Inkspell (22 page)

“Nor did his daughter. Are you saying she reads better than you?”

“Of course not!” Orpheus stood up very straight. “No one reads better than me. Haven’t I proved that? Didn’t you yourself say Dustfinger spent ten years looking for someone to read him back?”

“Yes, very well. No more talk, then.” Mortola picked up her stick and rose to her feet, with difficulty. “Wouldn’t it be amusing if a ferocious cat slipped out of the pages, like the one that came through when the fire-eater left? Basta’s hand hasn’t healed yet, and he had a knife and the
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dog to help him.” She gave Elinor and Darius a nasty look.

Elinor took a step forward, ignoring the butt of Basta’s rifle. “What do you mean? I’m coming, too, of course!”

Mortola raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh, and who do you think decides that? Why would I want you with us? Or that stupid bungler Darius? I’m sure my son would have no objection to feeding you two to the Shadow as well, but I don’t want to make things too difficult for Orpheus.” She pointed her stick at Mortimer. “We’re taking him with us. No one else.” Resa was clinging to Mortimer’s arm. Mortola went over to her, smiling. “Yes, little pigeon, I’m leaving you here, too!” she said, pinching her cheek hard. “It will hurt if I take him away from you again, won’t it? When you’ve only just gotten him back. After all those years .. ”

Mortola signed to Basta, who reached roughly for Resa’s arm. She struggled, still clinging to Mortimer, with a desperate expression on her face that went to Elinor’s heart. But as she went to try and help Resa, the wardrobe-man barred her way. And Mortimer himself gently removed Resa’s hand from his arm.

“It’s all right,” he said. “After all, I’m the only one in this family who hasn’t been to the Inkworld yet. And I promise you I won’t come back without Meggie.”

“Very true, because you won’t come back at all!” Basta mocked, as he pushed Resa hard toward Elinor. And Mortola was still smiling. Elinor would have loved to hit her. Do something, Elinor!

she thought. But what could she do? Hold on to Mortimer? Tear up the sheet of paper that the moonface was so carefully smoothing out on her glass case?

“Well, can we begin now?” asked Orpheus, licking his lips as if he could hardly wait to demonstrate his skill again.

“Of course.” Mortola leaned heavily on her stick and beckoned Basta to her side.

Orpheus looked at him suspiciously. “You’ll make sure he leaves Dustfinger alone, right?” he said to Mortola. “You promised!”

Basta passed a finger over his throat and winked at him.

“Did you see that?” Orpheus’s beautiful voice broke. “You promised! That was my one condition.

You leave Dustfinger in peace or I don’t read a single word!”

“Yes, yes, all right, don’t shout like that or you’ll ruin your voice,” replied Mortola impatiently.

“We have Silvertongue. Why would I be interested in that wretched fire-eater? Go on, start reading!”

“Hey, wait a minute!” This was the first time Elinor had heard the wardrobe-man’s voice. It was curiously high for a man of his size – as if an elephant were speaking in a cricket’s chirping voice.

“What happens to the others when you’re gone?”

“How should I know?” Mortola shrugged. “Let whatever comes here to replace us eat them.

Make the fat woman your maid and Darius your bootboy. Anything you like, it’s all the same to me. Just start reading!”

Orpheus obeyed. He went over to the glass case where the sheet of paper with his words on it
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was waiting, cleared his throat, and adjusted his glasses.

“Capricorn’s fortress lay in the forest where the first tracks of giants could be found.” The words flowed over his lips like music. ”
It was a long time since anyone had seen the giants, but other and
more alarming beings haunted the walls by night Night-Mares and Redcaps, creatures as cruel as
the men who had built the fortress. It was all of gray stone, as gray as the rocky slope behind it…
”

Do something!
thought Elinor.
Do something, it’s now or never. Snatch that piece of paper from the
moonfaced man’s hand, kick the Magpie’s stick away
… But she couldn’t move a muscle.

What a voice! And the magic of the words – they slowed her brain, making her drowsy with delight. When Orpheus read of prickly woodbine and tamarisk flowers, Elinor thought she could smell them.
He really does read as well as Mortimer!
That was the only thought of her own that would form in her head. And the others were no better off; they were all staring at Orpheus’s lips, as if they could hardly wait for the next word: Darius, Basta, the wardrobe-man, even Mortimer – why, even the Magpie. They listened motionless, caught up in the sound of the words. Only one of them moved. Resa. Elinor saw her struggling against the magic as you might struggle in deep water, finally coming up behind Mortimer and flinging her arms around him.

And then they had all disappeared: Basta, Mortola the Magpie – and Mortimer and Resa.

Chapter 18 – Mortola’s Revenge

I do not dare,

I do not dare to write it, if you die.

– Pablo Neruda, “The Dead Woman,”
The Captain’s Verses

It was as if a transparent picture, like stained glass, came down over what Resa had just been seeing – Elinor’s library, the backs of the books so carefully classified by Darius and arranged side by side – blurring it all, while the other picture itself became clearer. Stones eroded the books; soot-blackened walls replaced the bookshelves. Grass sprouted from Elinor’s wooden floorboards, and the white plaster of the ceiling gave way to a sky covered by dark clouds.

Resa’s arms were still wound around Mo. He was the only thing that didn’t disappear, and she wouldn’t let go of him for fear of losing him again after all, as she had lost him once before. So long ago.

“Resa?” She saw the alarm in his eyes as he turned and realized that she had come, too. Quickly, she put her hand over his mouth.

Honeysuckle climbed up the black walls on their left. Mo put out his hand to the leaves, as if his fingers must feel what his eyes had already seen. Resa remembered that she had once done the same, touching everything, bewildered to find the world beyond the letters on the page so real.

If she hadn’t heard the words Orpheus had spoken for herself, Resa wouldn’t have known where Mortola had made him read them all. Capricorn’s fortress had looked so different when she had last stood in its courtyard. There had been men everywhere, armed men on the flights of steps, at the gate, on the wall. Where the bakehouse had stood there was nothing now but charred beams, and it was by the stairway over there that she and the other maids used to beat the dust from the tapestry hangings, tapestries that Mortola placed on the walls of the bare rooms only on special occasions.

Those rooms were gone. The walls of the fortress were crumbling and black from fire. Soot covered the stones as if someone had painted them with a black brush, and yarrow grew all over the once bare courtyard. Yarrow loved burned earth; it grew everywhere. Where a narrow stairway had once led up to the watchtower, the forest was now making its way into Capricorn’s den. Young trees had taken root among the ruins, as if they had been just waiting to reclaim the
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place occupied by this human abode. Thistles grew in the gaping cavities of the windows, moss covered the ruined stairs, and ivy climbed to the charred wooden stumps that had once been Capricorn’s gallows. Resa had seen many men hanging on them.

“What’s this?” Mortola’s voice echoed from the dead walls. “What are these miserable ruins?

This isn’t my son’s fortress!”

Resa drew closer to Mo’s side. He still seemed numbed, almost as if he were waiting for the moment when he would wake up and see Elinor’s books again instead of the stones. Resa knew only too well how he was feeling. It was not so bad for her this second time; after all, she wasn’t alone now, and she knew what had happened. But Mo seemed to have forgotten everything: Mortola, Basta – and why they had brought him here. Resa, however, had not forgotten, and she watched with a thudding heart as Mortola stumbled through the yarrow to the charred walls and felt the stones, as if she were running her fingers over her dead son’s face.

“I’ll cut that man Orpheus’s tongue out with my own hands and serve it for supper!” she exclaimed. “With chopped foxglove! Is this supposed to be my son’s fortress? Never!”

Her head moved frantically back and forth like a bird’s as she looked around her. But Basta just stood there in silence, pointing his rifle at Resa and Mo.

“Well, say something!” shouted the Magpie. “Say something, you fool!”

Basta bent down and picked up a rusty helmet lying at his feet. “What do you expect me to say?”

he growled, throwing the helmet back into the grass with a gloomy expression and giving it a kick that sent it clattering against the wall. “Of course it’s our castle. Didn’t you see the figure of the goat on the wall there? Even the carved devils are still standing, though they wear ivy crowns now – and look, there’s one of the eyes that Slasher liked to paint on the stones.”

Mortola stared at the red eye to which Basta was pointing. Then she hobbled over to the remains of the wooden gate, now splintered, torn off its hinges, and barely visible under the brambles and tall stinging nettles. She stood there in silence, looking around her. As for Mo, he had finally come back to his senses.

“What are they talking about?” he whispered to Resa. “Where are we? Was this where Capricorn used to hide out?” Resa just nodded. However, the Magpie turned at the sound of Mo’s voice and stared at him. Then she came over to him, stumbling as if she felt dizzy.

“Yes, this is his castle, but Capricorn isn’t here!” she said in a dangerously low voice. “My son is not here. So Basta was right after all. He’s dead, here and in the other world, too, dead, and what killed him? Your voice, your accursed voice!” There was such hatred in her face that Resa instinctively tried to draw Mo away, somewhere, anywhere he would be safe from that glance.

But there was nothing behind them but the sooty wall with the figure of Capricorn’s goat still displayed on it, a red-eyed goat with burning horns.

“Silvertongue!” Mortola spat out the word as if it were poison. “Killertongue suits you better.

Your daughter couldn’t bring herself to utter the words that killed my son, but you – oh, you didn’t hesitate for a moment!” Her voice was little more than a whisper as she went on: “I can still see you before me, as if it had happened only last night – taking the piece of paper from her hand and putting her aside. And then the words came out of your mouth, fine-sounding as everything you say, and when you’d finished my son lay dead in the dust.” For a moment she put
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her fingers to her mouth as if to suppress a sob. When she let her hand drop again, her lips were still quivering.

“How – how can this be?” she went on, in a trembling voice. “Tell me, how is it possible? He didn’t belong in your false world at all. So how could he die there? Was that the only reason you lured him over with your wicked tongue?” And again she turned and stared at the burned walls, her bony hands clenched into fists.

Basta bent down again. This time he picked up an arrow point. “I’d really like to know what happened!” he muttered. “I always said Capricorn wasn’t here, but what about the others?

Firefox, Pitch-Eater, Humpback, the Piper, Slasher . . Are they all dead? Or are they in the Laughing Prince’s dungeon?” He looked uneasily at Mortola. “What are we going to do if they’re all gone?” Basta sounded like a boy afraid of the dark. “Do you want us to live in a cave like brownies until the wolves find us? Have you forgotten the wolves? And the Night-Mares, the fire-elves, all the other creatures crawling around the place .. I for one haven’t forgotten them, but you would come back to this accursed spot where there are three ghosts lurking behind every tree!” He reached for the amulet dangling around his neck, but Mortola did not deign to look at him.

“Oh, be quiet!” she said, so sharply that Basta flinched.

“How often must I tell you that ghosts are nothing to be afraid of? As for wolves, that’s why you carry a knife, isn’t it? We’ll manage. We managed in their world, and we know our way around in this one a good deal better. And, don’t forget, we have a powerful friend here. We’re going to pay him a visit, yes, that’s what. But first I have something else to do, something I should have done long ago.” And again her eyes were on Mo. On him and no one else. Then she turned, walked steadily up to Basta, and took the rifle from his hand.

Resa reached for Mo’s arm and tried to pull him aside, but Mortola was too quick on the draw.

The Magpie had some skill with a rifle. She had often shot at the birds who pecked the seed from her garden beds, back in Capricorn’s yard. Blood spread over Mo’s shirt like a flower blossoming, red, crimson. Resa heard herself scream as he fell and suddenly lay there motionless, while the grass around him turned as red as his shirt. She flung herself down on her knees, turned him over, and pressed her hands to the wound, as if she could hold back the blood, all the blood carrying his life away. .