Inkdeath (69 page)

"I don’t know. Pull out his fingernails?"

Jacopo went over to the bed. There it was, the cushion that the Adderhead always had with him. To prop up his sick flesh, they said. But Jacopo knew better. He’d often seen his grandfather put his hand under the heavy fabric to feel the leather binding with his fingers. Once he had even caught a glimpse of the blood-soaked covers. No one paid any attention to what a child saw. Not even the Adderhead, who trusted no one but himself.

"His fingernails? Hm. Painful, yes. I hope my son will get ideas like that once he’s your age. Although why does a man need a son when he’s immortal? I ask myself that question more and more frequently. Why does a man need a wife? Or daughters.

. . ."

The last words were barely audible. The Adderhead opened his mouth, and a snore came out. The lizardlike eyelids closed, and his left hand clutched the cushion in which his death was hidden, But Jacopo had small, slender hands, not at all like his grandfather’s. Very carefully, he undid the ribbons tying the fabric, put his fingers inside the cushion, and took out the Book, the White Book — although it really should be called the Red Book now. His grandfather turned his head, and his breath rattled in his sleep. Jacopo reached under his tunic for the volume he had taken from the Lost Library and exchanged it for its red twin.

"My grandfather’s asleep," he told the guards when he came out of the room. "And you’d better not wake him or he’ll pull out all your fingernails."

Resa had flown away to Silvertongue in the Hall of a Thousand Windows. "The bird will never leave you again, Resa!"

Dustfinger had warned her, but she had put the seeds into her mouth all the same.

He had had great difficulty in dragging her out of the bedchamber before the Silver Prince came back. The despair in her face went to his heart. They had not found the White Book, and both of them knew what that meant: It wasn’t the Adderhead who would die, but the Bluejay by the hand of the Piper, Thumbling, or the White Women coming for him because he hadn’t been able to pay the price Death demanded for his life.

Resa had flown to him so that Silvertongue would not be alone when he died. Or did she still hope for some miracle to save him? Perhaps. Dustfinger had not told her that Death was going to take him again, too and then her daughter.

"If you don’t find the Book," Silvertongue had whispered to him before sending him away to lay the fiery trail for the Piper, "then at least let us try to save our daughters."

Our daughters . . . Dustfinger knew where to find Brianna, but how was he to protect Meggie from the Piper or the White Women themselves?

Of course the Piper’s men had tried to hold him fast once he’d led them to the Bluejay, but it was easy to escape them. They were still looking for him, but the darkness in the castle hid the Adderhead’s enemies as well as eased the pain in his eyes.

Orpheus seemed very sure that his black dog was enough to guard Brianna. Two torches burned beside the cage where she sat, crouching like a captive bird. But there was no soldier on guard. The real guard lurked somewhere in the shadows, in a place that the torchlight didn’t reach.

How in the world had Orpheus managed to tame it?

"Don’t forget, he read it out of a book," Silvertongue had said. "A book for children, too, although I’m not sure that Fenoglio made the Night-Mare any less dangerous because of that. But it’s made of words, and I’m sure that Orpheus himself used words to make it obey him. Just a few rearranged words, a couple of slightly twisted sentences, and the terror in the night becomes an obedient dog."

But, Silvertongue, Dustfinger had thought, have you forgotten that everything in this world is made of words? He knew only that this Night-Mare was not less dangerous, but even more sinister than those found in the Wayless Wood. It would not, like its fellows, be driven away by fairy dust and fire it was woven of darker stuff. What a pity you didn’t ask the White Women its name, he said to himself as he slowly made his way toward the cages. Don’t the songs say that’s the only way to kill a NightMare? For that was what he had to do: destroy the creature so that Orpheus could not call it back. Forget the songs, Dustfinger, he told himself as he looked around. Write your own, just as the Bluejay must write his now.

At the sound of his whispering the torches flared up as if to welcome him, weary of the darkness surrounding them. And Brianna raised her head.

How beautiful she was, as lovely as her mother.

Dustfinger looked around again, waiting for the darkness to start moving. Where was it?

He heard a snuffling sound, felt cold breath, panting like a large dog’s. To his left the shadows grew and became blacker than black. His heart began to beat painfully fast.

Ah. So the fear was still there, even though he so seldom felt it now.

Brianna got to her feet and stumbled away until her back was up against the bars.

Behind her, a painted peacock spread its tail on the gray wall. "Go away!" she whispered. "Please! It will eat you!"

Go away. A tempting idea. But he had once had two daughters, now he had only one

. . . and he would keep her, not forever but perhaps for a few years yet. Precious time.

Time whatever that was.

All was cold behind him, dreadfully cold. Dustfinger called up the flames and wrapped himself in their warmth, but the cold made the fire burn low and go out, leaving him alone with the shadow.

"Please! Please go away!" Brianna’s voice urged, and the love in it, that she usually hid so well, warmed him more than the fire ever could. He called on the flames again, more sternly this time, reminding them that he and they were brothers, inseparable. Hesitantly, they licked up from the ground, trembling as if a cold wind were blowing through them, but they burned, and the Night-Mare retreated and stared at him.

Yes, what the songs said about him and his like was true. It must be true. The songs said Night-Mares were made entirely of the blackness of the soul, of evil that could not be forgotten or forgiven until they were snuffed out, consuming themselves and taking with them everything they had ever been.

The eyes transfixed him, red eyes in all that blackness, eyes both fierce and dull, lost in themselves, with no yesterday and no tomorrow, without light and warmth, caught in their own cold, the freezing entity of evil.

Dustfinger felt the fire around him like a warm fur. It almost burned his skin, but it was his only protection against those dull eyes and the hungry mouth that opened, screaming so horribly that Brianna sank to her knees and put her hands over her ears.

The Night-Mare reached a black hand out to the fire. It hissed when he dipped it into the flames and Dustfinger thought he recognized a face in all the blackness. A face he had never forgotten.

Was it possible? Had Orpheus seen it, too, and so tamed his black dog by calling it by its forgotten name? Or had he given it that name himself and brought back the man whom Silvertongue had sent to his death?

Brianna was crying behind him. Dustfinger sensed her trembling through the bars, but he felt no fear now. He was just grateful. Grateful for this moment. Glad of this new encounter—which he hoped would be their last.

"Well, look! Who have we here?" he said softly, as Brianna’s weeping died down on the other side of the bars. "Do you remember yourself in all your darkness? Do you remember the knife, and the boy’s thin, unprotected back? Do you remember the sound my heart made when it broke?"

The Night-Mare stared at him, and Dustfinger stepped toward it, still surrounded by flames—flames burning hotter I and hotter, nourished by all the pain and despair he was bringing back to mind.

"Away with you, Basta!" he said, speaking the name loud enough to pierce the heart of all the darkness. "Be gone for all eternity."

The face showed more clearly — the narrow, foxy face that he had once feared so much and Dustfinger made the flames bite into the cold, made them penetrate the blackness like swords, all of them writing Basta’s name, and the Night-Mare screamed again _ its eyes suddenly full of memories. It screamed and screamed while its shape ran like ink, melting into the shadows, dispersing like smoke. Only the cold was left, but the fire ate that, too, and Dustfinger fell on his knees and felt the pain leaving him pain that had outlasted death itself. He wished Farid were here with !

him. He wished it so much that, for a few moments, he forgot where he was.

"Father?" Brianna’s whisper reached him through the smoke.

Had she ever called him that before? Yes, long ago. But had he been the same man then?

The bars of the cage bent under the heat of his hands, He dared j not touch Brianna because he felt the fire so strongly in them. Footsteps approached—heavy, rapid footsteps. The NightMare’s screams had brought them. But the darkness swallowed up Dustfinger and Brianna before the soldiers reached the cages, and they looked in vain for their black watchman.

The Black Prince was still with Roxane. She was going to splint his injured leg so that he could walk on it. Walk to the Castle in the Lake. "We have time," Meggie had told him, although her heart was in a hurry. Mo would certainly need as long to bind this White Book as he had needed in the Castle of Night.

The Black Prince intended to set out with almost all his men to stand by the Bluejay.

But without Elinor and without Meggie. "Your father made me promise that you and your mother would stay in a safe place," he had told her. "With your mother I wasn’t able to keep my promise, but at least I’ll keep it where you’re concerned. Didn’t you promise him the same thing?"

No, she had not. So she would go, even if it almost broke her heart to leave Doria behind. He still hadn’t woken up, but Darius would talk to him. And Elinor. And she would come back wouldn’t she?

Farid was going with her. He would be able to call fire if the weather grew cold on their way, and she had stolen some dried meat and filled one of Battista’s leather bottles with water. How could the Black Prince think she would stay after she had seen those fiery words? How could he think she’d leave her father to die as if this were some other, quite different story?

"Meggie, the Black Prince doesn’t know about the words," Fenoglio had pointed out.

"And he has no idea what Orpheus is up to, either!" But Fenoglio did know, and all the same —just like the Prince — he didn’t want her to go. "Do you want what happened to your mother to happen to you, too? No one knows where she is. No, you must stay. We’ll help your father in our own way. I’ll write day and night, I promise you. But what use is that if you don’t stay here to read what I’ve written?"

Stay here. Wait. No, she was sorry, but she was going to steal away in secret like Resa, and she wouldn’t get lost . . . she’d waited far too long already. If Fenoglio did indeed think of something — and he had certainly been able to write the giant here

— then Darius could read it, and the children had Battista and Elinor, Roxane and Fenoglio to look after them. But Mo was alone, all alone. He needed her. He’d always needed her.

Elinor was snoring gently. Darius slept next to her, in between Minerva’s children.

Meggie moved as quietly as the woven structure of the nest allowed, picking up her jacket, her boots, and the backpack that still reminded her of the other world.

"Ready?" Farid was standing in the round doorway of the nest. "It will soon be light."

Meggie nodded and turned as Farid stared past her, his eyes as wide as a child’s.

A White Woman was standing beside the sleepers. She looked at Meggie.

She had a pencil in her hand, a short, worn-out chalk pencil, and with a look of invitation she was offering Farid one of the candles that Elinor had brought from Ombra. Farid went toward her like a sleepwalker, and with a whisper lit the wick.

The White Woman dipped her pencil into the flame and began to write on a sheet of paper. Meggie had been trying to write a good end to her father’s story on it after the giant took Fenoglio away. The White Woman wrote and wrote, while Minerva whispered her husband’s name in her sleep, while Elinor turned over onto her other side, while Despina put her arm around her brother, and the wind blew through the wickerwork of the nest, almost putting out the candle. Then the White Woman straightened up, looked at Meggie once more, and disappeared as if the wind had blown her away.

Farid breathed a sigh of relief when she had gone, and pressed his face into Meggie’s hair. But Meggie gently moved him aside and bent over the paper on which the White Woman had written.

"Can you read it?" Farid whispered.

Meggie nodded.

"Go to the Black Prince and tell him he can spare his leg," she said softly. "We’ll all stay here. The song of the Bluejay has been written."

It wasn’t easy to make your hands work slowly when they loved what they were doing so much. Mo’s eyes stung in the bad light, his ankles were sore from the heavy chains, and yet in the strangest way he felt happy. It was as if he were binding not the Adderhead’s death, but time itself into a book and with it all fears for the future, all the pain of the past.., until there was nothing left but now, this moment when his hands caressed paper and leather.

"I’ll bring fire to help you as soon as I’ve freed Brianna," Dustfinger had promised, before leaving him alone to go and act the part of a traitor once more. "And I’ll bring the White Book with me," he had added.

However, it was not Dustfinger but Resa who came. Mo’s heart had almost stopped when the swift flew through the doorway. One of the guards had aimed his crossbow at her, but she darted away from the arrow, and Mo had plucked a brown feather from his shoulder. They haven’t found the Book. That was his first thought as the swift settled on a beam above him. But whatever happened, he was glad she was there.

The Piper was leaning against a column, his eyes following every movement Mo made. Was he going to try doing without sleep for two whole weeks? Or did he think this book could be bound in a day?