Where was he? Where was Mo?
The Piper has locked him up in a cage. Tullio hadn't been able to say just where that cage stood. In a courtyard, he had stammered, a courtyard full of painted birds. Resa had heard about the painted walls of the castle. From the outside, however, its walls were almost black, built of the dark stone also found on the banks of the lake. She was glad she didn't have to cross the bridge, which was swarming with soldiers. It was raining, and the raindrops made endless circles on the water below her. But her body weighed very little, and flying was a wonderful sensation. She saw her reflection underneath her. It shot across the waves like an arrow, and at last the towers rose to meet her, the fortified walls, the slate-gray roofs, and among them courtyards – gaping dark holes in the pattern of the stone. She spotted trees with bare branches, dog runs, a frozen garden, and soldiers everywhere. But cages…?
When she finally found them, at first she saw only Dustfinger, lying where he had been thrown on the gray paving stones like a bundle of old clothes. Oh God. She would never have wanted to see him like that again. There was a child standing beside him, staring at the still body as if waiting for it to move – just as it had done once before, if the songs of the strolling players told the truth. And they do tell the truth, Resa wanted to call down. I've felt his warm hands. I've seen him smile again and kiss his wife. But when she saw him lying there it was as if he had never moved since he'd died in the mine.
She didn't see the cages until she dived below the slate rooftops. They were all empty. No trace of Mo. Empty cages and an empty body. She wanted to let herself drop like a stone, hit the paving, and lie there as motionless as Dustfinger.
The child turned. He was the boy she had last seen standing on the battlements in Ombra. Violante's son. Even Meggie, who would usually take any child on her lap with such tenderness, spoke of him only with dislike. Jacopo. For a moment he stared up at Resa as if he could see the woman under the feathers, but then he bent over the dead man again, touched the rigid face – and straightened up when someone called his name. There was no mistaking that strained nasal voice.
The Piper.
Resa flew up to the ridge of a roof.
"Come along, your grandfather wants to see you!" The Piper took the boy by the scruff of his neck and pushed him roughly toward the nearest flight of steps.
"What for?" Jacopo's voice sounded like a ridiculous echo of his grandfather's, but it was also the voice of a little boy lost among all the grown-ups, fatherless – and motherless, judging by all Roxane had said about Violante's lack of love for him.
"What do you think he wants you for? He's certainly not pining away for your peevish company." The Piper thumped Jacopo on the back with his fist. "He wants to know what your mother says when you're alone in her room with her."
"She doesn't talk to me."
"Oh, I don't like to hear that What are we to do with you if you're no use as a spy? Maybe we ought to feed you to the Night-Mare! It's a long time since the creature had anything to eat, and if your grandfather gets his way it won't get to taste the Bluejay in a hurry, either."
Night-Mare.
So Tullio had told the truth. As soon as the voices died away, Resa fluttered down to Dustfinger. But the swift couldn't weep any more than she could smile. Fly after the Piper, Resa, she told herself as she perched on the stones, wet with rain. Look for Mo. There's no more you can do for the Fire-Dancer now, any more than you could before. She was only thankful that the Night-Mare hadn't feasted on him as it had on Snapper. His cheek was so cold when she pressed her feathered head against it.
"How did you come by that pretty dress of feathers, Resa?"
The whisper came from nowhere – out of the rain, the moist air, the painted stone – but surely not from the cold lips. Yet it was Dustfinger's voice, husky and soft at the same time, ever familiar. Resa swiftly turned her bird's head – and heard his quiet laughter.
"Didn't you look around like that for me before, back in the dungeons of the Castle of Night? I was invisible then, too, as far as I remember, but it's far more entertaining to be without a body. Although you can't enjoy the entertainment too long. I'm afraid if I let my body lie here much longer it won't fit me anymore, and then I suppose not even your husband's voice could bring me back. Apart from the fact that without the help of the flesh you soon forget who you are. I admit I'd almost forgotten already – until I saw you."
It was like seeing a sleeper wake when the dead man moved. Dustfinger pushed back the damp hair from his face and looked down at himself, as if to make sure that his body did still fit him. It was just as Resa had dreamed it the night after his first death, when he did not wake again. Not until Mo brought him back to life.
Mo. She fluttered up onto Dustfinger's arm, but he put a warning finger to his lips as she opened her beak. He called Gwin with a soft whistle, then looked up at the steps that the Piper had climbed with Jacopo, to the windows on their left and on again to the oriel tower casting its shadow down on them. "The fairies tell tales of a plant that turns human beings into animals and animals into humans," he whispered. "But they also say it's dangerous to use it. How long have you been wearing your feathered clothing?"
"About two hours."
"Then it's time to take it off again. Luckily, this castle has many forgotten chambers, and I explored them all before the Piper arrived." He put out his hand, and Resa perched on his skin, now warm again. He was alive! Wasn't he?
"I brought back a few very useful abilities from the realm of Death!" whispered Dustfinger as he carried her down a passage painted with fish and water-nymphs so true to life that Resa felt as if the lake had swallowed them up. "I can take off this body like a garment, I can give fire a soul, and I can read your husband's heart better than the letters you took such trouble to teach me."
He pushed a door open. No window let any light into the room beyond, but Dustfinger whispered, and the walls were covered with sparks as if they were growing a fiery coat.
When Resa spat out the seeds she had been holding under her tongue, two were missing, and for a terrible moment she was afraid she would be a bird forever, but her body still remembered itself. When she had human limbs again she instinctively stroked her belly and wondered whether the child inside it was changed by the seeds, too. The idea frightened her so much that she was almost sick.
Dustfinger picked up a swift's feather lying at her feet and looked at it thoughtfully.
"Roxane is well," said Resa.
He smiled. "I know."
He seemed to know everything. So she told him nothing about either Snapper or Mortola, or how the Black Prince had nearly died. And Dustfinger did not ask why she had followed Mo.
"What about the Night-Mare?" Even speaking the word frightened her.
"I slipped through its black paws just in time." He rubbed a hand over his face as if to wipe a shadow away. "Luckily, creatures of its kind aren't interested in dead men."
"Where did it come from?"
"Orpheus brought it here with him. It follows him like a dog."
"Orpheus?" But that was impossible! Orpheus was in Ombra, drowning his sorrows in drink and wallowing in self-pity, as he had been doing ever since Dustfinger stole the book from him.
"That's right: Orpheus. I don't know how he fixed it, but he serves the Adder now. And he's just had your husband thrown into one of the dungeons under the castle."
Footsteps could be heard above them, but they soon died away.
"Take me to him!"
"You can't go there. The cells are deep down and well guarded. I may be able to do it alone, but two of us would attract far too much attention. This castle will be teeming with soldiers once they discover that the Fire-Dancer is back from the dead again."
You can't go there… wait here, Resa… it's too dangerous. She was tired of hearing this kind of thing. "How is he?" she asked. "You said you can read his heart."
She saw the answer in Dustfinger's eyes.
"A
bird will attract less attention than you would," she said, and put the seeds in her mouth before he could stop her.
62. BLACK
You are the bird whose soft wings came
When I cried out at night, waking from sleep.
Cried only with my arms, because your name
Is like a chasm, a thousand long nights deep.
Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Guardian Angel"
The cell they threw Mo into was worse than the tower in the Castle of Night or the dungeon in Ombra. They had let him down on a chain, his hands bound, deeper and deeper down until the dark settled on his eyes like blindness. And the Piper had stood there above him, describing in his nasal whine how he was going to bring Meggie and Resa here and kill them before his eyes. As if the Piper's words made any difference. Meggie was lost already. Death would take her as well as him. But perhaps the Great Shape-Changer would at least spare Resa and their unborn child if Mo refused to bind the Adderhead another book. Ink, Mortimer, black ink surrounds you, he thought. It was difficult to breathe in this damp void. But it made him feel strangely calm to think it was no longer up to him to go on with this story, on and on all the time. He was so tired of it…
He dropped to his knees. The damp stone felt like the bottom of a well. As a child he had always been afraid of falling into a well and starving to death, helpless and alone. He shuddered, longing for Dustfinger's fire, for its light and warmth. But Dustfinger was dead. Extinguished by Orpheus's Night-Mare. Mo thought he could hear it breathing beside him, so distinctly that he looked for its red eyes in all that blackness. But there was nothing. Or was there?
He heard footsteps and looked up.
"Well, how do you like it down there?"
Orpheus was standing on the edge of the shaft. The light of his torch didn't reach the bottom of it; the cell lay too deep for that, and Mo instinctively stepped back so that the darkness would hide him. Like a caged animal, he thought.
"Oh, so you're not talking to me anymore? Very understandable." Orpheus smiled with self-satisfaction, and Mo's hand went to where his knife had been hidden, the knife so carefully concealed by Battista. Thumbling had found it all the same. Mo imagined thrusting it into Orpheus's flabby body. Again and again. The pictures that his helpless hatred conjured up were so full of blood that they sickened him.
"I'm here to tell you how this story goes on. Just in case you still think you play a leading part in it."
Mo closed his eyes and leaned back against the damp wall. Let him talk, he told himself. Think of Resa, think of Meggie. Or perhaps he'd better not. How had Orpheus heard about the cave?
All is lost, a voice inside him whispered. Everything. The composure that he had felt since the appearance of the White Women was gone. Come back, he wanted to whisper. Please! Protect me! But they didn't come. Instead, words ate into his heart like pale maggots. Where did they come from? All is lost. Stop it, he told himself. But the words ate their way on, and he writhed as if in physical pain.
"You're so quiet! Ah, do you feel it already?" Orpheus laughed, happy as a child. "I knew it would work. I knew it when I read the first song. Oh yes, I have a book again, Mortimer. In fact I have three of them, full to the brim with Fenoglio's words, and two of them are all about the Bluejay. Violante brought them to this castle. Wasn't that kind of her? I had to make some changes, of course – move a few words here, a few more there. Fenoglio is very kind to the Bluejay, but I was able to put that right."
Fenoglio's Bluejay songs. All neatly written down by Balbulus. Mo closed his eyes.
"And, by the way, the water isn't my doing!" Orpheus called down to him. "The Adderhead has had the sluices to the lake opened. You won't drown, it doesn't rise high enough for that, but it won't be pleasant."
At the same moment Mo felt the water rising up his legs as if the darkness had turned liquid, so cold and black that he fought for breath.
"No, the water isn't my idea," Orpheus went on, sounding bored. "I know you too well by now to think that fear of that kind would change your mind. I suppose you're hoping your obstinacy may yet mollify Death, now that you haven't kept your part of the bargain. Oh yes, I know about the deal you did with Death, I know everything… but however that may be, I'll drive the obstinacy out of you. I'll make you forget your high-minded virtues. I'll make you forget everything except the fear, because the White Women can't protect you from my words."
Mo wanted to strike the man dead. With his bare hands. But they were bound, he reminded himself.
"At first I was going to write something about your wife and daughter, but then I said to myself: No, Orpheus, that way he won't feel the words himself!" How the moon-faced creature was enjoying every syllable he spoke. As if he had dreamed of this moment. There he is up above, thought Mo, and here I am down in a black cell, helpless as a rat that he could kill at any moment.
"No," Orpheus went on. "No, I said to myself. Let him feel the power of your words for himself. Show him that from now on you can play with the Bluejay like a cat plays with a mouse. Except that your claws are made of letters!"
And Mo felt the claws. It was as if the water were seeping through his skin and straight into his heart. So black. Then came the pain. As violent as if Mortola had shot him a second time, and so real that he pressed his hands to his chest, thinking he would feel his own blood between his fingers. Although the darkness blinded him, he saw it stain his shirt and his hands and felt his strength fading away as it had before. He could hardly stand upright; he had to brace his back against the wall to keep from slipping into the water that was already up to his waist. Resa. Oh God. Resa, help me.
Despair shook him like a child. Despair and helpless rage.
"I wasn't sure at first what would work best." Orpheus's voice cut through the pain like a blunt knife. "Should I send a few unpleasant water-monsters to visit you? I have the book here that Fenoglio wrote for Jacopo. It has some rather nasty creatures in it. But I decided on another, far more interesting way! I decided to drive you mad with beings out of your own head, come to haunt you with old fears, old anger, and old pain all dammed up in your heroic heart, locked away but not forgotten. Bring it all back to him, Orpheus! I told myself. With some added images that he's always been afraid of: a dead wife; a dead child. Send them all down to him in the darkness, let him drown in his own anger. Who feels like a hero when he's trembling with fright and knows it comes from nowhere but himself? How does the Bluejay feel when he dreams of bloody slaughter? How does it feel to doubt your own sanity? Yes, I told myself, if you want to break him, that's the way. Let him lose himself, let the Bluejay howl like a mad dog, let him trap himself in his own fear. Let loose the Furies who can kill him so cleverly from the inside."
Mo felt what Orpheus was describing even as the other man spoke, and he realized that Orpheus had already read the words aloud some time ago, with a tongue as powerful as his own. Yes, it was a new Bluejay song. Telling how he lost his mind in a damp, black cell, how he nearly drowned himself in his despair, and how at last he begged for mercy and bound the Adderhead another White Book, his hands still shaking from hours in the dark.
The water had stopped rising, but Mo felt something brush past his legs. Breathe slowly, Mortimer, breathe very steadily. Shut out the words; don't let them in. You can do it. But how, when a gunshot had just entered his breast again, when his blood was mingling with the water and everything in him cried out for revenge? He felt feverish again, feverish and yet so cold. He bit his lip to keep Orpheus from hearing him groan, pressed his hand to his heart. Feel it; there isn't really any blood there. Meggie isn't dead, even if you see that image as clearly as Orpheus could write the scene. No, no, no! But the words whispered: Yes! And he felt as if he were breaking into a thousand tiny shards.
"Throw your torch down, guard! I want to see him."
The torch fell. It dazzled Mo, and drifted on the dark water for a moment before going out.
"Well, well, so you do feel them! You feel every single
word, don't you?" Orpheus looked down at him like a child looks at a worm he has put on a hook, fascinated to see it writhe. Mo wanted to put his head under the water until he couldn't breathe anymore. Stop it, Mortimer, he told himself. What is he doing to you? Defend yourself. But how? He felt like sinking into the water just to escape the words, but he knew that even there they would be waiting for him.
"I'll be back in an hour's time!" Orpheus called down. "Of course, I couldn't resist reading at least a few nasty creatures into the water for you, but don't worry, they won't kill you. Who knows, perhaps you'll even find them a welcome diversion from what your mind shows you? Bluejay… Yes, you really ought to be careful when you choose what part to play. Get them to call me as soon as you realize that your high-minded approach is out of place here. Then I'll write you a few words to save you. Along the lines of: But morning came, and the Bluejay's madness left him…"
Orpheus laughed and went away. Leaving him alone with the water and the darkness and the words.
Bind the Book for the Adderhead. The sentence formed in Mo's mind as if written in perfect calligraphy. Bind him another White Book and all will be well.
Again pain shot through him so violently that he cried out. He saw Thumbling taking his fingers in a pair of pincers, saw the Milksop dragging Meggie out of a cave by her hair, saw the dogs snapping at Resa. He was shivering with fever, or was it from the cold? It's only in your mind, Mortimer! He struck his forehead against the stone. If only he could have seen something, anything but Orpheus's images. If only he could have felt something other than the words. Press your hands on the stone, go on, dip your face in the water, strike yourself with your fists, that's all that's real, nothing else. Oh yes?
Mo sobbed, and pressed his bound hands to his forehead. He heard a fluttering above him. Sparks sprang up in the blackness. The dark retreated as if someone were removing a blindfold from his eyes. Dustfinger? No, Dustfinger was dead. Even if his heart refused to believe it.
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