Inkdeath (52 page)

He overcomes the Adderhead with Violante’s help, writes the three words, Adderhead dead, Bluejay saved, Violante ruler of Ombra —oh yes, it sounds wonderful. I tried writing it like that last night. It doesn’t work! Dead words! This story doesn’t like taking an easy path. It has other ideas, I can smell that in the air.

But what are they? I brought the Piper into it, I gave Dustfinger his fair share of the action, but then — something or other was missing. Someone or other was missing!

Someone who’s going to thwart Mortimer’s fine plan with a vengeance. Snapper?

No, he’s too stupid. But who? Sootbird?"

She was looking at him so anxiously. Well, well. At last she understood. But the next moment she was as defiant as ever. It was a wonder she didn’t stamp her foot like a child. She was a child, disguised as a rather stout middle-aged woman.

"But that’s all nonsense! You’re the author. You, and no one else."

"Oh yes? So why is Cosimo dead, then? Did I write about Mortimer binding the Book in a way that would leave the Adderhead rotting alive? No. Was it my idea to make Snapper jealous of him, and Her Ugliness suddenly want to kill her father?

Definitely not. I just planted this story, but it’s growing the way it wants to, and everyone expects me to know in advance what kind of flowers it will have!"

Good God, that incredulous look. As if he’d been talking about Santa Claus. But finally she thrust out her chin (it was quite an imposing chin), and that never boded well.

"Excuses! Nothing but excuses! You can’t think of anything, and Resa’s on the way to that castle. Suppose the Adderhead gets there long before she does? Suppose he doesn’t trust his daughter, and Mortimer is dead before—"

"And suppose Mortola is back, as Resa says?" Fenoglio brusquely interrupted her.

"Suppose Snapper kills Mortimer because he’s jealous of the Bluejay? Suppose Violante hands Mortimer over to her father after all, because she can’t bear to be rejected by yet another man? What about the Piper, what about Violante’s spoiled son, what about all that?" His voice grew so loud that Rosenquartz hid under his blanket.

"Stop shouting." Suddenly, Signora Loredan sounded unusually subdued. "Poor Rosenquartz’s head will be splitting." "No, it won’t, because his head is as empty as a sucked-out snail’s shell. Mine, on the other hand, has to think about difficult problems, matters of life and death — but it’s my glass man that gets your sympathy, and you drag me out of bed after I’ve been lying awake half the night straining my ears trying to get this story to tell me where it wants to go!"

She fell silent. She actually fell silent. She bit her surprisingly feminine lower lip and plucked a few burrs off the dress that Minerva had given her, lost in thought. That dress was always picking up dead leaves, burrs, and rabbit droppings — and no wonder, the way she kept wandering around the forest. Elinor Loredan certainly loved his world, though of course she would never admit it — and she understood it almost as well as he did.

"How.., how would it be if you could at least gain us a little time?" She still sounded far less sure of herself than usual. "Time to think, time to write! Time that might really give Resa a chance to warn Mortimer of Snapper and that magpie. Perhaps a wheel could come off the Adderhead’s coach. He travels by coach, doesn’t he?"

Well, yes. Not such a stupid idea. Why hadn’t he thought of it himself?

"I can try," he growled.

‘‘Oh , wonderful.’’ She smiled with relief—and was immediately more self-confident again. "I’ll ask Minerva to make you some nicer tea," she added, looking back over her shoulder. "Tea is better for thinking than wine, I’m sure. And don’t be cross with Rosenquartz."

The glass man smiled at her in a nauseating way, and Fenoglio gave him a slight nudge with his foot that sent him over on his back.

"Stir the ink, you slimy-tongued traitor!" he said as Rosenquartz scrambled to his feet, looking offended.

Minerva really did bring him some tea. It even had a little lemon in it, and outside the cave the children were laughing as if everything in the world was all right. Well, make it all right, Fenoglio, he told himself. Loredan has a point. You’re still the author of this story. The Adderhead is on his way to the Castle in the Lake, where Mortimer is waiting. The Bluejay is preparing for his finest song. Write it for him!

Write Mortimer’s part to its end. He’s playing it with as much conviction as if he’d been born with the name you gave him. The words are obeying you again. You have the book. Orpheus is forgotten. This is still your story, so give it a good ending!

Yes. He’d do it. And Signora Loredan would finally be left speechless and show him the respect she owed him. But first he had to delay the Adderhead (and forget that had been Elinor’s idea in the first place).

Outside the children were shouting noisily. Rosenquartz was whispering to Jasper, who was sitting among the freshly sharpened pens and watching him, wide-eyed.

Minerva brought some soup, and Elinor peeped over the wall as if he couldn’t see her there. But soon Fenoglio was beyond noticing any of that. The words were carrying him away as they had in the past, letting him ride on their inky backs, leaving him blind and deaf to his surroundings, until he heard only the crunch of coach wheels on frozen ground and the sound of black-painted wood splitting. Soon both glass men were dipping pens in the ink for him, the words came so fast. Splendid words. Words worthy of Fenoglio. He’d quite forgotten how the letters on the page could intoxicate you. No wine could compete with them. . . .

"Inkweaver!"

Fenoglio raised his head, irritated. He was already deep in the mountains, on his way to the Castle in the Lake, aware of the Adderhead’s bloated flesh as if it were his own.

Battista stood there, concern in his face, and the mountains vanished. Fenoglio was back in the cave, surrounded by robbers and hungry children. What was the matter?

The Black Prince hadn’t taken a turn for the worse again, had he?

"Doria is back from one of his scouting expeditions. The boy’s dead on his feet; he must have been running half the night. He says the Milksop is on his way here, and he knows about the cave. No one has any idea who told him." Battista rubbed his pockmarked cheeks. "They have hounds with them. Doria says they’ll be here this evening. That means we must leave."

"Leave? And go where?"

Where could they take all the children, many of them half crazed with homesickness by now? Fenoglio saw from Battista’s face that the robber had no answer to that question, either.

Well, so now what would clever Signora Loredan say? How was anyone supposed to write in these circumstances? "Tell the Prince I’ll be with him right away."

Battista nodded. As he turned, Despina pushed past him. Her little face was anxious.

Children know at once when something’s wrong. They are used to having to guess what grown-ups don’t tell them.

"Come here!" Fenoglio beckoned her over, while Rosenquartz fanned the words he had just written, with a maple leaf. Fenoglio sat Despina on his lap and stroked her fair hair. Children . . he forgave his villains so much, but since the Piper had started hunting children down, there was only one ending he wanted to write to the man’s story, and it was a bloody one. If only he’d already written it! But it would have to wait now, like the song of the Bluejay. Where could they take the children? Think, Fenoglio, think!

He desperately rubbed his lined brow. Heavens, no wonder thinking dug such deep furrows in your face.

"Rosenquartz!" he told the glass man sharply. "Find Meggie. Tell her she must read what I’ve written, even though it isn’t quite finished. It’ll have to do."

The glass man scurried off so fast that he knocked over the wine Battista had brought, and the covers of Fenoglio’s bed were stained as if soaked in blood. The book! He snatched it out from under the damp fabric in concern. Inkheart. He still liked that title. What would happen if these pages were moistened? Would his whole world begin to rot? But the paper was dry, only one corner of the binding was slightly damp. Fenoglio rubbed it with his sleeve.

"What’s that?" Despina took the book from him. Of course — where would she ever have seen a book before? She hadn’t grown up in a castle or a rich merchant’s house.

"This is a thing that has stories in it," said Fenoglio.

He heard Elfbane calling the children together, the alarmed voices of the women, the first sounds of weeping. Despina listened anxiously, too, but then she stared at the book again.

"Stories?" She leafed through the pages as if expecting the words to fall out. "What stories? Have you told them to us already?" "Not this one." Fenoglio gently took the book from her hands and stared at the page where she had opened it. His own words looked back at him, written so long ago that they sounded like someone else’s work. .

. .

"What kind of a story is it? Will you tell it to me?"

He stared at his old words, written by a different Fenoglio, a Fenoglio whose heart had been so much younger, so much lighter — and not so vain, no doubt Signora Loredan would add.

Great marvels lay north of Ombra. Hardly any of its inhabitants had ever set eyes on those wonders, but the songs of the strolling players told tales about them and when the peasants wanted to escape their toil in the fields for afew precious moments they would imagine themselves standing on the banks of the lake, which, so it was said, the giants used as their mirror. They would picture the nymphs thought to live in it rising from the water and taking them away to castles made of pearls and mother-of-pearl. As the sweat ran down their faces they would sing softly, songs that told of snow-white mountains and of the nests human beings had built in a mighty tree when the giants had begun stealing their children.

Nests . . . a mighty tree . . . stealing their children. Good heavens, that was it!

Fenoglio picked up Jasper and put him on Despina’s shoulder. "Jasper will take you back to your mother," he said, and strode away past her. "I must go to the Prince."

Signora Loredan is right, he thought as he made his way swiftly through the crowd of excited children, weeping mothers, and robbers standing around helplessly. You’re a foolish old man. Your befuddled brain doesn’t even remember your own stories anymore! Orpheus may well know more about your own world than you do by now.

But his vain self, lurking somewhere between his forehead and his breastbone, answered back at once. How are you supposed to remember them all, Fenoglio?

There are just too many of them. Your imagination is inexhaustible.

Yes. Yes, he was indeed a vain old man. He admitted it. But he had very good reasons for his vanity.

Mortola was perching in a poison yew, surrounded by needles nearly as black as her plumage. Her left wing hurt. Orpheus’s servant had almost broken it with his meaty fingers, and only her beak had saved her. She’d pecked his ugly nose until it bled, but she hardly knew how she had managed to flutter out of the tent. She had been able to fly only short distances since then, but even worse, she couldn’t change back from her bird shape, although it was a long time since she had swallowed any of the seeds.

How long since she had taken human form? Two days, three days? The Magpie didn’t count days; the Magpie thought of nothing but beetles and worms (ah, plump, pale worms!), winter and wind and the fleas in her feathers.

The last person she had seen when she was in human shape was Snapper. And yes, he would follow the good advice she had given him in a whisper and attack the Adderhead in the forest, but all the thanks he’d given her was to call her a damn witch and try to seize her so that his men could kill her. She had bitten his hand, hissed at the others until they retreated, and there in the bushes she had swallowed the seeds again so that she could fly to Orpheus — only to have his servant almost break her wings! Peck out his eyes! Peck out all their eyes! Dig your claws into their stupid faces!

Mortola uttered a pitiful cry, and the robbers looked up at her as if she were announcing their death. They didn’t realize that the magpie was the old woman they’d wanted to kill. They didn’t realize anything. What were they going to do with the Book without her help, if they ever really did get their grubby hands on it? They were as stupid as the pale worms she pecked out of the earth. Did they think they just had to shake the Book or tap its rotting pages for the gold she’d promised them to come raining down? No, most likely they thought nothing at all as they sat down there among the trees, waiting for darkness to fall. Only a few hours before, they planned to ambush the Adderhead’s black coach, and what were they doing now?

Drinking home-distilled spirits stolen from some charcoal-burner, dreaming of the wealth to come, bragging that they’d kill first the Adder and then the Bluejay. What about the three words? That’s what the Magpie wanted to call down to them. Which of you fools can write them in the White Book? However, Snapper at least had obviously thought of that point.

"And once we have the Book," he was babbling, "we’ll catch the Bluejay and force him to write the three words in it, and then as soon as the Adder is dead and we’re wallowing in gold we’ll kill him, too, because I’m sick and tired of hearing all those stupid Songs about him."

"Yes, let folk sing about us in future!" mumbled Gecko, putting a piece of bread soaked in brandy into the beak of the crow on his shoulder. The crow, alone among them, kept staring up at Mortola. "We’ll be more famous than anyone! More famous than the Bluejay, more famous than the Black Prince, more famous than Firefox and his fire-raisers. More famous than. . . what was his old master’s name?"

‘‘Capricorn." The name pierced Mortola’s heart like a red-hot needle, and she cowered on the branch where she was perching, shaken by yearning for her son. Ah, to see his face once more, bring him food once more, cut his pale hair.

She uttered another shrill cry, and her pain and hatred echoed through the dark valley where the robbers were planning to attack the lord of the Castle of Night.