Inkspell

68. A VISIT

When Meggie woke, she didn't know for a moment where she was. In Elinor's house? she wondered. With Fenoglio? But then she saw Mo bending low over the big table, binding a book. The book. Five hundred blank pages. They were in the Castle of Night, and Mo was to have the book finished tomorrow… A flash of lightning illuminated the soot-blackened ceiling, and the thunder that followed sounded menacingly loud, but it wasn't the storm that had woken Meggie. She had heard voices. The guards. There was someone at the door. Mo had heard it, too.

"Meggie, he mustn't work such long hours. It could bring back the fever," the Barn Owl had told her that very morning, before they took him down to the dungeons again. But what could she do about it? Mo sent her to bed the moment she began yawning too often. ("That was the twenty-third yawn, Meggie.

Go on, bed for you, or you'll be dead on your feet before this damned book is finished.") Then it would be ages before he went to sleep himself. He stayed up cutting, folding, and stitching until it was nearly dawn. He'd done that tonight as well.

When one of the guards opened the door, Meggie thought for a dreadful moment that Mortola had come to kill Mo after all, before the Adderhead let him go. But it was not the Magpie. The Adderhead stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. Two servants stood behind him, their faces pale with exhaustion, carrying silver candelabras from which wax dripped to the floorboards. Their master, treading heavily, approached the table at which Mo worked and stared at the book. It was almost finished.

"What are you doing here?" Mo still had the paper knife in his hand. The Adderhead stared at him. His eyes were even more bloodshot than on the night when Meggie had made her bargain with him.

"How much longer?" he demanded. "My son is crying. He cries all night. He feels the White Women coming close, just as I do. Now they want to fetch him away, too, him and me at the same time. Folk say they're particularly hungry on stormy nights."

Mo put down the knife. "The book will be finished tomorrow, as agreed. It would have been ready sooner, but the leather to cover it was full of tears and holes made by thorns, so that held us up, and the paper wasn't as good as it might have been, either."

"Yes, yes, very well, the librarian has passed on your complaints!" The Adderhead's voice sounded as if he had been shouting himself hoarse. "If Taddeo had his way, you'd spend the rest of your life in this room, rebinding all my books. But I will let you go – you, your daughter, your wife, and those good-for-nothing strolling players. They can all go, I just want the book! Mortola has told me about the three words that your daughter so cunningly failed to mention, but never mind that – I shall take good care that no one writes them in its pages! I want to be able to laugh in the Cold Man's face at last – laugh at him and his pale women! Another night like this and I shall be beating my head against the wall, I shall kill my wife, I shall kill my child, I shall kill all of you. Do you understand, Bluejay or whatever your name is? You must finish the book before dark falls again! You must!"

Mo stroked the wooden boards that he had covered with leather only the day before. "I'll be finished by the time the sun rises. But you must swear to me on your son's life that then you will let us go at once."

The Adderhead looked at him as if the White Women were there standing behind him. "Yes, yes, I swear by whomever and whatever you like! By sunrise, that sounds good!" He walked ponderously over to Mo and stared at his chest. "Show me!" he whispered. "Show me where Mortola wounded you. With the magic weapon that my master-at-arms took apart so thoroughly that now no one can put it together again. I had the fool hanged for that."

Mo hesitated, but finally he opened his shirt.

"So close to the heart!" The Adderhead put his hand on Mo's chest as if to make sure that the heart in it was really still beating. "Yes," he said. "Yes, you must indeed know a way to cheat death or you wouldn't be alive now."

He turned abruptly and waved the two servants over to the door. "Very well, I shall have you fetched soon after sunrise, you and the book," he said over his shoulder.

"Now get me something to eat in the hall!" Meggie heard him shouting outside the door as the guards bolted it again. "Wake the cooks, wake the maids and the Piper. Wake them all! I want to eat and listen to a few dark songs. And the Piper must sing them so loudly that I don't hear the child crying."

Then his footsteps retreated, and only the rolling of the thunder remained. A flash of lightning made the pages of the almost-finished book shine as if they had a life of their own. Mo had gone over to the window. He stood there motionless, looking out.

"By sunrise! Can you do it?" asked Meggie anxiously.

"Of course," he said, without turning. Lightning was flickering over the sea like a distant light being switched on and off by someone – except that no such light existed in this world. Meggie went over to Mo, and he put his arm around her. He knew she was afraid of thunderstorms. When she was very small and had crept into bed with him, he always told her the same story: Thunderstorms were because the sky longed to be united with the earth, and reached out fiery fingers to touch it on such nights.

But Mo didn't tell that story today.

"Did you see the fear in his face?" Meggie whispered to him. "Exactly as Fenoglio described it."

"Yes, even the Adderhead must play the part that Fenoglio has written for him," replied Mo. "But so must we, Meggie. How do you like that idea?"