"Well, who'd have thought it! Then let's hope the words in the songs work as well as those I've written for the Black Prince." Fenoglio put an arm around her shoulders, as he had often done when they were both Capricorn's prisoners – in another world, in another story. Or was it the same story after all?
"Meggie," he said quietly. "Even if you go on reading my songs aloud, even if you read them a dozen times a day – we both know they haven't made your father the Bluejay. If I'd chosen him as the model for the Piper, do you think he'd have become a murderer? Of course not! Your father is like the Black Prince! He feels for the weak. I didn't write that into his heart; it was always there! Your father didn't ride to Ombra Castle because of my words but for the children asleep out there. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps this story is changing him, but he's changing the story, too! He's telling the next part of it through what he does, Meggie, not because of what I write. Even if the right words might be able to help him…"
"Protect him, Fenoglio!" Meggie whispered. "Snapper's after him, and he hates Mo."
Fenoglio looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean? You actually want me to write something about him? Heavens, it was confusing enough when I had only my own characters to worry about!"
And you let them die without giving it a thought, Meggie told herself, but she didn't say so aloud. After all, Fenoglio had saved the Black Prince today – and he had really feared for him. What would Dustfinger have said about this sudden fit of sympathy?
Rosenquartz started snoring again.
"Hear that?" asked Fenoglio. "Can you tell me how such a ridiculously small creature can snore at such volume? Sometimes I feel like stuffing him in the inkwell overnight just to get some peace and quiet!"
"You're a terrible old man!" Meggie reached for the written pages again and ran her finger along the words jotted down there. "What does all this mean? The pen or the sword? Who writes the three words? Who does Violante love?"
"Well, those are only some of the questions to be answered as this story goes on. All good stories hide behind a tangle of questions, and it isn't easy to find out their dodges. And this story certainly has a mind of its own. But," and here Fenoglio lowered his voice as if the story itself could be eavesdropping, "if you ask the right questions it will whisper all its secrets to you. A story like this is a very talkative thing."
Fenoglio read aloud what he had written. "The pen or the sword? A very important question. But I don't know the answer yet. Perhaps it will be both. Well, however that may be… Who writes the three words? Your father let himself be taken prisoner to do that, but who knows… will the Adderhead really allow his daughter to trick him? Is Violante as clever as she thinks, and Who does Her Ugliness love? I am afraid she's fallen in love with your father. I think she fell in love with him a long time ago, before she ever met him."
"What?" Meggie looked at him in astonishment. "What are you talking about? Violante isn't much older than me and Brianna!"
"Nonsense! Not in years, perhaps, but with all the experience she's had, she's at least three times your age. And like so many princes' daughters, she has a very romantic notion of robbers. Why do you think she made Balbulus illuminate all my Bluejay songs? And now he's riding along beside her in flesh and blood. Not unromantic, is it?"
"You're dreadful!" Meggie's indignant voice woke Rosenquartz again.
"Why? I'm only explaining what would have to be taken into account if I were really to try bringing this story to a good end, although it may have had different ideas itself for some time. Suppose I'm right? Suppose Violante loves the Bluejay and your father rejects her? Will she protect him from the Adderhead all the same? What role will Dustfinger take? Will the Piper see what game Violante is playing? Questions, nothing but questions! Believe you me, this story is a labyrinth! It looks as if there were several ways to go, but only one is right, and there's a nasty surprise ready to punish you for every false step. This time, though, I'll be prepared. This time I'll see the traps it's setting me, Meggie – and I'll find the right way out. But for that I have to ask questions. For instance: Where's Mortola? I can't get that question out of my mind. And what, by all inky devils, is Orpheus up to? Questions, more and more questions… but Fenoglio is back in the game again! And he's saved the Black Prince!"
Every wrinkle in his old face expressed self-satisfaction.
Oh, he really was a terrible old man!
46. THE CASTLE IN THE LAKE
There is something about it that opens no door to words.
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley
They rode north, farther and farther north. On the morning of the second day, Violante had Mo's hands, bound until now for fear of her father's spies, loosened after one of her soldiers told her that otherwise the Bluejay would soon lose the use of them. More than fifty soldiers had been waiting for them barely a mile out of Ombra. Hardly any of them were older than Farid, and they all looked as determined as if they would follow Violante to the end of the world.
With every mile they put behind them the woods were darker and the valleys deeper. The hills became mountains. Snow already lay on some of the passes, so that they had to dismount and lead their horses, and on the second night rain fell, covering the white snow with treacherous ice. The mountain range through which they were riding seemed almost uninhabited. Only very occasionally did Mo see a village in the distance, an isolated
farmhouse, or a charcoal-burner's hut. It was almost as if Fenoglio had forgotten to populate this part of his world.
Dustfinger joined them when they first stopped to rest. He did it as naturally as if nothing were simpler than to pick up the trail that Violante's soldiers were so carefully obliterating. The soldiers looked at him in the same respectful but wary way as they looked at Mo. Bluejay… Fire-Dancer… of course they knew the songs, and their eyes asked: Are these men made of the same flesh as us?
For himself, Mo knew the answer – although he sometimes wondered whether by now ink, rather than blood, flowed through his veins. He wasn't so sure about Dustfinger. The horses shied when they saw the Fire-Dancer, although he could calm them with a whisper. He hardly slept or ate, and he plunged his hands into fire as if it were water. But when he talked about Roxane or Farid, there was human love in his words, and when he looked around for his daughter surreptitiously, as if he were ashamed of it, it was with the eyes of a mortal father.
It was good to ride, just to ride on while the Inkworld unfurled before them like elaborately folded paper. And with every mile Mo doubted more and more that all this had really been made by Fenoglio's words. Wasn't it more likely that the old man had simply been a reporter describing a tiny part of this world, a fraction of it that they had long ago left behind? Strange mountains rimmed the horizon, and Ombra was far away. The Wayless Wood seemed as distant as Elinor's garden, the Castle of Night nothing but a dark dream. "Have you ever been in these mountains before?" he once asked Dustfinger, who rode beside him in silence most of the time. Sometimes Mo thought he could hear the other mans thoughts. Roxane, they whispered. And Dustfinger's eyes kept wandering to his daughter, who was riding at Violante's side and didn't deign to give her father a glance.
"No, I don't think so," replied Dustfinger, and it was the same as every time Mo spoke to him: It seemed as if he were calling him back from that place for which there were no words. Dustfinger didn't talk about it, and Mo asked no questions. He knew what the other man was thinking. The White Women had touched them both, sowing in their hearts a longing for that place, a constant, wordless, bittersweet longing.