Inkdeath

67. THE OTHER NAME

The Castle in the Lake had been built to protect a few unhappy children from the world, but the longer Mo walked in its corridors the more he felt as if it had been waiting for another task to fulfill one day: to drown the Bluejay in his own darkness between its painted walls. Dustfinger's fiery wolf ran ahead as if it knew the way, and while Mo followed he killed four more soldiers. The castle belonged to the Fire-Dancer and the Bluejay; he read it in their faces, and the anger that Orpheus aroused in him made him strike so often that their blood drenched his black clothes. Black. Orpheus's words had turned his heart black, too.

You ought to have asked them which way to go instead of killing them, he thought bitterly as he bent to pass through an arched gateway. A flock of doves fluttered up. No swifts. Not one. Where was Resa? Well, where did he suppose? In the Adderhead's bedchamber, searching for the Book he had once bound to save her. A swift could fly fast, very fast, and his own steps were heavy as lead from the words Orpheus had written.

There. Was that the tower into which the Adderhead had retreated? It was as Dustfinger had described it. Two more soldiers… they staggered back in horror when they saw him. Kill them quickly, Mo, before they scream. Blood. Blood as red as fire. Hadn't red once been his favorite color? Now the sight of it made him feel ill. He clambered over the dead men, took the silver-gray cloak from one of them, put on the other man's helmet. Maybe the disguise would spare him the killing if lie met any more of them.

The next corridor looked familiar, but there were no guards in sight. The wolf loped on, but Mo stopped outside a door and pushed it open.

The dead books. The Lost Library.

He lowered his sword and went in. Dustfinger's sparks glowed in here, too, burning the smell of mold and decay out of the air.

Books. He leaned the bloodstained sword against the wall, stroked their stained spines, and felt the burden of the words lifting from his shoulders. He was not the Bluejay, not Silvertongue, just Mortimer. Orpheus had written nothing about the bookbinder.

Mo picked up a book. Poor thing, it was a wreck. He took up another and then another – and heard a rustling sound. His hand immediately went to his sword, and Orpheus's words reached for his heart again.

A few piles of books fell over. An arm pushed its way past all the printed corpses, followed by a second arm, without a hand. Balbulus.

"Ah, it's you they're looking for!" He straightened up, ink on the fingers of his left hand. "Since I hid in here from the Piper, not a soldier's come through this door until today. I expect the moldy smell keeps them away. But today there've been two here already. They've certainly kept a better watch on you than on me! So, how did you escape them?"

"With the help of fire and feathers," said Mo, leaning his sword against the wall again. He didn't want to remember. He wanted to forget the Bluejay, just for a few moments, and find happiness instead of misery among parchment and leather-bound covers.

Balbulus followed his glance. No doubt he saw the longing in it. "I've found a few books that are still good for something. Do you want to see them?"

Mo listened for sounds outside. The wolf was silent, but he thought he heard voices. No. They died away again.

Just for a few moments, then.

Balbulus gave him a book not much bigger than his hand. It had a few holes nibbled in it, but it had obviously escaped mildew. The binding was very well made. His fingers had missed leafing through written pages so much. His eyes were so hungry for words that carried him away, instead of capturing and controlling him. How very much his hand wanted to hold a knife that cut not flesh but paper.

"What's that?" whispered Balbulus.

It had turned dark. The fire on the walls had gone out, and Mo couldn't see the book in his hands anymore.

"Silvertongue?"

He turned.

Dustfinger stood in the doorway, a shadow rimmed with fire.

"I've been talking to Orpheus." His voice sounded different. The composure that death had left in him was gone. His old desperation, almost forgotten by both of them, was back.

"What's happened?"

Dustfinger lured fire back out of the darkness and made it build a cage among the books, a cage with a girl in tears inside it.

Brianna. Mo saw on Dustfinger's face the same fear he had so often felt himself. Flesh of his flesh. Child. Such a powerful word. The most powerful of all.

Dustfinger had only to look at him, and Mo read it all in his eyes: the Night-Mare watching his daughter, the price he would have to pay to ransom her.

"So?" Mo listened for sounds outside. "Are the soldiers already out there?"

"I haven't laid the trail yet."

Mo sensed Dustfinger's fear sharply, as if Meggie were the girl in the cage, as if it were her weeping that came out of the fire.

"What are you waiting for? Lead them here!" he said. "It's time my hands bound a book again – even if the job must never be finished. Let them capture the bookbinder, not the Bluejay. They won't notice the difference. And I'll banish the Bluejay forever, bury him deep in the dungeon cell below, with the words that Orpheus wrote."

Dustfinger breathed into the darkness, and instead of the cage the fire formed the sign that Mo had imprinted on the spines of so many books: a unicorn's head. "If that's what you want," he said quietly. "But if you're playing the bookbinder again, then what part is mine?"

"Your daughter's rescuer," said Mo. "My wife's protector. Resa has gone to look for the White Book. Help her to find it, and bring it to me."

So that I can write the end in it, he thought. Three words, that's all it takes. And suddenly a thought occurred to him and made him smile in all the darkness. Orpheus had not written anything at all about Resa, not a single binding word. Who else had he forgotten?