Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

The wind blew a leaf against his chest. Tiny limbs hung from it, a frightened face, pale brown like the leaf itself. Orpheus’s leaf-men had obviously spread quickly. The strange creature bit Mo’s finger when he reached for it, and the next gust of wind blew it away.

"Did you see them last night, too?" Dustfinger turned in the saddle. The soldier riding behind them avoided his eyes. There is no land more foreign than the realm of Death.

"See who?"

Dustfinger responded with a mocking smile.

There had been two of them. Two White Women. They had been standing among the trees just before daybreak.

"Why do you think they’re following us? To remind us that we still belong to them?"

Dustfinger merely shrugged his shoulders, as if the answer wasn’t important and the question was the wrong one. "I see them every time I close my eyes. Dustfinger! they whisper. We miss you. Does your heart hurt again? Do you feel the burden of time?

Shall we lift it from you? Shall we make you forget once more? I tell them no. Let me feel all of it a little longer. Who knows, perhaps you’ll be taking me back soon anyway. Me," he added, looking at Mo, "and the Bluejay."

Dark clouds were gathering above them, as if they had been waiting beyond the mountains, and the horses grew restless, but Dustfinger calmed them with a few quiet words.

"What do they whisper to you?" he asked Mo, looking at him as if he knew the answer already.

"Ah." It was difficult to talk about the White Women. As difficult as if they held his tongue down as soon as he tried. "Usually they simply stand there as if they were waiting for me. And if they do speak to me they always say the same thing: Only Death will make you immortal, Bluejay."

He hadn’t told anyone that before, not the Black Prince nor Resa nor Meggie. What would be the point? The words would only have frightened them.

But Dustfinger knew the White Women — and the one they served. "Immortal," he repeated. "Yes, they like to say such things, and no doubt they’re right. But what about you? Are you in a hurry for immortality?"

Mo could find no answer for that.

Ahead, Violante turned her horse around. The path had brought them to the crest of a mountain, and far below lay a lake with a castle reflected in its waters, drifting on the ripples like a stone fruit floating a long way from the bank. Its walls were as dark as the spruce trees that grew on the slopes of the surrounding mountains, and an almost endless bridge, narrow as a ribbon of stone and supported on countless piers, led over the water to land, where two ruined watchtowers stood among a few abandoned huts.

"The Impregnable Bridge!" whispered one of the soldiers, and all the stories he had heard about this place were echoed in that whisper.

It began to snow again, tiny, wet flakes that disappeared in the dark lake as if it were devouring them. Violante’s young soldiers stared at their destination in dismal silence. It was not a very inviting sight. But their mistress’s face lit up like a young girl’s.

"What do you say, Bluejay?" she asked Mo, putting her gold-framed glasses on her nose. "Look at it. My mother described this castle to me so often that I feel as if I’d grown up here myself. I only wish these glasses were stronger," she added impatiently, "but even from here I can see that it’s beautiful!"

Beautiful? Mo would have called the castle sinister. But perhaps, to the Adderhead’s daughter, that was one and the same thing.

"Now do you see why I’ve brought you here?" Violante asked. "No one can take this castle. Even the giants couldn’t harm it when they still came to this valley. The lake is too deep, and the bridge is just wide enough for a single horseman."

The path leading down to the banks of the lake was so steep that they had to lead their horses. It was as dark under the dense spruce trees as if their needles ate up the daylight, and Mo felt his heart grow heavy again. But Violante walked on impatiently, and the rest of them could hardly keep up with her as they passed through the trees that grew so close together.

"Night-Mares!" whispered Dustfinger, when the silence among the trees grew as dark as the needles that covered the ground. "Black Bogles, Redcaps. . . everything that would terrify Farid lives here. Let’s hope this castle really is uninhabited."

When they were standing on the shore of the lake at last, mist hung above the water, and the bridge and the castle rose from the white vapor as if they had just been born out of it: stony growths from the depths of the water. The huts on the bank looked much more real now, although it was obvious that they had been standing empty for a very long time. Mo led his horse to one of the watchtowers. The door was charred, the interior black with soot.

Violante came to his side. "A nephew of my grandfather’s was the last who tried to capture this castle. He never got across the lake. My grandfather bred predatory fish in it. They’re said to be larger than horses, and they crave human flesh. The lake guards this castle better than any army could. There were never many soldiers here, but my grandfather always made sure there were enough provisions to withstand a siege. Cattle were kept in the castle, and he had vegetables grown and fruit trees planted in several of the inner courtyards. All the same, so my mother told me, she had to eat fish more often than she liked."

Violante laughed, but Mo looked out over the dark water uneasily. It was as if, through the drifting swathes of mist, he saw all the dead soldiers who had tried to cross the Impregnable Bridge. The lake was like a copy of the Inkworld itself, both beautiful and terrible. Its surface was smooth as glass, but the edge of the bank was marshy, and swarms of buzzing insects, obviously unaffected by the wintry weather, hovered among reeds now white with rime. "Why did your grandfather live in such a remote place?"

"Because he was tired of human beings. Is that surprising?" Violante was still looking as captivated as if she couldn’t believe that at last her nearsighted eyes were seeing what she had only known through words before. So often it is words or pictures that first tell us what we long for.

"My mother’s chambers were in the tower on the left. My grandfather had the tower built when giants still came here." Violante’s voice sounded as if she were talking in her sleep. "At that time this lake was the only place outside the cities where you could be safe from them, because they couldn’t cross it. But they loved to look at their reflection in its waters, and that’s why it was also called the Giants’ Mirror. My mother was afraid of them. She used to hide under the bed when she heard their footsteps, but all the same she wondered how big they would be if they were standing right in front of her, not on the distant shore. Once, when she was about five years old and a giant and his child appeared on the bank, she wanted to run over to them.

But one of her nursemaids caught up with her where the bridge begins, and my grandfather had her shut up in the tower there for three days and nights, as a punishment." Violante pointed to a tower that rose like a needle among the others.

"That tower was the only place in the castle that my mother didn’t like to talk about.

It had pictures of Night-Mares and lake monsters on its walls, of wolves and snakes and robbers attacking travelers. My grandfather had the pictures painted to show his daughters how dangerous the world beyond the lake was. The giants often used to take human beings — especially children— away as toys. Have you heard that?"