A chilly wind was blowing tonight, and Farid was just breathing on his invisible fingers to warm them when hoofbeats echoed through the dark.
"There, now!" whispered Dustfinger. "Looks like we're in luck for a change! Remember, whatever happens, we must be out of here before daybreak. The sun will make us visible again almost as fast as you can summon fire."
The hoofbeats grew louder, and a horseman emerged from the darkness – not in the Adderhead's pale silver but clothed in red and black. "Well, would you believe it?" whispered Dustfinger. "Sootbird, no less!"
One of the guards called something down from the battlements, and Sootbird replied.
"Come on!" Dustfinger hissed to Farid as the gate swung open, creaking. They followed so close to Sootbird that Farid could have touched his horse's tail. Traitor, he thought, filthy traitor! He would have liked to drag him down from the saddle, put a knife to his throat, and ask what news he was bringing to the Castle of Night – but Dustfinger thrust him on, through the gigantic gate and into the courtyard. He led Farid onward as Sootbird rode to the castle stables. They were swarming with men-at-arms. Obviously, the Castle of Night was as wakeful as its master was said to be.
"Listen!" whispered Dustfinger, drawing Farid under an arch. "This castle is the size of a city and as full of nooks and crannies as a labyrinth. Mark the way you go with soot. I don't want to have to search for you later because you're lost like a child in the forest, understand?"
"But what about Sootbird? He gave away the Secret Camp, didn't he?"
"Very likely. But forget him for now. Think of Meggie."
"But he was among the prisoners!" A troop of soldiers marched past them. Farid flinched back in alarm. He still couldn't believe that they really did not see him.
"So?" Dustfinger's voice sounded like the wind itself speaking. "It's the oldest disguise in the world for traitors. Where do you hide your informer? Among your victims. I expect the Piper told him once or twice what a magnificent fire-eater he was, and then they were best friends. Sootbird's always had peculiar taste in friends. Well, come on, or we'll still be standing here when the sun melts our invisibility off us."
That made Farid instinctively look up at the sky. It was a dark night. Even the moon seemed lost in all the blackness, and he could not take his eyes off the silver towers.
"The Adder's nest!" he whispered – and felt Dustfinger's invisible hand drawing him on again, none too gently.
59. THE ADDERHEAD
Thoughts of death
Crowd over my happiness
Like dark clouds
Over the silver sickle of the moon.
Sterling Allen Brown, Poems to Read
The Adderhead was at table when Firefox brought Meggie to him. Exactly as she had read it in the story. The hall where he was feasting was so magnificent that the Laughing Prince's throne room seemed plain as a farmhouse by comparison. The tiles over which Firefox dragged Meggie to his master were strewn with white rose petals. A sea of candles burned in claw-footed candelabra, standing between columns covered with silver scales. The light of the candles made them shimmer like snakeskin. Countless servants hurried around between the scaly pillars, soundlessly, heads bent. Maidservants waited in respectful rows for a sign from their master. They all looked tired, torn from sleep, just as Fenoglio had described it. Some were leaning their backs surreptitiously against the tapestries on the walls.
Beside the Adderhead, at a table that seemed to be laid for a hundred guests, sat a woman as pale as a porcelain doll, with such a childlike face that Meggie would have thought her the Adderhead's daughter if she didn't know better. The Silver Prince himself ate greedily, as if by swallowing the food that stood in countless dishes on the table covered with black cloth, he could swallow his own fear, too. But his wife touched nothing. It seemed to Meggie that the sight of her husband eating so greedily nauseated her; she kept passing her ringed hands over her swollen belly. Oddly enough, her pregnancy made her look even more like a child: a child with a thin, bitter mouth and cool eyes.
The silver-nosed Piper stood behind the Adderhead, one foot on a stool, his lute supported on his thigh, singing softly as his fingers slowly plucked the strings. But Meggie's eyes did not linger on him long. At the end of the table she had seen someone she knew only too well. Her heart faltered like an old woman's feet when Mortola returned her glance, with a smile so full of triumph that Meggie's knees began to tremble. The man who had wounded Dustfinger in the mill sat beside Mortola. His hands were bandaged, and above his forehead the fire had burned a pathway into his hair. Basta was in an even worse state. He was sitting close to Mortola, his face so red and swollen that Meggie almost failed to recognize him. But he had escaped death once again. Perhaps the good-luck charms he always wore worked after all.
Firefox clutched Meggie's arm tightly as he walked toward the Adderhead in his heavy fox-fur cloak – as if to prove that he personally had caught this little bird. He roughly pushed her in front of the table and threw the framed photograph down among the dishes.
The Adderhead raised his head and looked at her, with bloodshot eyes in which Meggie could still see the traces of the bad night Fenoglio's words had given him. When he raised his greasy hand, the Piper fell silent behind him and propped his lute against the wall.
"There she is!" announced Firefox, as his master wiped the grease from his fingers and lips with an embroidered napkin. "I wish we had a witch-picture like this of everyone we're after. Then the informers wouldn't keep bringing us the wrong people."
The Adderhead had picked up the photograph. Appraisingly, he compared it with Meggie. She tried to bend her head, but Firefox forced up her face.
"Remarkable!" commented the Adderhead. "My best painters couldn't have produced anywhere near as good a likeness of the girl." With a bored expression, he reached for a little silver toothpick and prodded his teeth with it. "Mortola says you're a witch. Is it true?"
"Yes!" replied Meggie, looking him straight in the eye. Now they'd find out whether Fenoglio's words would come true again. If only she had been able to read to the end! She had read a great deal of it, but she could feel the rest of the words still waiting under her dress. Forget them, Meggie, she told herself. You must make the words you have already read come true – and hope that the Adderhead plays his part just as you do.
"Yes?" repeated the Adderhead. "So you admit it? Don't you know what I usually do to witches and magicians? I burn them." The same words. He was speaking Fenoglio's words. Exactly as Fenoglio had put them into his mouth. Exactly as she had read them out loud in the infirmary a few hours ago.
She knew what she must answer. The words came into her mind of their own accord, as if they were hers and not Fenoglio's.
Meggie looked at Basta and the other man from the mill. Fenoglio hadn't written about them personally, but the answer was still right. "The last to burn," she said calmly, "were your own men. Only one man commands fire in this world, and he's not you."
The Adderhead stared at her – watchful as a fat tomcat not yet certain how to play his game most satisfactorily with the mouse he has caught. "Ah," he said in his heavy, thick voice. "I suppose you mean that fire-dancer. He likes to go around with poachers and footpads. You think he'll come and try to rescue you, eh? Then, at last, I could feed him to the fire that you claim obeys him so well."
"I don't need anyone to rescue me," replied Meggie. "I would have come to you myself in any case, even if you hadn't had me brought here."
There was laughter among the silver columns. The Adderhead leaned across the table and examined her with unconcealed curiosity.
"Well, well!" he said. "Really? Why? To plead with me to let your father go? Because that robber is your father, isn't he? At least, Mortola says so. She even says we've caught your mother, too."
Mortola! Fenoglio had never thought of her. He hadn't written a word about her, but there she sat with her magpie gaze. Don't think about it, Meggie. Be cold. Cold to your very hear
t, as you were on the night when you summoned the Shadow. But where was she to get the right words from now? Improvise, Meggie, she told herself, like an actress who's forgotten her lines. Go on! Make up your own words and then just mix them into the words Fenoglio wrote for you, like an extra spice.
"The Magpie is right," she replied to the Adderhead. And sure enough, her voice sounded calm and steady, as if her heart wasn't thudding in her breast like a small, hunted animal. "You took my father captive when she'd almost killed him, and you're holding my mother prisoner in your dungeons. However, I'm not here to ask for leniency. I have a deal to offer you."
"Listen to the little witch!" Basta's voice shook with hatred. "Why don't I just slice her up nice and thin, and you can feed her to your dogs?"
However, the Adderhead ignored him. He kept his eyes fixed on Meggie's face, as if seeking it for what she wasn't saying. Be like Dustfinger, she told herself. You can never tell what Dustfinger is thinking or feeling from the way he looks. Try! It can't be all that difficult.
"A deal?" The Adderhead took his wife's hand, as casually as if he had just found it lying beside his plate by chance. "What do you plan to sell me that I can't simply take for myself?"
His men laughed. Meggie tried not to notice that her fingers were numb with terror. Once again it was Fenoglio's words that passed her lips. Words that she had read aloud.
"My father," she continued, in a carefully controlled voice, "is no robber. He's a bookbinder and an enchanter. He is the only man alive who doesn't fear Death. Haven't you seen his wound? Didn't the physicians tell you that injury ought to have killed him? Nothing can kill him. Mortola tried, and did he die? No. He has brought Cosimo the Fair back to life, although the White Women had already delivered him up to Death, and if you let him and my mother go then you need not fear Death, either, for my father," said Meggie, taking her time over the last few words, "my father can make you immortal."
All was very quiet in the great hall.
Until Mortola's voice broke the silence. "She's lying!" she cried. "The little witch is lying! Don't believe a word of it. It's her tongue, her bewitched tongue. That's her only weapon. Her father can die, all right, indeed he can! Bring him here and I'll prove it. I'll kill him myself before your eyes, and this time I'll do it properly!"
No! Meggie's heart began to race as if it would leap out of her breast. What had she done? The Adderhead was staring at her, but when at last he spoke it seemed as if he hadn't even heard what Mortola had said.
"How?" was all he asked. "How could your father do what you promise?" He was thinking of the night to come now. Meggie saw it in his eyes. He was thinking of the fear waiting for him: It would be even worse than in the night just gone, even more merciless…
Meggie leaned forward over the laden table. She spoke the words as if she were reading them aloud again. "My father will bind you a book!" she said, so quietly that apart from the Adderhead no one, except perhaps his doll-like wife, could hear her. "He will bind it for you with my help, a book with five hundred blank pages. He will cover it with wood and leather, he will give it brass clasps, and you will write your name on the first page in your own hand. In token of thanks, however, you will let him go, and with him all whose lives he asks for, and you will hide the book in a place known only to you, for hear this: As long as that book exists you will be immortal. Nothing will be able to kill you, no disease, no weapon – as long as the book remains intact."
"Indeed!" The Adderhead's bloodshot eyes were staring at her. His breath smelled sweetish, as if he had been drinking wine that was too heavy. "And suppose someone burns it or tears it up? Parchment doesn't last like silver."
"You will have to take good care of it," replied Meggie quietly – and it will kill you all the same, she added in her thoughts. She felt as if she were hearing her own voice reading Fenoglio's words again (and how good they had tasted!): But there was that one thing the girl did not tell the Adderhead: The book not only made him immortal but could kill him, too, if someone only wrote three words on its white pages, and those words were: heart, spell, death.
"What's she whispering?" Mortola had risen to her feet. She leaned her bony hands on the table. "Don't listen to her!" she told the Adderhead. "She's a witch and a liar! How often do I have to tell you? Kill her – her and her father – before they kill you! The old man probably wrote all her words for her, the old man I told you about!"
For the first time the Adderhead turned to look at Mortola, and Meggie briefly feared that he might believe her after all. But then she saw the anger in his face. "Be quiet!" he snapped at the Magpie. "Capricorn may have listened to you, but he's gone, like the Shadow who made him powerful, and you are tolerated at this court only because you have rendered me certain services! But I don't want to hear any more of your drivel about silver tongues and old men who can bring written words to life. Not another word out of you, or I'll send you back to where you once came from – in the kitchen with the maids."
Mortola turned as white as if she had no blood left in her veins.
"I warned you!" she said hoarsely. "Don't forget it!" Then, stony-faced, she sat down again. Basta cast her an anxious glance, but Mortola took no notice of him. She just stared at Meggie with such venom that she felt those eyes were burning a hole in her face.
The Adderhead, however, speared one of the tiny roasted birds lying on a silver platter in front of him with his knife and put it between his lips with relish. Obviously, his angry exchange with Mortola had given him an appetite. "Did I understand you correctly? You yourself would help your father with the work?" he asked, as he spat out the little bones into the hand of a servant who hastily stepped forward. "Does that mean he has taught a daughter his craft, as a master craftsman usually teaches his sons? Surely you know that such a thing is forbidden in my realm?"
Meggie looked at him fearlessly. Even these words had been written by Fenoglio, every one of them, and she knew what the Adderhead was going to say next, because she had read that, too.
"If a craftsman of Argenta breaks that law, my pretty child," he went on, "I usually have his right hand chopped off. But, very well, I'll make an exception in your case, since it's to my own advantage."
He's going to do it, thought Meggie. He's going to let me see Mo just as Fenoglio planned. Happiness emboldened her. "My mother," she said, although Fenoglio had not written anything about that, "she could help, too. Then it would be done even faster."
"No, no!" The Adderhead smiled with delight, as if the disappointment in Meggie's eyes tasted better than all the delicacies on silver dishes before him. "Your mother stays in her dungeon, as a little incentive for the two of you to work quickly." He signaled impatiently to Firefox. "What are you waiting for? Take her to her father! And tell the librarian to set to work this very night, to provide everything a bookbinder needs for his work."
"Take her to her father?" Firefox gripped Meggie's arm, but he did not take a step. "You surely don't believe her witchy nonsense?"
Meggie almost forgot to breathe. She had not read these words aloud; not one of them was written by Fenoglio. What would happen now? Not a foot moved in the hall; even the servants stood still exactly where they were, and you could feel the silence. But Firefox went on. "A book to hold Death captive in its pages? Only a child would believe such a story, and this child has thought it up to save her father. Mortola's right. Hang him now, before we become the laughingstock of the peasants! Capricorn would have done it long ago."
"Capricorn?" The Adderhead spat out the name like one of the delicate bones he had spat into the servant's hand. He did not look at Firefox as he spoke, but his thick fingers clenched into a fist on the table. "Since Mortola came back I've heard that name very often. But as far as I know Capricorn is dead – even his personal witch and poisoner couldn't prevent that – and you, Firefox, have obviously forgotten who your new master is. I am the Adderhead! My family has ruled this land for more than seven generations, while your old master was o
nly the bastard son of a soot-blackened smith! You were a fire-raiser, a murderer, no more, and I've made you my herald. A little more gratitude is called for, I think, or do you want to look for a new master?"
Firefox's face turned almost as red as his hair. "No, Your Grace," he said almost inaudibly. "No, I don't."
"Good!" The Adderhead impaled another bird on his knife. They were waiting in their silver dish, piled up like chestnuts. "Then do as I said. Take the girl to her father and make sure he soon sets to work. Have you brought that physician, as I ordered? The Barn Owl?"
Firefox nodded, without looking at his master.
"Good. Let him visit her father to tend him twice a day. We want our prisoner to be fit and well, understand?"
"I understand," said Firefox hoarsely.
He looked neither to right nor left as he led Meggie out of the hall. All eyes followed her – and avoided her own eyes when they met theirs. Witch. That was what they had called her before, back in Capricorn's village. Perhaps it was true. At that moment she felt powerful, as powerful as if the whole Inkworld obeyed her voice. They are taking me to Mo, she thought. They are taking me to him, and that will be the beginning of the end for the Adderhead.
But when the servants had closed the doors of the hall behind them, a soldier barred Firefox's way.
"Mortola has a message for you," he said. "You're to search the girl for a sheet of paper or anything else with writing on it. She says you should look in her sleeves first. She hid something there once before."
Before Meggie fully realized what was happening, Firefox took hold of her and roughly pushed up her sleeves. Finding nothing there, he was about to put his hands inside her dress, but Meggie pushed them away and took out the parchment herself. Firefox tore it from her fingers, stared at the written letters for a moment with the baffled look of a man who couldn't read, and then, without a word, handed the parchment to the soldier.
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