A game. Mo looked round and saw the huge doors close behind the last servants. Once empty, the hall only seemed larger.
‘Well, how are you doing, Firefox?’ The Adderhead ran a cool eye over his herald. ‘What does it feel like to be immortal? Fabulous? Reassuring?’
Firefox said nothing. He was still holding the sword which had run him through. ‘I’d like my own sword back,’ he said hoarsely, without taking his eyes off his master. ‘This one is no good.’
‘Nonsense. I’ll have a new sword forged for you, a better one, in gratitude for the service you’ve done me today!’ replied the Adderhead. ‘But first we have one small thing to do so that we can remove your name from my book without any damage.’
‘Remove it?’ Firefox’s eyes wandered to the Piper, who opened the book again and held it out to the librarian.
‘Remove it, yes. You remember that originally the book was to make me immortal, not you, and for that to happen the scribe must write three more words in it.’
‘What for?’ Firefox wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
Three words. Poor devil. Did he hear the trap snapping shut? Meggie reached for Mo’s hand.
‘To make room, one might say. To make room for me,’ replied the Adderhead. ‘And do you know what?’ he went on, as Firefox looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘As a reward for your unselfish proof of how reliably this book really does protect one from death, as soon as the scribe has written those three words you may kill the Bluejay. If he can be killed, that is. Well, is it a fair offer?’
‘What? What are you talking about?’ Meggie’s voice was shrill with fear, but Mo quickly put his hand over her mouth. ‘Meggie, please!’ he said, low-voiced. ‘Have you forgotten what you said about Fenoglio’s words? Nothing will happen to me. Do you hear me?’
But she wouldn’t listen. She sobbed and held him tightly until two men-at-arms roughly dragged her away.
‘Three words!’ Firefox was advancing on him. And hadn’t he just been feeling sorry for him? You’re a fool, Mortimer, thought Mo.
‘Three words! Count them well, Bluejay!’ said Firefox, raising his sword. ‘On four I shall strike, and it will hurt, I promise you, even if it may not kill you. I know what I’m talking about.’
The sword blade shone like ice in the candlelight. It looked long enough to run three men through at once, and here and there Firefox’s blood still clung to the bright metal like rust.
‘Come now, Taddeo,’ said the Adderhead. ‘You remember the words I told you? Write them one by one, but don’t say them aloud. Just count them for us.’
The Piper opened the book and held it out to the old man. With trembling fingers, Taddeo dipped his pen in the jar of ink. ‘One,’ he whispered, and the pen scratched over the parchment.
‘Two.’
Firefox, smiling, set the point of the sword against Mo’s chest.
Taddeo raised his head, dipped his pen in the ink again and looked uncertainly at the Adderhead.
‘Have you forgotten how to count, old man?’ he asked.
Taddeo just shook his head and lowered the pen to the paper again. ‘Three!’ he whispered.
Mo heard Meggie call his name, and stared at the point of the sword. Words, nothing but words protected him from that sharp, bright blade …
In Fenoglio’s world, words were enough.
Firefox’s eyes widened in mingled astonishment and horror. Mo saw him try with his last breath to thrust the sword into him, to take him to wherever pen and ink were sending him, too, but the sword dropped from his hands. Firefox collapsed like a bundle of empty clothes, and fell at Mo’s feet.
The Piper stood there staring down at the dead man in silence, while Taddeo lowered his pen and retreated from the book in which he had just been writing as if it might kill him as well, with a quiet voice, with a single word.
‘Take him away,’ ordered the Adderhead. ‘Before the White Women come to fetch him from my castle. Get on with it!’
Three men-at-arms carried Firefox out. The foxtails on his cloak dragged on the tiles as they hauled him away, and Mo stood there staring at the sword lying at his feet. He felt Meggie put her arms around him. Her heart was beating like a frightened bird’s.
‘Who wants an immortal herald?’ remarked the Adderhead as the dead Firefox was removed. ‘If you’d been a little cleverer you’d have seen that for yourself.’ The jewels that adorned his nostrils looked more than ever like drops of blood.
‘Shall I remove his name, Your Grace?’ Taddeo’s voice was so hesitant that it was barely audible.
‘Of course. His name and the three words, you understand. And do a thorough job of it. I want the pages white as newly fallen snow again.’
The librarian obediently set to work. The scraping sound was curiously loud in the empty hall. When Taddeo had finished, he passed the flat of his hand over the parchment, which was blank again now. Then the Piper took the book from his hands and offered it to the Adderhead.
Mo saw the man’s stout fingers shaking as they dipped the pen in the ink. And before he began to write, the Adderhead looked up once more. ‘I am sure you weren’t stupid enough to bind any kind of extra magic into this book, were you, Bluejay?’ he asked warily. ‘There are ways of killing a man – and not just a man, but his wife and daughter too – that make dying a very long and very painful business. It can take days – many days and many nights.’
‘Magic? No,’ replied Mo, still staring at the sword at his feet. ‘I don’t know anything about magic. Let me say it again: bookbinding, and nothing else, is my trade. And all I know about it has gone into that book. No more and no less.’
‘Very well.’ The Adderhead dipped the pen in the ink again – and stopped once more. ‘White,’ he murmured, staring at the blank pages. ‘See how white they are. White as the women who bring death, white as the bones the Cold Man leaves behind when he’s had his fill of flesh and blood.’
Then he wrote. Wrote his name in the blank book, and closed it. ‘That’s done!’ he cried triumphantly. ‘That’s done, Taddeo! Lock him in the book, the soul-swallower, the enemy who can’t be killed. Now he can’t kill me either. Now we’re equals. Two Cold Men ruling the world together, for all eternity.’
The librarian obeyed, but as he was engaging the clasps he looked at Mo. Who are you? his eyes seemed to ask. What’s your part in this game? But even if Mo had wanted to, he couldn’t have given him the answer.
The Adderhead, however, seemed to think he knew it. ‘You know, I like you, Bluejay,’ he said, never taking his lizard-like gaze off Mo. ‘Yes, you’d make a good herald, but that’s not the way the parts are shared out, is it?’
‘No, indeed not,’ said Mo. But you don’t know who shares them out, and I do, he added in his thoughts.
The Adderhead nodded to the men-at-arms. ‘Let him go,’ he ordered. ‘And the girl, and anyone else he wants to take.’
They stepped aside, if reluctantly.
‘Come on, Mo!’ whispered Meggie, pressing his hand.
How pale she was. Pale with fear, and so defenceless. Mo looked past the men-at-arms, and thought of the walled courtyard waiting for them out there, the silver vipers staring down, the openings for boiling pitch above the gate. He thought of the crossbows of the guards on the battlements too, the spears of the guards at the gate – and the soldiers who had pushed Resa down in the dirt. Without a word, he bent down and picked up the sword that had fallen from Firefox’s hand.
‘Mo!’ Meggie let go of his hand and looked at him in horror. ‘What are you doing?’
But he just pulled her close to him without a word, while the men-at-arms all drew their weapons. Firefox’s sword weighed heavy, heavier than the one he had used to chase Capricorn out of his house.
‘Well, fancy that!’ said the Adderhead. ‘You don’t seem to trust my word, Bluejay!’
‘Oh, I trust it,’ said Mo, without lowering the sword. ‘But everyone here except me has a weapon, so I think
I’ll keep this masterless sword. You keep the book, and if we’re both lucky we’ll never see each other again after this morning.’
Even the Adderhead’s laughter sounded as if it were made of silver – dark, tarnished silver. ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘It’s a pleasure to play games with you, Bluejay. You’re a good opponent. Which is why I’ll keep my word. Let him go,’ he told the men-at-arms again. ‘Tell the guards at the gate the Adderhead is letting the Bluejay go because he need never fear him again. For the Adderhead is immortal!’
The words echoed in Mo’s ears as he took Meggie’s hand. Taddeo was still holding the book, holding it as if it might bite him. Mo thought he could still feel its paper between his fingers, the wood of the boards, the leather covering it, the thread stitching the pages. Then he saw Meggie’s gaze. She was staring at the sword in his hand as if it made a stranger of him.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s join your mother!’
‘Yes, go, Bluejay, take your daughter and your wife and all the others,’ the Adderhead called after them. ‘Before Mortola reminds me how stupid it is to let you go free!’
Only two men-at-arms followed them on their long journey through the castle. The courtyard was almost empty at this early hour of the morning. The sky above the Castle of Night was grey, and fine rain was falling like a veil before the face of the dawning day. The few servants already at work retreated in alarm from the sight of the sword in Mo’s hand, and the men-at-arms waved them aside without a word.
The other prisoners were already waiting at the gate, a forlorn little troop guarded by a dozen soldiers. At first Mo couldn’t see Resa, but suddenly one figure moved away from the others and ran towards him and Meggie. No one stopped her. Perhaps the soldiers had heard of Firefox’s fate. Mo felt their eyes on him, full of horror and fear – the man who bound Death between white pages, and was a robber into the bargain! Didn’t the sword in his hand prove that for all time? He didn’t care what they thought. Let them be afraid of him. He had felt more than enough fear for one lifetime in all those days and nights when he thought he had lost everything – his wife, his daughter – and there was nothing left for him but a lonely death in this world made of words.
Resa hugged him and Meggie in turn; she almost crushed them, and his face was wet with her tears when she let go of him again.
‘Come on, let’s go through the gate, Resa!’ he urged in a low voice. ‘Before the lord of this castle changes his mind! We all have a great deal to tell each other, but for now let’s go!’
The other prisoners joined them in silence. They watched incredulously as the gate opened for them, as its iron-bound wings swung open and let them go free. Some of them stumbled over their own feet in their haste as they crowded out. But still no one from the castle followed them. The guards just stood there, swords and spears in their hands, staring as the prisoners stumbled uncertainly away, their legs stiff from weeks in the dungeons. Only one man-at-arms came out of the gate with them, wordlessly indicating the path they should take. Suppose they shoot at us from the battlements? Mo thought, when he saw that there was not a single tree or bush to give them cover as they followed the road down the bare slope. He felt like a fly on the wall ready to be swatted. But nothing happened. They walked through the grey morning, through the rain now pouring down, with the castle crouched menacingly behind them like a monster – and nothing happened.
‘He’s keeping his promise!’ Mo heard the others whispering these words more and more often. ‘The Adderhead is keeping his word.’ Resa asked anxiously about his wound, and he replied quietly that he was all right, while he waited to hear footsteps behind them, soldiers’ footsteps. But all was still. It seemed as if they had been going down the bare hillside for an eternity when trees suddenly appeared in front of them. The shade that their branches cast on the road was as dark as if night itself had taken refuge under them.
71
Only a Dream
One day a young man said, ‘This tale about everybody having to die doesn’t sit too well with me. I will go in search of the land where one never dies.’
Italo Calvino, tr. George Martin,
‘The Land Where One Never Dies’,
Italian Folktales
Dustfinger was lying among the trees, drenched to the skin by the rain, with Farid beside him. The boy’s black hair clung to his forehead, and he kept shivering. The others were certainly in no better shape. They had been waiting for hours; they’d taken up their positions before sunrise, and it had been raining ever since. It was dark under the trees, as dark as if day had never dawned. And quiet, as quiet as if the waiting men were not alone in holding their breath. Only the noise of the rain splashed and dripped on to the trees and branches, falling and falling. Farid wiped his wet nose on his sleeve, and someone sneezed somewhere. Stupid fool, hold your nose, thought Dustfinger – then started when he heard something rustling on the other side of the road. But it was only a rabbit scuttling out of the thickets. It stopped in the middle of the road, sniffing the air, ears twitching, eyes wide open. It’s probably not half as scared as I am, thought Dustfinger, wishing himself back with Roxane in the dark underground galleries of the mine. They smelled like a crypt, but at least they were dry.
He was pushing his dripping hair back from his forehead for about the hundredth time when Farid, beside him, suddenly raised his head. The rabbit raced away among the trees, and footsteps sounded through the rushing of the rain. Here they came at last, a forlorn little troop, almost as wet as the robbers waiting for them. Farid was going to jump up, but Dustfinger seized him and pulled him roughly back to his side. ‘Stay where you are, understand?’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t leave the martens with Roxane only to have to catch you instead!’
Silvertongue led the way, with Meggie and Resa behind him. He was holding a sword in his hand, as he had on the night when he turned Capricorn and Basta out of his house. The pregnant woman he had seen in the dungeon was stumbling down the road beside Resa. She kept looking back, up to the Castle of Night, which still towered menacing and huge behind them, even though it was so far away now. There were more prisoners than he had seen at the inn in the forest. Obviously the Adderhead really had emptied his dungeons. Some were swaying as if they could hardly keep on their feet, others blinking as if even the dim light of this dark day was too much for their eyes. Silvertongue seemed to be all right, in spite of his blood-stained shirt, and Resa did not look quite as pale as in the dungeon, but perhaps that was just his imagination.
He had just seen the Barn Owl among the others – how old and fragile he looked! – when Farid clutched his arm in sudden fright and pointed at the men who had appeared on the road. They emerged so soundlessly that they might have been growing out of the rain, more and more of them, and at first Dustfinger thought the Black Prince had managed to get reinforcements after all. But then he saw Basta.
He was holding a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, and blood lust was written all over his scorched face. None of the men with him wore the Adderhead’s coat of arms, but that meant nothing. Perhaps Mortola had sent them, perhaps the Adderhead wanted to be able to protest innocence when his prisoners were found dead in the road. There were a great many men; that was all that mattered. Dozens and dozens of them. Far more than the robbers lying in wait in the trees with the Black Prince. Basta raised a hand, smiling, and they advanced down the road with drawn swords, going at a comfortable pace as if they wanted to enjoy the fear on the prisoners’ faces for a while before they struck.
The Black Prince was the first to leap out of the trees, with the bear at his side. The two of them took up their position in the road as if they alone could stop the slaughter. But his men were quick to follow, silently forming a wall of bodies between the prisoners and the men who had come to kill them. Cursing quietly, Dustfinger rose to his feet too. This was going to be a morning of bloodshed. The rain wouldn’t fall fast enough to wash all the blood away, and he would have to provoke the fire to
great anger, for it didn’t like rain. Damp made it sleepy – and it would have to bite hard, very hard.
‘Farid!’ He breathed the boy’s name, and was just in time to haul him back by the arm. He wanted to go to Meggie, of course, but he would have to take fire with him. They would need to make a circle of it – a ring of flames around those who had nothing but their hands against all those swords. He picked up a strong branch, enticed fire from its damp bark – hissing, steaming fire – and threw the burning wood to the boy. The barrier of human flesh wouldn’t hold for long; it was fire that must save them.
Basta’s voice came through the gloom, derisive, bloodthirsty, while Farid made sparks rain down the ground. He scattered them over the wet earth like a farmer sowing his seed, while Dustfinger followed him and made them grow. The flames were flaring up as Basta’s men attacked. Sword clashed against sword, screams filled the air, bodies collided as Dustfinger and Farid lured fire into being and nursed it until it almost surrounded the company of prisoners. Dustfinger left only a narrow path free, a way of escape into the forest in case the flames stopped obeying even him and their anger finally made them bite everyone, friend and foe alike.
He saw Resa’s face and the fear in it; he saw Farid leap over the flames to join the freed prisoners, in line with their plan. A good thing Meggie was there, or very likely Farid would not have left his side. Dustfinger himself still stood outside the fire. He drew his knife – it was always better to have a knife in your hand when Basta was around – and whispered to the fire, insistently, almost lovingly, to keep it from doing what it wanted and becoming an enemy instead of a friend. As the robbers were forced further and further back, they came closer and closer to the troop of freed prisoners. Among them all, only Silvertongue had a weapon.
Three of Basta’s men were attacking the Prince, but the bear was protecting his master with teeth and claws. Dustfinger felt almost sick at the sight of the wounds those black paws inflicted. The fire crackled at him, wanted to play, wanted to dance, didn’t understand anything about the fear all around, neither smelled nor tasted it. Dustfinger heard cries, one as clear as a boy’s voice. He pushed his way through the fighting bodies – and picked up a sword lying in the mud. Where was Farid?
There, thrusting about him with his knife, swift as an adder striking. Dustfinger seized his arm, hissing at the flames to let them pass, and dragged him away. ‘Damn it all! I ought to have left you with Roxane,’ he shouted as he pushed Farid through the fire. ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay with Meggie?’ He could have wrung the boy’s thin neck, but he was so relieved to see him uninjured.
Meggie ran to Farid and took his hand. They stood there side by side, staring at the blood and the turmoil, but Dustfinger tried to hear nothing, see nothing. The fire alone was his concern. The rest was up to the Prince.
Silvertongue was striking out well with his sword, far better than Dustfinger himself could have managed, but his face looked exhausted and wet with rain. Dustfinger glanced at Resa. She was standing beside Meggie, and she was still unhurt. For now. The damned rain was running down his face and the back of his neck, drowning out his voice with its rushing. The water was singing a lullaby to the flames, an ancient lullaby, and Dustfinger raised his voice, called louder and louder to wake it again, to make it roar and bite. He went very near the ring of fire, saw the fighting men come closer and closer. Some were already almost stumbling into the flames.
Farid too had seen what the rain was doing. He ran nimbly to where the flames were dying down, and Meggie ran after him. A man fell dead in the ring of fire where the boy was standing, extinguishing the flames there with his lifeless body, and a second man stumbled over him. Cursing, Dustfinger made for the deadly breach in the ring, called