Inkspell (11 page)

“So what about those threats he shouted after the boy?”

“Well, he was angry that he’d gotten away, wasn’t he? I don’t have to tell you the kind of things Basta says when he’s angry. I’m only surprised he was actually clever enough to find out that Dustfinger had the book. And I’d like to know where he found this man Orpheus, too. He seems to be better than me at reading aloud.”

“Nonsense!” Elinor’s voice sounded cross but relieved, too. “The only one who may be as good at it as you are is your daughter.”

Mo smiled at Meggie and put another slice of cheese on top of the jam. “Thanks, very flattering.

But, however that may be, our knife-happy friend Basta has gone! And I hope he’s taken the wretched book with him and put an end to that story forever. There’ll be no more need for Elinor to jump when she hears something rustling in the garden at night, and Darius won’t have to dream of Basta’s knife – which means that the news Farid has brought is in fact very good news! I hope you’ve all thanked him warmly!”

Farid smiled shyly as Mo raised his coffee cup to him, but Meggie saw the anxiety in his black eyes. If Mo was right, then by now Basta was in the same place as Dustfinger. And they all thought Mo was right. You could see the relief in Darius’s and Elinor’s faces, and Resa put her arms around Mo’s neck and smiled as if everything was fine again.

Elinor began asking Mo questions about the books he had so shockingly abandoned to answer Meggie’s phone call. And Darius was trying to tell Resa about the new system of classification he had thought up for Elinor’s library. But Farid looked at his empty plate. Against the background of its white china, he was probably seeing Basta’s knife at Dustfinger’s neck.

Basta. The name stuck in Meggie’s throat like a pebble. She kept thinking the same thing: If Mo was right, Basta was now where she soon hoped to be herself. In the Inkworld.

She was going to try it that very night, she would try to use her own voice and Orpheus’s words to make her way through the thicket of written letters, into the Wayless Wood. Farid had pleaded with her to wait no longer. He was beside himself with anxiety for Dustfinger, and Mo’s remarks had certainly done nothing to change that. “Please, Meggie!” He had begged her again and again. “Please read it!”

Meggie looked across the table at Mo. He was whispering something to Resa, and she laughed.

You heard her voice only when she laughed. Mo put his arm around her, and his eyes sought Meggie. When her bed was empty tomorrow morning he wouldn’t look as carefree as he did now. Would he be angry or merely sad? Resa laughed when, for her and Elinor’s benefit, he mimicked the horror of the collector whose books he had abandoned so disgracefully when Meggie had phoned, and Meggie had to laugh, too, when he imitated the poor man’s voice. The collector had obviously been very fat and breathless.

Elinor was the only one who didn’t laugh. “I don’t think that’s funny, Mortimer,” she said sharply. “Personally, I’d probably have shot you if you’d simply gone off leaving my poor books behind, all sick and dirty.”

“Yes, I expect you would.” Mo gave Meggie a conspiratorial look, as he always did when Elinor lectured him or his daughter on the way to treat books or the rules of her library.

Oh Mo, if only you knew
, thought Meggie,
if only you knew
. . She felt as if he would read her secret in her face any minute now. Abruptly, she pushed back her chair, muttered, “I’m not hungry,”

and went off to Elinor’s library. Where else?

Whenever she wanted to escape her own thoughts, she went to books for help. She was sure to find something to keep her mind occupied until evening finally came and they all went to bed, suspecting nothing.

Looking at Elinor’s library, you couldn’t tell that scarcely more than a year ago it had contained nothing but a red rooster hanging dead in front of empty shelves, while Elinor’s finest books burned on the lawn outside. The jar that Elinor had filled with some of their pale ashes still stood beside her bed.

Meggie ran her forefinger over the backs of the books. They were ranged side by side on the shelves again now, like piano keys. Some shelves were still empty, but Elinor and Darius were always out and about, visiting second-hand bookshops and auctions, to replace those lost treasures with new and equally wonderful books. Orpheus .. where was the story of Orpheus?

Meggie was on her way over to the shelf where the Greeks and Romans whispered their ancient stories when the library door opened behind her, and Mo came in.

“Resa says you have the sheet of paper that Farid brought with him in your room. Can I see it?”

He was trying to sound as casual as if he were just asking about the weather, but he’d never been any good at pretending. Mo couldn’t pretend, any more than he could tell lies.

“Why?” Meggie leaned against Elinor’s books as if they would strengthen her backbone. “Why?

Because I’m curious, remember? And what’s more,” he added, looking at the backs of the books,
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as if he could find the right words there, “and what’s more, I think it would be better to burn that sheet of paper.” “Burn it?” Meggie looked at him incredulously. “But why?”

“I know it sounds as if I’m seeing ghosts,” he said, taking a book off the shelf, opening it, and leafing absentmindedly through it, “but that piece of paper, Meggie .. I feel it’s like an open door, a door that we’d be well advised to close once and for all. Before Farid tries disappearing into that damn story, too.” “What if he does?” Meggie couldn’t help the cool note that crept into her voice. As if she were talking to a stranger. “Why can’t you understand? He only wants to find Dustfinger! To warn him about Basra.”

Mo closed the book he had taken off the shelf and put it back in its place. “So he says. But suppose Dustfinger didn’t actually want to take him along, suppose he left him behind on purpose? Would that surprise you?”

No. No, it wouldn’t. Meggie said nothing. It was so quiet among the books, so terribly quiet among all those words.

“I know, Meggie,” said Mo at last, in a low voice. “I know you think the world that book describes is much more exciting than this one. I understand the feeling. I’ve often imagined being right inside one of my favourite books. But we both know that once imagination turns to reality things feel quite different. You think the Inkworld is a magical place, a world of wonders – but believe me, your mother has told me a lot about it that you wouldn’t like at all. It’s a cruel, dangerous place, full of darkness and violence, ruled by brute force, Meggie, not by justice.”

He looked at her, searching her face for the understanding he had always found there before but did not find now. “Farid comes from a world like that,” said Meggie. “And he didn’t choose to get into this story of ours. You brought him here.”

She regretted her words the moment they were out. Mo turned away as if she had struck him.

“Yes. You’re right, of course,” he said, going back to the door. “And I don’t want to quarrel with you again. But I don’t want that paper lying around your room, either. Give it back to Farid. Or else, who knows, there could be a giant sitting on your bed tomorrow morning.” He was trying to make her laugh, of course. He couldn’t bear the two of them to be on bad terms again. He looked so depressed. And so tired.

“You know perfectly well nothing like that can happen,” said Meggie. “Why do you always worry so much? Things don’t just come out of the words on the page unless you call them. You should know that better than anyone!”

His hand was still on the door handle.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, no doubt you’re right. But do you know what? Sometimes I’d like to put a padlock on all the books in this world. And as for that very special book . . I’d be glad, now, if Capricorn really had burned the last copy back there in his village. That book brings bad luck, Meggie, nothing but bad luck, even if you won’t believe me.”

Then he closed the library door after him.

Meggie stood there motionless until his footsteps had died away. She went over to one of the windows looking out on to the garden, but when Mo finally came down the path leading to his workshop he didn’t look back at the house. Resa was with him. She had put her arm around his shoulders, and her other hand was tracing words, but Meggie couldn’t make them out. Were
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they talking about her?

It was sometimes an odd feeling suddenly to have not just a father but two parents who talked to each other when she wasn’t with them. Mo went into his workshop alone, and Resa strolled back to the house. She waved to Meggie when she saw her standing at the window, and Meggie waved back. An odd feeling ..

Meggie sat among Elinor’s books for some time longer, looking first at one, then at another, searching for passages to drown out her own thoughts. But the letters on the pages remained just letters, forming neither pictures nor words, and finally Meggie went out into the garden, lay down on the grass, and looked at the workshop. She could see Mo at work through its windows.

I can’t do it
, she thought, as the wind blew leaves off the trees and whirled them away like brightly painted toys.
No. I can’t! They’ll all be so worried, and Mo will never, ever say a word to
me again.

Meggie thought all those things, she thought them over and over again. And at the same time she knew, deep down inside her, that she had made up her mind long ago.

Chapter 8 – The Minstrel Woman

The minstrel must go on his way,

As he has done so long,

And so a note of sad farewell

Ah, will I e’er come back again?

My dear, alas, who knows?

The heavy hand of death is laid

–
E. von Monsterberg, quoted from Musikanten, Gaukler und Vaganten

It was just getting light when Dustfinger reached the farm that CloudDancer had described to him. It lay on a south-facing slope, surrounded by olive trees. The soil, said CloudDancer, was poor and stony there, but it suited the herbs that Roxane grew. The house stood alone, with no village nearby to protect it. There was only a wall, hardly chest-high, and a wooden gate. You could see the rooftops of Ombra in the distance, the castle towers rising high above the houses, and the road winding toward the city gate – so near, and yet too far to be a refuge if highwaymen or soldiers coming home from war thought it a good idea to loot this lonely farm, where only a woman and two children lived.

Perhaps at least she has a farmhand
, thought Dustfinger as he stood behind some bushes of broom. Their branches hid him, but he had a good view of the house.

It was small, like most farmhouses – not as poor as many of them but not much better, either.

The whole house would have fitted a dozen times over and more into one of the great halls where Roxane had once danced. Even the Adderhead used to invite her to his castle, poorly as he thought of the Motley Folk, for in those days everyone had wanted to hear her sing. Rich traders, the miller down by the river, the spice merchant who had sent her presents for more than a year

. . so many men had wanted to marry her, had given her jewelry and costly dresses, offered her fine apartments in their houses, and every one of those apartments was certainly larger than the little house where she lived now. But Roxane had stayed with the Motley Folk.

She had never been one of those women among the strolling players who would sell their voices and their bodies to a lord and master for a little security, a settled home. .

However, the day had come when she, too, had tired of traveling and had wanted a home for herself and her children. For no law protected those who lived on the road, and that meant the
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Motley Folk as well as robbers and highwaymen. If you stole from a player you need not fear any punishment, if you did violence to one of their women you could safely go back to your comfortable home, and even if you killed a traveler you need not fear the hangman. All his widow could do in revenge was strike the killer’s shadow as the sun cast it on the city wall, only his shadow, and she had to pay for her husband’s funeral, too. The Motley Folk were fair game.

People called them the Devil’s decoys, they liked to be entertained by them, listened to their songs and stories, watched their clever tricks – and barred their doors and gates to them when evening came. The players had to camp outside towns and villages, outside the protection of the walls, always on the move, envied for their freedom, yet despised because they served many masters for money and bread. Not many strolling players ever left the road – the road and the lonely paths. But that was obviously what Roxane had done. There was a stable beside the house, a barn, and a bakehouse, and between them a yard with a well in the middle of it. There was a garden, fenced off to keep chickens and goats from uprooting the young plants, and a dozen narrow fields on the slope beyond. Some had been harvested, while in others the herbs stood high, bushy, and heavy with their own seed. The fragrance borne across to Dustfinger on the wind made the morning air both sweet and bitter.