Inkspell

12. UNINVITED GUESTS

On the day when Meggie disappeared, silence moved back into Elinor's house, but not the silence of the old days when only her books lived there with her. The silence that now filled the rooms and corridors tasted of sorrow. Resa wept a great deal, and Mortimer said nothing, as if paper and ink had swallowed up not just his daughter, but all the words in the world with her. He spent a lot of time in his workshop, ate little, hardly slept – and on the third day Darius, looking very anxious, went to Elinor and told her that Silvertongue was packing up all his tools.

When Elinor entered his workshop, out of breath because Darius had been tugging her along behind him so fast, Mortimer was throwing the stamps he used for gold leaf into a crate, pell-mell – tools that he normally handled as carefully as if they were made of glass.

"What the devil are you doing?" inquired Elinor.

"What does it look like?" he replied and began clearing away his sewing frame. "I'm going to find another profession. I never want to touch a book again, curse them all. Other people can listen to the stories they tell and mend the clothes they wear. I want nothing more to do with them."

When Elinor went to fetch Resa to help her, Resa just shook her head.

"Well, I can understand why those two are useless just now," commented Elinor, as she and Darius sat at breakfast by themselves yet again. "How could Meggie do a thing like that to them? What was her idea – did she want to break her poor parents' hearts? Or prove once and for all that books are dangerous?"

Darius had no answer but silence. He had been the same all these last few sad days.

"For heaven's sake, all of you silent as the grave!" Elinor snapped at him. "We must do something to get the silly creature back. Anything. Good God, it can't be as difficult as all that! After all, there are no fewer than two Silvertongues under this roof!"

Darius looked at her in alarm and choked on his tea. He had left his gift unused for so long that no doubt it seemed like a dream to him, and he didn't want to be reminded of it.

"All right, all right, you don't have to read aloud," Elinor assured him impatiently. Good God, that owlish gaze of horror! She could have shaken him. "Mortimer can do it! But what should he read? Think, Darius! If we want to fetch her back, should it be something about the Inkworld or about our own world? Oh, I'm all confused. Perhaps we can write something like: Once upon a time there was a grumpy middle-aged woman called Elinor who loved nothing but her books, until one day her niece moved in with her, along with the niece's husband, and daughter. Elinor liked that, but one day the daughter set off on a very, very stupid journey, and Elinor swore that she would give all her books away if only the child would come home. She packed them up in big crates, and as she was putting the last book in, Meggie walked through the doorway.… Heavens above, don't stare at me in that sympathetic way!" she snapped at Darius. "I'm trying to do something, at least! And you yourself keep saying: 'Mortimer is a master, it takes him only a couple of sentences!'"

Darius adjusted his glasses. "Yes, only a couple of sentences," he said in his gentle, uncertain voice. "But they must be sentences describing a whole world, Elinor. The words must make music. They must be so closely interwoven that the voice doesn't fall through."

"Oh, for goodness' sake!" Elinor said brusquely – although she knew he was right. Mortimer had once tried to explain it to her in almost the same way: the mystery of why not every story would come to life. But she didn't want to hear about that, not now. Damn you, Elinor, she thought bitterly, damn you three times over for all those evenings you spent with the silly child imagining what it would be like to live in that other world, among fairies, brownies, and glass men. There had been many such evenings, very many, and Mortimer had often put his head around the door and asked, sarcastically, if they couldn't discuss something other than Wayless Woods and blue-skinned fairies just for once.

Well, at least Meggie knows all she needs to know about that world, thought Elinor, wiping the tears from her eyes. She realizes she must be careful of the Adderhead and his men-at-arms, and she mustn't go too far into the forest or she'll probably be eaten, torn to pieces, or trodden underfoot. And she'd be well advised not to look up when she passes a gallows. She knows she must bow when a prince rides by, and that she can still wear her hair loose because she's only a girl… Damn it, here came the tears again! Elinor was mopping the corners of her eyes with the hem of her blouse when someone rang the front doorbell.

Many years later, she was still angry with herself for the stupidity that didn't warn her to look through the spy hole in the door before opening it. Of course she had thought it was Resa or Mortimer outside. Of course. Stupid Elinor. Stupid, stupid Elinor. She had realized her mistake only when she opened the door, and there stood the stranger in front of her.

He was not very tall and rather too well fed, with pale skin and equally pale fair hair. The eyes behind his rimless glasses looked slightly surprised, almost innocent like a child's. He opened his mouth to speak as Elinor put her head around the door, but she cut him short.

"What are you doing here?" she barked. "This is private property. Didn't you see the sign down by the road?"

He had come in a car; the impudent fool had simply brought it up her drive! Elinor saw it, a dusty, dark blue vehicle, standing beside her own station wagon. She thought she saw a huge dog on the passenger seat. That was the last straw!

"Yes, of course I did!" The stranger's smile was so innocent that it suited his childish face. "Why, no one could miss seeing the sign, and I really do apologize, Signora Loredan, for my sudden and unannounced arrival."

Heavens above – it took Elinor's breath away. The moonfaced man's voice was almost as beautiful as Mortimer's, deep and velvety like a cushion. Coming from that round face with its childlike eyes, it was so incongruous that you felt almost as if the stranger had swallowed its real owner and taken over his voice.

"Never mind the apologies!" said Elinor abruptly, once she had gotten over her surprise. "Just get out." And so saying, she was about to close the door again, but the stranger only smiled (a smile that no longer looked quite so innocent) and jammed his shoe between the door and the frame. A dusty brown shoe.

"Do forgive me, Signora Loredan," he said softly, "but I've come about a book. A truly unique book. I have heard, of course, that you have a remarkable library, but I can assure you that you don't yet have this book in your collection."

With an almost reverent expression on his face, he put a hand under his pale, creased linen jacket. Elinor recognized the book at once. Of course. It was the only book that made her heart beat faster not because it was a particularly fine edition or because she longed to read it. No. At the sight of that book Elinor's heart beat faster for only one reason: because she feared it like a ferocious animal.

"Where did you get that from?" She answered her question herself, but unfortunately a little too late. Suddenly, very suddenly, the memory of the boy's story came back to her. "Orpheus!" she whispered – and she wanted to shout, loud enough for Mortimer to hear her in his workshop, but before a sound could come out of her mouth someone slipped out of the cover of the rhododendron bushes by the front door, quick as a lizard, and put his hand over her mouth.

"Well, my lady bookworm," a man's voice purred in her ear. Elinor had so often heard that voice in her dreams, and every time she found herself fighting for breath at the sound of it! Even in broad daylight the effect was just as bad. Basta pushed her roughly back into the house. Of course, he had a knife in his hand; Elinor could as easily imagine Basta without a nose as without a knife. Orpheus turned and waved to the strange car. A man built like a wardrobe got out, strolled around the car at a leisurely pace, and opened the back door. An old woman stuck out her legs and reached for his arm.

Mortola. The Magpie.

Another regular visitor to Elinor's nightmares.

The old woman's legs were thickly bandaged under her dark stockings, and she leaned on a stick as she walked toward Elinor's house on the wardrobe-man's arm. She hobbled into the hall with a grimly determined expression, as if she were taking possession of the whole house, and the look she gave Elinor was so openly hostile that its recipient felt weak at the knees, hard as she tried to hide her fear. A thousand dreadful memories came back to her – memories of a cage stinking of raw meat, a square lit by the beams of glaring car headlights, and fear, dreadful fear…

Basta closed the door of the house behind Mortola. He hadn't changed: the same thin face, the same way of narrowing his eyes, and there was an amulet dangling around his neck to ward off the bad luck that Basta thought lurked under every ladder, behind every bush.

"Where are the others?" Mortola demanded while the wardrobe-man looked around him with a foolish expression. The sight of all those books seemed to fill him with boundless astonishment. He was probably wondering what on earth anyone would do with so many.

"The others? I don't know who you're talking about." Elinor thought her voice sounded remarkably steady for a woman half dead with terror.

Mortola's small, round chin jutted aggressively. "You know perfectly well. I'm talking about Silvertongue and his witch of a daughter, and that maidservant, the one he calls his wife. Shall I get Basta to set fire to a few of your books, or will you call the three of them for us of your own accord?"

Basta? Basta's afraid of fire, Elinor wanted to reply, but she refrained. It wasn't difficult to hold a lighted match to a book. Even Basta, who feared fire so much, would probably be capable of that small action, and the wardrobe-man didn't look bright enough to be afraid of anything. I just have to keep stalling, thought Elinor. After all, they don't know about the workshop in the garden, or about Darius, either.

"Elinor?" she heard Darius call at that very moment. Before she could reply, Basta's hand was over her mouth again. She heard Darius come down the corridor with his usual rapid tread. "Elinor?" he called again. Then the footsteps stopped as abruptly as his voice.

"Surprise, surprise!" purred Basta. "Aren't you glad to see us, Stumbletongue? A couple of old friends come to pay you a visit!" Basta's left hand was bandaged, Elinor noticed when he took his fingers away from her mouth, and she remembered the hissing creature that Farid said had slipped through the words in Dustfinger's place. What a pity it didn't eat more of our knife-happy friend, she thought.

"Basta!" Darius's voice was little more than a whisper.

"That's right, Basta! I'd have been here much sooner, believe you me, but they put me in jail for a while on account of something that happened years ago. No sooner was Capricorn gone than all the people who'd been too scared to open their mouths suddenly felt very brave. Well, never mind. You could say they did me a favor, because who do you think they put in my cell one fine day? I never could get him to tell me his real name, so let's call him by the name he's given himself: Orpheus!" He slapped the man so hard on the back that he stumbled forward. "Yes, our good friend Orpheus!" Basta put an arm around his shoulders. "The Devil did me a real favor when he made Orpheus, of all people, my cellmate – or perhaps our story is so keen to have us back that it sent him? Well, one way or another, we had a good time, didn't we?"

Orpheus did not look at him. He straightened his jacket in embarrassment and inspected Elinor's bookshelves.

"Hey, just look at him!" Basta dug his elbow roughly into Orpheus's ribs. "You wouldn't believe how often I've told him there's nothing to be ashamed of in going to jail, particularly when your prisons here are so much more comfortable than our dungeons at home. Come on, tell them how I found out about your invaluable gifts. How I caught you one night reading yourself that stupid dog out of the book! Reading himself a dog! Lord knows, I could think of better ideas."

Basta laughed nastily, and Orpheus straightened his tie with nervous fingers. "Cerberus is still in the car," he told Mortola. "He doesn't like it there at all. We ought to bring him in!"

The wardrobe-man turned to the door. He obviously had a soft spot for animals, but Mortola stopped him with an impatient gesture.

"The dog stays where it is. I can't stand that creature!" Frowning, she looked around Elinor's hall. "Well, I expected your house to be bigger than this," she said, with assumed disappointment. "I thought you were rich."

"So she is!" Basta flung his arm so roughly around Orpheus's neck that his glasses slipped down his nose. "But she spends all her money on books. What would she pay us for the book we took from Dustfinger, do you think?" He pinched Orpheus's round cheeks. "Yes, our friend here made good juicy bait for the fire-eater. He may look like a bullfrog, but even Silvertongue can't make the words obey him so well, let alone Darius. Ask Dustfinger – Orpheus sent him home as if nothing could be easier! Not that the fire-eater will -"

"Hold your tongue, Basta!" Mortola interrupted him abruptly. "You've always liked the sound of your own voice. Well?" She impatiently tapped her stick on the marble tiles that were Elinor's pride and joy. "Where are they? Where are the others? I shan't ask again!"

Come on, Elinor told herself, lie to them. Lie yourself blue in the face! Quick! But she hadn't even opened her mouth when she heard the key in the lock. Oh no! No, Mortimer! she prayed silently. Stay where you are! Go back to the workshop with Resa, shut yourselves up there, but please, please don't come in just now!

Of course her prayers made not the slightest difference.

Mortimer opened the door, came in with his arm around Resa's shoulders – and stopped abruptly at the sight of Orpheus. Before he had entirely grasped what was going on, the man built like a wardrobe had closed the door behind him in obedience to a signal from Mortola.

"Hello there, Silvertongue!" said Basta in a menacingly soft voice, as he snapped his knife open in front of Mortimer's face. "And isn't this our lovely mute Resa? Excellent! Two birds with one stone. All we need now is the little witch."

Elinor saw Mortimer close his eyes for a moment, as if hoping that Basta and Mortola would have disappeared when he opened them again. But, naturally, no such thing happened.

"Call her!" ordered Mortola, as she stared at Mortimer with such hatred in her eyes that Elinor felt afraid.

"Who?" he asked, without taking his eyes off Basta.

"Don't pretend to be more stupid than you are!" Mortola said crossly. "Or do you want me to let Basta cut the same pattern on your wife's face as he did on the fire-eater's?"

Basta ran his thumb lovingly over the gleaming blade.

"If by 'little witch' you mean my daughter," replied Mortimer huskily, "she isn't here."

"Oh no?" Mortola hobbled toward him. "Be careful what you say. My legs are aching after that endless drive to get here, so I'm not feeling particularly patient."

"She isn't here," Mortimer repeated. "Meggie has gone away, with the boy you took the book from. He asked her to take him to Dustfinger, she did it – and she went with him."

Mortola narrowed her eyes incredulously. "Nonsense!" she exclaimed. "How could she have done it without the book?" But Elinor saw the doubt in her face.

Mortimer shrugged. "The boy had a handwritten sheet of paper with him – the one that sent Dustfinger back, apparently."

"That's impossible!" Orpheus looked at him in astonishment. "Are you seriously saying your daughter read herself into the story, using my words?"

"Oh, so you're this Orpheus, are you?" Mortimer returned his glance, not in a very friendly way. "Then you're responsible for the loss of my daughter."

Orpheus straightened his glasses and gave Mortimer an equally hostile look. Then, abruptly, he turned to Mortola. "Is this man Silvertongue?" he demanded. "He's lying! I'm sure of it! He's lying! No one can read themselves into a story. He can't, his daughter can't, no one can. I've tried it myself, hundreds of times. It doesn't work!"

"Yes," said Mortimer wearily. "That's just what I thought, too. Until four days ago."

Mortola stared at him. Then she signaled to Basta. "Shut them up in the cellar!" she ordered. "And then look for the girl. Search the whole house."