Inkspell

69. THE NIGHT BEFORE

It was the last night before the day when the Adderhead would show his clemency. In a few hours, just before dawn, they would all be in position by the road. None of the informers had been able to say exactly when the prisoners were to come down it – they knew only that this would be the day. The robbers were sitting together, telling one another tales of old adventures in loud voices. Presumably that was their means of keeping fear at bay, but Dustfinger did not feel like either talking or listening. He kept waking suddenly from sleep, but not because of the voices that came to his ears. Pictures in his mind woke him, terrible pictures that had been robbing him of sleep for days.

This time they had been particularly bad, and so real that he started up as if Gwin had jumped on his chest. His heart was still thudding hard as he sat there staring into the dark. Dreams – in the other world they had often kept him from sleeping, too, but he couldn't remember any of them as bad as this one. "It's the dead. They bring bad dreams," Farid always said. "They whisper terrible things to you, and then they lie on your breast to feel your racing heart. It makes them feel alive again!"

Dustfinger liked this explanation. He feared death but not the dead. But suppose it was quite different, suppose the dreams were showing him a story already waiting for him somewhere? Reality was a fragile thing; Silvertongue's voice had shown him that once and for all.

Roxane stirred in her sleep beside him. She turned her head and murmured the names of her children, the dead as well as the living. There was still no news from Ombra. Even the Black Prince had heard nothing for a long time, either from the castle or the city, no word of what had happened after the Adderhead sent Cosimo's body back to his daughter, with the news that hardly any of the men who had followed him would come back, either.

Roxane whispered Brianna's name again. Every day she stayed here with him cut her to the heart, Dustfinger knew that only too well. So why didn't he simply go back with her? Why not turn his back on this infernal hill and return at last to a place where you didn't have to hide underground like an animal? Or like a dead man, he added in his thoughts.

You know why, he told himself. It's the dreams. The accursed dreams. He whispered fire-words to banish the darkness in which dreams put forth such dreadful blossoms. A flame licked up sleepily from the ground beside him. He held out his hand and let it dance up his arm, lick his fingers and his forehead, in the hope that it would simply burn away the horrible pictures. But even the pain did not rid him of them, and Dustfinger extinguished the flame with the flat of his hand. His skin was sooty and hot afterward, as if the fire had left its black breath behind, but the dream was still there, a terror in his heart, too black and strong even for the fire.

How could he simply go away when he saw such images by night – pictures of the dead, again and again, nothing but blood and death? The faces changed. Sometimes it was Resa's face he saw, sometimes Meggie's, then at other times the face of the Barn Owl. He had seen the Black Prince, too, with blood on his breast. And today – today it had been Farid's face. Just like the night before. Dustfinger closed his eyes when the pictures came back, so plain and clear… Of course he had tried to persuade the boy to stay with Roxane tomorrow, when he set off with the robbers – along the road they were to come down, Resa and Silvertongue, Meggie, the Barn Owl, and all the others. (Just how many there would be, even the Prince's informers could not say.) But it was hopeless.

Dustfinger leaned back against the damp stone into which hands long gone had cut the narrow galleries, and looked at the boy. Farid had curled up like a small child, knees drawn up against his chest, with the two martens beside him. They slept at Farid's side more and more often when they came back from hunting, perhaps because they knew that Roxane did not like them.

How peacefully the boy lay there, not at all as Dustfinger had just seen him in his dreams. A smile even flickered across his dark face. Perhaps he was dreaming of Meggie, Resa's Meggie, as like her mother as one flame is like another and yet so different. "You do think she's all right, don't you?" Farid asked that question heaven knows how many times a day. Dustfinger still

clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.

A cold wind blew through the galleries, and Dustfinger saw the boy shivering in his sleep. Gwin raised his head when he rose and took the cloak off his shoulders, covering Farid with it. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he whispered to the marten. "He's crept into your heart just as he crept into mine. How could it happen to us, Gwin?"

The marten licked his paw and looked at him from dark eyes. When he dreamed it was surely only of hunting, not of dead boys.

Suppose the old man was sending the dreams? The idea made Dustfinger shudder as he lay down beside Roxane on the hard ground again. Yes, Fenoglio could be sitting in some corner, as he had often done these last few days, spinning bad dreams for him. That was exactly what he had done with the Adderhead's fears! Nonsense, thought Dustfinger angrily, putting his arm around Roxane. Meggie isn't here. Without her, the old man's words are nothing but ink. Now try to get some sleep, or you'll be nodding off as you wait among the trees with the others tomorrow. But it was a long time before he could close his eyes. He just lay there and listened to the boy's breathing.