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 towards 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 her face up.
‘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 tom-cat 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 heart, 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 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 to the two of you to work quickly.’ He signalled 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 – 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 laughing stock 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 only 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 her sleeves up. 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.
Meggie felt dizzy with fear as he led her on. Suppose Mortola showed the letter to the Adderhead? Suppose, suppose …?
‘Get moving!’ growled Firefox, pushing her up a flight of stairs. As if numbed, Meggie stumbled up the steep steps. Fenoglio, she thought, Fenoglio, help me. Mortola knows about our plan.
‘Stop!’ Firefox brutally grabbed her by the hair. Four men-at-arms were on guard outside a door with three bolts over it. A nod of the head from Firefox told them to open it.
Mo, thought Meggie. They really are taking me to him. And that thought extinguished any others. Even thoughts of Mortola.
60
Fire on the Wall
Lo, on the whiteness of the wall,
Behold, appeared a human hand,
Which wrote and wrote, in letters tall,
A fiery message for the land.
Heinrich Heine,
Belshazzar
All was quiet in the wide, dark corridors as Dustfinger and Farid stole into the Castle of Night. Only wax dripped from a thousand candles on the stone flags that all bore the Adderhead’s coat of arms. Servants hurried past them in soft-soled shoes, and maids scuttled by with bent heads. Guards stood in endless passages and outside doorways so high that they seemed to have been made for giants, not ordinary humans. Every one of them bore the emblematic creature of the Adderhead – the snake striking at its prey – in scales of silver, and huge mirrors hung beside the doors. Farid kept stopping in front of them to look into the polished metal and reassure himself that he really was invisible.
Dustfinger made an acorn-sized flame dance on his hand so that the boy could follow him. Servants were carrying delicious things to eat out of one of the halls they passed. Their aroma reminded Dustfinger painfully of his invisible stomach, and when he pushed his way past the servants as soundlessly as the Adderhead’s snake, he heard them talking in muted tones about a young witch, and a deal that was to save the Bluejay from the gallows. Dustfing
er, as invisible as their voices, listened to them and did not know which of his emotions was the stronger: relief that Fenoglio’s words were obviously coming true again, or fear of those words and the invisible threads spun by the old man, threads to catch even the Adderhead and make him dream of immortality, although Fenoglio had recorded his death in writing long ago. But had Meggie really read those deadly words before they took her away?
‘Now what?’ Farid whispered. ‘Did you hear that? They’ve shut Meggie up with Silvertongue in one of the towers! How do I get there?’ His voice was shaking – heavens, what a plague love was! Anyone who claimed otherwise had never yet felt that wretched trembling of the heart.
‘Forget it!’ Dustfinger whispered to the boy. ‘The dungeons in the tower have strong doors. Even invisible you wouldn’t get through them. And the place will be swarming with guards. After all, they still think they’ve caught the Bluejay. You’d do better to steal into the kitchen and listen to the maids and the menservants – you always learn something interesting that way. But be careful! I repeat: invisible doesn’t mean immortal.’
‘How about you?’
‘I’m going to venture down to the dungeons under the castle, where the less valuable prisoners are held, to find the Barn Owl and Meggie’s mother. See that fat marble statue there? Must be some ancestor of the Adderhead. We’ll meet there. And don’t even think of following me! Farid?’
But the boy had already gone. Dustfinger suppressed a soft curse. He just hoped no one heard the boy’s lovesick heart thudding!
It was a long, dark way to the dungeons. One of the women healers who worked for the Barn Owl had told him where the entrance lay. None of the guards he passed even turned their heads as Dustfinger slipped by them. Two were lounging around at the mouth of the damp corridor, lit only by a single torch, with the door to the dungeons at the end of it. Beyond that door the way went on down, down into the deadly entrails of the Castle of Night which digested human beings like a stony stomach, now and then excreting a few dead bodies. There was another snake on the door that no one ever wished to enter, but here the silver adder was coiled around a skull.
The guards were quarrelling – it was something to do with Firefox – but Dustfinger had no time to eavesdrop. He was only glad that all their attention was on each other as he slipped past. The door creaked slightly when he opened it, just wide enough to get through – his heart almost stopped as he did it – but the guards didn’t turn round. What wouldn’t he give for a fearless heart like Farid’s, even if it made you reckless! It was so dark beyond the door that, for a moment, he had to summon fire before his invisible feet made their way down the steps, and just in time. They were steep and well-trodden, worn away by the people whom the dungeons had swallowed up. Fear and desperation rose to greet him like vapours from the depths. The steps were said to lead as far down under the hill as the castle towers rose to the sky above it, but Dustfinger had never met anyone who could confirm this tale. Of those he had known who were taken down here, he had never seen a single one alive again.
Dustfinger, Dustfinger, he thought before starting on the downward climb, this is a dangerous path to take just to pass the time of day with two old friends, and your visit won’t even do them much good. However, he had run after the Barn Owl for years just as Farid was now running after him, and as for Resa – perhaps he recalled her name last to convince himself that he was certainly not climbing down this damned stairway on her account.
Unfortunately even invisible feet make sounds, but luckily he only met guards once. Three warders passed him at such close quarters that he could smell the garlic on their breath, and he only just managed to press close to the wall in time to stop the fattest of them bumping into him. During the rest of the dark downward climb, he met no one. There was a torch burning every few metres along the rough-hewn walls, so different from the finely chiselled masonry in the castle above. Dustfinger twice passed a room where more guards were sitting, but they never even raised their heads as he stole by, more quietly than a breath of air and equally invisible.
When the stairs finally came to an end, he almost collided with a warder pacing up and down a candlelit corridor with a bored expression on his face. Soundlessly, he slipped past the man. He peered into dungeons scarcely larger than holes, too low for anyone to stand up in. Others were large enough to take fifty men. It would certainly be easy simply to
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