Inkdeath ti-3

by Cornelia Funke

  Doria did not reply. He stayed silent for a long time, and she felt sorry she'd snapped at him like that. She wanted to say so, but she, too, remained silent, her head bent so that he wouldn't see the tears she'd been holding back for hours. What he'd said had started them flowing. And now he'd be thinking, she's a girl, she cries.

  She felt Doria's hand on her hair. He was stroking it as gently as if to wipe away the rain. "He won't kill him," he whispered to her. "The Piper is far too frightened of the Adderhead for that!"

  "But he hates my father! Hate is sometimes stronger than fear! And if the Piper doesn't kill him, then the Milksop will do it, or the Adderhead himself. He'll never get out of that castle alive, never!"

  How her hands were shaking – as if all her fear was in her fingers. But Doria clasped them so firmly in his own hands that they couldn't shake anymore. He had strong hands, although his fingers weren't much longer than her own. Farid's hands were slender by comparison.

  "Farid says you saved your father once with words when he was wounded. He says you did it just with words."

  Yes, but she had no words this time.

  Words…

  "What is it?" Doria let go of her hands and looked at her with a question in his eyes. Farid was still watching them, but Meggie ignored him. She planted a kiss on Doria's cheek. "Thank you!" she said, quickly getting to her feet.

  Of course he didn't understand what she was thanking him for. Words. The words that Orpheus had written! How could she have forgotten them?

  She ran through the wet grass to the tent where her parents were sleeping. Mo will be terribly angry, she thought, but he'll live! Hadn't she read what would happen next into this story more than once already? It was time to do it again, even if that meant it wouldn't end as Mo wanted. The Black Prince would just have to tell the rest of it. He'd find a way to make it turn out well, even Without the Bluejay's aid. For the Bluejay must leave – before her father died with him.

  The Strong Man had nodded off. His head had sunk onto his chest, and he was snoring slightly as Meggie crept past him.

  Her mother was awake. She had been crying.

  "I need to talk to you!" Meggie whispered to her, "Please!"

  Mo was fast asleep. Resa cast a glance at his sleeping face and then followed Meggie outside. They still weren't speaking to each other very much. Meggie found it impossible to forget that night among the graves. Yet now she was about to do exactly what her mother had intended when she rode to Ombra in secret.

  "If it's about tomorrow," said Resa, taking her hand, "don't tell anyone, but I'm going to Ombra with them, even though your father doesn't want me to. I want at least to be near him when he rides into the castle…"

  "He's not going to ride into the castle."

  Rain was still falling through the fading leaves as if the trees were shedding tears, and Meggie longed for Elinor's garden. The rain sounded so peaceful there. Here it whispered of nothing but death and danger. "I'm going to read the words."

  Dustfinger turned, and for a moment Meggie was afraid he could see in her face what she planned to do and tell Mo, but he turned away again and kissed Roxane's black hair,

  "What words?" Resa looked at her blankly.

  "The words Orpheus wrote for you!" The words for which Mo almost died, she wanted to add. Now they would save his life.

  Resa looked back at the tent where Mo was sleeping. "I don't have them anymore," she said. "I burned them when your father didn't come back."

  No.

  "They couldn't have protected him anyway!"

  A glass man appeared among dripping wet nettles, pale green, like many of the glass men who still lived in the forest. He sneezed

  and scurried away in alarm at the sight of Meggie and Resa.

  Her mother placed her hands on Meggie's shoulders. "He didn't want to come with us, Meggie! He told Orpheus to write something just for us. Your father wants to stay, even now, and neither you nor I can force him to go back. He'd never forgive us."

  Resa tried to stroke her daughter's wet hair back from her forehead, but Meggie pushed her hand away. It couldn't be true. She was lying. Mo would never stay here without his wife and daughter… would he?

  "And perhaps he's right. Perhaps everything will turn out well," said her mother quietly. "And one day we'll be telling Elinor how your father saved the children of Ombra." Resa's voice didn't sound half as hopeful as her words. "Bluejay," she whispered as she glanced at the men sitting by the fire. "The first present your father ever gave me was a bookmark made of blue jay feathers. Isn't that strange?"

  Meggie didn't answer. And Resa caressed her wet face once more and went back to the tent.

  Burnt.

  It was still dark, but a few freezing fairies were already beginning to dance. Mo would soon be setting out, and there was nothing that could stop him. Nothing.

  Battista was sitting alone between the roots of the great oak that the guards climbed at night. You could see almost as far as Ombra from its highest branches. He was making a new mask. Meggie saw the blue feathers in his lap and knew who would soon be wearing it.

  "Battista?" Meggie kneeled down beside him. The ground was cold and damp, but the moss among the roots was as soft as the cushions in Elinor's house.

  He looked at her, his eyes full of sympathy. His glance was even more comforting than Doria's hands. "Ah, the Bluejay's daughter," he said in the voice that the Strong Man called Battista's marketplace voice. "What a beautiful sight at such a dark hour. I've sewn your father a good place to hide a sharp knife. Can a poor strolling player ease your heart in some other way?"

  Meggie tried to smile. She was so tired of tears. "Can you sing me a song? One of the songs the Inkweaver wrote about the Bluejay? It has to be one of those! The best you know. A song full of power and…"

  "Hope?" Battista smiled. "Of course. I could fancy such a song, too. Even if," he added, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial tone, "even if your father doesn't like having them sung when he's around. But I'll sing it so quietly that my voice won't wake him. Let's see, which is the right song for this dark night?" He thoughtfully stroked the mask on his lap. It was nearly finished. "Yes," he whispered at last. "I know!" And he began singing in a soft voice:

  Piper, beware, your end is near,

  The Adder's power dwindles.

  He writhes, he goes in mortal fear,

  Nothing his strength rekindles.

  Though you seek the Jay in country and town,

  No sword can wound him, no hound run him down,

  And when you think you'll succeed in your quest,

  You find that the bird has flown the nest.

  Yes, those were the right words. Meggie got Battista to sing them to her until she could remember every line. Then she sat down a little way from everyone else, under the trees, where the firelight still kept the darkness of night away, and wrote the song down in the notebook that Mo had bound for her long ago, in that other life, after a quarrel that now seemed so strange. Meggie, you'll lose yourself in the Inkworld. Didn't he say something like that to her at the time? And now he himself didn't want to leave this world, he wanted to stay here alone, without her.

  Words written down in black and white. It was a long, long time since she'd read anything aloud. When did she last do it? When she brought Orpheus here? Don't think about that, Meggie. Think of the other times, the Castle of Night, the words that helped when Mo was wounded…

  Piper, beware, your end is near.

  Yes, she could still do it. Meggie felt the words gathering weight on her tongue as she wove them into her surroundings…

  The Adder's power dwindles. He writhes, he goes in mortal fear, Nothing his strength rekindles…

  She sent the words to find Mo in his sleep, made him armor out of them, armor that even the Piper and his dark master couldn't pierce…

  Though you seek the Jay in country and town, No sword can wound him, no hound run him down, And when you think you'll succeed in your
quest, You find that the bird has flown the nest.

  Meggie read Fenoglio's song over and over again. Until the sun rose.

  35. THE NEXT VERSE

  Through this toilsome world, alas!

  Once and only once I pass;

  If a kindness I may show;

  If a good deed I may do

  To a suffering fellow man,

  Let me do it while I can.

  No delay, for it is plain

  I shall not pass this way again.

  Anonymous, "I Shall Not Pass This Way Again"

  It was a cold day, misty and colorless, and Ombra looked as if it were wearing a gray dress. The women had gone to the castle at daybreak, silent as the day itself, and now they were standing there and waiting without a word.

  There was not a cheerful sound to be heard, no laughter, no weeping. It was simply quiet. Resa stood with the mothers as if she, too, were waiting for a child to come back, instead of expecting to lose her husband. Did the baby she was carrying under her aching heart sense its mother's despair this morning? Suppose it never saw its father? Had that thought ever made Mo hesitate? She hadn't asked him.

  Meggie stood beside her, her face under such rigid control that it frightened Resa more than if she had been crying. Doria was with her, dressed as a maidservant with a head scarf over his brown hair, because boys of his age were conspicuous in Ombra now. His brother hadn't come with them. All Battista's skill with disguises couldn't have made the Strong Man look like a woman, but more than a dozen robbers had been able to steal past the guards at the gate with their faces shaved, wearing stolen dresses and with scarves over their heads. Even Resa didn't notice them among all the women. The Black Prince had told his men to go to the mothers as soon as their children were free and persuade them to bring their sons and daughters to the forest the next day, so that the robbers could hide them in case the Piper broke his word and came to take them away to the mines after all. For who was going to ransom them a second time, once the Bluejay was caught?

  The Black Prince himself hadn't come to Ombra with them. His dark face would have attracted far too much attention. Snapper, who had opposed Mo's plan to the last, had also stayed in the camp, like Roxane and Farid. Of course Farid had wanted to go with the others, but Dustfinger had forbidden it, and after what had happened on Mount Adder, Farid did not go against such orders.

  Resa glanced at Meggie again. She knew that if she could find any comfort today it would be only in her daughter. Meggie was grown-up now; Resa realized that this morning. I don't need anyone, said her face. It said so to Doria, who was still standing beside her, to her mother, and perhaps above all to her father.

  A whisper ran through the waiting crowd. Reinforcements joined the guards on the castle walls, and Violante appeared behind the battlements above the gates, so pale that it looked as if the rumors about her were true: The Adderhead's daughter, they said, almost never left her dead husband's castle. Resa had never seen Her Ugliness before. But of course she had heard of the mark that had disfigured her face like a brand since birth, and then faded on Cosimo's return. It was hardly visible now, but Resa noticed that Violante's hand instinctively went to her cheek when she saw all the women staring up at her. Her Ugliness. Had they shouted that name up to her in the past, whenever she had appeared on the battlements? Some of the women were whispering it even now, but Violante was neither ugly nor beautiful. She held herself very erect, as if to make up for her lack of height, but between the two men who stationed themselves beside her she looked so young and vulnerable that Resa felt fear close like a claw around her heart. The Piper and the Milksop. Violante looked like a child between the two of them. How was this girl to protect Mo?

  A boy pushed his way in beside the silver-nosed minstrel. He wore a metal nose, too, but there was a real flesh-and-blood nose under it. This must be Jacopo, Violante's son. Mo had mentioned him. He obviously thought more of the Piper's company than his mother's, judging by the admiring looks he gave his grandfather's herald.

  Resa felt dizzy when she saw the man with the silver nose standing up there so proudly. No, Violante couldn't protect Mo from him. He commanded Ombra now, not she, and not the Milksop who stood looking down at his subjects as haughtily as if the mere sight of them turned his stomach. The Piper, in contrast, seemed as pleased with himself as if the day belonged to him alone. Didn’t I tell you so? his glance mocked them. I'll catch the Bluejay, and then I'll take your children all the same.

  Why had she come? Why was she doing this to herself? Because she wanted to convince herself that it was all really happening, that she wasn't just reading about it?

  The woman next to her reached for her arm. "He's coming!" she whispered to Resa. There were whispers everywhere. "He's coming! He's really coming!" Resa saw the sentries on the watchtowers by the gate giving the Piper a signal. Of course he was coming. What had they expected? Did they think he wouldn't keep his word?

  The Milksop adjusted his wig and smiled at the Piper as triumphantly as if he personally, single-handed, had driven into his path the quarry he'd been hunting so long, but the Piper ignored him. He was staring at the street leading up from the city gate, his eyes as gray as the sky above him and just as cold. Resa remembered those eyes only too well. She also remembered the smile that now stole over his thin lips. He had smiled in just the same way in Capricorn's fortress whenever there was going to be an execution.

  And then she saw Mo.

  There he was all of a sudden, where the street ended, mounted on the black horse that the Prince had given him after he had to leave his own behind at Ombra Castle. The mask that Battista had made him was dangling around his neck. He didn't need the mask anymore to be the Bluejay. The bookbinder and the robber had the same face now.

  Dustfinger was behind him. He was riding the horse that had carried Roxane to the Castle of Night, bringing Fenoglio's words to save them. But there were no words for what was going to happen now. Or were there? Was the terrible silence weighing down on them all made of words?

  No, Resa, she thought. This story has no author anymore. What happens now is written by the Bluejay in his own flesh and blood – and for a moment, as he rode out of the alley, even she could call Mo by no other name. The Bluejay. How hesitantly the women made way for him, as if they themselves suddenly thought the price he was going to pay for their children too high. But at last they formed a lane just wide enough for the two riders, and every hoofbeat made Resa clutch the folds of her dress more tightly.

  What's the matter? Didn't you always love to read such stories? she thought bitterly, her heart in her mouth. Wouldn't you have liked this story, too? The robber setting the children free by giving himself up to his enemies… Admit it, you'd have loved every word! Except that the heroes of such stories don't usually have wives. Or daughters.

  Meggie was still standing there as if none of this had anything to do with her, but her eyes were fixed on her father as if her gaze could protect him. Mo rode past, so close that Resa could have touched his horse. Her knees felt weak. She reached for the arm of the nearest woman, feeling so faint and ill that she could hardly keep on her feet. Look at him, Resa, she told herself. That's what you're here for, to see him once again, aren't you?

  Did he feel fear? The fear that had made him wake abruptly from sleep on so many nights, his fear of bars and fetters? Resa, leave the door open.

  Dustfinger is with him, she thought, trying to comfort herself. Dustfinger is right behind him, and he left all his own fears behind with Death. But Dustfinger will stay with him only as far as the castle gates, whispered her heart, and the Piper is waiting beyond them. She felt her knees giving way again until suddenly Meggie's arm was under hers, holding it as firmly as if her daughter were the older of the two of them. Resa turned her face into Meggie's shoulder, while the women around her looked longingly at the castle gates, which were still firmly closed.

  Mo reined in his horse. Dustfinger was still just behind him, his face as expre
ssionless as only he could make it. She wasn't yet used to the sight of him without his scars. He looked so much younger. Many eyes rested on him, the Fire-Dancer whom the Bluejay had brought back from the dead.

  "The Piper won't be able to touch him!" whispered the woman beside her, murmuring it like a magic spell. "No, how can he hold the Bluejay captive if even Death couldn't do it?"

  Perhaps the Piper is more murderous than Death, Resa felt like replying, but she said nothing. She held her peace and looked up at the man with the silver nose.

  "So here you really are! The Bluejay, in person!" His hoarse voice carried a long way in the silence that had settled over Ombra again. "Or do you still claim to be someone else, as you did back at the Castle of Night? How shabby you look. A dirty vagabond. I really thought you'd send someone in your place, hoping we wouldn't find him out behind the mask too soon."

  "Oh, I don't think you as stupid as that, Piper!" Mo's face was full of contempt as he looked up at the silver-nosed man. "Although shouldn't we change your name and call you after your new trade in future? Butcher of Children, how do you like that?"

  Resa had never heard such hatred in Mo's voice before. The voice that could call the dead back to life. How intently everyone was listening. And in spite of all the hate and anger in it, it still sounded so soft and warm by comparison with the Piper's.

  "Call me what you like, bookbinder!" The Piper put his gloved hands on the battlements. "I hear you know something about butchery yourself. But why did you bring the fire-eater with you? I don't remember inviting him! Where are his scars? Did he leave them with the dead?"

  The battlements caught fire just where the Piper was leaning, and the flames whispered words that only Dustfinger understood. The silver-nosed tyrant flinched back, cursing, and struck at the sparks that were settling on his fine clothes, while Jacopo ducked into safety behind his back and stared, fascinated, at the whispering fire.