Inkdeath

46. THE CASTLE IN THE LAKE

They rode north, farther and farther north. On the morning of the second day, Violante had Mo's hands, bound until now for fear of her father's spies, loosened after one of her soldiers told her that otherwise the Bluejay would soon lose the use of them. More than fifty soldiers had been waiting for them barely a mile out of Ombra. Hardly any of them were older than Farid, and they all looked as determined as if they would follow Violante to the end of the world.

With every mile they put behind them the woods were darker and the valleys deeper. The hills became mountains. Snow already lay on some of the passes, so that they had to dismount and lead their horses, and on the second night rain fell, covering the white snow with treacherous ice. The mountain range through which they were riding seemed almost uninhabited. Only very occasionally did Mo see a village in the distance, an isolated

farmhouse, or a charcoal-burner's hut. It was almost as if Fenoglio had forgotten to populate this part of his world.

Dustfinger joined them when they first stopped to rest. He did it as naturally as if nothing were simpler than to pick up the trail that Violante's soldiers were so carefully obliterating. The soldiers looked at him in the same respectful but wary way as they looked at Mo. Bluejay… Fire-Dancer… of course they knew the songs, and their eyes asked: Are these men made of the same flesh as us?

For himself, Mo knew the answer – although he sometimes wondered whether by now ink, rather than blood, flowed through his veins. He wasn't so sure about Dustfinger. The horses shied when they saw the Fire-Dancer, although he could calm them with a whisper. He hardly slept or ate, and he plunged his hands into fire as if it were water. But when he talked about Roxane or Farid, there was human love in his words, and when he looked around for his daughter surreptitiously, as if he were ashamed of it, it was with the eyes of a mortal father.

It was good to ride, just to ride on while the Inkworld unfurled before them like elaborately folded paper. And with every mile Mo doubted more and more that all this had really been made by Fenoglio's words. Wasn't it more likely that the old man had simply been a reporter describing a tiny part of this world, a fraction of it that they had long ago left behind? Strange mountains rimmed the horizon, and Ombra was far away. The Wayless Wood seemed as distant as Elinor's garden, the Castle of Night nothing but a dark dream. "Have you ever been in these mountains before?" he once asked Dustfinger, who rode beside him in silence most of the time. Sometimes Mo thought he could hear the other mans thoughts. Roxane, they whispered. And Dustfinger's eyes kept wandering to his daughter, who was riding at Violante's side and didn't deign to give her father a glance.

"No, I don't think so," replied Dustfinger, and it was the same as every time Mo spoke to him: It seemed as if he were calling him back from that place for which there were no words. Dustfinger didn't talk about it, and Mo asked no questions. He knew what the other man was thinking. The White Women had touched them both, sowing in their hearts a longing for that place, a constant, wordless, bittersweet longing.

Dustfinger looked over his shoulder as if in search of a familiar view. "I never rode north in the old days. The mountains frightened me," he said, and smiled as if he were smiling at his old self, who had known so little of the world that a few mountains could scare him. "I was always drawn to the sea. The sea and the south."

Then he fell silent again. Dustfinger had never been very talkative, and his journey to the land of Death hadn't changed that. So Mo left him to his silence and wondered, once more, whether the Black Prince had heard yet from Farid that the Bluejay was no longer in Ombra, and how Meggie and Resa had taken the news. It was so hard to leave them farther behind with every step his horse took, even if he did it knowing that the farther away he was, the safer they were. Don't think about them, he told himself. Don't wonder when or whether you'll see them again. Tell yourself the Bluejay never had a wife or a daughter. Just for a while.

Violante turned in the saddle as if to make sure she hadn't lost him. Brianna whispered something to her, and Violante smiled. Her Ugliness had a beautiful smile, although you seldom saw it. It showed how young she still was.

They were riding up a densely wooded hill. Sunlight fell through the branches of the almost leafless trees, and in spite of the snow covering the moss and roots farther up the slopes, there was still a smell of autumn here, of rotting leaves and the last fading flowers. Fairies, drowsy with the onset of winter, flitted through the grass, which was yellow now and stiff with frost. Brownie tracks crossed their path, and Mo thought he heard wild glass men scurrying about under the bushes that grew on the slope above them. One of Violante's soldiers began to sing quietly, and the sound of his young voice made Mo feel as if everything he had left behind were fading: his concern for Resa and Meggie, the Black Prince, the children of Ombra and the threat of the Piper, even his bargain with Death. There was only the path, the endless path winding up into the strange mountains, and the desire in his heart that he couldn't tame, a wish to ride farther and farther on into this bewildering world. What did the castle to which Violante was leading them look like? Were there really giants in the mountains? Where did the path end? Did it ever end at all? Not for the Bluejay, a voice inside him whispered, and for a moment his heart beat like the heart of a ten-year-old boy, as fearless and as fresh.

He sensed Dustfinger's eyes resting on him. "You like this world of mine."

"Yes. Yes, I do." Mo himself could hear the guilt in his voice.

Dustfinger laughed louder than Mo had ever heard him laugh before. He looked so different without the scars – as if the White Women had healed his heart as well as his face. "And you're ashamed of it!" he said. "Why? Because you still think everything here is just made of words? It is indeed a strange thing: Look at you! Anyone might think you belonged here as much as me. Are you sure someone didn't just read you over into that other world of yours?"

Mo didn't know whether or not he liked that idea. "Fairly sure," he answered.

The wind blew a leaf against his chest. Tiny limbs hung from it, a frightened face, pale brown like the leaf itself. Orpheus's leaf-men had obviously spread quickly. The strange creature bit Mo's finger when he reached for it, and the next gust of wind blew it away.

"Did you see them last night, too?" Dustfinger turned in the saddle. The soldier riding behind them avoided his eyes. There is no land more foreign than the realm of Death.

"See who?"

Dustfinger responded with a mocking smile.

There had been two of them. Two White Women. They had been standing among the trees just before daybreak.

"Why do you think they're following us? To remind us that we still belong to them?"

Dustfinger merely shrugged his shoulders, as if the answer wasn't important and the question was the wrong one. "I see them every time I close my eyes. Dustfinger! they whisper. We miss you. Does your heart hurt again? Do you feel the burden of time? Shall we lift it from you? Shall we make you forget once more? I tell them no. Let me feel all of it a little longer. Who knows, perhaps you'll be taking me back soon anyway. Me," he added, looking at Mo, "and the Bluejay."

Dark clouds were gathering above them, as if they had been waiting beyond the mountains, and the horses grew restless, but Dustfinger calmed them with a few quiet words.

"What do they whisper to you?" he asked Mo, looking at him as if he knew the answer already.

"Ah." It was difficult to talk about the White Women. As difficult as if they held his tongue down as soon as he tried. Usually they simply stand there as if they were waiting for me. And if they do speak to me they always say the same thing: Only Death will make you immortal, Bluejay."

He hadn't told anyone that before, not the Black Prince nor Resa nor Meggie. What would be the point? The words would only have frightened them.

But Dustfinger knew the White Women – and the one they served. "Immortal," he repeated. "Yes, they like to say such things, and no doubt they're right. But what about you? Are you in a hurry for immortality?"

Mo could find no answer for that.

Ahead, Violante turned her horse around. The path had brought them to the crest of a mountain, and far below lay a lake with a castle reflected in its waters, drifting on the ripples like a stone fruit floating a long way from the bank. Its walls were as dark as the spruce trees that grew on the slopes of the surrounding mountains, and an almost endless bridge, narrow as a ribbon of stone and supported on countless piers, led over the water to land, where two ruined watchtowers stood among a few abandoned huts.

"The Impregnable Bridge!" whispered one of the soldiers, and all the stories he had heard about this place were echoed in that whisper.

It began to snow again, tiny, wet flakes that disappeared in the dark lake as if it were devouring them. Violante's young soldiers stared at their destination in dismal silence. It was not a very inviting sight. But their mistress's face lit up like a young girl's.

"What do you say, Bluejay?" she asked Mo, putting her gold- framed glasses on her nose. "Look at it. My mother described this castle to me so often that I feel as if I'd grown up here myself. I only wish these glasses were stronger," she added impatiently, "but even from here I can see that it's beautiful!"

Beautiful? Mo would have called the castle sinister. But perhaps, to the Adderhead's daughter, that was one and the same thing.

"Now do you see why I've brought you here?" Violante asked. "No one can take this castle. Even the giants couldn't harm it when they still came to this valley. The lake is too deep, and the bridge is just wide enough for a single horseman."

The path leading down to the banks of the lake was so steep that they had to lead their horses. It was as dark under the dense spruce trees as if their needles ate up the daylight, and Mo felt his heart grow heavy again. But Violante walked on impatiently, and the rest of them could hardly keep up with her as they passed through the trees that grew so close together.

"Night-Mares!" whispered Dustfinger, when the silence among the trees grew as dark as the needles that covered the ground. "Black Bogles, Redcaps… everything that would terrify Farid lives here. Let's hope this castle really is uninhabited."

When they were standing on the shore of the lake at last, mist hung above the water, and the bridge and the castle rose from the white vapor as if they had just been born out of it: stony growths from the depths of the water. The huts on the bank looked much more real now, although it was obvious that they had been standing empty for a very long time. Mo led his horse to one of the watchtowers. The door was charred, the interior black with soot.

Violante came to his side. "A nephew of my grandfather's was the last who tried to capture this castle. He never got across the lake. My grandfather bred predatory fish in it. They're said to be larger than horses, and they crave human flesh. The lake guards this castle better than any army could. There were never many soldiers here, but my grandfather always made sure there were enough provisions to withstand a siege. Cattle were kept in the castle, and he had vegetables grown and fruit trees planted in several of the inner courtyards. All the same, so my mother told me, she had to eat fish more often than she liked."

Violante laughed, but Mo looked out over the dark water uneasily. It was as if, through the drifting swathes of mist, he saw all the dead soldiers who had tried to cross the Impregnable Bridge. The lake was like a copy of the Inkworld itself, both beautiful and terrible. Its surface was smooth as glass, but the edge of the bank was marshy, and swarms of buzzing insects, obviously unaffected by the wintry weather, hovered among reeds now white with rime.

"Why did your grandfather live in such a remote place?"

"Because he was tired of human beings. Is that surprising?" Violante was still looking as captivated as if she couldn't believe that at last her nearsighted eyes were seeing what she had only known through words before. So often it is words or pictures that first tell us what we long for.

"My mother's chambers were in the tower on the left. My grandfather had the tower built when giants still came here." Violante's voice sounded as if she were talking in her sleep. "At that time this lake was the only place outside the cities where you could be safe from them, because they couldn't cross it. But they loved to look at their reflection in its waters, and that's why it was also called the Giants' Mirror. My mother was afraid of them. She used to hide under the bed when she heard their footsteps, but all the same she wondered how big they would be if they were standing right in front of her, not on the distant shore. Once, when she was about five years old and a giant and his child appeared on the bank, she wanted to run over to them. But one of her nursemaids caught up with her where the bridge begins, and my grandfather had her shut up in the tower there for three days and nights, as a punishment." Violante pointed to a tower that rose like a needle among the others. "That tower was the only place in the castle that my mother didn't like to talk about. It had pictures of Night-Mares and lake monsters on its walls, of wolves and snakes and robbers attacking travelers. My grandfather had the pictures painted to show his daughters how dangerous the world beyond the lake was. The giants often used to take human beings – especially children – away as toys. Have you heard that?"

"I've read about it," replied Mo.

The happiness in her voice moved him, and he wondered, not for the first time, how it was that the book that had told him so much about fire-elves and giants said so little about the Adderhead's daughter. To Fenoglio, Violante had been only a minor character, an ugly, unhappy little girl, nothing more. Perhaps you could learn from her how small parts can be made into major roles if you play them in your own way.

Violante seemed to have forgotten that he was standing beside her. Indeed, she seemed to have forgotten everything, even that she had come here to kill her father. She was looking at the castle as if she hoped to see her mother appear on the battlements at any moment. But at last she turned abruptly.

"Four of you stay by the watchtowers!" she ordered her soldiers. "The rest come with me. But ride slowly if you don't want the sound of your horses' hooves to entice the fishes. My mother used to tell me how they'd pulled dozens of men down from the bridge."

An uneasy murmur rose among her soldiers. They really were little more than children.

But Violante took no notice. She picked up her skirts, black like everything Mo had ever seen her wear, and let Brianna help her up onto her horse. "You'll see," she said. "I know this castle better than if I'd lived here. I've studied all the books there are about it. I know its ground plan and all its secrets."

"Has your father ever been here?" Dustfinger asked the question just as it had formed in Mo's mind, too.

Violante picked up her reins. "Only once," she said, without looking at Dustfinger. "When he was courting my mother. But that's a long time ago. All the same, he's sure to remember that no one can take this castle."

She turned her horse. "Come, Brianna," she said, and rode toward the bridge. But her horse shied back when it saw the stone path across the water. Without a word, Dustfinger brought his mount to Violante's side, took the reins from her hand, and led her horse onto the bridge behind his. The sound of their hooves echoed over the water as Violante's men followed him.

Mo was the last to ride onto the bridge. Suddenly, the whole world seemed to be made of water. Mist drifted into his face, and the castle swam on the lake before him like a dark dream: towers, battlements, bridges, oriels, windowless walls with the wind and the water eating at them. The bridge seemed to go on forever, and the gate to which it led looked out of reach, but at last it began to grow larger with every step his horse took. The towers and walls filled the sky like a menacing song, and Mo saw dark shadows glide through the water, like watchdogs picking up the scent of their coming.

"What did the castle look like. Mo?" he heard Meggie asking. "Describe it!"

What would he say? He looked up at the towers, as many of them as if a new one grew every year, at the maze of oriels and bridges and the stone griffin above the gateway. "It didn't look like a happy ending, Meggie," he heard himself reply. "It looked like a place from which no one ever comes back."