been pointing at Dustfinger’s chest. Then Farid pushed Slasher into the flames. The man was more than a head taller than Farid himself, but desperation lent him strength. Farid was about to attack Basta too as he emerged from the smoke, coughing, but Dustfinger pulled him back and hissed at the flames until they made for Basta like angry vipers. Farid heard Basta scream, but did not turn to look. He just stumbled towards the window, with Dustfinger beside him, cursing as he pressed his fingers to his bleeding leg. But he was alive. He was really alive. While the fire was devouring Basta.
50
The Best of all Nights
‘Eat,’ said Merlot.
‘I couldn’t possibly,’ said Despereaux, backing away from the book.
‘Why?’
‘Um,’ said Despereaux, ‘it would ruin the story.’
Kate DiCamillo,
The Tale of Despereaux
Later, none of them knew how they had got away from the mill. All Farid could remember were images: of Meggie’s face as she stumbled down to the river, of the blood in the water when Dustfinger jumped in, of the smoke they could see still rising into the sky after they had been wading through the cold water for more than an hour. But no one came after them: not Slasher or the miller or his man, and not Basta either. Only Gwin appeared on the bank at some point. Stupid Gwin.
It was the middle of the night when Dustfinger clambered out of the water, his face pale with exhaustion. As he let himself drop on to the grass, Farid anxiously listened into the darkness, but all he heard was a loud and steady roar like the breathing of a gigantic animal.
‘What’s that?’ he whispered.
‘The sea. Don’t you know what the sea sounds like?’
The sea. Gwin jumped on Farid’s back as he was looking at Dustfinger’s leg, but he shooed the marten away. ‘Get out!’ he snapped. ‘Go hunting! You’ve done enough harm for one day.’ Then he let Jink out of the rucksack too, and looked for something to bind up the wound. Meggie wrung out her wet dress and crouched beside them.
‘Is it bad?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ said Dustfinger, but he winced as Farid cleaned the deep gash. ‘Poor Cloud-Dancer!’ he murmured. ‘He escaped death once, and now the Grim Reaper’s come for him after all. Who knows, perhaps the White Women don’t like people to slip through their fingers like that?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Meggie spoke so quietly that Farid could hardly hear her. ‘I’m so very sorry. It’s all my fault, and he died for nothing. Because where is Fenoglio going to find us now, even if he’s written something for me?’
‘Fenoglio.’ Dustfinger spoke as if it were the name of some disease.
‘Did you feel them too?’ Meggie looked at him. ‘I thought I could feel his words on my skin. I thought: they’re going to kill Dustfinger and there’s nothing we can do about it!’
‘But there was,’ said Farid defiantly.
Dustfinger, however, leaned back and looked up at the stars. ‘Really? We’ll see. Perhaps the old man’s thought up some different fate for me by now. Perhaps death is waiting just around another corner.’
‘Let it wait!’ was all Farid would say, fishing a bag out of Dustfinger’s rucksack. ‘A little fairy dust can never hurt,’ he murmured as he trickled the glittering powder into the wound. Then he pulled his shirt over his head, cut a strip off with his knife, and tied it carefully round Dustfinger’s leg. It wasn’t easy with his burned fingers, but he did his best, although the pain twisted his face.
Dustfinger reached for his hand and looked at it, frowning. ‘Heavens, your fingers are covered with as many blisters as if fire-elves had been dancing on them,’ he commented. ‘I guess we both need a physician. What a pity Roxane isn’t here.’ Sighing, he lay down on his back again and looked up at the dark sky. ‘You know what, Farid?’ he said, as if talking to the stars. ‘There’s one really strange thing about all this. If Meggie’s father hadn’t plucked me out of my own story, I don’t suppose I’d ever have found such a fabulous watchdog as you.’ He winked at Meggie. ‘Did you see him biting? I’ll bet Slasher thought it was the Black Prince’s bear gnawing his shoulder.’
‘Oh, stop it!’ Farid didn’t know where to look. Embarrassed, he picked a blade of grass with his bare toes.
‘Yes, but Farid is cleverer than the bear,’ said Meggie. ‘Much cleverer.’
‘Indeed. Cleverer than me too,’ Dustfinger pointed out. ‘And as for what he can do with fire, I’m beginning to get seriously worried.’
Farid couldn’t help it; he had to grin. He felt so proud that the blood shot all the way to his ears, but in the dark no one, luckily, would see him blushing.
Dustfinger felt his leg, and cautiously rose to his feet. The first step he took made his face contort with pain, but then he limped up and down the river bank a few times. ‘There we are,’ he said. ‘A little slower than usual, but it will do. It must.’ Then he stopped in front of Farid. ‘I believe I owe you a debt,’ he said. ‘How am I to repay you? Perhaps I could show you something new? A game with fire that only I can play? How about that?’
Farid held his breath. ‘What kind of a game is it?’ he asked.
‘I can’t show you except by the sea,’ replied Dustfinger, ‘but we must go there anyway, because we both need a physician. And the best physician I know lives by the sea. In the shadow of the Castle of Night.’
They decided to take turns keeping watch. Farid said he would take the first watch, and while Meggie and Dustfinger slept behind him, under the branches of a durmast oak that dipped low to the ground, he sat in the grass and looked up at the sky, where more stars shone than there were fireflies hovering above the river. Farid tried to remember a night, any night, when he had felt as he did now, so entirely at ease with himself, but he couldn’t. This was the best of all nights for him – in spite of all the terrors that lay behind him, in spite of his burned fingers, which still hurt although Dustfinger had put fairy dust on them, and the cooling ointment that Roxane had made for him.
He felt so much alive. As alive as the fire.
He had saved Dustfinger. He had been stronger than the words. Everything was all right.
The two martens were squabbling behind him, no doubt over prey of some kind. ‘Wake me when the moon is above that hill,’ Dustfinger had said, but when Farid went to him he was sleeping deeply, with such peace in his face that Farid decided to let him sleep on, and returned to his place under the stars.
Soon afterwards, when he heard steps behind him, it was not Dustfinger but Meggie he saw there. ‘I keep waking up,’ she said. ‘I just can’t stop thinking.’
‘Wondering how Fenoglio is going to find you now?’
She nodded.
She still believed in words so much. Farid believed in other things: in his knife, in courage and cunning. And in friendship. Meggie leaned her head against his shoulder, and they both remained as silent as the stars above them. After a while a wind rose, cold and gusty, salt as seawater, and Meggie sat up and clasped her arms around her knees, shivering.
‘This world,’ she said. ‘Do you really like it?’
What a question! Farid never asked himself such things. He was glad to be with Dustfinger again, and didn’t mind where that was.
‘It’s a cruel world, don’t you think?’ Meggie went on. ‘Mo often told me I forget how cruel it is too easily.’
With his burned fingers, Farid stroked her fair hair. It shone even in the dark. ‘They’re all cruel,’ he said. ‘The world I come from, the world you come from, and this one too. Maybe people don’t see the cruelty in your world straight away, it’s better hidden, but it’s there all the same.’
He put his arm round her, sensed her fear, her anxiety, her anger … it was as if he could hear her heart whispering as clearly as the voice of fire.
‘You know a funny thing?’ she asked. ‘Even if I could go back at this moment, I wouldn’t. Now that’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s almost as if I’d always wanted to come here, to somewher
e like this. But why? It’s a terrible place!’
‘Terrible and beautiful,’ said Farid, and kissed her. Kissing her tasted good. Much better than Dustfinger’s fire-honey. Much better than anything he had ever tasted before. ‘You can’t go back, anyway,’ he whispered to her. ‘As soon as we have your father free, we’ll explain that to him.’
‘Explain what?’
‘Why, that we’re afraid he’ll have to leave you here. Because you belong with me now, and I’m staying with Dustfinger.’
She laughed, and pressed her face to his shoulder in embarrassment. ‘I’m sure Mo won’t agree to that.’
‘Well? So tell him the girls here marry when they’re your age.’
She laughed again, but then her face grew grave. ‘Perhaps Mo will stay too,’ she said softly. ‘Perhaps we’ll all stay … Resa and Fenoglio too. And we’ll go and fetch Elinor and Darius as well, and then we’ll all live happily ever after.’ The sad note had crept back into her voice. ‘They can’t hang Mo, Farid!’ she whispered. ‘We’ll save him, won’t we? And my mother and the others. It’s always like that in stories: bad things happen but then it all ends happily. And this is a story.’
‘Of course!’ said Farid, although with the best will in the world he couldn’t imagine that happy ending. He felt good, though, all the same.
After a while, Meggie dropped off to sleep beside him. And he sat there and kept watch over her – her and Dustfinger – all night long. It was the best of all nights.
51
The Right Words
There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple. If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with’t.
William Shakespeare,
The Tempest
The groom was a fool, and took forever to saddle up the wretched horse. I never invented a character like that, thought Fenoglio. Lucky that I’m in a good mood. For he was indeed in the best of moods. He had been whistling quietly to himself for hours, because he had done it. He had found the solution! Yes, at last the words had flowed on to the parchment as if they’d just been waiting for him to fish them out of the sea of letters. The right words. The only right words. Now the story could go on and all would end well. He was an enchanter after all, a conjuror with words, one of the very first quality. No one could hold a candle to him – well, one or two, maybe, but in his own world, not this one. If only this dolt of a groom would hurry up! It was high time he went to Roxane’s house or she would ride away without the letter – and then how was he going to get it to Meggie? For there was still no sign of life from the young hothead he had sent after her. That callow youth had probably got lost in the Wayless Wood.
He felt for the letter under his cloak. A good thing that words weighed light, light as a feather, even the most important of them. Roxane wouldn’t have a heavy load to carry when she took Meggie the Adderhead’s death warrant. And she would take something else to the principality by the sea with her – the certainty of Cosimo’s victory.
Just so long as Cosimo didn’t set out before Meggie even had a chance to read his words! Cosimo was burning with impatience, longing for the day when he would lead his soldiers to the other side of the forest. ‘Because he wants to find out who he is!’ whispered the quiet voice in Fenoglio’s head (or was it in his heart?). ‘Because your fine avenging angel is empty, like a box with nothing inside it. A few borrowed memories, a few stone statues – that’s all the poor lad has, and your stories of his heroic deeds. He searches his empty heart in desperation for some echo of them. You ought to have tried to bring the real Cosimo back, after all, straight back from the realm of the dead, but you didn’t dare!’ Hush! Fenoglio shook his head in annoyance. Why did these troublesome thoughts keep returning? Everything would be all right once Cosimo sat on the Adderhead’s throne. Then he’d have memories of his own, and he’d gather more of them every day. And soon the emptiness would be forgotten.
His horse was saddled at last. The groom helped him to mount, his mouth twisted in a mocking smile. The fool! Fenoglio knew he didn’t cut a very good figure on a horse, he’d never get used to riding – but so what? These horses were alarming beasts, much too strong for his liking, but a poet living at his prince’s court didn’t travel on foot like a peasant. And he would go much faster on horseback – assuming the animal wanted to go the same way as he did. What a business it was to get the creature moving!
The hooves clattered over the paved courtyard, past the barrels of pitch and iron spikes that Cosimo was having set on the walls. The castle still resounded at night to the hammering of the smiths, and Cosimo’s soldiers slept in the wooden huts along the wall, crammed close together like larvae in an ants’ nest. He had certainly brought a warrior angel into being, but hadn’t angels always been warlike? The fact is, I’m just no good at making up peaceful characters, thought Fenoglio as he trotted across the yard. The good ones either have bad luck like Dustfinger, or they fall among thieves like the Black Prince. Could he ever have made up a character like Mortimer? Probably not.
As Fenoglio was riding towards the Outer Gate it swung open, so that for a moment he actually assumed the guards were finally showing a little respect for their prince’s poet. But when he saw how low they bent their heads he realized that it couldn’t possibly be for him.
Cosimo came riding towards him through the wide gateway, on a horse so white that it looked a little unreal. In the dark he looked almost more beautiful than by day, but wasn’t that the case with all angels? Only seven soldiers followed him; he never took more as guards on his nocturnal rides. But someone else rode at his side too: Brianna, Dustfinger’s daughter, no longer wearing a dress that had belonged to her mistress, poor Violante, as so often in the past, but in one of the gowns that Cosimo had given her. He heaped presents upon her, while he no longer allowed his wife even to leave the castle, or their son either. But in spite of all these proofs of love, Brianna didn’t look particularly happy. And why should she? What girl would be cheerful if her lover was planning to go to war? The prospect didn’t seem to cloud Cosimo’s mood. Far from it; he looked as light at heart as if the future could bring nothing but good. He went riding every night. He seemed to need very little sleep, and Fenoglio had heard he rode at such a breakneck pace that hardly any of his bodyguards could keep up – like a man who had been told that Death had no power over him. What difference did it make anyway, when he could remember neither his death nor his life?
Day and night, Balbulus was painting the most wonderful pictures to illustrate stories about that lost life. More than a dozen scribes supplied him with the hand-written pages. ‘My husband still won’t enter the library,’ Violante had commented bitterly, last time Fenoglio saw her. ‘But he fills all the reading desks with books about himself.’
Unfortunately, it was only too clear that the words from which Fenoglio and Meggie had made him did not satisfy Cosimo. There were simply not enough of them. Everything he heard about himself seemed to be to do with another man. Perhaps that was why he loved Dustfinger’s daughter so much: because she had nothing to do with the man he seemed to have been before his death. Fenoglio had to keep writing new and ardent love songs to Brianna for him. He generally stole them from other poets; he had always had a good memory for verse, and Meggie wasn’t here now to catch him in the act of theft. Tears always came to Brianna’s eyes when one of the minstrels, who were now welcomed to the castle again, sang her one of those songs.
‘Fenoglio!’ Cosimo reined in his horse, and Fenoglio bent his head in the most natural way in the world, as he did only for the young prince. ‘Where are you going, poet? Everything’s ready for us to march out!’ He sounded as impatient as his horse, which was prancing back and forth, and threatened to infect Fenoglio’s horse with its restlessness. ‘Or would you rather stay here and sharpen your pens for all the songs you’ll have to write about my victory?’
March out? Ready?
Fenoglio looked round in confusion, but Cosimo lau
ghed. ‘Do you think I’d assemble the troops here in the castle? There are far too many for that. No, they’re encamped down by the river. I’m only waiting for one more company of mercenaries recruited for me in the north. They may arrive tomorrow!’
As soon as that? Fenoglio cast Brianna a quick glance. So that was why she looked so sad. ‘Please, Your Grace!’ Fenoglio could not conceal the anxiety in his voice. ‘It’s much too soon! Wait a little longer!’
But Cosimo only smiled. ‘The moon is red, poet! The soothsayers think that’s a good sign. A sign that we mustn’t miss the moment, or all may come to grief.’
What nonsense! Fenoglio bowed his head to keep Cosimo from seeing the annoyance in his face. Cosimo knew anyway that his love of soothsayers and fortune-tellers irritated Fenoglio, who thought them all a set of avaricious frauds. ‘Let me say it once again, Your Grace!’ He had repeated this warning so often that it was beginning to sound flat. ‘The only thing that will bring you bad luck is setting out too soon!’
But Cosimo merely shook his head indulgently.
‘You’re an old man, Fenoglio,’ he said. ‘Your blood flows slowly, but I’m young! What should I wait for? For the Adderhead to recruit mercenaries too and barricade himself in the Castle of Night?’
He probably did that long ago, thought Fenoglio. And that’s why you must wait for the words, my words, and for Meggie to read them, the way she read you here. Wait for her voice! ‘Just one or two weeks more, Your Grace!’ he said urgently. ‘Your peasants must bring their harvest in. What else will they have to live on in winter?’
But Cosimo didn’t want to hear about such things. ‘That truly is old man’s talk!’ he said angrily. ‘Where are your fiery words now? They’ll live on the Adderhead’s stores of provisions, on the good fortune of our victory, on the silver from the Castle of Night. I’ll have it distributed in the villages!’
They can’t eat silver, Your Grace, thought Fenoglio, but he did not say so aloud. Instead, he looked up at the sky. Dear God, how high the moon had risen already! But Cosimo still had something on his mind.
‘There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time,’ he said, just as Fenoglio was about to take his leave with some stammered excuse. ‘You’re so friendly with the strolling players. Everyone’s talking about that fire-eater, the one they say can talk to the flames …’
Out of the corner of his eye, Fenoglio saw Brianna bend her head.
‘You mean Dustfinger?’
‘Yes, that’s his name. I know he’s Brianna’s father,’ said Cosimo, casting her a loving glance, ‘but she won’t talk about him. And she says she doesn’t know where he is now. But perhaps you do?’ Cosimo patted his horse’s neck. His face seemed to burn with beauty.
‘Why? What do you want of him?’
Inkspell Page 36
