Inkspell (Inkworld 2)

– J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

It was an odd feeling, being invisible. Farid felt all-powerful and lost at the same time. As if he were nowhere and everywhere. The worst of it was that he couldn’t see Dustfinger. He had to rely on his hearing. “Dustfinger?” he kept whispering as he followed him through the night, and every time a quiet reply came back: “I’m here, right in front of you.”

The soldiers who had taken Meggie and the Barn Owl with them would have to follow a road – a bad one, almost entirely overgrown in many places – that wound up into the hills, bending and curving. Dustfinger, on the other hand, was making his way across country and up slopes too steep for horses, especially when they had to carry armed riders. Farid tried not to think how much it must be hurting Dustfinger’s leg. Now and then he heard him swearing quietly, and he kept stopping, invisible, nothing but a breathing in the night.

The castle was indeed farther away than it had looked from the beach, but finally its walls towered to the sky right in front of them. By comparison with this fortress, the castle of Ombra seemed to Farid like a toy, built by a prince who liked to eat and drink but had no intention of going to war. In the Castle of Night, every stone seemed to have been set in place with war in mind, and as Farid followed the sound of Dustfinger’s gasping breaths, he pictured to himself, with horror, what it must be like to storm up the steep slope with hot pitch raining down on you from the battlements above and bolts from crossbows flying your way.

Morning was still far off when they reached the castle gate. They still had a few precious hours of invisibility left, but the gate was shut, and Farid felt tears of disappointment fill his eyes. “It’s closed!” he whispered. “They’ve taken them into the castle already! Now what?” Every breath hurt him, they had traveled so fast. But what good did it do them now to be as transparent as glass, as invisible as the wind?

He sensed Dustfinger’s body beside him, warm in the windy night. “Of course it’s closed!” his voice whispered. “What did you expect? Did you think the two of us would overtake them? We wouldn’t have done that even if I wasn’t hobbling like an old woman! But you wait: They’re sure to open the gate for someone else tonight. Even if it’s only one of their informers.”

“Or maybe we could climb in?” Farid looked up hopefully at the pale gray walls. He saw the guards on the battlements, armed with spears.

“Climb in? You really do seem to be head over heels in love. Can’t you see how smooth and high these walls are? Forget it we’ll wait.”

Six gallows towered in front of them. Dead men hung from four of them. Farid was thankful that in the darkness they just looked like bundles of old clothes. “Damn it!” he heard Dustfinger murmur. “Why doesn’t the fairy venom make your fear go away as well as your body?” The same thing had occurred to Farid, too, but he was not afraid of the guards, Basta, or Firefox. His fear, his terrible fear, was for Meggie. Being invisible only made it worse. There seemed to be nothing left of him but the pain in his heart.

A chilly wind was blowing tonight, and Farid was just breathing on his invisible fingers to warm them when hoofbeats echoed through the dark.

“There, now!” whispered Dustfinger. “Looks like we’re in luck for a change! Remember, whatever happens, we must be out of here before daybreak. The sun will make us visible again almost as fast as you can summon fire.”

The hoofbeats grew louder, and a horseman emerged from the darkness – not in the Adderhead’s pale silver but clothed in red and black. “Well, would you believe it?” whispered Dustfinger. “Sootbird, no less!”

One of the guards called something down from the battlements, and Sootbird replied.

“Come on!” Dustfinger hissed to Farid as the gate swung open, creaking. They followed so close to Sootbird that Farid could have touched his horse’s tail. Traitor, he thought, filthy traitor! He would have liked to drag him down from the saddle, put a knife to his throat, and ask what news he was bringing to the Castle of Night – but Dustfinger thrust him on, through the gigantic gate and into the courtyard. He led Farid onward as Sootbird rode to the castle stables. They were swarming with men-at-arms. Obviously, the Castle of Night was as wakeful as its master was said to be.

“Listen!” whispered Dustfinger, drawing Farid under an arch. “This castle is the size of a city and as full of nooks and crannies as a labyrinth. Mark the way you go with soot. I don’t want to have to search for you later because you’re lost like a child in the forest, understand?”

“But what about Sootbird? He gave away the Secret Camp, didn’t he?”

“Very likely. But forget him for now. Think of Meggie.”

“But he was among the prisoners!” A troop of soldiers marched past them. Farid flinched back in alarm. He still couldn’t believe that they really did not see him.

“So?” Dustfinger’s voice sounded like the wind itself speaking. “It’s the oldest disguise in the world for traitors. Where do you hide your informer? Among your victims. I expect the Piper told him once or twice what a magnificent fire-eater he was, and then they were best friends.

Sootbird’s always had peculiar taste in friends. Well, come on, or we’ll still be standing here when the sun melts our invisibility off us.”

That made Farid instinctively look up at the sky. It was a dark night. Even the moon seemed lost in all the blackness, and he could not take his eyes off the silver towers.

“The Adder’s nest!” he whispered – and felt Dustfinger’s invisible hand drawing him on again, none too gently.

Chapter 59 – The Adderhead

Thoughts of death

Crowd over my happiness

Like dark clouds

Over the silver sickle of the moon.

– Sterling Allen Brown, Poems to Read

The Adderhead was at table when Firefox brought Meggie to him. Exactly as she had read it in the story. The hall where he was feasting was so magnificent that the Laughing Prince’s throne room seemed plain as a farmhouse by comparison. The tiles over which Firefox dragged Meggie to his master were strewn with white rose petals. A sea of candles burned in claw footed candelabra, standing between columns covered with silver scales. The light of the candles made them shimmer like snakeskin. Countless servants hurried around between the scaly pillars, soundlessly, heads bent. Maidservants waited in respectful rows for a sign from their master.

They all looked tired, torn from sleep, just as Fenoglio had described it. Some were leaning their backs surreptitiously against the tapestries on the walls.

Beside the Adderhead, at a table that seemed to be laid for a hundred guests, sat a woman as pale as a porcelain doll, with such a childlike face that Meggie would have thought her the Adderhead’s daughter if she didn’t know better. The Silver Prince himself ate greedily, as if by swallowing the food that stood in countless dishes on the table covered with black cloth, he could swallow his own fear, too. But his wife touched nothing. It seemed to Meggie that the sight of her husband eating so greedily nauseated her; she kept passing her ringed hands over her swollen belly. Oddly enough, her pregnancy made her look even more like a child: a child with a thin, bitter mouth and cool eyes.