Inkdeath (64 page)

"Oh, you showed me how, Prince!" said Fenoglio hoarsely.

"The giant was obviously only interested in live toys."

"Just as well for us," replied the Prince, closing his eyes. He deserves better, thought Fenoglio. Better than so much pain and all that fighting.

Something rustled in the undergrowth. Fenoglio spun around in alarm, but it was only two more robbers and Farid, with a stretcher made of branches. The boy nodded to him, but he clearly wasn’t half as glad as the others to see him safe. How those black eyes were looking at him! The fact was, Farid knew too much about Fenoglio and the part he played in this world. Don’t look at me so accusingly, he wanted to protest. What else were we to do? Meggie thought it was a good idea, too—well, to be honest, she had expressed afew doubts.

"I don’t understand where that giant came from so suddenly!" said Battista. "Even when I was a child the giants were little more than a fairy tale. I don’t know any of the strolling players who ever set eyes on one, except for Dustfinger, and he would always venture farther into the mountains than the rest of us."

Without a word, Farid turned his back on Fenoglio and cut a few more twigs for the stretcher. The bear would happily have carried his master on his furry back, and Battista had some difficulty in persuading him to get out of the way when they lifted the Black Prince and put him on the stretcher. Only when his master spoke gently to him did the bear calm down, and he -lumbered along beside the Prince, looking dejected.

Well, come on, Fenoglio, the old man told himself, what are you waiting for? "Go after them," he muttered as he followed Battista, his legs aching. "No one’s going to carry you. And you’d better pray to whatever you believe in that the Milksop isn’t back!"

The fire was everywhere. It ate its way along the walls and licked down from the ceiling, crept out of the stone, and gave as much light as if the sun itself had risen in the darkened castle to scorch his bloated flesh.

The Adderhead shouted at the Piper until he was hoarse. He struck him in his bony chest with his fists, longing to ram the man’s silver nose into his face, deep into the sound flesh that he envied him so much.

The Fire-Dancer was back from the dead for the second time, and the Bluejay had escaped from one of the cells that so his father-in-law had always claimed no prisoner ever left alive. "Flown away!" whispered the Adder’s soldiers. "The bird has flown, and now he’s roaming the castle like a hungry wolf He’ll kill us all!"

The Adderhead had handed over the two guards of the cell to Thumbling for punishment, but the Bluejay had already killed six more, and the rumors grew louder with every dead man they found. His soldiers were running away, over the bridge or along the tunnel under the lake, anywhere to get away from the bewitched castle that now belonged to the Bluejay and the Fire-Dancer. Some of them had even jumped into the lake, never to climb out again. The rest were shaking in their shoes like a crowd of terrified children, while the painted walls burned and the light scorched the Adder’s brain and his skin.

"Bring me Four-Eyes!" he shouted, and Thumbling dragged Orpheus into his room.

Jacopo crept in at the door, too, like a worm that had dug its way out of damp earth.

"Put out the fire!" How his throat hurt! As if the sparks were in there, too. "Put it out at once and bring me back the Bluejay, or I’ll cut your slimy tongue out! Is this why you persuaded me to throw him into that cell? So that he could fly away?"

The pale blue eyes blurred behind the man’s glasses and the flattering tongue sounded as if it had been bathed in precious oil. But it was impossible to mistake the fear in it.

"I told the Piper he ought to post more than two guards outside the cell," said the sly little snake. So much cleverer than Silvernose, so much mock innocence, even the Adderhead couldn’t quite see through it. "Only a few more hours and the Jay would have been pleading with you to let him bind the Book. Ask the guards. They heard him down there writhing like a worm on the hook, groaning and sighing

"The guards are dead. I handed them over to Thumbling and told him to make sure their screams could be heard all over the castle."

Thumbling adjusted his black gloves. "Four-Eyes is telling the truth. The guards kept bleating over and over that the Bluejay was in a very bad state down in that cell.

They heard him screaming and groaning, and they checked a couple of times to make sure he was still alive. I’d like to know how you did it," he said, his hawklike gaze resting on Orpheus for a moment. "But anyway, they said the Jay kept whispering one name again and again. . . ."

The Adderhead put his hands over his burning eyes. "What name? My daughter’s name, by any chance?"

"No, the name of some other woman," replied Thumbling.

"Resa. His wife, Your Highness." Orpheus smiled. The Adderhead was not sure whether his smile expressed deference or self-satisfaction.

The Piper cast a vicious glance at Orpheus. "My men will soon have caught his wife.

And his daughter, too!"

"And what use is that to me now?" The Adderhead pressed his fists into his eyes, but he could still see the fire all the same. Pain was cutting him into slices, stinking slices, and now the man to whom he owed it all had fooled him for the second time.

He needed the Book! A new Book to heal his flesh. It was hanging off his bones like mud heavy, damp, stinking mud. Bluejay.

"Take two of those who tried to run away up onto the bridge where everyone can see them," he said grimly. "And you, fetch that dog of yours!" he snapped at Orpheus. "It must be hungry."

The men screamed like animals as the black shadow devoured them, and the Adderhead imagined that the cries echoing all the way to his room were the Bluejay’s. The man owed him many screams.

Orpheus listened with a smile, and the Night-Mare returned to him like a faithful dog after its meal. Panting, it merged with Orpheus’s shadow, and its darkness made even the Adderhead shudder. Orpheus, however, adjusted his glasses with a satisfied expression. Their round lenses reflected the sparks burning on the walls. Four-Eyes.

"I’ll bring you back the Bluejay," he said, and even against his will the Adderhead felt the confidence in that velvety voice soothing him once again. "He hasn’t escaped you, however it may seem. I have bound him in invisible chains. I forged them myself with my black art, and wherever he’s hiding, those chains will pull at him and bring back old pain. He knows I am the one sending him the pain, and he knows it will never end as long as I live. So he’ll try to kill me. Set Thumbling to guard my room, and the Bluejay will stumble into his arms. He’s not our problem anymore.

But the Fire-Dancer is."

The hatred in his pale face surprised the Adderhead. Usually, such hatred comes only after love.

"So, he’s back from the dead again!" Loathing clung to every word that Orpheus spoke, slowing his smooth tongue. "He’s acting as if he were lord of this castle, but take my advice and his fire will soon be extinguished!"

"And what advice might that be?"

Orpheus smiled.

"Send Thumbling to your daughter. Have her thrown into one of the cells, and spread word that she helped the Bluejay to escape. That’ll stop all the nonsense talk that makes your soldiers tremble with fear. As for her beautiful maidservant, lock her up in the cage where the Bluejay himself was held. And tell Thumbling he needn’t treat the girl too gently."

The fire was still reflected in Orpheus’s glasses. They made his eyes almost invisible, and for a moment the Adderhead felt something he had never felt before fear of another man. It was an interesting sensation. Like a tingling on the back of the neck, a slight pressure in the stomach.

"Exactly what I planned to do," he said and read in Orpheus’s face that he knew he was lying. I’ll have to kill him, thought the Adderhead. As soon as the new Book is bound.

No man should be cleverer than his master. Particularly not when he controlled so dangerous a dog.

You must go! You’re not safe anywhere in this castle!" I Dustfinger kept saying it, again and again, and Mo kept shaking his head.

"I have to find the White Book."

"Let me look for it. I’ll write the three words. Even I can write well enough for that!"

"No, that wasn’t the bargain. Suppose Death comes for Meggie all the same? I bound the Book, I must rid the world of it. And the Adder wants to see you dead as much as me."

"I’ll simply slip out of my skin again."

"You only just found your way back into it last time."

How familiar the two of them sounded with each other. Like two sides of a coin, like two faces of the same man.

"What bargain are you talking about?"

They looked at Resa as if they both wished her far, far away. Mo was pale, but his eyes were dark with anger, and his hand kept going to his old wound. What had they done to him down in that terrible cell?

Dust lay like snow in the room where they were hiding. The plaster on the ceiling was so damp that it had crumbled away in places. The Castle in the Lake was sick, Perhaps it was already dying, but on its walls lambs still slept beside wolves, dreaming of a world that never was. The room had two narrow windows. A dead tree stood in the courtyard below.

Walls, parapets, oriel towers, bridges . . . a stony trap, and Resa wanted her wings back. How her skin was itching. As if the feathered quills were just waiting to pierce through again.

"Mo what kind of bargain?" She came between the two men.

When he told her she began crying. Now at last she understood. He was promised to Death whether he stayed or fled. Caught in a trap made of stone and ink. And so was their daughter.

He took her in his arms, but he wasn’t really with her. He was still down in the cell, drowning in hate and fear. His heart was beating so violently that she was afraid it might break in his breast.

"I’ll kill him," she heard him say as she wept into his shoulder. "I ought to have done it long ago. And after that I’ll look for the Book."

She knew only too well who he meant. Orpheus. He pushed her gently away from him and picked up his sword. It was covered with blood, but he wiped the blade clean on his sleeve. He still wore the black clothes of a bookbinder, although it was a long time since that had been his trade. He made for the door with determination, but Dustfinger barred his way.

"That’s your idea?!" he said. "Very well, so Orpheus read the words, but you are making them come true!" He raised his hands, and fire wrote the words in the air, terrible words, all speaking of only one thing. The Last Song of the Bluejay.

Mo stretched out his hand as if to extinguish them, but they scorched his fingers and burned his heart.

"Orpheus is just waiting for you to come to him!" said Dustfinger. "He’s going to serve you up to the Adderhead on a platter made of ink. Resist it! It’s not a pleasant feeling to read the words that guide your actions. No one knows that better than I do, but they didn’t come true for me, either. They have only as much power as you give them. You won’t go to Orpheus, I will. I don’t know much about killing. Even dying didn’t teach me that, but I can steal the books from which he takes the words. And once you can think straight again, we’ll look for the White Book together."

"Suppose the Adder’s soldiers find Mo here first?" Resa was still staring at the burning words. She read them again and again.

Dustfinger passed his hand over the picture fading on the walls of the room, and the painted wolf began to move. "I’ll leave you a watchdog, though not quite such a fierce one as Orpheus’s, but it will howl when the soldiers come, and I hope it can hold them off long enough to give you time to find another hiding place. Fire will teach the Adder’s men to fear every shadow."

The wolf with its burning coat leaped off the wall and followed Dustfinger out.

However, the words that had been written in the air were still there, and Resa read them again:

But when the Bluejay would not bow to the Adderhead, only one man knew what to do, a stranger who had come from far away to be the Adder’s adviser. He understood that the Bluejay could be broken by only one man, and that was himself So he summoned up all that the Bluejay didn’t dare to acknowledge: the fear that made him fearless, the anger that made him invincible. He had him thrown into darkness to fight himself there to fight the pain still inside him, never forgotten, never healed, all the fear that fetters and chains had given him, the anger that had sown the seeds of fear. He painted dreadful pictures in his heart, pictures of. . .

Resa read no more. The words were too terrible. But the fire had burned the last sentences into her memory.

. . . and the Bluejay, broken by his own darkness, pleaded with the Adderhead to be allowed to bind him a second Book, even more beautiful than the first. But as soon as the Silver Prince had the Book in his hands he condemned him to die the slowest of all deaths, and the minstrels sang the Last Song of the Bluejay.

Mo had turned his back on the words. He stood there with the dust of countless years around him like gray snow, looking at his hands as if he wasn’t sure whether they still did as he told them or obeyed the words burning behind him.

"Mo?" Resa kissed him. She knew that he wouldn’t like what she was about to do.

He looked at her absently, his eyes full of darkness.

"I will look for the White Book. I’ll find it and write the three words in it for you."

So that the Adderhead dies before Orpheus’s words come true, she added in her mind, and before the name Fenoglio gave you kills you.

By the time Mo understood what she had said, she was already lifting the seeds to her mouth. He tried to knock them out of her hand, but she already had them under her tongue.

"No, Resa!"

She flew through the fiery letters. Their heat singed her breast.

"Resa!"

No, this time he was the one who must wait. Stay where you are, she thought. Please, Mo.