CHAPTER 65
MADE VISIBLE
You must go! You’re not safe anywhere in this castle!" I Dustfinger kept saying it, again and again, and Mo kept shaking his head.
"I have to find the White Book."
"Let me look for it. I’ll write the three words. Even I can write well enough for that!"
"No, that wasn’t the bargain. Suppose Death comes for Meggie all the same? I bound the Book, I must rid the world of it. And the Adder wants to see you dead as much as me."
"I’ll simply slip out of my skin again."
"You only just found your way back into it last time."
How familiar the two of them sounded with each other. Like two sides of a coin, like two faces of the same man.
"What bargain are you talking about?"
They looked at Resa as if they both wished her far, far away. Mo was pale, but his eyes were dark with anger, and his hand kept going to his old wound. What had they done to him down in that terrible cell?
Dust lay like snow in the room where they were hiding. The plaster on the ceiling was so damp that it had crumbled away in places. The Castle in the Lake was sick, Perhaps it was already dying, but on its walls lambs still slept beside wolves, dreaming of a world that never was. The room had two narrow windows. A dead tree stood in the courtyard below.
Walls, parapets, oriel towers, bridges . . . a stony trap, and Resa wanted her wings back. How her skin was itching. As if the feathered quills were just waiting to pierce through again.
"Mo what kind of bargain?" She came between the two men.
When he told her she began crying. Now at last she understood. He was promised to Death whether he stayed or fled. Caught in a trap made of stone and ink. And so was their daughter.
He took her in his arms, but he wasn’t really with her. He was still down in the cell, drowning in hate and fear. His heart was beating so violently that she was afraid it might break in his breast.
"I’ll kill him," she heard him say as she wept into his shoulder. "I ought to have done it long ago. And after that I’ll look for the Book."
She knew only too well who he meant. Orpheus. He pushed her gently away from him and picked up his sword. It was covered with blood, but he wiped the blade clean on his sleeve. He still wore the black clothes of a bookbinder, although it was a long time since that had been his trade. He made for the door with determination, but Dustfinger barred his way.
"That’s your idea?!" he said. "Very well, so Orpheus read the words, but you are making them come true!" He raised his hands, and fire wrote the words in the air, terrible words, all speaking of only one thing. The Last Song of the Bluejay.
Mo stretched out his hand as if to extinguish them, but they scorched his fingers and burned his heart.
"Orpheus is just waiting for you to come to him!" said Dustfinger. "He’s going to serve you up to the Adderhead on a platter made of ink. Resist it! It’s not a pleasant feeling to read the words that guide your actions. No one knows that better than I do, but they didn’t come true for me, either. They have only as much power as you give them. You won’t go to Orpheus, I will. I don’t know much about killing. Even dying didn’t teach me that, but I can steal the books from which he takes the words. And once you can think straight again, we’ll look for the White Book together."
"Suppose the Adder’s soldiers find Mo here first?" Resa was still staring at the burning words. She read them again and again.
Dustfinger passed his hand over the picture fading on the walls of the room, and the painted wolf began to move. "I’ll leave you a watchdog, though not quite such a fierce one as Orpheus’s, but it will howl when the soldiers come, and I hope it can hold them off long enough to give you time to find another hiding place. Fire will teach the Adder’s men to fear every shadow."