsed without a sound, as the White Women vanished.

Yes, Farid was moving – like someone who has slept too long and too deeply. He sat up, his gaze blurred, with no idea who was suddenly lying there motionless behind him. Even when Roxane made her way past him he did not turn. He stared into space, as if there were pictures in front of him that no one else could see.

Hesitantly, as if he were a stranger, Meggie went to him. She didn’t know what to feel. She didn’t know what to think.

But Roxane stood beside Dustfinger, her hand pressed firmly to her mouth, as if she had to hold back her pain. Her name was still burning on the wall of the gallery as if it had stood there forever, but she took no notice of the letters of fire. Without a word she sank to her knees and took Dustfinger’s head on her lap, as carefully as if she feared to break what was already broken, and she bent over him until her black hair surrounded his face like a veil.

Resa began to weep. But Farid still sat there as if numbed. Only when Meggie was right in front of him did he seem to notice her.

“Meggie?” he murmured, his tongue heavy.

It couldn’t be true. He was really back.

Farid. Suddenly, his name did not taste of pain. He put his hand out to her and she took it, quickly, as if she had to hold on tight to prevent him from going away again, so far away. Was Dustfinger in that place now? How warm Farid’s face felt again. Her fingers couldn’t believe it.

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She kneeled beside him and put her arms around him, much too tight, felt his heart beating against her, beating strongly.

“Meggie!” He looked as relieved as if he had woken from a bad dream. There was even a smile stealing over his lips. But then Roxane, behind them, began sobbing very quietly, so quietly that you could hardly hear it through her curtain of hair – and Farid turned around.

For a moment he seemed unable to take in what he saw.

Then he tore himself away from Meggie, stood up, stumbled over the cloak as if his legs were still too weak for him to walk. He crawled over to Dustfinger’s side on his knees and touched the still face with incredulous horror.

“What happened?” He was shouting at Roxane as if she were the cause of all misfortune. “What have you done? What did you do to him?”

Meggie kneeled down beside him, trying to soothe him, but he wouldn’t let her. He pushed her hands away and bent over Dustfinger again, putting his ear to his chest, listening – and sobbing as he pressed his face to the place where no heart beat anymore.

The Black Prince entered the gallery. Mo was with him, and more and more faces appeared behind them.

“Go away!” Farid shouted at them. “Go away, all of you!

What have you done to him? Why isn’t he breathing? There’s no blood anywhere, no blood at all.”

“No one did anything to him, Farid!” whispered Meggie. You’d like him back, too, wouldn’t you?

Meggie heard Dustfinger saying. She kept hearing the words in her head, over and over again. “It was the White Women. We saw them. He summoned them himself.”

“You’re lying!” Farid was almost shouting at her. “Why would he do a thing like that?”

But Roxane ran her finger over Dustfinger’s scars, fine, pale lines, as fine as if a glass man’s pen, and not a knife, had drawn them. “There’s a story that the strolling players tell their children,”

she said, without looking at any of them. “About a fire-eater whose son the White Women took.

In his despair he remembered something that was said about them: They fear fire, yet long for its warmth. So he decided to summon them by his art and ask them to give him back his son. It worked. He summoned them with fire, he made it dance and sing for them, and they did not deliver his son to death but gave him back his life. However, they took the fire-eater with them, and he never came back. The story says he must live with them forever, until the end of time, and make fire dance for them.” Roxane picked up Dustfinger’s lifeless hand and kissed the soot-blackened fingertips. “It’s only a story,” she went on. “But he loved to hear it. He always said it was so beautiful that there must be a grain of truth in it. Whether that’s so or not – he’s made it come true himself now, and he’ll never return. In spite of his promise. Not this time.”

Farid stared at her in horror. Watching his face, Meggie saw memory return: the memory of Basta’s knife. He reached around to his back, and when he withdrew his hand his own blood was sticking to his fingers. His tunic was still damp with it.

“You were dead, Farid!” Meggie whispered. “And Dustfinger brought you back.” She closed her 348

 

eyes so as not to see that motionless figure anymore. She wanted to see other pictures: Dustfinger breathing fire for her in Elinor’s garden, or guiding her and Mo through the hills away from Capricorn’s dreadful village, and his happiness when she first saw him in his own world. He had both betrayed and rescued her – and now he had given her Farid back. Tears were running down her face, and she hardly noticed when her mother kneeled down beside her.

It was a long night.

Roxane and the Prince kept watch by Dustfinger’s side, but Farid had climbed out of the mine to where the moon was showing through black clouds, and mist rose from the ground that was wet with rain. He had pushed aside the guards who tried to stop him and thrown himself down on the moss. He lay there now under Mortola’s venomous trees, sobbing – while the two martens scuffled in the darkness as if they still had a master to quarrel over.

Of course Meggie went to him, but Farid sent her away, so she set off to find Mo. Resa was asleep beside him, her face wet with tears, but Mo was awake. He sat there with his arm around her sleeping mother and looked into the darkness as if a story was written there – a story that he didn’t yet understand. For the first time, Meggie couldn’t read in his face what he was thinking.

There was something strange and closed in it, hard as the scab over a wound, but when he noticed her inquiring look he smiled at her, and all the strangeness was gone.

“Come here,” he said softly, and she sat down beside him and pressed her face into his shoulder.

“I want to go home, Mo!” she whispered.

“No, you don’t,” he whispered back, and she sobbed into his shirt, as she had done so often when she was a little girl. She had been able to unload all her grief onto him, however heavily it weighed. Mo had brushed it away simply by stroking her hair, putting his hand on her brow, and whispering her name, and that was what he did now in this sad place, on this sad night. He couldn’t take away all the pain, there was too much of it, but he could help just by holding her close. No one could do it better. Not Resa. Not even Farid.

Yes, it was a long night, as long as a thousand nights, darker than any that Meggie had ever known. And she didn’t know how long she had been sleeping beside Mo when Farid was suddenly shaking her awake. He led her off with him, away from her sleeping parents, into a dark corner that smelled of the Prince’s bear.

“Meggie,” he whispered, taking her hand between his and pressing it so hard that it hurt. “I know how we can make everything right again. You go to Fenoglio! Tell him to write something that will bring Dustfinger back to life! He’ll listen to you!”

Of course. She might have known he would think up this idea. He was looking at her so pleadingly that it hurt, but she shook her head.

“No, Farid. Dustfinger is dead. Fenoglio can’t do anything for him. And even if he could – haven’t you heard what he keeps muttering to himself? He says he’ll never write another word, not after what happened to Cosimo.”

Fenoglio had indeed changed. Meggie had hardly recognized him when she saw him again.

Once, his eyes had always reminded her of a little boy’s. Now they were an old man’s eyes. His gaze was suspicious, uncertain, as if he didn’t trust the ground under his feet anymore, and since Cosimo’s death he cared nothing for shaving himself, combing his hair, or washing. He had asked 349

 

only about the book that Mo had bound. But not even Meggie’s assurance that its blank pages did indeed ward off death had wiped the bitterness from his face. “Oh, wonderful!” he had muttered.

“The Adderhead’s immortal and Cosimo’s dead as a doornail. Nothing goes right with this story anymore.” And he had gone off again, far from all the others. No, Fenoglio wouldn’t help anyone anymore, not even himself. All the same, when Farid set off in search of him, Meggie went, too.

Fenoglio was spending most of his time these days in one of the deepest galleries of the mine, a place almost entirely filled with rubble, to which no one else climbed down. He was asleep when they clambered down the steep ladder, the fur that the robbers had given him drawn up to his chin, his old forehead wrinkled as if he were thinking hard even in his dreams.

“Fenoglio!” Farid roughly shook him awake.

The old man turned over on his back with a grunt that would have done the Prince’s bear credit.

Then he opened his eyes and stared at Farid as if seeing his dark face for the very first time. “Oh, it’s you!” he growled, dazed with sleep, and propped himself on his elbows. “The boy who came back from the dead. Something else that I never wrote! What do you want? Do you know I was just having my first good dream for days?”

“You must write us something!”

“Write something? I’m never going to write again. Haven’t we seen what comes of it? I have this fabulous idea about the book of immortality that will set the good characters free and bring the Adderhead to his death in the most subtle way. And what happens? The Adder is immortal now, and the forest is full of corpses again! Robbers, strolling players, the two-fingered man dead!

Why do I keep making them up if this story is only going to kill them? Oh, this thrice-accursed story! It’s in love with Death!”

“But you must bring him back!” Farid’s lips were trembling.

“You made the Adderhead immortal, so why not him?” “You’re talking about Dustfinger, aren’t you?” Fenoglio sat up and rubbed his face, sighing heavily. “Yes, he’s dead now, too, dead as a doornail, but I’d planned that a long way back, as you perhaps remember. Be that as it may, Dustfinger is dead, you were dead .. Minerva’s husband, Cosimo, the boys who rode with him, they’re all dead! Can’t this story think of anything else? I’ll tell you something, my boy. I’m not its author anymore. No, the author is Death, the Grim Reaper, the Cold Man, call him what you like.

It’s his dance, and never mind what 1 write he’ll take my words and make them serve him!”

“Nonsense!” Farid was no longer even wiping away the tears that streamed down his face. “You must fetch him back. It wasn’t his death at all, it was mine! Make him breathe again! It will only take a few words. After all, you did it for Cosimo and for Silvertongue.”

“Just a moment – Meggie’s father wasn’t dead yet,” Fenoglio soberly pointed out. “And as for Cosimo, he only looked like Cosimo – how many more times do I have to explain that? Meggie and I made a brand-new Cosimo, and unfortunately it went terribly wrong. No!” He reached into his belt, produced something resembling a handkerchief, and blew his nose noisily. “This is not a story in which the dead come to life! All right, I admit I brought immortality into it, yes. But that’s different from bringing back the dead. No, when someone is dead here, he stays dead! It’s the same in this world as in the one I come from. Dustfinger got around that rule very cleverly on your behalf. Perhaps I wrote the sentimental story that gave him the idea myself .. I really don’t remember, but never mind, there are always gaps. And he paid for your life with his own.

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That’s always been the only trade-off that Death will accept. Who’d have thought it? Dustfinger, of all people, gets so fond of a good-for nothing boy that he ends up dying for him. I admit it’s a much better idea than the one about the marten, but it isn’t mine. Oh no! So if you’re looking for someone to blame, then blame yourself. Because one thing is certain, my boy” – and so saying he jabbed his finger roughly into Farid’s thin chest – “and it’s that you don’t belong in this story!

And if you hadn’t taken it into your head to wangle your way into it, Dustfinger would still be alive –”

Farid punched Fenoglio in the face before Meggie could pull him back.

“How can you say a thing like that?” she shouted at Fenoglio as Farid, sobbing, put his arms around her. “Farid saved Dustfinger at the mill. He’s protected him ever since he arrived here –”

“Yes, yes, all right!” growled Fenoglio, feeling his nose. It hurt. “I’m a heartless old man, I know.

But although you may not believe it, I felt dreadful when I saw Dustfinger lying there. And then Roxane’s tears, appalling, really appalling. All the wounded men, Meggie, all the dead, so many dead .. No, Meggie, the words don’t obey me anymore. Except when it suits them. They’ve turned against me like snakes.”

“Exactly. You’re a failure, a miserable failure!” Farid shook Meggie off. “You don’t know your own trade. But someone else does. The man who brought Dustfinger here. Orpheus. He’ll get him back, you wait and see. Write him here! You can at least do that! Yes, write Orpheus here at once or . . or . . I’ll tell the Adderhead you were going to kill him, I’ll tell all the women in Ombra it’s your fault their men folk are dead .. I’ll. . I’ll. .”

He stood there with his fists clenched, quivering with rage and despair. But the old man just looked at him. Then, with difficulty, he rose to his feet. “Do you know something, my boy?” he said, putting his face very close to Farid’s. “If you’d asked me nicely I might have tried, but not this way. No, no! Fenoglio must be asked, not threatened. I still have that much pride left.”

At this Farid looked like going for him again, but Meggie held him back. “Fenoglio, stop it!” she shouted at the old man. “He’s desperate, can’t you see that?”

“Desperate? So what? I’m desperate, too!” Fenoglio snapped at her. “My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here,” he said, holding them out to her, “don’t want to write anymore! I’m afraid of words, Meggie! Once they were like honey, now they’re poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn’t love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I’m its creator!”

“Fetch Orpheus!” said Farid hoarsely. Meggie could hear how much trouble he was taking to control his voice, to banish the rage from it. “Bring him here, and let him write it for you! Teach him what you know, the way Dustfinger taught me everything! Let him find the right words for you. He loves your story, he told Dustfinger so himself! He even wrote you a letter when he was a boy.”

“Did he?” For a moment Fenoglio sounded almost like his old inquisitive self.

“Yes, he admires you! He thinks this is the best of all stories, he said so!”

“Really?” Fenoglio sounded flattered. “Well, it isn’t bad. That is to say, it wasn’t bad.” He looked thoughtfully at Farid. “A pupil. A pupil for Fenoglio,” he murmured. “A writer’s apprentice. Hmm.

Orpheus .. ” He spoke the name as if he had to taste it. “The only poet who ever challenged Death 351

 

. . appropriate.”

Farid was looking at him so hopefully that it went to Meggie’s heart again. But Fenoglio smiled, even though it was a sad smile.

“Look at him, Meggie!” he said. “He has the same pleading look as my grandchildren could turn on to wheedle anything out of me. Does he look at you the same way when he wants something from you?”

Meggie felt herself blushing. However, Fenoglio turned back to Farid. “You know we’ll need Meggie’s help, don’t you?”

Farid nodded, and looked at her.

“I’ll read it,” she said quietly. “If Fenoglio writes it, I’ll read it.” And get the man who helped Mortola to bring my father here and almost kill him into this story, Meggie added in her thoughts.

She tried not to think of what Mo would say about the deal.

However, Fenoglio already seemed to be searching for words in his mind. The right words –

words that would not betray and deceive him. “Very well,” he muttered abstractedly, “let’s get down to work one last time. But where am I going to find paper and ink? Not to mention a pen and a helpful glass man? Poor Rosenquartz is still in Ombra.”

“I have paper,” said Meggie, “and a pencil.”

“That’s very beautiful,” said Fenoglio when she put her notebook in his lap. “Did your father bind it?”

Meggie nodded.

“There are some pages torn out.”

“Yes, for a message I gave my mother and the letter I sent you. The one that Cloud-Dancer brought you.”

“Oh. Oh yes. Him.” For a moment Fenoglio looked dreadfully tired. “Books with blank pages,” he murmured. “They seem to be playing more and more of a part in this story, don’t you think?”

Then he asked Meggie to leave him alone with Farid so that the boy could tell him about Orpheus. “To be honest,” he whispered to Meggie, “I think he vastly overestimates the man’s abilities! What has this fellow Orpheus done? Put my own words together in a different order, that’s all. But I’ll admit I’m curious to meet him. It takes a fair amount of megalomania to give yourself a name like that, and megalomania is an interesting character trait.”

Meggie did not share his opinion, but it was too late to go back on her promise. She would read again. For Farid this time. She went quietly back to her parents, laid her head on Mo’s chest, and fell asleep hearing his heartbeat in her ear. Words had saved him, why shouldn’t they do the same for Dustfinger? Even if he had gone far, far away .. didn’t the words of this world rule even the land of silence?

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Chapter 73 – The Bluejay

 

The world existed to be read. And I read it.

– L. S. Schwartz, Ruined by Reading

 

Resa and Meggie were asleep when Mo woke, but he felt as if he couldn’t breathe among all the stones and the dead a moment longer. The men guarding the entrance of the mine greeted him with a nod as he came climbing up to them. Pale morning light was seeping through the crevice that led to the outside world; the air smelled of rosemary, thyme, and the berries on Mortola’s poisonous trees. Mo’s senses were constantly confused by the way the familiar mingled with the strange in Fenoglio’s world – and by the fact that the strange features often struck him as more real than the others.

The guards were not the only men Mo met at the entrance to the mine. Five more were leaning against the walls of the gallery, among them Snapper and the Black Prince himself.

“Ah, here comes the most wanted robber between Ombra and the sea!” said Snapper, low-voiced, as Mo came toward them. They examined him like some new kind of animal, of which they had heard the strangest stories. And Mo felt more than ever like an actor who had stepped onstage with the unpleasant feeling that he knew neither the play nor his part in it.

“I don’t know how the rest of you feel,” said Snapper, glancing around at the others, “but I always thought some writer had made up the Bluejay. And that the only man who might lay claim to that feathered mask was our own Black Prince, even if he doesn’t entirely match the description in the songs. So when folk said the Bluejay was a prisoner in the Castle of Night, I thought they just wanted to hang some other poor fellow because he happened to have a scar on his arm. But then,” he said, looking Mo up and down as extensively as if assessing him by every line of every song he had ever heard about the Bluejay, “then I saw you fight in the forest . . ‘and his sword-blade flashes through them like a needle through the pages,’ isn’t that what one of the songs says? A good description, indeed!”

Oh yes, Snapper? thought Mo. Suppose I were to tell you that the Bluejay was really made up by a writer just like you?

How furtively they were all looking at him.

“We must get away from here,” said the Prince into the silence. “They’re combing the forest all the way down to the sea. They’ve already found two of our hiding places and smoked them out –

they haven’t yet come upon the mine, but only because they don’t expect us to be so close to their own back door.” The bear grunted, as if amused by the stupidity of the men-at-arms. The gray muzzle in the furry black face, the clever little amber eyes – Mo had liked the bear even in the book, although he had imagined him slightly larger. “Tonight half of us will take the injured 353

 

to the Badger’s Earth,” the Black Prince continued, “and the others will go to Ombra with me and Roxane.”

“And where does he go?” Snapper was looking at Mo. Then they all looked at him. Mo felt as if their eyes were fingering his skin. Eyes full of hope, but what for? What had they heard about him? Were people already telling stories about what had happened at the Castle of Night, about the book full of blank pages and Firefox’s death?

“He has to get away from here, what else do you think? A long way away!” The Prince picked a dead leaf out of the bear’s coat. “The Adderhead will be looking for him, even though he’s spreading word everywhere that Mortola was responsible for the attack in the forest.” He nodded to a thin boy, at least a head shorter than Meggie, who was standing among the men.

“Tell us again what the crier announced in your village.”

” This, ” began the boy in a hesitant voice, ” this is the Adderhead’s promise: If the Bluejay ever ventures to show his face in Argenta again, he will die the slowest death that the executioners of the Castle of Night have ever given anyone. And the man who brings him in will be rewarded with the Bluejay’s weight in silver. ”

“Better start starving yourself, then, Bluejay,” mocked Snapper, but none of the others laughed.

“Did you really make him immortal?” It was the boy who asked this question.

Snapper laughed out loud. “Listen to the lad! I expect you think the Prince can fly, too, eh?”

But the boy took no notice of him. He was still looking at Mo. “They say you yourself can’t die,”

he said in a low voice. “They say you made yourself a book like that, too, a book of white pages with your death held captive in it.”

Mo had to smile. Meggie had so often looked at him wide-eyed, just like that. Is it a true story, Mo? Come on, tell me! They were all waiting for his answer, even the Black Prince. He saw it in their faces.

“Oh, I can die all right,” he said. “Believe me, I have come very close. As for the Adderhead, however – yes, I have made him immortal. But not for long.”

“What do you mean by that?” The smile had long since frozen on Snapper’s coarse-featured face.

Mo was looking not at him but at the Black Prince when he answered. “I mean that at present nothing can kill the Adderhead. No sword, no knife, no disease. The book I have bound for him protects him. But the same book will be his undoing, for he will have only a few weeks to enjoy it.”

“Why’s that?” It was the boy again.

Mo lowered his voice when he replied, just as he did when he was sharing a secret with Meggie.

“Oh, it’s not particularly difficult to ensure that a book doesn’t live long, you know. Particularly not for a bookbinder. And that’s my trade, although so many people seem to think differently.

Normally, it’s not my job to kill a book – on the contrary, I’m usually called in to save the lives of books – but in this case I’m afraid I had to do it. After all, I didn’t want to be guilty of letting the Adderhead sit on his throne for all eternity, passing the time by hanging strolling players.”

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“Then you are a wizard!” Snapper’s voice was hoarse.

“No, really, I’m not,” replied Mo. “Let me say it once again: I’m a bookbinder.”

They were staring at him again, and this time Mo wasn’t sure whether there might not be some fear mingled with the respect in their eyes.

“Off you all go now!” The Prince’s voice broke the silence. “Go and make litters for the injured.”

They obeyed, although every one of them cast a last glance at Mo before they walked away. Only the boy gave him a bashful smile, too.

As for the Black Prince, he signaled to Mo to go with him.

“A few weeks,” he repeated when they were in the gallery where he and the bear slept, away from the others. “How many exactly?”

How many? Even Mo couldn’t tell for sure. If they didn’t notice what he had done for the time being, it would all be quite quick. “Not very many,” he replied.

“And they won’t be able to save the book?”

“No.”

The Prince smiled. It was the first smile Mo had seen on his dark face. “That’s consoling news, Bluejay. It saps one’s courage to fight an immortal enemy. But you do know, don’t you, that he’ll only hunt you down all the more pitilessly when he realizes that you’ve tricked him?”

So he would, indeed. That was why Mo hadn’t told Meggie, had done what had to be done in secret, while she was asleep. He hadn’t wanted the Adderhead to see the fear in her face.

“I don’t intend to come back to this side of the forest,” he told the Prince. “Perhaps there’ll be a good hiding place for us somewhere near Ombra.”

The Prince smiled again. “I’m sure there will be,” he said and looked at Mo as intently as if he meant to see straight into his heart. Go on, try it, thought Mo. Look into my heart and tell me what you find there, because I don’t know myself anymore. He remembered reading about the Black Prince for the first time. What a fabulous character, he had thought, but the man now standing before him was considerably more impressive than the image of him that the words had conjured up. Perhaps a little smaller, though. And a little sadder.

“Your wife says you’re not the man we take you for,” said the Prince. “Dustfinger said the same.

He told me that you come from the country where he spent all those years when we thought he was dead. Is it very different from here?”

Mo couldn’t help smiling. “Oh yes. I think so.”

“How? Are people happier there?”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps! Hmm.” The Prince bent and picked up something lying on the blanket under which he’d slept. “I’ve forgotten what your wife calls you. Dustfinger had a strange name for you: Silvertongue. But Dustfinger is dead, and to everyone else you will be the Bluejay now. Even I 355

 

find it difficult to call you anything else, after seeing you fight in the forest. So this belongs to you here in the future. Unless you decide to go back after all . . back to the country where you came from, and where I suppose you have another name.”

Mo had never before seen the mask that the Prince was holding out to him. The leather was dark and damaged here and there, but the feathers shone brightly: white, black, yellowish brown, blue. The colors of a blue jay.

“This mask has been celebrated in many songs,” said the Black Prince. “I allowed myself to wear it for a while, and several of us have done so, too, but now it is yours.”

In silence, Mo turned the mask this way and that in his hands. For a strange moment he felt an urge to put it on, as if he had done so many times before. Oh yes, Fenoglio’s words were powerful, but words they were, nothing but words – even if they had been written for him. Any actor, surely, could choose the part he played?

“No,” he said, handing the mask back to the Prince. “Snapper is right; the Bluejay is a fantasy, an old man’s invention. Fighting, I assure you, is not my trade.”

The Prince looked at him thoughtfully, but he did not take the mask. “Keep it all the same,” he said. “It’s too dangerous for anyone to wear it now. And as for your trade – none of us here was born a robber.”

Mo said nothing to that. He just looked at his fingers. It had taken him a long time to wash off all the blood on them after the fight in the forest.

He was still standing there holding the mask, alone in the dark gallery that smelled of the long-forgotten dead, when he heard Meggie’s voice behind him.

“Mo?” She looked at his face with concern. “Where have you been? Roxane is setting out soon, and Resa wants to know if we’re going with her. What do you say?”

Yes, what did he say? Where did he want to go? Back to my workshop, he thought. Back to Elinor’s house. Or did he?

What did Meggie want? He had only to look at her to know the answer. Of course. She wanted to stay because of the boy, but he was not the only reason. Resa wanted to stay, too, in spite of the dungeon where they had put her, in spite of all the pain and darkness. What was it about Fenoglio’s world that filled the heart with longing? Didn’t he feel it himself? Like sweet poison that worked on you only too quickly. .

“What do you say, Mo?” Meggie took his hand. How tall she had grown. And how pleadingly she looked at him!

“What do I say?” He listened as though, if he concentrated hard, he could hear the words whispering in the walls of the gallery or in the weave of the blanket under which the Black Prince slept. But all he heard was his own voice. “How would you like it if I said: Show me the fairies, Meggie? And the water-nymphs. And that illuminator in Ombra castle. Let’s find out how fine those brushes really are.”

Dangerous words. But Meggie hugged him harder than she had since she was a little girl.

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Chapter 74 – Farid’s Hope

And now he was dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the cold mud, somewhere in the city’s wake.

– Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

 

When the men on guard raised the alarm for the second time, just before sunset, the Black Prince ordered everyone to climb deep down into the mine, where there was water in the narrow passages and you thought you could hear the earth breathing. But one man did not join them: Fenoglio. When the Prince gave the all clear, and Meggie climbed up again with the others, her feet wet and her heart still full of fear, Fenoglio came toward her and drew her aside.

Luckily, Mo happened to be talking to Resa and didn’t notice.

“Here you are. But I’m not guaranteeing anything,” Fenoglio whispered to her as he gave her back the notebook. “This is very likely another mistake in black and white just like the others, but I’m too tired to worry about it. Feed this damned story, feed it with new words, I’m not going to listen. I’m going to lie down and sleep. That was the last thing I will ever write in my life.”

Feed it.

Farid suggested that Meggie should read Fenoglio’s words in the place where he and Dustfinger had slept. Dustfinger’s backpack was still lying beside his blanket, and the two martens had curled up to the right and left of it. Farid crouched down between them and hugged the backpack to him as if Dustfinger’s heart were beating inside. He looked expectantly at Meggie, but she remained silent. She looked at the words and said nothing. Fenoglio’s writing swam before her eyes as if, for the first time, it did not want her to read it.

“Meggie?” Farid was still looking at her. There was such sadness in his eyes, such despair. For him, she thought. Just for him. And she kneeled down on the blanket where Dustfinger used to sleep.

Even as she read the first few words, she sensed that Fenoglio had done his work well yet again.

She felt it like breath on her face. The letters on the page were alive, the story was alive. It wanted to take those words and grow. That was what it wanted. Had Fenoglio felt the same when he wrote them?

” One day, when Death had taken much prey again, ” began Meggie, and it was almost as if she were reading a familiar book that she had only just laid aside, ” Fenoglio the great poet decided to write no more. He was tired of words and their seductive power. He had had enough of the way they cheated and scorned him and kept silent when they should have spoken. So he called on another, younger man, Orpheus by name – skilled in letters, even if he could not yet handle them with the mastery of Fenoglio himself– and decided to instruct him in his art, as every master does at some time. For a while Orpheus should play with words in his place, seduce and lie with them, create and destroy, banish and restore – while Fenoglio waited for his weariness to pass, for his pleasure in words to reawaken, and then he would send Orpheus back to the world from which he had summoned him, to keep his story alive with new words never used before. ”

Meggie’s voice died away. It echoed underground as if it had a shadow. And just as silence was spreading around them, they heard footsteps.

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Footsteps on the damp stone.

358

Chapter 75 – Alone Again

“Hope” is the thing with feathers.

– Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson

 

Orpheus disappeared right in front of Elinor’s eyes. She was standing only a few steps from him, holding the bottle of wine he had demanded, when he simply vanished into thin air into less than thin air, into nothing – as if he had never been there at all, as if she had only dreamed him. The bottle slipped from her hand, fell on the wooden floorboards of the library, and broke among the books that Orpheus had left open there.

The dog began to howl so horribly that Darius came racing out of the kitchen. The wardrobe-man didn’t bar his way. He was simply staring at the place where Orpheus had been standing a moment ago. His voice trembling, he had been reading from a sheet of paper lying on one of Elinor’s glass display cases right in front of him and clutching Inkheart to his breast, as if he could force the book to accept him at last in that way. Elinor had stopped as if turned to stone when she realized what he was trying to do for the hundredth, even the thousandth time.

Perhaps they’ll come back out of the book to replace him, she had thought, or at least one of them: Meggie, Resa, Mortimer. Each of the three names tasted so bitter on her tongue, as bitter as all that is lost. But now Orpheus had gone, and none of the three had come back. Only the damned dog refused to stop howling.

“He’s done it,” whispered Elinor. “Darius, he’s done it! He’s over there .. they’re all over there. All except for us!”

For a moment she felt infinitely sorry for herself. Here she was, Elinor Loredan, among all her books, and they wouldn’t let her in, not one of them would let her in. Closed doors enticing her, filling her heart with longing, and then letting her go no farther than the doorway. Accursed, blasted, heartless things! Full of empty promises, full of false lures, always making you hungry, never satisfying you, never!

But you once saw it quite differently, Elinor! she reminded herself, wiping the tears from her eyes. So what? Wasn’t she old enough to change her mind, to bury an old love that had betrayed her miserably? They had not let her in. All the others were between their pages now, but she wasn’t. Poor Elinor, poor, lonely Elinor! She sobbed so loudly that she had to put her hand over her mouth.

Darius cast her a sympathetic glance and hesitantly came to her side. Well, at least he was still with her, that was one good thing. And of course he could read her thoughts in her face, as always. But he couldn’t help her, either.

I want to be with them, she thought despairingly. They’re my family: Resa and Meggie and Mortimer. I want to see the Wayless Wood and feel a fairy settle on my hand again, I want to meet the Black Prince even if it means smelling his bear, I want to hear Dustfinger talking to fire even if I still can’t stand the man! I want, I want, I want…

“Oh, Darius!” sobbed Elinor. “Why didn’t the wretched fellow take me, too?” But Darius just looked at her with his wise, owl-like eyes.

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“Hey, where did he go? That bastard still owed me money!” Sugar went to the place where Orpheus had disappeared and looked all around him, as if Orpheus might be stuck among the bookshelves somewhere. “Damn it, what does he think he’s doing, just vanishing like that?” He bent down and picked up a sheet of paper.

The sheet of paper that Orpheus had been reading from! Had he taken the book with him but left behind the words that had opened the door for him? If so, then all was not lost after all. . With determination, Elinor snatched the sheet of paper from Sugar’s hand. “Give me that!” she demanded, clutching it to her breast just as Orpheus had clutched the book. The wardrobe-man’s face darkened.

Two very different feelings seemed to be struggling with each other on his face: anger at Elinor’s boldness, and fear of the written words that she was pressing to her breast so passionately. For a moment Elinor wasn’t sure which would get the upper hand. Darius came up behind her, as if he seriously intended to defend her if necessary, but luckily Sugar’s face cleared again, and he began to laugh.

“Well, fancy that!” he mocked her. “What do you want that scrap of paper for? Do you want to disappear into thin air, too, like Orpheus and the Magpie and your two friends? Feel free, but first I want the wages Orpheus and the old woman still owe me!” And he looked around Elinor’s library as if he might see something in it that would do instead of payment.

“Your wages, yes, of course, I understand!” said Elinor quickly, leading him to the door. “I still have some money hidden in my room. Darius, you know where it is. Give it to him, all that’s left, just so long as he goes away.”

Darius did not look very enthusiastic, but Sugar gave such a broad smile that you could see every one of his bad teeth. “Well, that sounds like sense at last!” he grunted and stomped after Darius who, resigned to this development, led him to Elinor’s room.

But Elinor stayed behind in the library.

How quiet it suddenly was there. Orpheus had indeed sent all the characters he had read out of their books back into them again. Only his dog was still there, tail drooping as it sniffed the spot where its master had been standing only a few minutes before.

“So empty!” Elinor murmured. “So empty.” She felt desolate. Almost more so than on the day when the Magpie had taken Mortimer and Resa away. The book into which they had all disappeared was gone. What happened to a book that disappeared into its own story?

Oh, forget the book, Elinor! she thought as a tear ran down her nose. How are you ever going to find them again now?

Orpheus’s words. They swam before her eyes as she looked at the paper. Yes, they must have taken him over there, what else? Carefully, she opened the glass case on which the paper had been lying before Orpheus disappeared, took out the book inside it a wonderfully illustrated edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales signed by the author himself – and put the sheet of paper in its place.

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Chapter 76 – A New Poet

The joy of writing

The power of preserving,

Revenge of a mortal hand.

– Wislawa Szymborska, “The Joy of Writing”, View with a Grain of Sand

At first Orpheus could hardly be seen in the shadows filling the gallery like black breath. He stepped hesitantly into the light of the oil lamp by whose light Meggie had been reading. She thought she saw him put something under his jacket, but she couldn’t make out what it was.

Perhaps a book.

“Orpheus!” Farid ran to him, still holding Dustfinger’s backpack in his arms.

So he was really here. Orpheus. Meggie had imagined him very differently .. as much more impressive. This was just a man who was rather too stout, still very young, in an ill-fitting suit, and he looked as out of place in the Inkworld as a polar bear or a whale. In addition, he seemed to have lost his tongue. He stood there in a daze, looking at Meggie, at the dark gallery down which he had come, and finally at Farid, who had obviously entirely forgotten that the man he now greeted with such a radiant smile had stolen from him and betrayed him to Basta at their last meeting. Orpheus didn’t even seem to recognize Farid, but when he finally did it brought back his voice.

“Dustfinger’s boy! How did you get here?” he faltered. And yes, Meggie had to admit that his voice was impressive, much more impressive than his face. “Well, never mind that. This must be the Inkworld!” he went on, taking no more notice of Farid. “I knew I could do it! I knew I could!”

A self-satisfied smile spread over his face. Gwin leaped up, hissing, as he almost trod on his tail, but Orpheus didn’t even notice the marten. “Fantastic!” he murmured as he ran the palm of his hand over the gallery walls. “I suppose this is one of the passages that lead to the princely tombs under the castle of Ombra.”

“No, it’s not,” said Meggie coldly. Orpheus – in league with Mortola – a magic-tongued deceiver.

How empty his round face looked! No wonder, she thought with great dislike, as she rose from the place where Dustfinger had slept. He has no conscience, no sympathy, no heart. Why had she brought him here? As if there weren’t enough of his sort in the Inkworld. I did it for Farid, replied her heart, for Farid…

“How are Elinor and Darius? If you’ve done anything to them .. ” Meggie didn’t finish her sentence. If he had, then what?

Orpheus turned, with as much surprise as if he hadn’t seen her at all before. “Elinor and Darius?

Oh, are you that girl who apparently read herself here?” His eyes became watchful. Obviously, he remembered what he had done to her parents.

“My father almost died because of you!” Meggie was angry with herself for the way her voice shook.

Orpheus blushed childishly red, whether in annoyance or embarrassment Meggie couldn’t have said, but whichever it was he quickly recovered. “Well, how can I help it if Mortola had a score to 361

 

settle with him?” he replied. “And from what you say I take it that he’s still alive, so there’s nothing to get upset about, is there?” Shrugging, he turned his back to Meggie. “Strange!” he murmured, glancing at the rubble at the end of the gallery, the narrow ladders and the props supporting the roof. “Will someone explain exactly where I am? This looks almost like a mine, but I didn’t read anything about a mine. . ”

“Never mind what you read. I’m the one who brought you here.” Meggie’s voice was so sharp that Farid cast her a glance of alarm.

“You?” Orpheus turned and examined her so condescendingly that the blood rushed to Meggie’s face. “You obviously don’t know who you’re talking to. But why am I bothering with you, anyway? I’m tired of looking at this unattractive mine. Where are the fairies? The men-at-arms?

The strolling players?” He roughly pushed Meggie aside and went to the ladder, but Farid barred his way.

“You stay where you are, Cheeseface!” he snapped. “Do you want to know why you’re here?

Because of Dustfinger.”

“Oh yes?” There was derision in Orpheus’s laughter. “Haven’t you found him yet? Well, perhaps he doesn’t want to be found, or not by a persistent fellow like you. . ”

“He’s dead,” Farid interrupted brusquely. “Dustfinger is dead, and the only reason why Meggie read you here is for you to write him back!”

“She – did – not – read – me – here! How many more times do I have to tell you?” Orpheus made for the ladder again, but Farid simply took his hand without a word and led him over to the place where Dustfinger was.

Roxane had hung his cloak in front of the gallery where he was still lying, motionless, as if the earth had crushed him. She and Resa had placed burning candles around him – dancing fire instead of the flowers usually laid beside corpses.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Orpheus when he saw him lying there. “Dead! He really is dead! But this is terrible!”

Meggie was amazed to see that there were tears in his eyes. His fingers shook as he took his misted-up glasses off his nose and polished them on his jacket. Then, hesitantly, he went up to Dustfinger, bent, and touched his hand.

“Cold!” he whispered and retreated. His eyes blurred with tears, he looked at Farid. “Was it Basta? Come on, tell me! No, wait, how did it go? Was Basta even there? ‘Some of Capricorn’s men,’ yes, that was it, they were going to kill the marten and Dustfinger tried to save him! I wept my eyes out when I read that chapter, I threw the book at the wall! And now I get here at last and –” He was struggling for breath. “I only sent him back because I thought he’d be safe here now! Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God! Dead!” Orpheus sobbed – and then fell silent. He bent over Dustfinger’s body again. “Wait a moment. Stabbed. Stabbed, that’s what it says in the book.

So where’s the wound? ‘Stabbed for the marten’s sake,’ yes, that’s what it said.” He turned abruptly and stared at Gwin, who was perched on Farid’s shoulders, hissing at him. “He left the marten behind. He left him and you both behind. So how is it possible that –”

Farid said nothing, as the marten affectionately licked his ear. Meggie felt so sorry for him, but when she put out her hand he drew back..

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“What’s that marten doing here? Tell me! Have you lost your tongue?” There was a metallic edge to Orpheus’s beautiful voice.

“He didn’t die for Gwin,” whispered Farid.

“No? Who did he die for, then?”

“For me.”

This time Farid did not withdraw his hand when Meggie took it. But before he could tell Orpheus any more, they heard another voice behind them. Abrupt and angry. “Who’s this? What is a stranger doing here?”

Orpheus spun around as if caught in some guilty act. There stood Roxane, with Resa beside her.

Orpheus stared at her in amazement. “Roxane!” he whispered. “The beautiful minstrel woman!

May I introduce myself? My name is Orpheus. I was a – a friend of Dustfinger’s. Yes, I think one could say that.”

“Meggie!” said Resa in a faltering voice. “How did he get here?”

Meggie instinctively hid the notebook containing Fenoglio’s words behind her back.

“So how is Elinor?” Resa asked Orpheus sharply. “And Darius? What have you done to them?”

“Nothing!” replied Orpheus. In his confusion he obviously didn’t notice that the woman who had been able to speak only with her fingers had a voice again. “Far from it. I went to a lot of trouble to help them feel more relaxed about books. They keep them like butterflies pinned in a case, each in its own place, imprisoned in their cells! But books want to breathe and sing, they want to feel air between their pages and a reader’s fingers tenderly stroking them –”

Roxane took Dustfinger’s cloak from the prop over which she had draped it. “You don’t look like a friend of Dustfinger’s to me,” she interrupted Orpheus. “But if you want to say good-bye to him, do it now, because I’m going to take him with me.”

“Take him with you? What do you mean?” Farid barred her way. “Orpheus is here to bring him back!”

“Get out of my sight!” Roxane snapped at him. “The very first time I saw you coming to my farm, I knew you brought bad luck. You ought to be dead, not Dustfinger. That’s how it is and that’s how it stays.”

Farid flinched as if Roxane had struck him. He did not resist as she pushed him aside, and stood there with his shoulders drooping as she bent over Dustfinger.

Meggie couldn’t think of any way to comfort him, but her mother kneeled down beside Roxane.

“Listen!” she said quietly. “Dustfinger brought Farid back from the dead by making the words of a story come true. Words, Roxane! In this world they make strange things happen, and Orpheus knows a lot about words.”

“Oh yes, I do!” Orpheus quickly went to Roxane’s side. “I made him a door of words so that he could come back to you. Did he never tell you?”

Roxane looked at him disbelievingly, but the magic of his voice worked on her, too. “Yes, believe 363

 

me, I did it!” Orpheus went on. “And I’ll write something to bring him back from the dead. I’ll find words as precious and intoxicating as the scent of a lily, words to beguile Death and open the cold fingers he has closed around Dustfinger’s warm heart!” A delighted smile lit up his face, as if he were already relishing his great achievements to come.

But Roxane just shook her head, as if to free herself from the magic of his voice, and blew out the candles standing around Dustfinger. “Now I understand,” she said, covering Dustfinger with his cloak. “You’re an enchanter. I only went to an enchanter once. After our younger daughter died.

People who go to enchanters are desperate, and they know it. They live on false hopes like ravens preying on carrion. His promises sounded just as wonderful as yours. He promised me what I most desperately wanted. They all do. They promise to bring back what’s lost forever: a child, a friend – or a husband.” She drew the cloak over Dustfinger’s still face. “I’ll never believe such promises again. They only make the pain worse. I’ll take him back to Ombra with me and find a place there where no one will disturb him, not the Adderhead, not the wolves, not even the fairies. And he will still look as if he were only sleeping long after my hair is white, for I know from Nettle how you go about preserving the body even when the soul is long gone.”

“You’ll tell me where that is, won’t you?” Farid’s voice trembled, as if he knew Roxane’s answer already. “You’ll tell me where you’re taking him?”

“No,” said Roxane. “You least of all.”

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Chapter 77 – Where Now?

The Giant rested back in his chair. “You’ve some stories left,” he said. “I can smell them on your skin.”

– Brian Patten, The Story Giant

 

Farid watched as they laid the injured on litters under cover of night. The injured and the dead.

Six robbers were standing among the trees listening for any sound that might mean danger.

Only the tops of the silver towers were to be seen in the distance, bright in the starlight, yet it seemed to them all as if the Adderhead could see them. Could he sense it up in his castle when they stole soft-footed over Mount Adder? Who could tell what the Adderhead might be able to do now? Now that he was immortal and as invincible as Death itself?

But the night was still, as still as Dustfinger, who was to be taken back to Ombra on a cart drawn by the Black Prince’s bear. Meggie was going there, too, for the time being, to the other side of the forest, with Silvertongue and her mother. The Black Prince had told them of a village too poor and remote from any road to interest princes. He would hide them there, or on one of the nearby farms.

Should he go with them?

Farid saw Meggie looking at him. She was standing with her mother and the other women.

Silvertongue was with the robbers, and hanging from his belt was the sword with which he had apparently killed Basta – and not just Basta. Almost a dozen men had died at his hands, so several of the robbers had told Farid, their voices lowered in respect. Amazing. Back in the hills around Capricorn’s village, Silvertongue couldn’t have killed a blackbird when they were in hiding together, let alone a human being. On the other hand, how had he himself learned to kill?

The answer was not hard to find. Fear and rage. And there was enough of those in this story.

Roxane was with the robbers, too. She turned her back on Farid when she noticed him looking at her. She treated him like air – as if he had never returned to the land of the living, as if he were only a ghost, an ill-intentioned ghost who had devoured her husband’s heart. “What was it like being dead, Farid?” Meggie had asked him. But he couldn’t remember. Or perhaps he didn’t want to remember.

Orpheus was standing barely two paces away from him, shivering in the thin shirt he wore. The Prince had told him he must change his light-colored suit for a dark cloak and woolen trousers.

But in spite of the clothes he still looked like a cuckoo among sparrows. Fenoglio was watching Orpheus like an old tomcat keeping a wary eye on a young one who has invaded his territory.

“He looks a fool!” Fenoglio had whispered this comment to Meggie just loud enough for everyone to hear it. “Look at him. A callow youth, knows nothing about life, how is he going to be able to write? It might well be best to send him straight back, but never mind. There’s no saving this wretched story now, anyway.”

He was probably right. But why hadn’t he at least tried to write Dustfinger back? Didn’t he care anything for the characters he had created? Was he just moving them like pawns in a game of chess, enjoying their pain?

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Farid clenched his fists in helpless anger. I would have tried, he thought. A hundred times, a thousand times, for the rest of my life. But he couldn’t even read those strange little signs! The few that Dustfinger had taught him would never be enough to bring him back from where he was now. Even if he wrote his name in letters of fire on the walls of the Castle of Night, Dustfinger’s face would remain as terribly still as when he last saw it.

No, only Orpheus could try it. But he hadn’t written a single word since Meggie read him here.

He just stood there – or paced up and down, up and down, while the robbers watched him suspiciously. The glances Silvertongue cast him were not very friendly, either. He had turned pale when he saw Orpheus again. For a moment Farid had thought he would seize Cheeseface and beat him to a pulp, but Meggie had taken his hand and drawn him away. Whatever the two of them had said to each other, she wasn’t telling Farid. She had known that her father would not approve if she read Orpheus here, but she had done it all the same. For him. Was Orpheus interested in any of that? Oh no.

He was still acting as if his own voice, not Meggie’s, had brought him here. Stuck-up, thrice-accursed son of a bitch!

“Farid? Have you made up your mind?” Farid came out of his gloomy thoughts. Meggie was standing in front of him. “You will come with us, won’t you? Resa says you can stay with us as long as you like, and Mo doesn’t mind, either.”

Silvertongue was still standing with the robbers, talking to the Black Prince. Farid saw Orpheus watching the two of them .. then he began pacing up and down once more, rubbed his forehead, smoothed back his hair, muttered as if talking to himself. Like a lunatic, thought Farid. I’ve pinned my hopes on a lunatic!

“Wait here.” He turned away from Meggie and went over to Orpheus. “I’m going with Meggie,” he said brusquely. “You can go wherever you like.”

Cheeseface straightened his glasses. “What are you talking about? Of course I’m coming with you! After all, I want to see everything – the Way less Wood, the Laughing Prince’s castle.” He looked up at the hill. “And of course I’d have liked to see the Castle of Night, too, but after what’s happened here, I suppose it isn’t a good time. Well, this is only my first day here. . Have you seen the Adderhead yourself? Is he very terrifying? I’d like to see those silver scales on the columns. . ”

“You’re not here to go sightseeing!” Farid’s voice was choked with anger. What on earth was Cheeseface thinking of? How could he stand there looking around him as if he were on a pleasure trip, while Dustfinger would soon be lying in some dark crypt or wherever Roxane planned to take him?

“Oh no?” Orpheus’s round face darkened. “Is that any way to talk to me? I’ll do as I like. Do you think I’ve finally arrived where I always wanted to be just to have a snotty boy, who has no business here, anyway, order me around? You think words can simply be plucked from the empty air? This is all about Death, you stupid boy! It could take months for me to get the right idea. Who knows? You don’t call up ideas just like that, not even with fire, and we need a brilliant, a divine idea. Which means” Orpheus inspected his fingernails – “that I shall need a servant! Or do you want me to waste my time washing my own clothes and finding myself something to eat?”

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The dog. The accursed dog. “Very well. I’ll be your servant, too.” Farid brought the words out only with difficulty. “If you will bring him back.”

“Excellent!” Orpheus smiled. “Then, for a start, get me some food. It looks as if we’re going to be embarking on a long and uncomfortable march.”

Farid gritted his teeth, but of course he obeyed. He would have scraped the silver from the towers of the Castle of Night to get Dustfinger breathing again.

“Farid? What is it? Are you coming with us?” Meggie stepped into his path as he ran past her, with bread and dried meat for Cheeseface in his pockets.

“Yes – yes, we’re coming with you!” He flung his arms around her neck, but only once he saw that Silvertongue’s back was turned to him. You never knew with fathers. “I’ll save him, Meggie!”

he whispered in her ear. “I’ll bring Dustfinger back. This story will have a happy ending. I swear!”

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