Inkspell (34 page)

Then, just as suddenly as they had come, the men-at-arms were gone. Only the sound of their horses’ hooves could still be heard as they rode fast up the street to the castle. The marketplace was left looking as if a strong wind had blown through it, an ill wind breaking jugs and pots as well as human bones. There was a smell of fear in the air as Meggie crawled out from behind the barrels. Peasants were gathering up their trampled vegetables, mothers wiped tears from their children’s faces and blood from their knees, women stood looking at the broken earthenware dishes they had hoped to sell – and all was quiet in the marketplace again. Very quiet. The voices cursing the horsemen did so in undertones, and even the weeping and groaning were muted.

Minerva came over to Meggie, concern in her face, with the sobbing Despina and Ivo beside her.

“Yes, I think we have a new master now,” she said bitterly, helping Meggie to her feet. “Can you take the children home? I’ll stay here and see what I can do to help. There must be many broken bones, but luckily a few physicians can always be found here on market day.”

Meggie just nodded. She didn’t know how she felt. Afraid?

Angry? Desperate? There didn’t seem to be any word to describe the state of her heart. Silently, she took Despina and Ivo by the hand and set off home with them. Her knees hurt, and she was limping, but nonetheless she hurried along the alleys so fast that the children could hardly keep up.

“Now!” She uttered just that one word as she hobbled into Fenoglio’s room. “Let me read it now.

At once.” Her voice shook, and she had to lean against the bare wall because her grazed knees were trembling. Indeed, everything in her and about her was trembling.

“What’s happened?” Fenoglio was sitting at his desk. The parchment lying before him was covered with words. Rosenquartz stood beside him with a dripping pen in his hand, looking at Meggie in astonishment.

“We must do it now!” she cried. “This minute! They just rode into the middle of the crowd – into all those people!”

“Ah, so the soldiers are here already. Well, I told you we must hurry. Who was leading them?

Firefox?”

“No, it was the Piper.” Meggie went over to the bed and sat down on it. Suddenly, she felt only fear, as if she were back kneeling among the toppled stalls again, and her fury had run out of steam. “There are so many of them!” she whispered. “It’s too late! What could Cosimo do against them?”

“You just leave that to me!” Fenoglio took the pen from the glass man’s hand and began writing again. “The Laughing Prince has many soldiers, too, and they’ll follow Cosimo once he’s back. Of course, it would have been better if you’d read him here while his father was still alive. The Laughing Prince was in too much of a hurry to die, but that can’t be helped now! Other things can be, though.” With his brow furrowed, he read through what he had written, crossed out a word here, added one there, and then waved his hand to the glass man. “Sand, Rosenquartz, hurry up!”

Meggie pulled up her skirt and looked at her injured knees.

One of them was beginning to swell. “But are you sure it will really be any better with Cosimo?”

she asked in a low voice. “From what Her Ugliness said about him, it didn’t sound like it.”

“Of course it will be better! What kind of question is that? Cosimo is one of the good characters and always was, never mind what Violante says. Anyway, when you read this aloud you’ll be bringing a new version of him here. An improved version, we might say.”

“But .. but why does there have to be a new prince here at all?” Meggie passed her sleeve over her tearstained face. The clank of armor was still echoing in her ears, the snorting and whinnying, the screaming – the screams of people who wore no armor.

“What can be better than a prince who does what we want?” Fenoglio took another sheet of parchment. “Just a few more lines,” he murmured. “I’ve almost finished. Oh, curse it, how I hate writing on parchment. I hope you ordered more paper, Rosenquartz.”

“Of course I did, long ago,” replied the glass man huffily. “But there haven’t been any deliveries for ages. The paper mill’s on the other side of the forest, remember?”

“Yes, a pity.” Fenoglio wrinkled his nose. “Very inconvenient, to be sure.”

“Fenoglio, listen to me, will you? Why don’t we read that robber here instead of Cosimo?” Meggie pulled down her skirt over her knees again. “You know – the robber in your songs! The Bluejay!”

Fenoglio laughed out loud. “The Bluejay? Good heavens! I’d like to see your face if– but joking aside, no – absolutely not! A robber’s not fit to rule, Meggie. Robin Hood didn’t become king!

Robbers are good for stirring up trouble, that’s all. I couldn’t even put the Black Prince on the throne here. This world is ruled by royalty, not robbers, entertainers, or peasants. That’s the way I made it, and I assure you it’s a royal prince we need.”

Rosenquartz sharpened another quill and dipped it in the ink, and Fenoglio began writing again.

“Yes,” Meggie heard him whispering. “Yes, this will sound wonderful when you read it aloud.

What a surprise for the Adder head! He thinks he can do what he likes in my world, do exactly as he pleases, but he’s wrong. He’ll play the part I give him and no other!”

Meggie rose from the bed and limped over to the window. It had begun to rain again; the sky was weeping as silently as the people in the marketplace. And the Adderhead’s banner was already being hoisted above the castle.

“Yes,” said Abhorsen. “I am a necromancer, but not of the common kind. Where others of
the art raise the dead, I lay them back to rest …”

– Garth Nix, Sabriel

It was dark when Fenoglio finally put aside his pen. All was still in the alley below. It had been quiet there all day, as if the people had fled indoors like mice hiding from the cat.

“Have you finished?” asked Meggie, as Fenoglio leaned back and rubbed his weary eyes. Her voice sounded faint and afraid, not like a voice that could awaken a prince and bring him to life, but after all, she had already made a monster rise from Fenoglio’s words, even if that was long ago – and Mo, not she, had read the very last words.

Mo. After what had happened in the marketplace, she missed him more than ever.

“Yes, I’ve finished!” Fenoglio sounded as pleased with himself as he had in Capricorn’s village, when he and Meggie between them first planned a way to alter his story. All had ended well that time, but now .. now she was in the story herself. Did that make Fenoglio’s words stronger or weaker? Meggie had told him about Orpheus’s rule – that it was better to use only words that were in the story already – but Fenoglio had just dismissed the idea. “Nonsense. Remember how we wrote a happy ending before for the Steadfast Tin Soldier? Did I stop to make sure I was using only words out of his own story? No, I didn’t. Perhaps that rule applies to people like this man Orpheus, people who venture to mess around with other writers’ stories, but surely not for an author setting out to change his own!”

Meggie hoped he was right.

Fenoglio had crossed out a good deal, but his handwriting had indeed become more legible.

Meggie looked along the lines. Yes, this time they were Fenoglio’s own words, not stolen from any other writer…

“Good, isn’t it?” He dipped a piece of bread in the soup that Minerva had brought up for them hours ago and looked expectantly at Meggie. Of course the soup was cold. Neither of them could have even thought of eating until now, and Rosenquartz was the only one who had drunk some of the soup. It had made his whole body change color, until Fenoglio firmly took his tiny spoon away from him and asked if he wanted to kill himself.

“Leave that alone, Rosenquartz!” he now added sternly, as the glass man reached a transparent finger out to his dish again. “You’ve had quite enough! You know you can’t digest human food.

Do you want me to have to take you back to that physician who almost broke off your nose last time?”

“Eating sand all the time is so boring!” complained the glass man, withdrawing his finger with an injured air. “And the sand you bring me isn’t particularly tasty, either.”

“You ungrateful creature!” thundered Fenoglio. “When I go down to the river for it specially! And last time the river-nymphs thought it would be fun to pull me in. I nearly drowned, all because of you.”

The glass man seemed unimpressed. Still looking injured, he sat down beside the jug full of quills, closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep.

“Two of them have already died on me that way!” Fenoglio whispered to Meggie. “They just can’t resist our food. Stupid creatures.”

But Meggie was only half listening. She sat down on the bed with the parchment and read through it all again, word by word. Rain came in through the window, as if to remind her of another night – the night when she first heard of Fenoglio’s book and saw Dustfinger standing outside in the rain. Dustfinger had looked happy in the castle courtyard. Fenoglio was happy, too, and Farid, and Minerva and her children. And it must stay that way. I’ll read this for all of them, thought Meggie. For the strolling players, so that the Adderhead won’t hang them just for singing a song, for the peasants in the marketplace whose vegetables were trampled by those horses. What about Her Ugliness? Would it make Violante happy to have a husband again?

Would she notice that this was a different Cosimo? But the words would come too late for the Prince of Sighs. He would never hear of his son’s return.

“Well, say something!” Fenoglio’s voice sounded unsure of itself. “Don’t you like it?”

“Oh yes. Yes, I do. It’s lovely.”

Relief spread over his face. “Then what are you waiting for?” “About the mark on her face – oh, I don’t know – it sounds like magic, like an inkspell.”

“Oh, come on. I think it’s romantic, and that never hurts.”

“If you say so. It’s your story.” Meggie shrugged her shoulders. “But there’s one more thing.

Who’s going to disappear when he arrives?”

Fenoglio went pale. “Heavens, I’d entirely forgotten about that. Rosenquartz, go and hide in your nest!” he told the glass man. “Luckily, the fairies are out.”

“That’s no use,” said Meggie quietly, as the glass man made his way up to the empty fairies’ nest, where he used to sulk and sometimes sleep. “Hiding is no use at all.”

The sound of a horse’s hooves rose to them from the street outside. One of the men-at-arms was riding by. Obviously, the Piper wasn’t going to let the people of Ombra forget who their new master truly was, even in their sleep.

“Well, there’s a sign for us!” Fenoglio whispered to Meggie. “If that man disappears, he’s no loss.

Anyway, how do you know anyone will disappear at all? I think it happens only if you read someone here who leaves a gap to be filled in his own story. But our new Cosimo has no story of his own! He was born here, today, from these words!”

Well, he might be right.

The clatter of the hooves mingled with the sound of Meggie’s voice. ”
It was a quiet night in
Ombra, very quiet,
” she read. ”
The wounds inflicted by the men-at-arms had not yet healed, and
many never would.
” And suddenly she forgot about the fear she had felt in the morning and again thought only of her anger. She had felt so angry with men who encased themselves in armor and kicked women and children in the back with their iron shoes. The anger made her voice strong and full, ready to awaken new life. ”
Doors and shutters were bolted, and behind them
161

the children cried, as quietly as if fear itself kept their mouths shut, while their parents peered out
into the night, fearfully wondering how dark the future would be under their new master. But
suddenly, hoof-beats echoed down the alley where the cobblers and saddlers lived.
” How easily the words came now! They flowed over Meggie’s tongue as if they had been just waiting to be read aloud, to be brought to life this very night. ”
People hurried to their windows. They looked out in
fear, expecting to see one of the men-at-arms or even the Piper himself with his silver nose, but
someone else came riding up to the castle, and the sight of him, familiar as it was, yet turned their
faces pale. For the new arrival who came riding through sleepless Ombra bore the face of their
dead prince, Cosimo the Fair, who had been resting in his crypt so long.
”

His likeness rode down the street on a white horse, and he was as handsome as all the songs about the fair Cosimo said. He rode through the castle gateway with the Adderhead’s banner flying above it, reined in his horse in the quiet nocturnal courtyard, and for all who saw him there in the moonlight, sitting erect on his white horse, it was as if Cosimo had never been away.

Then all the weeping was over, the weeping and the fear. The people of Ombra rejoiced, and others came from the most remote villages to see the man who bore a dead prince’s face, and they whispered, ‘Cosimo is back. Cosimo the Fair has come back to take his father’s place and protect Ombra from the Adderhead.’

“And so it was. The savior of the city ascended the throne, and the birthmark on Her Ugliness’s face faded. Cosimo the Fair had his father’s court poet summoned and asked his advice, for he had been told how wise a man he was, and now a great new age began.”

Meggie lowered the parchment. A great new age ..

Fenoglio hurried to the window. Meggie had heard the sound, too – hoof beats – but she did not rise to her feet.

“That must be him!” whispered Fenoglio. “He’s coming, oh, Meggie, he’s coming! Listen!”

But Meggie still sat there looking at the written words on her lap. It seemed to her that they were breathing. Paper made flesh, ink made blood .. Suddenly she was tired, so tired that it seemed much too far to walk to the window. She felt like a child who had climbed down into the cellar all alone and now felt scared. If only Mo were here. .

“Any moment now! He’ll be riding by any moment now!” Fenoglio leaned so far out of the window that he was in danger of falling headfirst into the alley. At least he was still here – he hadn’t disappeared the way he did when she summoned the Shadow. But where else would he have gone? Meggie wondered. There seemed to be only one story left, this story, Fenoglio’s story. And it seemed to have no beginning and no end.