Inkspell (9 page)

Charcoal-burners’ huts appeared among the trees more and more often now, but Dustfinger did not let the soot-blackened men see him. Outside the forest, people spoke of them slightingly, for the charcoal-burners lived deeper in the forest than most dared to go. Craftsmen, peasants, traders, princes: They all needed charcoal, but they didn’t like to see the men who burned it for them in their own towns and villages. Dustfinger liked the charcoal-burners, who knew almost as much about the forest as he did, although they made enemies of the trees daily. He had sat by their fires often enough, listening to their stories, but after all these years there were other stories he wanted to hear, tales of what had been going on outside the forest, and there was only one place to hear those: in one of the inns that stood along the road. Dustfinger had one particular inn in mind. It lay on the northern outskirts of the forest, where the road appeared among the trees and began to wind uphill, past a few isolated farms, until it reached the city gate of Ombra, the capital city of Lombrica, the Laughing Prince’s realm.

The inns on the road outside Ombra had always been places where the strolling players called the Motley Folk met. They offered their skills there to rich merchants, tradesmen, and craftsmen, for weddings and funerals, for festivities to celebrate a traveler’s safe return or the birth of a child. They would provide music, earthy jokes, and conjuring tricks for just a few coins, taking the audience’s minds off their troubles large and small. And if Dustfinger wanted to find out what had been happening in all the years he was away, then the Motley Folk were the people to ask. The players were the newspapers of this world. No one knew what went on in it better than these travelers who were never at home anywhere.

Who knows?
, thought Dustfinger as he walked down the road, with the autumn sun, by now low in the sky, on his face.
If I’m lucky I may even meet old acquaintances.

The road was muddy and full of puddles. Cartwheels had made deep ruts in it, and the hoofprints left by oxen and horses were full of rainwater. At this time of year it sometimes rained for days on end, as it had yesterday, when he had been glad to be under the trees where the leaves caught the rain before it drenched him to the skin. The night had been cold, all the same, and his clothes were clammy even though he had slept beside his fire. He was glad that the sky was clear today, apart from a few shreds of cloud drifting over the hills.

Luckily, he had found a few coins in his old clothes. He hoped they would be enough for a bowl of soup. Dustfinger had brought nothing with him from the other world. What would he do here with the printed paper they used for money in that world? Only gold, silver, and ringing copper counted in this one, with the local prince’s head on the coins if possible. As soon as his money was gone he’d have to look for a marketplace where he could perform, in Ombra or elsewhere.

The inn that was his destination hadn’t changed much in the last few years, either for better or for worse. It was as shabby as ever, with a few windows that were hardly more than holes in the gray stone walls. In the world where he had been living until three days ago, it was unlikely that any guests at all would have crossed such a grubby threshold. But here the inn was the last shelter available before you entered the forest, the last chance of a hot meal and a place to sleep that wasn’t damp with dew or rain ..
and you got a few lice and bugs thrown in for free
, thought Dustfinger as he pushed open the door.

It was so dark in the room inside that his eyes took a little while to adjust to the dim light. The other world had spoiled him with all its lights, with the brightness that made even night into day there. It had accustomed him to seeing everything clearly, to thinking of light as something you could switch on and off, available whenever you wanted. But now his eyes must cope again with a world of twilight and shadows, of long nights as black as charred wood, and houses from which the sunlight was often shut out, because its heat was unwelcome.

All the light inside the inn came from the few sunbeams falling through the holes that were the windows. Dust motes danced in them like a swarm of tiny fairies. A fire was burning in the hearth under a battered black cauldron. The smell rising from it was not particularly appetizing, even to Dustfinger’s empty stomach, but that didn’t surprise him. This inn had never had a landlord who knew the first thing about cooking. A little girl hardly more than ten years old was standing beside the cauldron, stirring whatever was simmering in it with a stick. Some thirty guests were sitting on rough-hewn benches in the dark, smoking, talking quietly, and drinking.

Dustfinger strolled over to an empty place and sat down. He surreptitiously looked around for a face that might seem familiar, for a pair of the Motley trousers that only the players wore. He immediately saw a lute-player by the window, negotiating with a much better dressed man than the musician himself, probably a rich merchant. No poor peasant could afford to hire an entertainer, of course. If a farmer wanted music at his wedding he must play the fiddle himself.

He couldn’t have afforded even the two pipers who were also sitting by the window. At the table next to them, a group of actors were arguing in loud voices, probably about who got the best part in a new play. One still wore the mask behind which he hid when they acted in the towns’

marketplaces. He looked strange sitting there among the others, but then all the Motley Folk were strange – with or without masks, whether they sang or danced, performed broad farces on a wooden stage or breathed fire. The same was true of their companions traveling physicians, bonesetters, stonecutters, miracle healers. The players brought them customers.

Old faces, young faces, happy and unhappy faces, there were all of those in the smoke-filled room, but none of them seemed familiar to Dustfinger. He, too, sensed he was being scrutinized, but he was used to it. His scarred face attracted glances everywhere, and the clothes he wore did the rest – a fire-eater’s costume, black as soot, red as the flames that he played with, but that others feared. For a moment he felt curiously strange amid all this once-familiar activity, as if the other world still clung to him and could be clearly seen: all the years, the endless years since Silvertongue plucked him out of his own story and stole his life without intending to, as you might crush a snail-shell in passing.

“Hey, who have we here?”

A hand fell heavily on his shoulder, and a man leaned over him and stared at his face. His hair was gray, his face round and beardless, and he was so unsteady on his feet that for a moment Dustfinger thought he was drunk. “Why, if I don’t know that face!” cried the man incredulously, grasping Dustfinger’s shoulder hard, as if to make sure it was really flesh and blood. “So where’ve you sprung from, my old fire-eating friend? Straight from the realm of the dead? What happened? Did the fairies bring you back to life? They always were besotted with you, those little blue imps.”

A few men turned to look at them, but there was so much noise in the dark, stuffy room that not many people noticed what was going on.

“CloudDancer!” Dustfinger straightened up and embraced the other man. “How are you?” “Ah, and there was I thinking you’d forgotten me!” CloudDancer gave a broad grin, baring large, yellow teeth.

Oh no, Dustfinger had not forgotten him – although he had tried to, as he had tried to forget the others he had missed. CloudDancer, the best tightrope-walker who ever strolled around the rooftops. Dustfinger had recognized him at once, in spite of his now gray hair and the left leg that was skewed at such a curiously stiff angle.

“Come along, we must drink to this. You don’t meet a dead friend again every day.” He impatiently drew Dustfinger over to a bench under one of the windows. A little sunlight fell through it from outside. Then he signaled to the girl who was still stirring the cauldron and ordered two goblets of wine. The little creature stared at Dustfinger’s scars for a moment, fascinated, and then scurried over to the counter. A fat man stood behind it, watching his guests with dull eyes.

“You’re looking good!” remarked CloudDancer. “Well fed, not a gray hair on your head, hardly a hole in your clothes. You even still have all your teeth, by the look of it. Where’ve you been?

Maybe I should set out for the same place myself– seems like a man can live pretty well there.”

“Forget it. It’s better here.” Dustfinger pushed back the hair from his forehead and looked around. “That’s enough about me. How have you been yourself? You can afford wine, but your hair is gray, and your left leg .. ”

“Ah, yes, my leg.” The girl brought their wine. As CloudDancer searched his purse for the right money, she stared at Dustfinger again with such curiosity that he rubbed his fingertips together and whispered a few fire-words. Reaching out his forefinger, he smiled at her and blew gently on the fingertip. A tiny flame, too weak to light a fire but just bright enough to be reflected in the little girl’s eyes, flickered on his nail and spat out sparks of gold on the dirty table. The child stood there enchanted, until Dustfinger blew out the flame and dipped his finger in the goblet of wine that CloudDancer pushed over to him.

“So you still like playing with fire,” said CloudDancer, as the girl cast an anxious glance at the fat landlord and hurried back to the cauldron. “My own games are over now, sad to say.” “What happened?”

“I fell off the rope, I don’t dance in the clouds anymore. A market trader threw a cabbage at me –

I expect I was distracting his customers’ attention. At least I was lucky enough to land on a cloth-43

merchant’s stall. That way I broke my leg and a couple of ribs, but not my neck.”

Dustfinger looked at him thoughtfully. “Then how do you make a living now that you can’t walk the tightrope?”

CloudDancer shrugged. “Believe it or not, I can still go about on foot. I can even ride with this leg of mine – if there’s a horse available. I earn my living as a messenger, although I still like to be with the strolling players, listening to their stories and sitting by the fire with them. But it’s words that nourish me now, even though I can’t read. Threatening letters, begging letters, love letters, sales contracts, wills – I deliver anything that can be written on a piece of parchment or paper. And I can be relied upon to carry a spoken message, too, when it’s been whispered into my ear in confidence. I make quite a good living, although I’m not the fastest messenger money can hire. But everyone who gives me a letter to deliver knows that it really will reach the person it’s meant for. And a guarantee of that is hard to find.”

Dustfinger believed him.
For a few gold pieces you can read the prince’s own letters
, that was what they used to say even in his own time. You just had to know someone who was good at forging broken seals. “How about our other friends?” Dustfinger looked at the pipers by the window. “What are they doing?”

CloudDancer took a sip of wine and made a face. “Ugh! I should have asked for honey in this.

The others, well” – he rubbed his stiff leg – “some are dead, some have just disappeared like you.

Look over there, behind the farmer staring so gloomily into his tankard,” he said, jerking his head at the counter. “There’s our old friend Sootbird, with a laugh fixed on his face like a tattoo, the worst fire-eater for miles around, although he still tries to copy you and wonders why fire would rather dance for you than him.”

“He’ll never find out.” Dustfinger glanced surreptitiously at the other fire-eater. As far as he remembered, Sootbird could juggle burning torches well enough, but fire didn’t dance for him.

He was like a hopeless lover rejected again and again by the girl of his choice. Long ago, feeling sorry for the man’s futile efforts, Dustfinger had given him some fire-elves’ honey, but even with its aid Sootbird hadn’t understood what the flames were telling him.

“I’ve heard that he works with powders bought from alchemists now,” CloudDancer whispered across the table, “and that’s an expensive pastime, if you ask me. The fire bites him so often that his hands and arms are quite red from it. But he doesn’t let it get at his face. Before he performs he smears it with grease until it shines like bacon fat.” “Does he still drink after every show?”

“After the show, before the show, but he’s still a good-looking fellow, don’t you think?”

Yes, so he was, with his friendly, ever-smiling face. Sootbird was one of those entertainers who lived on the glances of others, on laughter and applause, on knowing that people will stop to look at them. Even now he was entertaining the others who were leaning against the counter with him. Dustfinger turned his back; he didn’t want to see the old mixture of admiration and envy in the other man’s eyes. Sootbird was not one of those he had missed. “You mustn’t think times are any easier now for the Motley Folk,” said CloudDancer across the table, low-voiced. “Since Cosimo’s death the Laughing Prince doesn’t let the likes of us into the markets except on feast days, and as for going up to the castle itself, that’s only when his grandson demands entertainers loudly enough. Not a very nice little boy – he’s already ordering his servants around and threatening them with whipping and the pillory. Still, he loves the Motley Folk.”

“Cosimo the Fair is dead?” Dustfinger nearly choked on the sour wine.

“Yes.” CloudDancer leaned over the table, as if it wasn’t right to speak of death and misfortune in too loud a voice. “He rode away scarcely a year ago, beautiful as an angel, to prove his princely courage and finish off the fire-raisers who were haunting the forest then. You may remember their leader, Capricorn?” Dustfinger had to smile. “Oh yes. I remember him,” he said quietly.

“He disappeared about the same time you did, but his gang carried on the same as ever. Firefox became their new leader. There wasn’t a village nor a farm this side of the forest that was safe from them. So Cosimo rode away to put an end to their evil deeds. He smoked out the whole band, but he didn’t come home himself. Since then, his father, who used to like eating so much that his breakfast alone could have fed three whole villages, has become known as the Prince of Sighs, too. For the Laughing Prince does nothing but sigh these days.”