my punishment so thoroughly for him. He was never a friend of such spectacles anyway. An execution is a serious matter to the Adderhead. The gallows outside the castle will do for a poor minstrel, there’ll be no trouble about that, but the Bluejay will die inside the gate.’
‘Yes. If his daughter’s voice doesn’t open that gate for him,’ replied Dustfinger. ‘Her voice and a book – a book full of immortality.’
Farid heard the Black Prince laugh. ‘That sounds almost like some new song by the Inkweaver!’
‘Yes,’ replied Dustfinger in a husky voice. ‘It sounds just like him, doesn’t it?’
64
All is Lost
’Tis war! ’Tis war! God’s angel stand by ye
And guide your hand.
’Tis war, alas, and guiltless I would be
Of what betides this land.
Matthias Claudius,
War Song
After a few days’ rest, Dustfinger’s leg was much better, and Farid was just telling the two martens how they’d soon all be stealing into the Castle of Night to rescue Meggie and her parents when bad news came to the Badger’s Earth. One of the men who had been watching the road to Ombra brought it. His face was covered with blood and he could hardly keep on his feet.
‘They’re killing them!’ he kept stammering over and over again. ‘They’re killing them all.’
‘Where?’ asked the Prince. ‘Where exactly?’
‘Not two hours from here,’ the messenger managed to say. ‘Keep going north.’
The Prince left ten men at the Badger’s Earth. Roxane tried to persuade Dustfinger to stay too. ‘You must spare your leg, or it will never heal,’ she said. But he would not listen to her, so she too came on the fast, silent march through the forest.
They heard the sound of battle long before they could see anything. Screams reached Farid’s ears, cries of pain, and the whinnying of horses, shrill with fear. A moment came when the Prince signalled to them to go more slowly. A few more paces, bending low, and the ground in front of them dropped steeply to the road that ended, many miles further on, at the gates of Ombra. Dustfinger made Farid and Roxane get down on the ground, although no one was looking their way. Hundreds of men were fighting among the trees down below, but there were no robbers among them. Robbers do not wear shirts of chain mail, breastplates and helmets decked with peacock feathers; they seldom have horses, and never coats of arms embroidered on silken surcoats.
Dustfinger held Roxane close when she began to sob. The sun was sinking behind the hills as the Adderhead’s soldiers cut down Cosimo’s men one by one. It looked as if the battle had been raging for a long time; the road was covered with dead bodies lying side by side. Only a small troop was still on horseback amidst all this death. Cosimo himself was among them, his beautiful face distorted by rage and fear. For a moment it looked almost as if those few mounted men would be able to carve themselves a breach in the enemy ranks, but then Firefox came among them with a company of men gleaming like deadly beetles in their armour. They mowed down Cosimo and his retinue like dry grass as the sun sank right behind the hills, as red as if all the blood that had been shed was reflected in the sky. Firefox himself struck Cosimo from his horse, and Dustfinger buried his face in Roxane’s hair, as if he were tired of seeing Death at work. But Farid did not turn his head away. His face unmoving, he looked at the slaughter and thought of Meggie – Meggie, who perhaps still believed that a little ink could cure anything in this world. Would she believe it if her eyes saw what his were seeing now?
Few of Cosimo’s men survived their Prince. Barely a dozen fled into the trees. No one went to the trouble of pursuing them. The Adderhead’s soldiers broke into cries of triumph, and began plundering the corpses like a flock of vultures in human form. They did not get Cosimo’s body, however. Firefox himself drove his soldiers off, and had that beautiful corpse loaded on to a horse and taken away.
‘Why are they doing that?’ asked Farid.
‘Why? Because his corpse is the proof that he really is dead this time,’ said Dustfinger bitterly.
‘Yes, he is indeed,’ whispered the Black Prince. ‘I suppose you think yourself immortal if you’ve come back from the dead once. But he wasn’t, any more than his men, and now almost all the people of Lombrica will be widows and orphans.’
It was many hours before the Adderhead’s soldiers finally moved away, laden with what they could rob from the dead. Darkness was coming on again when silence fell at last among the trees, the silence that is felt only in the presence of Death.
Roxane was the first to find a way down the slope. She was no longer weeping. Her face was fixed and rigid, but whether with anger or pain Farid could not have said. The robbers hesitated before following her, for the first White Women were already standing there among the dead.
65
Lord of the Story
Iron helmets will not save
Even heroes from the grave.
Good men’s blood will drain away
While the wicked win the day.
Heinrich Heine,
Valkyries
Fenoglio was wandering among the dead when the robbers found him. Night fell, but he did not know what night it was. Nor could he remember how many days had passed since he rode out of the gates of Ombra with Cosimo. He knew only one thing: they were all dead. Minerva’s husband, his neighbour, the father of the boy who had so often begged him for a story. All dead. And he himself would very likely have been dead too if his horse hadn’t shied and thrown him. He had crawled away into the trees, to hide there like an animal and watch the slaughter.
Since the departure of the Adderhead’s soldiers he had been stumbling from one corpse to the next, cursing himself, cursing his story, cursing the world he had created. When he felt the hand on his shoulder he actually thought for a moment that Cosimo had risen from the dead yet again, but it was the Black Prince standing behind him.
‘What are you doing here?’ he snarled at him and the men with him. ‘Do you want to die too? Go away and hide, and leave me in peace.’ He struck his brow. His damned head that had invented them all, and with them all the misfortune they were wading through like black, stinking water! He fell on his knees beside a dead man whose open eyes were staring at the sky, and blamed himself furiously – himself, the Adderhead, Cosimo and his haste – and then suddenly fell silent when he saw Dustfinger standing next to the Prince.
‘You!’ he stammered, and got to his feet again, swaying. ‘You’re still alive! You’re not dead yet, even though I wrote it that way.’ He took Dustfinger’s arm and clutched it tightly.
‘Yes, disappointing, isn’t it?’ replied Dustfinger, shaking Fenoglio’s hand roughly off. ‘Is it any comfort to you that no doubt, but for Farid, I’d have been lying as dead and cold as these men? After all, you didn’t foresee him.’
Farid? Oh yes, the boy plucked by Mortimer from his desert story. He was standing beside Dustfinger and staring at Fenoglio with murder in his eyes. No, the boy really did not belong here. Whoever had sent him to protect Dustfinger, it hadn’t been him, Fenoglio! But that was the wretched part of the whole business! With everyone interfering in his story, how could it turn out well?
‘I can’t find Cosimo!’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been looking for him for hours. Have any of you seen him?’
‘Firefox has had his body taken away,’ the Prince replied. ‘I expect they’ll put it on public display so that this time no one can claim he’s still alive.’
Fenoglio stared at him until the bear began to growl. Then he shook his head again and again. ‘I don’t understand it!’ he stammered. ‘How could it happen? Didn’t Meggie read what I wrote for her? Didn’t Roxane find her?’ He looked despairingly at Dustfinger. How well he remembered the day he had described his death! A good scene, one of the best he’d ever written.
‘Oh yes, Roxane gave Meggie the letter. Ask her yourself if you don’t believe me. Although I don’t think she’ll feel muc
h like talking at the moment.’ Dustfinger pointed to the woman walking among the corpses. Roxane. The beautiful Roxane. She bent over the dead, looked into their faces, and finally knelt down beside a man whom a White Woman was approaching. She quickly put her hands over his ears, bent over his face, and gestured to the two robbers who were following her with torches in their hands. No, she would certainly not feel much like talking just now.
Dustfinger looked at him. Why that reproachful expression? Fenoglio wanted to snap at him. After all, I invented your wife too! But he bit the words back. ‘Very well. So Roxane gave Meggie the letter,’ he said instead. ‘But did Meggie read it?’
Dustfinger looked at him with great dislike. ‘She tried to, but the Adderhead had her taken to the Castle of Night that very evening.’
‘Oh, God!’ Fenoglio looked around. The dead faces of Cosimo’s men stared at him. ‘So that’s it!’ he cried. ‘I thought all this had happened only because Cosimo wanted to set off too soon, but no! The words, my wonderful words … Meggie can’t have read them, or everything would have been all right!’
‘Nothing would have been all right!’ Dustfinger’s voice was so cutting that Fenoglio involuntarily flinched. ‘Not a man of all these lying here would be dead if you hadn’t brought Cosimo back!’
The Prince and his men stared at Dustfinger, unable to make anything of this. Of course, they had no idea what he was talking about. But obviously Dustfinger knew only too well. Meggie had told him about Cosimo. Or had it been the boy?
‘Why are you staring at him like that?’ Farid challenged the robbers, ranging himself at Dustfinger’s side. ‘It was exactly as he says! Fenoglio brought Cosimo back from the dead. I was there myself.’
How the fools flinched away! Only the Black Prince looked thoughtfully at Fenoglio.
‘What nonsense!’ Fenoglio said. ‘No one comes back to this world from the dead! Think what a crowd there’d be! I made a new Cosimo, a brand-new one, and everything would have turned out well if Meggie hadn’t been interrupted while she read! My Cosimo would have been a wonderful ruler, a—’
Before he could say any more, the Prince’s black hand came down over his mouth. ‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘Enough talking while the dead lie here around us. Your Cosimo is dead, wherever he came from, and the man they take for the Bluejay because of your songs may well be dead soon too. You seem to enjoy playing with Death, Inkweaver.’
Fenoglio tried to protest, but the Black Prince had already turned to his men. ‘Go on looking for the wounded!’ he told them. ‘And hurry! It’s time we got off this road.’
They found barely two dozen survivors. Two dozen among hundreds of dead. When the robbers set off again with the wounded men, Fenoglio staggered after them in silence without asking where they were going. ‘The old man is following us!’ he heard Dustfinger tell the Prince. ‘Where else would he go?’ was all the Prince replied – and Dustfinger said nothing. But he kept well away from Fenoglio, as if he were Death itself.
66
Blank Paper
We make for your sake such things as stand fast,
Through the ages these pages forever will last.
On blank paper the printer sets down what is heard
Giving life to what’s rife with the power of the word.
Michael Kongehl,
‘On the White Art’,
Die Weisse und die Schwarze Kunst
When Mortola had Mo’s cell unlocked, Meggie was just telling him about the Laughing Prince’s festivities, the tightrope-walker and the Black Prince and Farid’s juggling with the torches. Mo put his arm protectively round her as the bolts were shot back and Mortola came into the cell, flanked by Basta and the Piper. The sunlight falling into the room made Basta’s face look like boiled lobster.
‘Look at that, what an idyll! Father and daughter reunited,’ sneered Mortola. ‘Truly touching!’
‘Hurry up!’ the guard told her through the door, low-voiced. ‘If the Adderhead hears that I let you in to see him, they’ll put me in the pillory for three days!’
‘And if they do I’ve paid you well enough, haven’t I?’ was all Mortola replied, while Basta went up to Mo with a vicious smile.
‘Well, Silvertongue,’ he purred, ‘didn’t I say you’d all fall into our trap yet?’
‘You look more as if it was you who fell into Dustfinger’s trap,’ replied Mo, quickly putting Meggie behind him when, by way of answer, Basta snapped his knife open.
‘Basta! Stop that!’ Mortola snapped at him. ‘We don’t have time for your games.’
Meggie came out from behind Mo’s back as Mortola moved towards her. She wanted to show the old woman that she wasn’t afraid of her (even if, of course, that was only a brave lie).
‘Those were interesting words that you had hidden in your clothing,’ Mortola said to her, low-voiced. ‘The Adderhead was particularly interested in the part about three very special words. Oh, see how pale she’s gone around her pretty little nose! Yes, the Adderhead knows about your plans, little pigeon, and he knows now that Mortola isn’t as stupid as he thought. But unfortunately he still wants the book you promised him. The fool really does believe that you two can keep his death imprisoned in a book.’ The Magpie wrinkled her nose at such princely stupidity, and came yet closer to Meggie. ‘Yes, he’s a gullible fool, like all princes!’ she whispered to Meggie. ‘We both know that, don’t we? For the words you carried with you also say that Cosimo the Fair will conquer this castle, and kill the Adderhead, with the aid of the book your father is to bind for him. But how can that be so? Cosimo is dead, and for good this time. Oh, how alarmed you look, you little witch!’ Her bony fingers pinched Meggie’s cheeks hard. Mo went to strike her hand away, but Basta faced him with the knife. ‘Your tongue has lost its magic power, my little darling!’ said the Magpie. ‘The words are only words. The book your father is to bind for the Adderhead will be nothing but a blank book – and once the Silver Prince finally realizes that, nothing will save you two from the hangman. And Mortola will be avenged at last.’
‘Leave her alone, Mortola!’ Mo reached for Meggie’s hand in spite of Basta’s knife, and Meggie clasped his fingers firmly in hers as thoughts raced through her mind in confusion. Cosimo was dead? For the second time? What did that mean? Nothing, she thought. Nothing at all, Meggie. Because you never read the words that were to protect him.
Mortola seemed to notice her relief, for the Magpie’s eyes became as narrow as her lips. ‘Ah, so that doesn’t trouble you? Do you think I’d lie to you? Or do you believe in that book of immortality yourself? Let me tell you something.’ The Magpie’s thin fingers dug into Meggie’s shoulder. ‘It’s a book, no more, and I am sure you and your father remember what my son used to do with books! Capricorn would never have been fool enough to entrust his life to one, even if you’d promised him immortality for it! And furthermore … those three words that it seems must not be written in the book … I know them now too.’
‘What do you mean by that, Mortola?’ asked Mo quietly. ‘Do you by any chance dream of putting Basta here on the Adderhead’s throne? Or even yourself?’
The Magpie cast a quick glance at the guard outside the cell door, but he had his back to them, and she turned to Mo again, her face expressionless. ‘Whatever I intend to do, Silvertongue,’ she hissed at him, ‘you won’t live to see it. This story is over for you. Why isn’t he in chains?’ she snapped at the Piper. ‘He’s still a prisoner, isn’t he? At least tie his hands while you move him.’
Meggie was about to protest, but Mo cast her a warning glance.
‘Believe me, Silvertongue,’ said Mortola in a low voice as the Piper roughly tied Mo’s hands behind his back, ‘even if the Adderhead sets you free after you’ve made him his book, you won’t get far. And Mortola’s word is worth more than the words of a poet. Take the pair of them to the Old Chamber!’ she ordered as she went to the door again. ‘But watch them closely, and make sure that not a single book falls into th
eir hands.’
The Old Chamber lay in the most remote part of the Castle of Night, far from the halls where the Adderhead held court. The corridors down which Basta and the Piper led them were dusty and deserted. No silver adorned the columns and doors here; there was no glass in the draughty windows.
The chamber whose door the Piper finally opened, with a mocking bow to Mo, seemed to have been unoccupied for a long time. The pink fabric of the bed hangings was moth-eaten. The bunches of flowers standing in pitchers in the window niches were long dried up; dust was caught in the withered blossoms, and lay thick and dirty white on the chests that stood under the windows. In the middle of the chamber was a table: a long wooden surface laid on trestles. A man stood behind it, as pale as paper, with white hair and inkstains on his fingers. He gave Meggie only a quick glance, but he studied Mo as thoroughly as if someone had asked him to deliver an expert opinion on him.
‘Is this the man?’ he asked the Piper. ‘He looks as if he’d never held a book in his hand in his life, let alone had the faintest idea how to bind one.’
Meggie saw a smile steal over Mo’s face. Without a word he went over to the table and examined the tools lying on it.
‘My name is Taddeo, and I am the librarian here,’ went on the stranger, sounding annoyed. ‘I don’t suppose that a single one of these objects means anything to you, but I can assure you that the paper you see there alone is worth more than your wretched robber’s life. The finest product of the best paper mill for a thousand miles around, enough to bind more than two books of five hundred pages. Although a genuine bookbinder, of course, would prefer parchment to any paper, however good.’
Mo held his bound hands out to the Piper. ‘There could be two opinions about that,’ he said, as the silver-nosed minstrel, his