Inkdeath

56. FIRE AND DARKNESS

How many did you count?"

"Nearly fifty." They were trying hard to sound casual, but Violante's child-soldiers were frightened, and Mo wondered – not for the first time – whether they had ever really fought before, or if they knew about war only from the deaths of their brothers and fathers.

"Only fifty? Then he really does trust me!" There was no mistaking the triumph in Violante's voice. The Adderhead's daughter thought nothing of fear. It was an emotion that she was very good at suppressing – one among many – and Mo read contempt in her eyes when she saw the fear on her young soldiers' faces. But it could be seen on Brianna's face, too, and even on Tullio's furry features.

"Is the Milksop with him?"

The boys, as Mo still couldn't help calling them, shook their heads.

"What about the Piper? Surely he's brought the Piper, too, hasn't he?"

More head-shaking. Mo exchanged a glance of surprise with Dustfinger.

"To your posts!" Violante ordered. "We've discussed it often enough. You don't even let my father onto the bridge. He can send a single envoy, no more. We'll keep him waiting for two or maybe three days. That's what he himself does with his enemies."

"He won't like that."

"He's not meant to like it. Now, off you all go. I want to speak to the Bluejay alone." Violante cast Dustfinger an imperious glance. "Entirely alone."

Dustfinger did not move. Only when Mo nodded to him did he turn and leave, as silently as if he were the other man's shadow.

Violante went over to the window. They were in the room that had once been her mother's. On the walls, unicorns grazed peacefully among the spotted cats that Mo had often seen in the forest, and the window had a view of the aviary courtyard, with the empty cages and painted nightingales, now faded by daylight. The Adderhead seemed far, far away, in another world.

"So he hasn't brought the Piper," said Violante. "All the better. I suppose he sent him back to the Castle of Night, to punish him for letting you escape."

"Do you really think so?" Mo examined the peacefully grazing unicorns on the walls. They reminded him of other pictures, hunting scenes in which their white coats were pierced by lances. "Last night the White Women told me a different tale."

He could still hear them whispering: The Piper is preparing the way for him.

"Really? Well, be that as it may… if he's coming after all, then we must kill him, too. We can let the others go, but not the Piper."

Was she really so sure of herself?

Violante still had her back turned to him. "I'll have to have you bound again. Otherwise my father isn't likely to believe you're really my prisoner."

"I know. Get Dustfinger to do it. He knows how to tie people up so that they can easily free themselves." He learned it from a boy my daughter's in love with, added Mo in his mind. Where was Meggie now? With her mother, he hoped. And with the Black Prince. In safety.

"When my father is dead" – Violante spoke the word cautiously, so perhaps she wasn't so sure of succeeding as she made out – "the Milksop isn't going to give up the throne of Ombra to me without a fight. He'll probably get support from his sister in the Castle of Night. I hope you and I will still be allies?" For the first time she looked at him.

What was he to say? No, once your father is dead I'm going away. Was he?

Violante turned her back to him again before asking her next question. "Do you really have a wife?"

"Yes."

Princes' daughters have a soft spot for robbers and mountebanks.

"Send her away. I'll make you Prince of Ombra."

Mo thought he heard Dustfinger laughing. "I'm no prince, Your Highness," he replied. "I'm a robber – and a bookbinder. Two parts are more than enough for one man to play."

She turned again and scrutinized him as if she couldn't believe he meant it seriously. If only he could read her face better. But the mask Violante wore was even more inscrutable than those Battista made for performing his farces.

"You don't even want to think my offer over?"

"As I said, two parts are enough," repeated Mo, and for a moment Violante's face was so like her father's that his heart missed a beat.

"Very well. As you say," she said, "But I will ask you again when all this is over."

She looked out of the window once more. "I've told my soldiers to shut you up in the tower called the Needle. I won't consign you to one of the holes my grandfather used as dungeons. They're built so that the lake can fill them with just enough water to keep prisoners from actually drowning." She looked at him, as if to see whether the idea frightened him. Yes, it does, thought Mo. So?

"I will receive my father in the Hall of a Thousand Windows," Violante went on. "That's where he came to court my mother. I'll have you brought once I'm sure he has the White Book with him."

The way she put her hands together – it was like a schoolgirl reciting in class. He still felt affection for her; she moved him. He wanted to protect her from all the pain of the past and the darkness in her own heart, although he knew no one could do that. Violante's heart was a locked room, with dark pictures on the walls.

"You will pretend that you can heal the White Book, just as we planned. I'll have everything made ready – Balbulus has told me what you'd need – and when you seem to be starting work I'll distract my father's attention so that you can write the three words. I'll make him angry. That's usually the best way to distract him. He has a savage temper. If we're lucky he won't even notice you re-putting pen to paper. They say he has a new bodyguard, so that could be a problem. But I'm sure my men can deal with him."

My men. They're children, thought Mo, but fortunately Dustfinger was here, too. No sooner had the name come into his mind than Dustfinger himself stepped through the doorway.

"What do you want?" Violante snapped.

Dustfinger ignored her. "It's very quiet out there," he told Mo in a low voice. "The Adderhead is taking the news that he's to be kept waiting surprisingly well. I don't like it." He went back to the door and looked down the passage. "Where are the guards?" he asked Violante.

"Where would they be? I sent them down to the bridge. But two of my men are stationed in the courtyard. Now it's time for you to play the part of my prisoner, Bluejay. Yet another part. You see? Sometimes there are more than two." She went to the window and called to the guards, but only silence answered her.

Mo felt it at the same moment. He felt the story taking a new turn. Time suddenly seemed to weigh more heavily, and a strange uneasiness took hold of him. As if he were onstage and had missed his cue.

"Where are they?" Violante turned, and for a moment she looked almost as young and frightened as her soldiers. She went to the door and called for them again, but no one replied. Only the silence.

"Keep close to me!" Dustfinger whispered to Mo. "Whatever happens. Fire is sometimes a better defense than the sword."

Violante was still listening intently. The sound of footsteps was coming closer – stumbling, unsteady footsteps. Violante stepped back from the door as if afraid of what was coming. The soldier who collapsed at her feet was covered with blood – his own blood. It was the boy who had let Mo out of the sarcophagus. Did he know more about killing now?

He stammered something that Mo didn't understand until he bent over him. "The Piper… they're everywhere." The boy whispered more, but Mo couldn't make it out. He died with the faltering words still on his lips, mingling with his blood.

"Is there another entrance? One you haven't told us about?" Dustfinger seized Violante's arm roughly.

"No!" she stammered. "No!" And she tore herself away from him as if it were he who had killed the boy at her feet.

Mo reached for her hand and led her out into the corridor, away from the voices suddenly echoing through the silent castle on all sides. But their flight ended at the next set of steps. Dustfinger sent his marten scurrying off as soldiers barred their way, bloodstained men who hadn't been boys for a long time. Aiming crossbows at them, they drove them to the hall where Violante's mother and her sisters had learned to dance in front of a dozen silver mirrors. Now the Piper was reflected in them.

"Well, well, isn't the prisoner in chains? How careless, Your Ugliness." As always, the silver-nosed man held himself erect, proud as a peacock. But Mo was less surprised by the sight of him than by seeing the man at his side. Orpheus. He had never expected Orpheus to come here. He had forgotten him as soon as Dustfinger told him how he had taken the book, and all the words in it, away from him. You're a fool, Mortimer. As so often, his face showed what he was thinking, and Orpheus gloated over his surprise.

"How did you get into the castle?" Violante pushed away the men holding her and went up to the Piper, who might have been no more than an uninvited guest. His soldiers retreated before her as if they had forgotten who their master was. The Adderhead's daughter – it was a mighty title, even if she was the ugly daughter.

However, it did not impress the Piper. "Your father knew a more comfortable way in than that draughty bridge," he replied in a world-weary tone. "He thought you didn't know it, so it wouldn't be guarded. Obviously, it was your grandfather's best-kept secret, but in fact it was your mother who showed it to your father when she stole away from this castle with him. A romantic story, don't you think?"

"You're lying!" Violante looked around like a hunted animal, but all she saw was her own reflection next to the Piper's.

"Really? Your men know better. I haven't had them all killed. Boys like them make excellent soldiers, because they still think themselves immortal." He took a step toward Mo.

"I could hardly wait to see you again, Bluejay. 'Send me on ahead,' I asked the Adderhead. 'So that I can catch you the bird who flew away from me. I'll stalk him like a cat, along secret ways, and seize him while he's still looking out just for you.'"

Mo wasn't listening. He read Dustfinger's thoughts as if they were his own. Now, Bluejay! they whispered, and as a fiery snake crawled up the legs of the soldier on his right he drove his elbow into the chest of the man behind him. Fire licked up from the floor, baring teeth of flame and setting light to the clothes of the men guarding them. Screaming, they staggered back, while the fire formed a protective ring around their two prisoners. Two solders raised their crossbows, but the Piper struck down their arms. He knew his master would not forgive him once more if he brought him the Bluejay dead. His face was pale with rage. But Orpheus smiled.

"Very impressive! It really is!" He went up to the fire and inspected the flames intently as if to find out how Dustfinger summoned them up. But then his gaze went to Dustfinger himself.

"No doubt you really could rescue the bookbinder all by yourself," he said gently. "But unluckily for him, you've made an enemy of me. What a mistake. I didn't come with the Piper. I serve his master now. He's waiting for night to fall before paying a call on the Bluejay, and he sent me ahead to prepare everything for his arrival. Including, among other things, the sad task of dispatching the Fire-Dancer to the realm of Death for the last time."

The regret in his voice sounded almost genuine, and Mo remembered the day in Elinor's library when Orpheus had bargained with Mortola for Dustfinger's life.

"That's enough talking. Get rid of him, Four-Eyes!" cried the Piper impatiently as his men tore off their burning clothes. "I want to get my hands on the Bluejay at last!"

"Yes, yes, you'll have him in a minute!" replied Orpheus. He sounded irritated. "But first I want my share!"

He came so close to the fire that its light reddened his pale face.

"Whom did you give Fenoglio's book to? " he asked Dustfinger through the flames. "Him?" He nodded in Mo's direction.

"Maybe," replied Dustfinger, and smiled.

Orpheus bit his lip like a child who has to hold back tears. "Very well, smile away!" he said huskily. "Mock me! But you'll soon be sorry for what you did to me."

"Will I?" replied Dustfinger, unmoved, as if the soldiers still aiming crossbows at them were not there at all. "How are you going to frighten a man who's died once already?"

This time it was Orpheus who smiled, and Mo wished he had a sword, even though he knew that it wouldn't help him.

"Piper, what is this man doing here? Since when has he served my fa…" Violante's voice died away as Orpheus's shadow moved, like an animal waking from sleep.

A shape grew out of it, panting like a large dog. No face could be made out in that blurred, pulsating blackness, only eyes, cloudy and angry. Mo felt Dustfinger's fear, and the fire died down as if the dark figure had taken its breath away.

"I don't suppose I have to explain what a Night-Mare is, do I?" said Orpheus in a velvety voice. "The strolling players say they are the dead sent back by the White Women because even they couldn't wash the dark stains from their souls. So they condemn them to wander without human bodies, driven by their own darkness, in a world that is no longer theirs… until they are finally extinguished, eaten away by the air they can't breathe, burned by the sun from which nobody protects them. But until that happens they are like hungry dogs – very hungry."

He took a step back. "Take him!" he told the shadowy form. "Get him, good dog! Take the fire-eater for your own, because he broke my heart."

Mo moved closer to Dustfinger's side, but Dustfinger pushed him back. "Get away, Bluejay!" he said sharply. "This thing is worse than death!" The flames around them went out, and the Night-Mare, breathing heavily, stepped into the soot-ringed circle. Dustfinger did not shrink from it. He simply stood there as the shapeless hands reached for him, and then the life just went out of him, extinguished like a flame.

Mo felt as if his own heart stopped when the other man fell. But the Night-Mare bent over Dustfinger's motionless body, snuffling like a disappointed dog, and Mo remembered something that Battista had once told him: Night-Mares were interested only in living flesh and avoided the dead, fearing to be taken back by them to the realm they had escaped for a short time.

"Oh, what happened?" cried Orpheus. He sounded like a disappointed child. "Why was it so quick? I wanted to watch him dying for longer!"

"Seize the Bluejay!" Mo heard the Piper calling. "Go on, do it!" But his soldiers just stared at the Night-Mare. It had turned, and its dull gaze was now bent on Mo.

"Orpheus! Call it off!" The Piper's voice almost cracked. "We still need the Bluejay!"

The Night-Mare moaned as if its mouth were trying to find words – if it had a mouth at all. For a second Mo thought he could make out a face in the blackness. Evil seeped through his skin, covering his heart like mildew. His legs gave way, and he struggled desperately for breath. Dustfinger had been right; the creature was worse than death.

"Back, dog!" Orpheus's voice made the Night-Mare freeze. "You don't get him until later."

Mo fell to his knees beside Dustfinger's motionless body. He wanted to lie down beside him, to stop breathing, too, stop feeling, but the solders hauled him up and bound his hands. He hardly felt it. He could still barely breathe.

When the Piper came up to him, Mo saw him as if through a veil. "Somewhere in this castle they say there's a courtyard, an aviary with birdcages in it. Put him in one of those." He drove his elbow into Mo's stomach, but all Mo felt was that he could breathe again as the Night-Mare withdrew, merging with Orpheus's shadow.

"Stop! The Bluejay is still my prisoner!" Violante barred the soldiers' way as they were dragging Mo along with them.

But the Piper pushed her roughly aside. "He was never your prisoner," he said. "Just how stupid do you think your father is? Take her to her room!" he ordered one of the soldiers. "And throw the Fire-Dancer into the courtyard, outside the cage where you lock up the Bluejay. After all, we shouldn't part a shadow from its master, should we?"

Another of Violante's soldiers was lying outside the door, his young face showing his terror as he saw death coming. They lay everywhere. The Castle in the Lake – and the Bluejay with it – belonged to the Adderhead. So that was how the song ended.

"What a terrible ending!" Mo could almost hear Meggie saying. "I don't want to listen to this book, Mo. Don't you have another story?"