Inkdeath

32. AT LAST

Darius read wonderfully, although in his mouth the words sounded very different from the way Mortimer would have read them (and of course very different again from the voice of Orpheus, that defiler of books). Perhaps Darius's art was most like Meggie's. He read with the innocence of a child, and it seemed to Elinor as if, for the first time, she saw the boy he had once been – a thin, bespectacled boy who loved books as passionately as she did, but with the difference that for him the pages came to life.

Darius's voice was not as full and beautiful as Mortimer's, nor did it have the enthusiasm that lent Orpheus's voice its power. No, Darius took the words on his tongue as carefully as if they might break apart there, might lose their meaning if they were spoken in too loud and firm a tone. All the sadness of the world lay in Darius's voice: the magic of the weak, the quiet and cautious, and their knowledge of the pitiless minds of the strong…

The music of Orpheus's words amazed Elinor as much as on the day she'd first heard him read them. Those words didn't sound at all like the work of the vain fool who had thrown her books at the library walls. Well, that's because he stole them from someone else, thought Elinor, and then she thought of nothing more at all.

Darius's tongue didn't stumble once – perhaps because this time not fear but love made him read. He opened the door between the letters on the page so gently that Elinor felt as if they were stealing into Fenoglio's world like two children slipping into a forbidden room.

When she suddenly found a wall behind her she dared not believe what her fingers were feeling. At first you think it's a dream. Wasn't that how Resa had described it? Well, if this is a dream, thought Elinor, then I never intend to wake up! Her eyes greedily drank in the images suddenly flooding in on her: a square, a well, houses leaning against each other as if they were too old to stand up straight, women in long dresses (most of them very shabby), a flock of sparrows, pigeons, two thin cats, a cart and an old man shoveling garbage into it… Heavens above, the stench was almost unbearable, but all the same Elinor breathed it in deeply.

Ombra! She was in Ombra! What else could her surroundings be? A woman drawing water at the well turned and looked suspiciously at the heavy dark-red velvet dress Elinor was wearing. Oh, drat it! She had rented the dress from a theatrical costume agency, along with the tunic Darius was wearing. She'd asked for "something medieval," and now here she stood looking as conspicuous as a peacock among a flock of crows!

Never mind. You're here, Elinor! When something pulled her hair rather roughly, tears of joy came to her eyes. With a practiced move, she caught the fairy who was about to make off with a gray strand of it. How she'd missed those tiny, fluttering creatures! But hadn't they been blue? This one shimmered in all the iridescent colors of a soap bubble. Captivated, Elinor closed her hands around her catch and examined the fairy through her fingers. The little creature looked rather sleepy. This was wonderful! When the tiny teeth dug into her thumb and the fairy escaped, Elinor laughed out loud, making two women poke their heads out of the nearby windows.

Elinor!

She clapped her hand to her mouth, but she could still feel laughter like sherbet powder fizzing on her tongue. Oh, she was so happy, so idiotically happy. She hadn't felt like this since she was six years old and stole into her father's library to get at the books he wouldn't let her read. Perhaps you ought to drop dead here and now, Elinor, she told herself. At this very moment. How can things get any better?

Two men in colorful garments were crossing the square. Strolling players! They didn't look quite as romantic as Elinor had imagined the Motley Folk, but never mind… they were minstrels, and a brownie was carrying their instruments. His hairy face looked so bemused when he saw her that Elinor instinctively felt her nose. Had something happened to her face? No, surely her nose had always been that size, hadn't it?

"Elinor?"

She turned. Darius! For heaven's sake, she'd completely forgotten him. What was he doing under the rubbish cart?

Looking bewildered, he crawled out from between the wooden wheels and plucked a few not-very-clean blades of straw off his tunic. Oh, Darius! Of all the places in the Inkworld, he had to land under a load of garbage! Just like him! He was a walking disaster area. And the way he was looking around him – as if he'd fallen among thieves. Poor Darius. Wonderful Darius. He was still holding the sheet of paper with Orpheus's words on it, but where was the bag with all the things they'd meant to bring?

Just a moment, Elinor, you were going to bring it. She looked around – and instead of the bag saw Cerberus beside her, snuffling at the strange paving stones with great interest.

"H-h-he'd have starved to death if we'd left him behind," stuttered Darius, still brushing straw off his tunic. "A-a-anyway I suppose he can lead us to his master, and maybe he'll know where we can find the others."

Not a bad idea, Elinor told herself. I'd never have thought of that. But what was making him stammer again?

"Darius! You did it!" she whispered, hugging him so hard that his glasses slipped. "Thank you! Thank you so, so much!"

"Hey, you there, where'd that dog come from?"

Cerberus pressed close to Elinor's legs, growling. Two soldiers were facing them. The soldiers are worse than the highwaymen. Hadn't Resa told her that, too? Most of them will kill for fun sometime or other.

Involuntarily, Elinor took a step back, but she just came up against the wall of the house behind her.

"Well, cat got your tongues?" One of the men punched Darius in the belly with his gloved fist, so hard that he doubled up.

"What do you think you're doing? Leave him alone!" Elinor's voice didn't sound half as fearless as she had hoped. "That's my dog."

"Yours?" The soldier approaching her had only one eye. Fascinated, Elinor stared at the place where the other eye had once been. "Only princesses may keep dogs. Trying to tell me you're a princess?"

He drew his sword and ran the blade over Elinor's dress. "And what sort of clothes are those? You think they make you look like a fine lady? What seamstress made that dress? She ought to be put in the pillory, so she ought!"

The other soldier laughed. "The strolling players wear such garments!" he said. "She's a minstrel woman rather past her prime."

"A minstrel woman? Nah, too ugly for that." The one-eyed man scrutinized Elinor as if he were about to strip off her dress.

She longed to tell him what she thought of his own appearance, but Darius cast her a pleading glance, and the point of the sword pressed menacingly against her stomach as if the one-eyed soldier was thinking of boring a second navel in it. Look down, Elinor! Remember what Resa said. Women keep their eyes lowered in this world.

"Please!" With difficulty, Darius scrambled to his feet. "We… we're strangers here. W-w-we come from far away…"

"And you come to Ombra?" The soldiers laughed. "By the Adderhead's silver, who'd come here of his own free will?"

The one-eyed man was staring at Darius. "Take a look at this!" he said, lifting off his glasses. "He's got the same kind of frame thing as Four-Eyes, the fellow that got the unicorn and the dwarf for the Milksop."

Making a big performance of it, he perched the glasses on his own nose.

"Hey, take that off!" The other man uneasily retreated.

The one-eyed soldier blinked at him through one thick lens and grinned. "I can see all your lies. All your black lies!"

Laughing, he threw the glasses at Darius's feet.

"Wherever you come from," he said, reaching out for Cerberus's collar, "you're going back without any dog. Dogs belong to princes. This one's an ugly brute, but the Milksop will like it all the same."

Cerberus bit the gloved hand so hard that the soldier screamed and fell to his knees. The other man drew his sword, but Orpheus's dog wasn't half as stupid as he was ugly. With the soldier's glove still in his jaws, he turned and ran for his life.

"Quick, Elinor!" Darius swiftly snatched up his twisted glasses and dragged her away with him, while the soldiers, cursing, stumbled off in pursuit of the hellhound. Elinor couldn't remember when she had last run so fast – and even if her heart still felt like a young girl's, her legs were the legs of a rather too stout old woman.

Elinor, this was not the way you imagined your first hours in Ombra, she told herself as she followed Darius down an alley so narrow that she was afraid of getting stuck between the houses. But even if her feet hurt, and she could still feel the tip of that one-eyed oaf's sword in her stomach – never mind! She was in Ombra! At last she was behind the letters on the page! That was all that mattered. And it was hardly to be expected that life would be as tranquil here as in her house at home – leaving aside the fact that recently it hadn't been so tranquil there, either. Well, never mind that… she was here! She was here at last! In the only story with an ending that she really wanted to know, because all the people she loved were in it.

But it's a pity the dog has gone, she thought, as Darius stopped at the end of the alley, unsure which way to go. Cerberus's ugly nose would have come in very useful in this maze of alleyways. and she was probably going to miss him, too. Resa, Meggie,

Mortimer – she felt like shouting their names through the streets. Where are you? I'm here, I'm here at last!

But perhaps they're not here anymore, Elinor, a voice inside her whispered, while the strange sky above them grew dark. Perhaps the three of them died long ago. Hush, she thought. Hush, Elinor. That thought wasn't allowed. It simply was not allowed.