Why could she sleep, although she feared him, while he paced up and down the magnificent bedchamber like an old dancing bear in its cage?
Because he alone felt the truly great fear. The fear of Death. Death waited outside the windows, outside the glass panes paid for by selling his strongest peasants. Death pressed its ugly face against them as soon as darkness swallowed up his castle like a snake swallowing a mouse. He had more torches lit every night, more candles, yet still the fear came – to make him shake and fall on his knees because they trembled so much, to show him his future: the flesh falling from his bones, the worms eating him, the White Women leading him away. The Adderhead pressed his hands to his mouth so that the guards outside the door would not hear him sobbing. Fear. Fear of the end of all his days, fear of the void, fear, fear, fear. Fear that Death was already in his body somewhere, invisible, growing and flourishing and eating him away – the one enemy he could never defeat, never burn or stab or hang, the one enemy from whom there was no escaping.
One night, blacker and more endless than any that had gone before, the fear was particularly terrible, and he had them all woken, as he quite often did, all who were sleeping peacefully in their beds instead of trembling and sweating like him: his wife, the useless physicians, the petitioners, scribes, administrators, his herald, the silver-nosed minstrel. He had the cooks driven into the kitchen to prepare him a banquet, but as he was sitting at his table, his fingers dripping with fat from the freshly roasted meat, a girl came to the Castle of Night. She walked fearlessly past the guards and offered him a deal: a bargain with Death.
That was how it would be. Because she was reading it. How the words made their way out through Meggie’s lips. As if they were weaving the future. Every sound, every character a thread. . Meggie forgot everything around her: the infirmary, the straw mattress she was sitting on, even Farid and his unhappy face as he watched her go. She went on spinning Fenoglio’s story; that was why she was here, spinning it out of threads of sound with her breath and her voice – to save her father and her mother. And this whole strange world that had enchanted her.
When Meggie heard the agitated voices she thought at first that they were coming out of the words, but they grew louder and louder. Reluctantly, she raised her head. She hadn’t read it all yet. There were still a few sentences waiting, waiting for her to teach them to breathe. Look at the words on the page, Meggie, she told herself. Concentrate!
She gave a start when a dull knocking resounded through the infirmary. The voices grew louder, she heard hasty footsteps, and Roxane appeared in the doorway. “They’ve come from the Castle of Night!” she whispered. “They have a picture of you, a strange picture. Quick, come with me!”
Meggie tried to put the parchment in her sleeve until she could read those last few sentences, but then thought better of it and pushed it down the neck of her dress. She hoped it would not show under the firm fabric. She could still taste the words on her tongue, she still saw herself standing before the Adderhead just as she had read it, but Roxane reached for her hand and pulled her along. A woman’s voice came down the colonnade, Bella’s voice, and then the voice of a man, loud and commanding. Roxane did not let Meggie’s hand go but led her on, past the doors behind which the patients slept or else lay awake listening to their own heavy breathing.
The Barn Owl’s room was empty. Roxane took Meggie in with her, bolted the door, and looked around. The window was barred, and the steps were coming closer. Meggie thought she heard the Barn Owl’s voice, and another voice, rough and threatening. Then, suddenly, there was silence. They had stopped outside the door. Roxane put her arm around Meggie’s shoulders.
“They’re going to take you with them!” she whispered as the Barn Owl talked to the intruders on the other side of the door. “We’ll send word to the Black Prince. He has spies in the castle. We’ll try to help you, understand?”
Meggie just nodded.
Someone was hammering on the door. “Open up, little witch, or do we have to come and get you?”
Books, books everywhere. Meggie retreated among the stacks of volumes. There wasn’t a single book here she could have gone to for help, even if she’d wanted to. The knowledge in them could give her no aid. She’d have needed a story for that, but she remembered looking for a suitable story in vain in Capricorn’s house. She glanced at Roxane in search of help – and saw the same helplessness on Roxane’s face, too.
What would happen if they took her away with them? So many sentences were still unread.
Meggie tried desperately to remember just where she had been interrupted. .
More hammering on the door. The wood groaned; it would soon splinter and break. Meggie went to the door, pushed back the bolt, and opened it. She couldn’t count the soldiers standing out in the narrow corridor, but there were a great many of them. They were led by Firefox; Meggie recognized him in spite of the scarf he had tied over his mouth and nose. They all had such scarves wound around their faces, and their eyes above the cloth were terrified. I hope you’ve all caught the plague here, thought Meggie. I hope you die like flies. The soldier beside Firefox stumbled back as if he had heard her thoughts, but it was Meggie’s face that frightened him.
“Witch!” he exclaimed, staring at what Firefox held in his hand. Meggie recognized the narrow silver frame at once. It was her photograph, from Elinor’s library.
A murmur arose among the men-at-arms. But Firefox put his hand roughly under her chin, making her turn her face to him. “I thought so. You’re the girl from the stable,” he said. “I’ll admit you didn’t look to me like a witch there!” Meggie tried to turn her head away, but Firefox’s hand did not let go. “Well done!” he said to a girl who was standing among the men-at-arms looking lost. Her feet were bare, and she wore the same plain tunic as all the women who worked in the infirmary. Carla, wasn’t that her name?
She bent her head and looked at the piece of silver that the soldier pressed into her hand as if she’d never seen such a beautiful, shiny coin before. “He said I’d get work,” she whispered almost inaudibly. “In the castle kitchen. The minstrel with the silver nose said so.”
Firefox shrugged scornfully. “You’ve come to the wrong man here,” he said, turning his back to her heedlessly. “And this time I’m to take you, too, sawbones,” he said to the Barn Owl. “You’ve let the wrong sort of visitors through your gate once too often. I told the Adderhead it was high time to light a fire here, a great fire. I can still do that kind of thing extremely well, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Someone’s told him his death will come out of a fire. Since then he won’t let us light anything but candles.” There was no missing his contempt for his master’s weakness.
The Barn Owl looked at Meggie. I’m sorry, said his eyes. And she read a question in them, too: Where’s Dustfinger?’Yes, where?
“Let me go with her.” Roxane went up to Meggie and tried to put an arm around her shoulders again, but Firefox pushed her roughly back.
“Only the girl in the witch picture,” he said, “and the physician.”
Roxane, Bella, and a few of the other women followed them to the gate leading out to the sea.