Inkspell (70 page)

His herald did not reply, but just stood there staring at the bloodstained sword in his hands.

But the Adderhead went on, in a voice of high good humor, “Well, I think that proves it! The girl wasn’t lying, and the Adderhead is not a gullible fool who fell for a child’s fairy tale, is he?”

He placed his words as carefully as a beast of pre)’ places its paws. Nothing but silence answered him. Even Firefox, his face white with pain, said not a word as he wiped his own blood from the sword blade.

“Excellent!” remarked the Adderhead. “That’s done, then and now I have an immortal herald. It’s time I was able to say the same of myself. Piper,” he said, turning to the man with the silver nose.

“Empty the hall for me. Get everyone out – servants, women, physicians, clerks, all of them. I want just ten men-at-arms to stay, the librarian, you and Firefox, and the two prisoners. You go away, too!” he snapped at Mortola, who was about to protest. “Stay with my wife and get that baby to stop crying at last.”

“What’s he going to do, Mo?” whispered Meggie as the hall emptied around them. But he could only shake his head. He didn’t know, either. He only felt that the game was far from over yet.

“What about us?” he called to the Adderhead. “My daughter and I have fulfilled our part of the bargain, so fetch the prisoners from your dungeons and let us go.”

But the Adderhead only raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Yes, of course, of course, Bluejay,” he graciously replied. “As you have kept your word, I keep mine. The Adder’s word of honor. I’ve already sent men down to the dungeons, but it’s a long way from there to the gate, so give us the pleasure of your company a little longer. Believe me, we shall provide you with entertainment.”

A game
. Mo looked around and saw the huge doors close behind the last servants. Once empty, the hall only seemed larger.

“Well, how are you doing, Firefox?” The Adderhead ran a cool eye over his herald. “What does it feel like to be immortal? Fabulous? Reassuring?”

Firefox said nothing. He was still holding the sword that had run him through. “I’d like my own sword back,” he said hoarsely, without taking his eyes off his master. “This one is no good.”

“Nonsense. I’ll have a new sword forged for you, a better one, in gratitude for the service you’ve done me today!” replied the Adderhead. “But first we have one small thing to do so that we can remove your name from my book without any damage.”

“Remove it?” Firefox’s eyes wandered to the Piper, who opened the book again and held it out to the librarian.

“Remove it, yes. You remember that originally the book was to make me immortal, not you, and for that to happen the scribe must write three more words in it.”

“What for?” Firefox wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

Three words. Poor devil. Did he hear the trap snapping shut? Meggie reached for Mo’s hand.

“To make room, one might say. To make room for me,” replied the Adderhead. “And do you know what?” he went on, as Firefox looked at him uncomprehendingly. “As a reward for your unselfish proof of how reliably this book really does protect one from death, as soon as the scribe has written those three words you may kill the Bluejay. If he can be killed, that is. Well, is it a fair offer?”

“What? What are you talking about?” Meggie’s voice was shrill with fear, but Mo quickly put his hand over her mouth. “Meggie, please!” he said, low-voiced. “Have you forgotten what you said about Fenoglio’s words? Nothing will happen to me. Do you hear me?”

But she wouldn’t listen. She sobbed and held him tightly until two men-at-arms roughly dragged her away.

“Three words!” Firefox was advancing on him. And hadn’t he just been feeling sorry for him?

You’re a fool, Mortimer
, thought Mo.

“Three words! Count them well, Bluejay!” said Firefox, raising his sword. “On four I shall strike, and it will hurt, I promise you, even if it may not kill you. I know what I’m talking about.”

The sword blade shone like ice in the candlelight. It looked long enough to run three men through at once, and here and there Firefox’s blood still clung to the bright metal like rust.

“Come now, Taddeo,” said the Adderhead. “You remember the words I told you? Write them one by one, but don’t say them aloud. Just count them for us.”

The Piper opened the book and held it out to the old man.

With trembling fingers, Taddeo dipped his pen in the jar of ink. “One,” he whispered, and the pen scratched over the parchment. “Two.”

Firefox, smiling, set the point of the sword against Mo’s chest.

Taddeo raised his head, dipped his pen in the ink again, and looked uncertainly at the
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Adderhead.

“Have you forgotten how to count, old man?” he asked.

Taddeo just shook his head and lowered the pen to the paper again. “Three!” he whispered.

Mo heard Meggie call his name and stared at the point of the sword. Words, nothing but words protected him from that sharp, bright blade. .

In Fenoglio’s world, words were enough.

Firefox’s eyes widened in mingled astonishment and horror. Mo saw him try with his last breath to thrust the sword into him, to take him to wherever pen and ink were sending him, too, but the sword dropped from his hands. Firefox collapsed like a bundle of empty clothes and fell at Mo’s feet.

The Piper stood there staring down at the dead man in silence, while Taddeo lowered his pen and retreated from the book in which he had just been writing as if it might kill him as well, with a quiet voice, with a single word.

“Take him away,” ordered the Adderhead. “Before the White Women come to fetch him from my castle. Get on with it!”

Three men-at-arms carried Firefox out. The foxtails on his cloak dragged on the tiles as they hauled him away, and Mo stood there staring at the sword lying at his feet. He felt Meggie put her arms around him. Her heart was beating like a frightened bird’s.

“Who wants an immortal herald?” remarked the Adderhead as the dead Firefox was removed. “If you’d been a little cleverer you’d have seen that for yourself.” The jewels that adorned his nostrils looked more than ever like drops of blood.

“Shall I remove his name, Your Grace?” Taddeo’s voice was so hesitant that it was barely audible.

“Of course. His name and the three words, you understand. And do a thorough job of it. I want the pages white as newly fallen snow again.”

The librarian obediently set to work. The scraping sound was curiously loud in the empty hall.

When Taddeo had finished, he passed the flat of his hand over the parchment, which was blank again now. Then the Piper took the book from his hands and offered it to the Adder head.

Mo saw the man’s stout fingers shaking as they dipped the pen in the ink. And before he began to write, the Adderhead looked up once more. “I am sure you weren’t stupid enough to bind any kind of extra magic into this book, were you, Bluejay?” he asked warily. “There are ways of killing a man – and not just a man, but his wife and daughter, too – that make dying a very long and very painful business. It can take days – many days and many nights.”

“Magic? No,” replied Mo, still staring at the sword at his feet. “I don’t know anything about magic.

Let me say it again: Bookbinding, and nothing else, is my trade. And all I know about it has gone into that book. No more and no less.”

“Very well.” The Adderhead dipped the pen in the ink again – and stopped once more. “White,”

he murmured, staring at the blank pages. “See how white they are. White as the women who bring death, white as the bones the Cold Man leaves behind when he’s had his fill of flesh and
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blood.”

Then he wrote. Wrote his name in the blank book and closed it. “That’s done!” he cried triumphantly. “That’s done, Taddeo! Lock him in the book, the soul-swallower, the enemy who can’t be killed. Now he can’t kill me, either. Now we’re equals. Two Cold Men ruling the world together, for all eternity.”

The librarian obeyed, but as he was engaging the clasps he looked at Mo.
Who are you?
his eyes seemed to ask.
What’s your part in this game?
But even if Mo had wanted to, he couldn’t have given him the answer.

The Adderhead, however, seemed to think he knew it. “You know, I like you, Bluejay,” he said, never taking his lizard-like gaze off Mo. “Yes, you’d make a good herald, but that’s not the way the parts are shared out, is it?”

“No, indeed not,” said Mo.
But you don’t know who shares them out, and I do
, he added in his thoughts.

The Adderhead nodded to the men-at-arms. “Let him go,” he ordered. “And the girl, and anyone else he wants to take.” They stepped aside, if reluctantly.

“Come on, Mo!” whispered Meggie, pressing his hand.

How pale she was. Pale with fear, and so defenseless. Mo looked past the men-at-arms and thought of the walled courtyard waiting for them out there, the silver vipers staring down, the openings for boiling pitch above the gate. He thought of the crossbows of the guards on the battlements, too, the spears of the guards at the gate – and the soldiers who had pushed Resa down in the dirt. Without a word, he bent down and picked up the sword that had fallen from Firefox’s hand.

“Mo!” Meggie let go of his hand and looked at him in horror. “What are you doing?”

But he just pulled her close to him without a word, while the men-at-arms all drew their weapons. Firefox’s sword weighed heavy, heavier than the one he had used to chase Capricorn out of his house.

“Well, fancy that!” said the Adderhead. “You don’t seem to trust my word, Bluejay!”

“Oh, I trust it,” said Mo, without lowering the sword. “But everyone here except me has a weapon, so I think I’ll keep this masterless sword. You keep the book, and if we’re both lucky we’ll never see each other again after this morning.”

Even the Adderhead’s laughter sounded as if it were made of silver – dark, tarnished silver.

“Well, now,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to play games with you, Bluejay. You’re a good opponent.

Which is why I’ll keep my word. Let him go,” he told the men-at-arms again. “Tell the guards at the gate the Adderhead is letting the Bluejay go because he need never fear him! again. For the Adderhead is immortal!”

The words echoed in Mo’s ears as he took Meggie’s hand. Taddeo was still holding the book, holding it as if it might bite him. Mo thought he could still feel its paper between his fingers, the wood of the boards, the leather covering it, the thread stitching the pages. Then he saw Meggie’s gaze. She was staring at the sword in his hand as if it made a stranger of him.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s join your mother!”

“Yes, go, Bluejay, take your daughter and your wife and all the others,” the Adderhead called after them. “Before Mortola reminds me how stupid it is to let you go free!”

Only two men-at-arms followed them on their long journey through the castle. The courtyard was almost empty at this early hour of the morning. The sky above the Castle of Night was gray, and fine rain was falling like a veil before the face of the dawning day. The few servants already at work retreated in alarm from the sight of the sword in Mo’s hand, and the men-at-arms waved them aside without a word.

The other prisoners were already waiting at the gate, a forlorn little troop guarded by a dozen soldiers. At first Mo couldn’t see Resa, but suddenly one figure moved away from the others and ran toward him and Meggie. No one stopped her. Perhaps the soldiers had heard of Firefox’s fate. Mo felt their eyes on him, full of horror and fear – the man who bound Death between white pages and was a robber in the bargain! Didn’t the sword in his hand prove that for all time? He didn’t care what they thought. Let them be afraid of him. He had felt more than enough fear for one lifetime in all those days and nights when he thought he had lost everything – his wife, his daughter – and there was nothing left for him but a lonely death in this world made of words.

Resa hugged him and Meggie in turn, she almost crushed them, and his face was wet with her tears when she let go of him again.

“Come on, let’s go through the gate, Resa!” he urged in a low voice. “Before the lord of this castle changes his mind! We all have a great deal to tell one another, but for now let’s go!”

The other prisoners joined them in silence. They watched incredulously as the gate opened for them, as its ironbound wings swung open and let them go free. Some of them stumbled over their own feet in their haste as they crowded out. But still no one from the castle followed them.

The guards just stood there, swords and spears in their hands, staring as the prisoners stumbled uncertainly away, their legs stiff from weeks in the dungeons. Only one man-at-arms came out of the gate with them, wordlessly indicating the path they should take.
Suppose they shoot at us
from the battlements?
Mo thought, when he saw that there was not a single tree or bush to give them cover as they followed the road down the bare slope. He felt like a fly on the wall ready to be swatted. But nothing happened. They walked through the gray morning, through the rain now pouring down, with the castle crouched menacingly behind them like a monster – and nothing happened.

“He’s keeping his promise!” Mo heard the others whispering these words more and more often.

“The Adderhead is keeping his word.” Resa asked anxiously about his wound, and he replied quietly that he was all right, while he waited to hear footsteps behind them, soldier’s footsteps.

But all was still. It seemed as if they had been going down the bare hillside for an eternity when trees suddenly appeared in front of them. The shade that their branches cast on the road was as dark as if night itself had taken refuge under them.

Chapter 71 – Only A Dream

One day a young man said, “This tale about everybody having to die doesn’t sit too well
with me. I will go in search of the land where one never dies.”

– Italo Calvino, “The Land Where One Never Dies,”
Italian Folk Tales