“The towers,” said Farid. “Are they really all pure silver?”
“Oh yes,” said Dustfinger. “Dug from the mountains, this one and others. Roast fowls, young women, fertile land . , . and silver . . the Adder head has a hearty appetite for many things.”
A broad, sandy beach edged the bay. Where it joined the trees a long wall and a tower rose, sand-colored and inconspicuous. There was not a soul to be seen on the beach, no boat was drawn up on the pale sand, only that building – the low tower and the long, tiled rooftops hardly visible behind the wall. A path wound toward it like a viper’s trail, but Dustfinger led them around to the back of the building under cover of the trees. He beckoned impatiently to them before disappearing into the shadow of the wall. The wood of the door outside which he was waiting for them was weathered, and the bell hanging above it was rusty with the salty wind.
Wildflowers grew near the door, faded blossoms and brown seed heads with a fairy nibbling at them. She had paler skin than her woodland sisters.
It all seemed so peaceful. The buzz of a wasp reached Meggie’s ear, mingling with the roaring of the sea, but she remembered only too well how peaceful the mill had looked. Dustfinger had not forgotten it, either. He stood there listening intently before he finally put out his hand and pulled the chain of the rusty bell. His leg was bleeding again – Meggie saw him press his hand to it – but nonetheless he had kept urging them to make haste on the way to this place. “There’s no better physician,” was all he would say when Farid asked where he was taking them, “and none we can trust more. In addition, it’s not far from there to the Castle of Night, and that’s where Meggie still wants to go, doesn’t she?” He had given them some leaves to eat, downy and bitter. “Get them down inside you,” he said when they made faces of disgust. “You can stay where we’re going only if you have at least five of them in your belly.”
The wooden door opened just a crack, and a woman peered through. “By all good spirits!”
Meggie heard her whisper, and then the door opened and a thin, wrinkled hand beckoned them in. The woman who quickly closed it behind them again was just as wrinkled and thin as her hand, and she stared at Dustfinger as if he had fallen straight from heaven.
“Yesterday! He said so yesterday!” she exclaimed. “You wait and see, Bella, he’s back, that’s what he said. Who else would have set the mill ablaze? Who else talks to fire? He didn’t get a wink of sleep all night. He was worried, but you’re all right, aren’t you? What’s the matter with your leg?”
Dustfinger put a finger to his mouth, but Meggie saw that he was smiling. “It could be better,” he said quietly. “And you talk as fast as ever, Bella, but could you take us to the Barn Owl now?”
“Yes, yes, of course!” Bella sounded slightly injured. “I suppose you have that horrible marten in there?” she inquired, with a distrustful look at Dustfinger’s backpack. “Don’t you go letting him out.”
“Of course not,” Dustfinger assured her, casting a glance at Farid, which obviously warned him to say nothing about the second marten asleep in his own backpack.
Without another word, the old woman beckoned them to follow her down a dark, unadorned colonnade. She took small, hasty footsteps, as if she were a squirrel wearing a long dress of coarsely woven fabric. “A good thing you came around the back way,” she said in a lowered voice as she led them past a series of closed doors. “I’m afraid the Adderhead has ears even here now, but luckily he doesn’t pay his informers well enough for them to work in the wing where we treat infectious cases. I hope you gave those two enough of the leaves?”
“Yes, indeed.” Dustfinger nodded, but Meggie saw that he looked around uneasily and inconspicuously put another of the leaves that he had given them into his own mouth. Not until they passed the fragile figures sunning themselves in the courtyard around which the colonnade ran did Meggie realize just where Dustfinger had brought them. It was an infirmary. Farid put his hand to his mouth in horror when they met an old man who looked as pale as if Death had come for him long ago, and he replied to the man’s toothless smile with only a frightened nod.
“Don’t look as if you were about to fall down dead!” Dustfinger whispered to him, although he didn’t look particularly comfortable here, either. “Your fingers will be well tended here, and moreover we’ll be relatively safe, which is more than can be said for many places on this side of the forest.”
“Yes, if there’s one thing the Adderhead fears,” added Bella in knowing tones, “it’s death and the diseases that lead to it. All the same, you shouldn’t let either the patients or the nurses here see more of you than they must. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s never to trust anyone.
Except the Barn Owl, of course.”
“And what about me, Bella?” asked Dustfinger.
“You least of all!” was her only reply. She stopped at a plain wooden door. “It’s a pity your face is so unmistakable,” she told Dustfinger, low-voiced, “or you could have put on a show for our patients. Nothing does the sick more good than a little pleasure.” Then she knocked on the door and, with a nod, stepped aside.
The room on the other side of the door was dark, for the only window was half hidden behind stacks of books. It was the kind of room Mo would have loved. He liked books to look as if someone had only just put them down. Quite unlike Elinor, he saw nothing wrong in leaving them lying there open, waiting for the next reader. The Barn Owl seemed to feel the same. He could hardly be spotted among all those piled books – a small man with short-sighted eyes and broad hands. He looked to Meggie like a mole, except that his hair was gray.
“Didn’t I say so?” He knocked two books off their stacks as he hurried toward Dustfinger. “He’s back,” I said, but they wouldn’t believe it. Obviously, the White Women are letting more and more of the dead come back to life these days!”
The two men embraced. Then the Barn Owl took a step back and looked Dustfinger thoroughly up and down. The physician was an old man, older than Fenoglio, but his eyes were as young as Farid’s. “You look all right,” he commented, pleased. “Except for your leg. What’s the matter with it? Did you get that injury at the mill? One of my women healers was taken up to the castle yesterday to tend two men bitten by fire. She brought back a strange story about an ambush and a horned marten that spits fire. . ”
Up to the castle? Instinctively, Meggie moved toward the physician. “Did she see the prisoners, too?” she interrupted him. “They would just have been taken there – strolling players, men and women. My mother and father are with them.”
The Barn Owl looked at her sympathetically. “Are you the girl that the Black Prince’s men told me about? Your father –”
“– is the man they take for the Bluejay.” Dustfinger finished the sentence. “Do you know how he and the other prisoners are?”
Before the Barn Owl could answer, a girl put her head around the door. She stared at the strangers in alarm. Her eyes lingered on Meggie so long that finally the Barn Owl cleared his throat.