Inkspell

53. THE BARN OWL

The sea. Meggie hadn't seen it since the day they drove back from Capricorn's village to Elinor's house with the fairies and brownies who were nothing but ashes now. "This is where the physician whom I told you about lives," said Dustfinger, when the bay appeared beyond the trees. It was beautiful. The sun made the water shimmer like green glass, foaming glass constantly shaped by the wind into new folds. It was a strong wind, driving veils of cloud over the blue sky, and it carried a scent of salt and distant islands. It would have gladdened the heart but for the bare hill in the distance rising above the wooded slopes, and the castle on the top of the hill, broad and heavy as its master's face, in spite of its silvered rooftops and battlements. "Yes, there it is," said Dustfinger when he saw Meggie's look of alarm. "The Castle of Night. And the hill where it stands is called Mount Adder, what else? Bare as an old man's bald head, so no one can come close under the cover of trees. But don't worry, it's not quite as close as it looks."

"The towers," said Farid. "Are they really all pure silver?"

"Oh yes," said Dustfinger. "Dug from the mountains, this one and others. Roast fowls, young women, fertile land… and silver… the Adderhead has a hearty appetite for many things."

A broad, sandy beach edged the bay. Where it joined the trees a long wall and a tower rose, sand-colored and inconspicuous. There was not a soul to be seen on the beach, no boat was drawn up on the pale sand, only that building – the low tower and the long, tiled rooftops hardly visible behind the wall. A path wound toward it like a viper's trail, but Dustfinger led them around to the back of the building under cover of the trees. He beckoned impatiently to them before disappearing into the shadow of the wall. The wood of the door outside which he was waiting for them was weathered, and the bell hanging above it was rusty with the salty wind. Wildflowers grew near the door, faded blossoms and brown seed heads with a fairy nibbling at them. She had paler skin than her woodland sisters.

It all seemed so peaceful. The buzz of a wasp reached Meggie's ear, mingling with the roaring of the sea, but she remembered only too well how peaceful the mill had looked. Dustfinger had not forgotten it, either. He stood there listening intently before he finally put out his hand and pulled the chain of the rusty bell. His leg was bleeding again – Meggie saw him press his hand to it – but nonetheless he had kept urging them to make haste on the way to this place. "There's no better physician," was all he would say when Farid asked where he was taking them, "and none we can trust more. In addition, it's not far from there to the Castle of Night, and that's where Meggiestill wants to go, doesn't she?" He had given them some leaves to eat, downy and bitter. "Get them down inside you," he said when they made faces of disgust. "You can stay where we're going only if you have at least five of them in your belly."

The wooden door opened just a crack, and a woman peered through. "By all good spirits!" Meggie heard her whisper, and then the door opened and a thin, wrinkled hand beckoned them in. The woman who quickly closed it behind them again was just as wrinkled and thin as her hand, and she stared at Dustfinger as if he had fallen straight from heaven.

"Yesterday! He said so yesterday!" she exclaimed. "You wait and see, Bella, he's back, that's what he said. Who else would have set the mill ablaze? Who else talks to fire? He didn't get a wink of sleep all night. He was worried, but you're all right, aren't you? What's the matter with your leg?"

Dustfinger put a finger to his mouth, but Meggie saw that he was smiling. "It could be better," he said quietly. "And you talk as fast as ever, Bella, but could you take us to the Barn Owl now?"

"Yes, yes, of course!" Bella sounded slightly injured. "I suppose you have that horrible marten in there?" she inquired, with a distrustful look at Dustfinger's backpack. "Don't you go letting him out."

"Of course not," Dustfinger assured her, casting a glance at Farid, which obviously warned him to say nothing about the second marten asleep in his own backpack.

Without another word, the old woman beckoned them to follow her down a dark, unadorned colonnade. She took small, hasty footsteps, as if she were a squirrel wearing a long dress of coarsely woven fabric. "A good thing you came around the back way," she said in a lowered voice as she led them past a series of closed doors. "I'm afraid the Adderhead has ears even here now, but luckily he doesn't pay his informers well enough for them to work in the wing where we treat infectious cases. I hope you gave those two enough of the leaves?"

"Yes, indeed." Dustfinger nodded, but Meggie saw that he looked around uneasily and inconspicuously put another of the leaves that he had given them into his own mouth. Not until they passed the fragile figures sunning themselves in the courtyard around which the colonnade ran did Meggie realize just where Dustfinger had brought them. It was an infirmary. Farid put his hand to his mouth in horror when they met an old man who looked as pale as if Death had come for him long ago, and he replied to the man's toothless smile with only a frightened nod.

"Don't look as if you were about to fall down dead!" Dustfinger whispered to him, although he didn't look particularly comfortable here, either. "Your fingers will be well tended here, and moreover we'll be relatively safe, which is more than can be said for many places on this side of the forest."

"Yes, if there's one thing the Adderhead fears," added Bella in knowing tones, "it's death and the diseases that lead to it. All the same, you shouldn't let either the patients or the nurses here see more of you than they must. If there's one thing I've learned in life it's never to trust anyone. Except the Barn Owl, of course."

"And what about me, Bella?" asked Dustfinger.

"You least of all!" was her only reply. She stopped at a plain wooden door. "It's a pity your face is so unmistakable," she told Dustfinger, low-voiced, "or you could have put on a show for our patients. Nothing does the sick more good than a little pleasure." Then she knocked on the door and, with a nod, stepped aside.

The room on the other side of the door was dark, for the only window was half hidden behind stacks of books. It was the kind of room Mo would have loved. He liked books to look as if someone had only just put them down. Quite unlike Elinor, he saw nothing wrong in leaving them lying there open, waiting for the next reader. The Barn Owl seemed to feel the same. He could hardly be spotted among all those piled books – a small man with shortsighted eyes and broad hands. He looked to Meggie like a mole, except that his hair was gray.

"Didn't I say so?" He knocked two books off their stacks as he hurried toward Dustfinger. "He's back," I said, but they wouldn't believe it. Obviously, the White Women are letting more and more of the dead come back to life these days!"

The two men embraced. Then the Barn Owl took a step back and looked Dustfinger thoroughly up and down. The physician was an old man, older than Fenoglio, but his eyes were as young as Farid's. "You look all right," he commented, pleased. "Except for your leg. What's the matter with it? Did you get that injury at the mill? One of my women healers was taken up to the castle yesterday to tend two men bitten by fire. She brought back a strange story about an ambush and a horned marten that spits fire…"

Up to the castle? Instinctively, Meggie moved toward the physician. "Did she see the prisoners, too?" she interrupted him. "They would just have been taken there – strolling players, men and women. My mother and father are with them."

The Barn Owl looked at her sympathetically. "Are you the girl that the Black Prince's men told me about? Your father -"

"- is the man they take for the Bluejay." Dustfinger finished the sentence. "Do you know how he and the other prisoners are?"

Before the Barn Owl could answer, a girl put her head around the door. She stared at the strangers in alarm. Her eyes lingered on Meggie so long that finally the Barn Owl cleared his throat.

"What is it, Carla?" he asked.

The girl bit her pale lips nervously. "I'm to ask if we have any eyebright left," she said timidly.

"Of course. Go to Bella and she'll give you some, but now leave us alone."

The girl disappeared with a hasty nod, but she left the door open. Sighing, the Barn Owl closed it and then bolted it, too. "Where were we? Oh yes, the prisoners. The physician responsible for the dungeons is looking after them. He's useless at his job, but who else could stand it up there? Instead of healing the sick he has to preside over whippings and lashings. Luckily, they're not letting him near your father, and the Adderhead's own physician isn't going to soil his fingers on a prisoner, so my best woman healer goes up to the castle every day to tend him."

"How is my father?" Meggie tried not to sound like a little girl holding back her tears with difficulty, but she didn't entirely succeed.

"He's badly wounded, but I think you know that?"

Meggie nodded. And the tears came again, flowing and flowing as if to wash it all out of her heart: her grief, her longing, her fear. Farid put his arm around her shoulders, but that just reminded her of Mo even more – of all the years he had protected her and held her close. And now that he was in trouble, she wasn't with him.

"He's lost a great deal of blood, and he's still weak, but he's doing well – much better, anyway, than we let the Adderhead know." You could tell from the Barn Owl's voice that he often had to talk to people who were anxious about those they loved. "My healer has advised him not to let anyone notice, to give us more time. But at the moment there really is nothing for you to worry about."

Meggie's heart soared. It will be all right, something inside her said – for the first time since Dustfinger had given her Resa's note. Everything will be all right! Feeling embarrassed, she wiped the tears off her face.

"The weapon that wounded your father – my healer says it must be a terrible thing," the Barn Owl continued. "I hope the Adderhead's armorers are not working on some diabolical invention in secret!"

"No, that weapon was from a very different place." And nothing good comes from that place, said Dustfinger's face, but Meggie didn't want to think of what a rifle could do to this world just now. Her thoughts were with Mo.

"My father," she told the Barn Owl, "would like this room very much. He loves books, and yours are really beautiful. Although he'd probably tell you that some of them needed rebinding, and that one won't live much longer if you don't soon do something about the beetles eating it."

The Barn Owl picked up the book she had pointed out and caressed the pages just as Mo always did. "The Bluejay loves books?" he asked. "Unusual for a robber."

"He's not a robber," said Meggie. "He's a doctor like you, only he heals books instead of people."

"Really? Then is it true that the Adderhead had captured the wrong man? In that case, I suppose when they say your father killed Capricorn, that isn't true, either?"

"Oh yes, that's true." Dustfinger looked out of the window as if he saw the scene of Capricorn's festivities outside. "And all he needed to do it was his voice. You ought to get him or his daughter to read to you sometime. Afterward, I assure you, you'll see your books in a very different light. You might well close and padlock them."

"Really?" The Barn Owl looked at Meggie with great interest, as if he would like to hear more about Capricorn's death, but there was another knock. This time a man's voice came through the bolted door. "Will you come, master? We've prepared everything, but it will be better if you make the incision."

Meggie saw Farid turn pale. "Just coming!" said the Barn Owl. "You go ahead. I hope I can welcome your father to this room someday," he said to Meggie as he went to the door. "For you're right: My books could certainly do with a doctor. Does the Black Prince have any plans for the prisoners?" He looked inquiringly at Dustfinger.

"No. No, I don't think so. Have you heard anything about the other captives? Meggie's mother is among them." It gave Meggie a pang that Dustfinger, and not she, had been the one to ask about Resa.

"No, I don't know anything about the others," replied the Barn Owl. "But now you must excuse me. I am sure Bella's already told you that you had better keep to this part of the building. The Adderhead is spending more and more of his silver on informers. No place in Argenta is safe from them, not even this one."

"I know." Dustfinger picked up one of the books lying on the Barn Owl's table. It was an herbal. Meggie could imagine how Elinor would have looked at it – full of longing to own it – and Mo would have run a finger over the painted pages as if he could feel the brush that had conjured up the fine lines of the pictures on paper. But what was Dustfinger thinking of? The herbs in Roxane's fields? "Believe me, I wouldn't have come here but for what happened at the mill," he said. "No one would want to bring danger to this place, but we'll be gone again this very day."

However, the Barn Owl wouldn't hear of it. "Nonsense, you must stay until your leg and the boy's fingers are better," he said. "You know how glad I am you came. And I'm glad you have the boy with you, too. Did you know," he asked, turning to Farid, "he's never had a pupil before? I was always telling him that a master must pass on his art, but he wouldn't listen to me. I pass mine on to many, and that's why I must leave you now. I have to show a pupil how to cut off a foot without killing the man it's attached to."

Farid stared at him, horrified. "Cut it off?" he whispered. "How do you mean, cut it off?" But the Barn Owl had already closed the door behind him.

"Didn't I tell you?" said Dustfinger, feeling his injured thigh. "The Barn Owl is a first-class sawbones. But I think we'll be allowed to keep our own fingers and feet."

After Bella had treated Farid's blisters and Dustfinger's leg, she took them to a remote room, close to the door through which they had entered the building. Meggie liked the prospect of sleeping under a roof again, but Farid was not at all comfortable with the idea. Looking unhappy, he squatted on the lavender-strewn floor, chewing one of the bitter leaves with determination. "Can't we sleep on the beach tonight? I should think the sand would be nice and soft," he asked Dustfinger, who was stretching out on one of the straw mattresses. "Or in the forest?"

"If you like," replied Dustfinger. "But let me sleep now. And stop looking as if I'd brought you among cannibals, or I won't show you what I promised tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow?" Farid spat out the leaf into his hand. "Why not tonight?"

"Because it's too windy now," said Dustfinger, turning his back on him, "and because my damn leg hurts… Do you need any more reasons?"

Remorsefully, Farid shook his head, put the leaf back in his mouth, and stared at the door as if Death in person might walk in any moment. But Meggie just sat there in the bare room, repeating to herself over and over, what the Barn Owl had said about Mo: He's doing well – much better, anyway, than we let the Adderhead know… At the moment there really is nothing for you to worry about.

When twilight fell, Dustfinger limped outside. He leaned against a column and looked up at the hill where the Castle of Night stood. Never moving, he gazed at the silver towers – and Meggie asked herself, for what was surely the hundredth time, if he was helping her only for her mother's sake. Perhaps Dustfinger himself didn't know.