Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

if he wanted to be sure that any words he used were in Inkheart, too. It was a nuisance, but it had to be done, and so far his method had proved its merits.

"All ready!" Ironstone nodded eagerly.

Good! The words were already coming. Orpheus sensed them like a tingling of his scalp. As soon as he picked up the pen he could hardly dip it in the ink fast enough.

Dustfinger. . . the tears still came to his eyes when he remembered seeing him lying dead in the mine. Certainly one of the worst moments of his life.

And how the promise he’d given Roxane had come to haunt him, even if she had never believed a word of it! He had given it with the dead man at his feet. "I’ll find words as precious and intoxicating as the scent of a lily, words to beguile Death and open the cold fingers he has closed around Dustfinger’s warm heart!" He had been looking for those words ever since he arrived in this world—even if Farid and Fenoglio thought he did nothing but write unicorns and rainbow-colored fairies into it. But after his first failed attempts he had accepted the bitter fact that beauty of sound alone was not enough in this case. Words like lilies would never bring Dustfinger back. Death demanded a more substantial price—a price paid in flesh and blood.

Incredible that he hadn’t hit upon the idea of Mortimer before—the man who had made Death a laughingstock to the living when he had bound an empty book to make the Adderhead immortal!

So away with him! This world needed only one silver tongue, and it was his. Once he had fed Mortimer to Death, and Fenoglio’s brain was wrecked by the drink, only he would go on telling this story, on and on with a suitable part in it for Dustfinger and a not inconsiderable part for himself.

"Yes, call up the White Women for me, Mortimer!" whispered Orpheus as he filled the parchment with word after word in his elegant script. "You’ll never know what I’ve whispered into their pale ears first! ‘Look what I’ve brought you! The Bluejay.

Take him to your cold lord with greetings from Orpheus, and give me the FireDancer in exchange.’ Ah, Orpheus, Orpheus, they can say many things about you, but they can never call you stupid."

He dipped his pen in the ink with a soft laugh — and spun around when the door opened behind him. Farid came in. Damn it, where was Oss? "What do you want?"

he snapped at the boy. "How often do I have to tell you to knock before coming in?

Next time I’ll throw the inkwell at your stupid head. Bring me wine! The best we have."

How the lad looked at him as he closed the door. He hates me, thought Orpheus.

He liked that idea. In his experience only the powerful were hated, and that was what he meant to be in this world. Powerful.

CHAPTER 23

THE GRAVEYARD OF THE STROLLING PLAYERS

The strolling players’ graveyard lay above a deserted village. Carandrella. It had kept its name, although the inhabitants had left long ago. Why and where they went no one knew now an epidemic, some said, while others spoke of famine, and others again of two warring clans who had slaughtered each other and driven out any survlvors. Whichever story was true, it wasn’t in Fenoglio’s book, nor was this graveyard where the peasants had buried their dead among the Motley Folk, so that now they slept side by side forever. A narrow, stony path wound its way from the abandoned cottages up the furze-grown slope and ended on a rocky headland.

Standing there you could look far south over the treetops of the Wayless Wood toward Argenta, where the sea lay somewhere beyond the hills. The dead of Carandrella, they said in Lombrjca, have the best view in the country.

A crumbling wall surrounded the graves. The gravestones were of the pale stone that was also used to build houses here. Stones for the living, stones for the dead. Names were incised on some of them, scratched clumsily as if whoever wrote them had learned the letters only to preserve the sound of a beloved name, rescuing it from the silence of death.

Meggie felt as if the stones were whispering those names to her as she walked past the graves Farina, Rosa, Lucio, Renzo. Those stones that bore no names seemed like closed mouths, sad mouths that had forgotten how to speak. But perhaps the dead didn’t mind what their names had once been?

Mo was still talking to Orpheus. The Strong Man was sizing up his bodyguard, Oss, as if wondering which of them had the broader chest.

Mo. Don’t do it! Please.

Meggie looked at her mother, and abruptly turned her face away when Resa returned her glance. She was so angry with her. It was all because of Resa’s tears, and because she had ridden off to see Orpheus, that Mo was here now.

The Black Prince had come with them as well as the Strong Man — and Doria, although his brother had told him to stay behind. Like Meggie, he was standing among the graves, looking around him at the things lying in front of the gravestones: faded flowers, a wooden toy, a shoe, a whistle. A fresh flower lay on one grave.

Doria picked it up. The flower was white, like the beings they were waiting for.

When he saw Meggie looking at him he came over to her. He really wasn’t at all like his brother. The Strong Man wore his brown hair short, but Doria’s was wavy and shoulder length. Sometimes Meggie felt as if he had come out of one of the old fairy-tale books that Mo had given her when she’d just learned to read. The pictures in the books had been yellow with age, but Meggie used to look at them for hours, firmly convinced that the fairies featured in some of the tales had painted them with their tiny hands.

"Can you read the letters on the stones?" Doria was still holding the white flower as he stopped in front of her. Two fingers of his left hand were stiff His father had broken them long ago in a drunken rage when Doria tried to protect his sister from him. At least, that was how the Strong Man told the story.

"Yes, of course." Meggie looked her father’s way again. Fenoglio had sent him a message, delivered by Battista. You can’t trust Orpheus, Mortimer! All useless.

Don’t do it, Mo. Please!

"I’m looking for a name." Doria sounded shyer than usual. "But I can’t, . . I can’t read. It’s my sister’s name. "What was she called?"

If the Strong Man was right, Doria had been fifteen on the very day when the Milksop was going to hang him. Meggie thought he looked older. "Ah, well," the Strong Man had said. "Could be he’s older. My mother’s not that good at counting.

She can’t even remember my birthday."

"Her name was Susa." Doria looked at the graves as if the name alone could conjure up his sister. "My brother says she’s supposed to be buried here, only he can’t remember just where."

They found the gravestone. It was overgrown with ivy, but the name was still clearly legible. Doria bent down and moved the ivy leaves aside. "She had hair as bright as yours," he said. "Lazaro says my mother turned her out because she wanted to go and live with the strolling players. He never forgave her for that."

"Lazaro?"

"My brother. You call him the Strong Man." Doria traced the letters with his finger.

They looked as if someone had scratched them into the stone with a knife. The first S

was overgrown with moss.

Mo was still talking to Orpheus. Orpheus handed him a sheet of paper: the words he had written at Resa’s request. Was Mo going to read them this very night, if the White Women really did appear? Would they all be back in Elinor’s house before it was day? Meggie didn’t know whether the idea made her feel sad or relieved. She didn’t want to think about it, either. All she wanted was for Mo to get on his horse and ride away again, and for her mother’s tears never to have brought him here.