The Book of Lies (32 page)

In a final desperate appeal, he tried again. “They are in prison, a magical prison, with Lord Alwyn’s sorcery as the lock and key. They can’t do anything unless they are freed, and I would never do it. I will never set them free.”

This time the Book closed with a thud and began to glow.

“That much is true, at least,” Pelham muttered. The hall had become so quiet that his words were easily heard. “And how can those two challenge me unless they are released from their prison?”

The dark and hooded eyes of the more suspicious moved to the Princess and Marcel beside her. Nicola again took the lead and said clearly, “I would never set Damon or Eleanor free from that chamber.”

Watching through Lord Alwyn’s eyes, Marcel wanted to shout at her, to stop her. “Don’t say the words! You don’t know what tragedy they will bring!” But he realised that even for magic some things are impossible.

The Book began to buck and unfurl its pages, and when they settled her words appeared on the open page. There seemed no doubt this time.

“Traitor!” a voice called from behind the King.

“No!” she yelled. “It can’t be true!”

But even her own father had to believe it this time.

Marcel was made to swear that he, too, would never release the murderous cousins from their chamber, and when the Book reacted in the same way he stood accused just like his sister.

“All three of you!” wailed the King.

“It can’t be true, Father. The Book is lying!” Nicola pleaded. But they had all witnessed its damning response.

“That’s enough!” her father wailed, tears soaking his eyes. “Take them up to their rooms!”

Before they had gone, he cried out again. “All of you, leave me! Get out and take this accursed book with you.”

There was a brief hesitation, but when the King’s face darkened even more, the courtiers began to drift through the oaken doors, the Chancellor pausing reluctantly to lift the Book from the table before the throne.

“Not you, Alwyn,” came Pelham’s voice. “Stay with me.”

When they were all gone and the doors hastily closed, he turned a stricken face towards the wizard. “What do you make of this? Could the Book itself be lying?”

“Impossible, Pelham. It was created to identify truth and it will always do so.”

“But you saw what happened. My own children will betray me. One of my own sons will try to kill me.”

Although he was confined within Lord Alwyn’s mind, Marcel yelled out, “No, Father! Don’t believe it! The Book of Lies must be wrong! Fergus will never harm you, not once he knows who he really is!”

He couldn’t be heard, of course, and instead his father’s voice began again.

“Is there any way to avoid such a fate, Alwyn? I have heard it from their own mouths, but they are only children still.”

The King stood up suddenly and roamed down the hall, searching the tapestry for some clue, some way out. “I will send them away, to the high country, where no one knows their faces. Let them lead a simple life, as farmers and a farmer’s wife. Let them be orphans, as I was, but in the home of a woman with a loving heart to care for them, as Madeleine cared for me.”

“But the high country is not so far away. They could still return to betray you.”

“Use your magic, then. What can it do?”

“I can make them forget their lives here in this palace and the prophecy of my book.”

“Yes, it’s the only choice, Alwyn. See that they never know of this day, and make sure no one can ever tell them of the betrayal the Book promises. Send them separately and unnamed, so that none will suspect who they are.”

Lord Alwyn turned away, leaving Marcel without a view of his father, but halfway to the huge doors the King called him back. The harshness of his ordeal fell away and he was not a king but a father. “I can’t bear to think of them let loose up there to fend for themselves. Go with them, Alwyn. Watch over them until they are settled into their new lives, away from treachery and murder, where they won’t have to grieve for their mother as they do now.”

A sudden surge of noise in his ears told Marcel the magic was ended. He opened his eyes and found Bea and Nicola staring at him in wonder. He looked quickly for Lord Alwyn and saw him slumped in a chair beside the large desk, with the King kneeling at his side.

“What happened? What did you do?” Nicola asked him urgently.

“I saw…” he said tentatively, still trying to understand what had happened. Then he was speaking, telling his sister all that he had witnessed through Lord Alwyn’s eyes. This time, she heard every word.

Pelham heard it too. “Alwyn’s spell has been broken,” he exclaimed in astonishment. He rose from where he had been tending to his sorcerer, who looked close to collapse, one of his arms spread limply across an open map of the Kingdom.

“Such powers, my son…”

But Marcel could not think about that now. The shocking vision of what had happened here in this hall was still too
vivid in his mind. What a terrible thing. They had been accused of betraying their father, and not by a human witness. They had been accused by the Book of Lies itself.

“I don’t understand it,” he cried in frustration. “The Book of Lies must always show the truth. But what it showed about us was a lie!”

Lord Alwyn recovered enough of his strength to sit upright in the chair. “No, not a lie!” he spat. “The Book will always seek the truth. My magic demands it.”

“What good is that?” Nicola snapped. “Eleanor used the truth to trick us! She told us that Pelham had poisoned his own Queen. Her words were true but it was still a despicable lie, and the Book must have known it.”

“Yes,” Marcel asserted. “It looks into a person’s mind and knows what he is thinking. It looks into our hearts too and knows what we barely know ourselves. It
must
have known she was lying.”

Not just Eleanor, either, he saw now. He appealed to the King, knowing that he was the one who must understand. “I’ve even done it myself, Father. I tricked Starkey. I could feel the Book reach inside me. It knew I was lying and it helped me do it.

“Evil…” he murmured, remembering what he had sensed when his fingers were pressed against the Book. “I’ve felt it with my own hand, a sly and patient kind of evil, just like Eleanor’s lies. The Book has learned how to deceive, even as people are telling the truth.”

“That’s right!” Nicola shouted, coming to realisations of her own. “That’s what happened here in this hall, to make you think we would betray you. We would never have let Damon and Eleanor out of the chamber if Lord Alwyn’s magic hadn’t been worked on us. Don’t you see, Father? The Book made it happen. It has found a way to create evil out of the truth!”

“Nonsense!” roared Lord Alwyn, with what little force he could muster. “My magic would never allow it!”

Marcel saw the indecision in his father’s face and knew he must convince him somehow. There was worse to fear from the Book’s predictions. Far worse.

He moved close enough to touch the Book of Lies, which had lain all this time on the map table. “But what about the verses that have appeared in the Book?” he insisted. “You must tell my father about the dragon, Lord Alwyn. There is real danger, and you can’t ignore it any longer.”

“Verses? A dragon? What is my son talking about, Alwyn?”

Before the wizard could answer, Marcel opened the Book at the back cover, where the words were still emblazoned for all to see. The steely glare he fixed on Lord Alwyn demanded an answer.

“These verses are nothing to worry about, Sire,” Alwyn said hastily. “Some lines have appeared in the Book of Lies. Here, see for yourself.” He tapped the leather where the words were now exposed. “Starkey believes they describe a dragon. He has convinced himself it is the great dragon of legend.” All eyes
followed as Alwyn swept his arm towards the tapestry, to the scene where Mortregis was tamed by the first Master of the Books.

The wizard’s face broke into a knowing smile. “Starkey’s a fool. He has even tried to conjure Mortregis from the words of this strange verse. But you know as well as I do, Pelham, that Mortregis is not a dragon at all.”

The King nodded. “I know what Mortregis is,” he conceded.

“Do you see now why there is no need to be afraid of this verse?” Lord Alwyn continued. “The key lies in the last two lines:

Till one who understands this verse
Controls the Beast and breaks its curse.”

The wizard addressed Marcel in the patronising tone that adults reserve for ignorant children. “Look closely at the tapestry, Marcel, and you might come to understand as well.”

Marcel backed away towards the tapestry, desperate to solve this strange puzzle, while behind him the King stooped again and pored over the verses, conferring with his sorcerer in quiet murmurs.

Marcel could see his father still trusted the old wizard, who knew so much that he was yet to learn. He must earn his father’s respect by discovering what Mortregis was for himself. For a moment he considered trying another spell, but
something held him back: the words from the rhyme that began his own book of sorcery.
Not magic but wisdom…

He found the embroidered figure of the dragon and began to examine it again. Nicola and Bea were soon at his side.

“Help me,” he begged them both in a whisper. “I have to understand what Mortregis really is. My father won’t listen to me until I know.”

“It
was
a dragon. Can’t they see that?” said Nicola hotly, tracing her fingers over the creature’s teeth.

“Shaped like swords,” muttered Marcel, remembering the verse. He noticed the vicious claws ending in triangular tips like arrows – again, just how the poem described them.

Bea was gone from beside him and he saw that she had moved to inspect the scenes before Mortregis first appeared. When he joined her, he found soldiers fighting one another with real swords, long pikes raised against galloping horsemen and the sky above them filled with an arc of deadly arrows. The death and misery of battle were stitched into each of the dreadful images, the fine needlework capturing every wound, every drop of blood. At the margins, widowed mothers and their children waited anxiously for men who would never come home.

“The horror of battle,” he said softly. He began to walk slowly beside the tapestry, checking every picture sewn into the fabric.

“What are you looking for?” asked Nicola as she followed him, perplexed.

“Soldiers. Fighting. More scenes like the ones back there, at the start of the tapestry.”

Slowly an idea was growing inside him, and by the time they reached the most recent part of the Kingdom’s history, he knew.

“War!” he breathed. At last he understood.

He strode back to Lord Alwyn and the King, who straightened to his full height to hear what his son had to say.

“The Master’s magic is meant to protect your people, isn’t it, Father, and the greatest evil is Mortregis. I saw it in the tapestry. Mortregis is war, and it has risen up again, after all these years, as though it truly were a dragon, to tear your kingdom apart. If the prophecy is right, Starkey and Damon and Eleanor must have convinced the elves and the men of Lenoth Crag to join them after all. Their armies are marching towards Elstenwyck right now!”

The King’s face lost every trace of colour. “Alwyn, could this be true? You are Master of the Books, the Kingdom’s sorcerer. It is your job to keep Mortregis at bay, just as each of the Masters has done before you.”

“Don’t listen to him, Your Majesty, he’s just a boy!” cried Lord Alwyn as he fought his way awkwardly out of the chair. “My magic, the magic of the Book of Lies, has protected this kingdom from the scourge of war since before you were born.”

Marcel couldn’t bear the anguish in the old wizard’s face, but he went on. He must make his father see the truth. “The
Book of Lies has broken free of your magic, Lord Alwyn,” he announced boldly. “It is so full of lies that they have begun to overwhelm the sorcery that brought it to life.”

Marcel could see his father was torn between the old man he had trusted all his life and the son he loved, in spite of all. But as King, he must make a choice. “Could your book be corrupt, Alwyn?”

“The Book of Lies contains my greatest magic. You may trust it as you trust me. It would never deceive you.”

No sooner had he spoken than his own words began to appear opposite the verses, on the final page of the Book. Marcel saw them first, then the King, father and son staring down in disbelief as each letter looped and curled on to the brittle paper. Only then did Lord Alwyn follow their gaze, and his own eyes widened in terror as he realised what was happening.

“Your own Book denies it, Alwyn. What does this mean?” the King demanded.

For once, Lord Alwyn had no ready answer. He was too stunned by his precious creation’s astonishing response.

Looking up at the King, he pleaded, “I have never lied to you, Pelham.”

At this, the Book of Lies heaved all of its pages over until the front cover appeared, and once it had closed its golden sheen glowed in competition with the very sunlight that streamed in through the high windows.