Inkdeath

48. WAITING

The Castle in the Lake was an oyster that had closed itself off from the world. Not a single window had a view of the mountains around. Not a single window looked out on the lake lapping at its dark walls. Once you had left the gate behind you there was only the castle: its dark and narrow courtyards, covered bridges linking its towers, walls painted with worlds like nothing that existed in the world outside these windowless fortifications. They showed gardens and gently rolling hills populated by unicorns, dragons, and peacocks, and above them an eternally blue sky with white clouds drifting over it. The pictures were everywhere, in the rooms, along the corridors, on the courtyard walls. You saw them through every window (and there were many windows inside the castle). Painted views of a world that didn't exist. But the moist breath of the lake made paint flake off the stones, so that it seemed in many places as if someone had tried to wipe the painted lies off the walls.

Only from the towers, where the view was not interrupted by walls, oriels, and roofs, could you see the world that really surrounded the castle, the great lake and the mountains that lay around it. Mo was immediately drawn to the battlements, where he could feel the sky above him and look at the world that fascinated him so much that he kept making his way deeper and deeper into it, even though it might not be any more real than the pictures on the walls. But Violante just wanted to see the rooms with windows looking out on painted worlds, rooms where her mother had played in the past.

She moved through the castle as if she had come home, tenderly caressing the furniture, which was gray with dust, scrutinizing every piece of earthenware that she found under the cobwebs, and examining the pictures on the walls as closely as if they told her tales of her mother. "This was the room where she and her sisters did their lessons. Look, those were their desks! They had a horrible tutor!" "This was where my grandmother slept!" "This was where they kept the hounds, this was the dovecote for the pigeons who carried their messages."

The longer Mo followed her, the more it seemed to him that this painted world was exactly what Violante's nearsighted eyes wanted to see. Perhaps she felt safer in a world resembling the scenes in Balbulus's books – invented, easily controlled, timeless and unchanging, every corner of it familiar.

Would Meggie have liked to see painted unicorns from her window, he wondered, eternally green hills, clouds that were always the same? No, he answered himself, Meggie would have climbed up to the towers like him.

"Did your mother ever tell you if she was really happy here?" Mo couldn't keep the doubt out of his voice, and Violante heard it The girlish softness that changed her face so much disappeared at once, and the Adderhead's daughter was back.

"Of course! Very happy. Until my father made my grandfather give him her hand in marriage and took her away to the Castle of Night!" She looked at him defiantly, as if her mere gaze could force him to believe her – and to love this castle.

There was one room that didn't let you forget the outside world. Mo first found it when he was exploring on his own, searching for someplace where he wouldn't feel that he was a prisoner again, if in a beautifully painted dungeon this time. Daylight dazzled him as he suddenly stepped into a hall in the west wing of the castle. It had so many windows that they turned the walls into lace. Light, reflected from the water of the lake, danced on the ceiling, and the mountains seemed to line up outside as if they wanted nothing more than to be seen through all those windows. The beauty of the view took Mo's breath away, although it was a dark beauty, and his eyes instinctively went to the somber mountain slopes in search of any trace of human beings. He filled his lungs with the cold air carried in on the wind, and did not see that he was not alone until he turned and looked south, to where Ombra lay somewhere beyond the mountains. Dustfinger was sitting in one of the windows, the wind in his hair, his face turned toward the cold sun.

"The strolling players call it the Hall of a Thousand Windows," he said, without turning, and Mo wondered how long he had been sitting there. "They say that Violante's mother and sisters had poor eyesight because their father would never let them look into the distance, for fear of what awaited them there. Daylight began to hurt their eyes. They couldn't even make out the pictures on the walls of their rooms clearly anymore, and a physician who came here with a couple of the Motley Folk told Violante's grandfather that his daughters would go blind unless he let them see the real world now and then. So the Prince of Salt – that was what people called him, because he'd made a fortune in the salt trade – had these windows made in the walls and ordered his daughters to look out of them for an hour every day. But while they did so a minstrel had to tell them about the terrors of the outside world – the heartlessness and cruelty of human beings, disease running rife and hungry wolves – so that they'd never want to go out into it and leave their father."

"What a strange story." As Mo went over to Dustfinger's side he could feel the Fire-Dancer's longing for Roxane as strongly as if it were his own.

"It's only a story now," said Dustfinger. "But it all really happened, here in this place." He blew a gentle breath into the cool air, and beside them three girls were formed out of fire. They stood close together, staring into the distance, where the mountains were as blue as yearning.

"It's said they tried to run away with the strolling players several times. Their father tolerated the Motley Folk only because they brought him news from other princely courts. But neither the girls nor the strolling players ever got any farther than the first trees. Their father had them caught and brought his daughters back to the castle. As for the strolling players, he had them tied up there" – Dustfinger pointed to a rock on the banks of the lake – "and the girls had to stand at the window" – (the figures did exactly what Dustfinger described) – "freezing cold and trembling with fear, until giants came and dragged the strolling Players away."

Mo couldn't take his eyes off the fiery girls. The flames depicted their fear and loneliness as expressively as Balbulus could have done with his brush. No, Violante's mother had not been happy in this castle, whatever her daughter said.

"What's he doing?"

Suddenly, Violante was standing behind them. Brianna and Tullio were with her.

Dustfinger snapped his fingers, and the flames lost their human form and twined around the window like a fiery plant. "Don't worry. There'll just be a little soot left on the stones, and for the moment," he added, glancing at Brianna, who was staring into the flames as if enchanted, "it looks beautiful, don't you think?"

It did. The fire surrounded the window with red leaves and flowers of gold. Tullio instinctively took a step toward it, but Violante roughly pulled him back to her side. "Put it out, Fire-Dancer!" she ordered Dustfinger. "This minute."

Shrugging his shoulders, Dustfinger obeyed. A whisper, and the fire went out. Violante's anger did not impress him, and that alarmed the Adderhead's daughter. Mo could see it in her eyes.

"It did look beautiful, don't you agree?" he asked, passing his finger over the sooty sill. It was as if he could still see the three girls standing at the window.

"Fire is never beautiful," said Violante with scorn. "Have you ever seen anyone die by fire? They burn for a long time."

She obviously knew what she was talking about. How old had she been when she first saw someone die at the stake, how old when she first saw a hanging? How much darkness could children bear before darkness became a part of them forever?

"Come with me, Bluejay!" Violante turned abruptly. "There's something I want to show you. Only you! Brianna, get some water and wash off that soot."

Brianna hurried away without a word, but not without casting a quick glance at her father, who held Mo back as he was about to follow Her Ugliness.

"Beware of her!" he whispered. "Princes' daughters have a weakness for mountebanks and robbers."

"Bluejay!" Violante's voice was sharp with impatience. "Where are you?"

Dustfinger painted a fiery heart on the floor.

Violante was waiting on the staircase in the tower as if afraid of the windows. Perhaps she liked shadows because she still felt the mark on her cheek from which her cruel nickname came. Meggie had been called very different pet names when she was little: "my pretty," "sweetheart," "honey,"… Meggie had grown up in the certainty that the mere sight of her filled Mo with love. Presumably, Violante's mother had shown her daughter that kind of love, but everyone else had looked at her and shuddered, or felt pity at the most. Where had Violante hidden, as a child, from all those glances of dislike and all that pain? Had she taught her heart to despise everyone who could show the world a pretty face? Poor Adder's daughter, thought Mo as he saw her standing on the dark staircase, so lonely in her dark heart… No, Dustfinger was wrong, Violante loved nothing and no one, not even herself.

She hurried down the steps as if running away from her own shadow. She always walked fast and impatiently, picking up her long skirts as if cursing the clothes women had to wear in this world at every step she took.

"Come with me. I want to show you something. My mother always told me the library of this castle was in the north wing, with the unicorn pictures. I don't know when it was moved, or why, but see for yourself… the tower guardroom, the scribe's room, the women's room," she whispered as she walked. "The bridge to the north tower, the bridge to the south tower, the aviary courtyard, the hounds' courtyard…" She really did move around the castle as if she had lived in it for years.

How often had she studied the books describing this place! Mo could hear the lake as she led him through a courtyard containing empty cages, gigantic cages made of metalwork as elaborate as if the bars were meant to be substitute trees for the birds inside. He heard water breaking on the stones, but the walls surrounding this courtyard were painted with beech and oak trees, with flocks of birds sitting in their branches: sparrows, larks, wild doves, nightingales and falcons, crossbills and robin redbreasts, woodpeckers and hummingbirds dipping their beaks into red flowers. A blue jay sat beside a swallow.

"My mother and her sisters loved birds. So my grandfather didn't just have them painted on the walls, he had live birds brought here from the most distant lands and filled these cages with them. He had the cages covered in winter, but my mother crept in under the covers. Sometimes she would sit for hours in one of the cages, until the nursemaids found her and plucked the birds' feathers from her hair."

She hurried on. A covered passage under a gateway, another courtyard. Kennels, hunting scenes on the walls, and above it all the sound of the water of the lake, so far away and yet so close. Of course Violante's mother loved birds, thought Mo. She wished she had wings, too. No doubt she and her sisters dreamed of flying away when they climbed into the cages and waited for their fine dresses to be covered with feathers.

It saddened him to think of the three lonely girls, but all the same he would have loved to show Meggie the cages and the painted birds, the unicorns and dragons, the Hall of a Thousand Windows, even the Impregnable Bridge that seemed to be hovering over the lake when you looked down on it from above. You'll tell Meggie about all this one day, he said to himself, as if just imagining it could make the words true.

Another staircase, another covered bridge like a tunnel suspended between the towers. The door at which Violante stopped was stained black, like all the doors in the castle. The wood had swelled, and she had to brace her shoulder against it to open it.

"It's terrible!" she said, and she was right. Mo couldn't make out much in the long room. Two narrow windows let in only a little light and air, but even if he hadn't been able to see anything he would have smelled it. The books were stacked like firewood by the damp walls, and the cold air smelled so strongly of mold that he put his hand over his mouth and nose.

"Look at them!" Violante picked up the nearest book and held it out to him, tears in her eyes. "They're all like that!"

Mo took the book from her hand and tried to open it, but the pages had stuck together in a single blackened, musty-smelling lump. Mold covered the cut edges of the pages like foam. The covers were eaten away. What he was holding wasn't a book anymore – it was the corpse of a book, and for a moment Mo felt nausea as he thought that he had condemned the Book he had bound for the Adderhead to the same fate. Did it look as bad as this one by now? Hardly, or it would have killed the Adderhead long ago, and the White Women wouldn't be reaching out their hands to Meggie.

"I've looked at so many of them. Hardly any of them are in a better state! How can it have happened?"

Mo put the ruined book back with the others.

"Well, wherever the library originally was, I'm afraid there's no safe place for books in this castle. Even if your grandfather tried to forget the lake outside, it's still there. The air is so damp that the books started rotting, and since no one knew how to save them I suppose they were put in this room, in the hope that they'd dry out more quickly here than in the library. A bad mistake. They must have been worth a fortune."

Violante pressed her lips together and passed her hand over the crumbling covers, as if stroking a dead pet's coat for the last time. "My mother described them to me even more vividly than the rest of this castle! Luckily, she took some to the Castle of Night with her, and then I took most of those to Ombra. As soon as I arrived I asked my father-in-law to send for the other books, too. After all, this castle had been empty for years. But who listens to an eight-year-old girl? 'Forget the books, and the castle where they stand,' that's what he said whenever I asked him. I'm not sending my men to a place like the Castle in the Lake, not for the finest books in the world. Haven't you heard of the fish your grandfather bred in the lake, and the eternal mists? Not to mention the giants.' As if giants hadn't disappeared from these mountains years ago! He was such a fool! A greedy, gluttonous fool!" Anger took the sadness from her voice.

Mo looked around. The idea of the treasures that had once been hidden between all these wrecked covers nauseated him more than the stench of mold.

"You can't do anything for the books now, can you?"

He shook his head. "No. There's no remedy for mold. Although you say that the Adderhead has found one. I don't suppose you know what it is?"

"Oh yes. But you won't like it." Violante picked up one of the spoiled books. This one would still open, but the pages fell apart in her fingers. "He's had the White Book dipped in fairy blood. They say that if that hadn't worked he'd have tried human blood."

Mo felt as if he could see the blank pages he had cut in the Castle of Night soaking up the blood. "That's appalling!" he said.

It obviously amused Violante that such a ridiculous piece of cruelty could shake him. "Apparently, my father mixed the fairy blood with the blood of fire-elves so that it would dry more quickly," she went on, unmoved. "Their blood is very hot, did you know that? Hot as liquid fire."

"Indeed?" Mo's voice was hoarse with disgust. "I hope you aren't planning to try the same remedy with these books. Believe me, it wouldn't help them now."

"If you say so."

Was he just imagining the disappointment in her voice?

He turned around. He didn't want to see the dead books anymore. Nor did he want to think of those pages drenched in blood.

As he came through the doorway, Dustfinger moved away from the painted wall of the corridor. It was almost as if he were stepping out of a book again. "We have a visitor, Silvertongue," he said. "Although not the one we were expecting."

"Silvertongue?" Violante appeared in the open doorway. "Why do you call him that?"

"Oh, it's a long story." Dustfinger gave her a smile which she did not return. "I assure you the name fits him at least as well as the one you give him. And he's had it very much longer."

"Has he?" Violante looked at Dustfinger with barely concealed dislike. "Is that what they call him among the dead, too?"

Dustfinger turned and ran his finger over the gold-mocker sitting among the painted branches of a rosebush. "No.

No one goes by any name among the dead. We're all alike there. Mountebanks and princes. You'll find that out yourself someday."

Violante's face froze, and once again it looked like her father's, "My husband once came back from the dead, too. But he didn't tell me mountebanks were so highly honored there."

"Did he tell you anything about it at all?" Dustfinger replied, looking so directly at Violante that she turned pale. "I could tell you a long tale about your husband. I could tell you I've seen him twice among the dead. But I think you should greet your visitor now. He's not in a very good way."

"Who is this visitor?"

Dustfinger plucked a fiery paintbrush out of the air.

"Balbulus?" Violante looked at him in disbelief.

"Yes," said Dustfinger. "And the Piper has left the mark of your father's anger on him."