Dustfinger looked over his shoulder as if in search of a familiar view. "I never rode north in the old days. The mountains frightened me," he said, and smiled as if he were smiling at his old self, who had known so little of the world that a few mountains could scare him. "I was always drawn to the sea. The sea and the south."
Then he fell silent again. Dustfinger had never been very talkative, and his journey to the land of Death hadn't changed that. So Mo left him to his silence and wondered, once more, whether the Black Prince had heard yet from Farid that the Bluejay was no longer in Ombra, and how Meggie and Resa had taken the news. It was so hard to leave them farther behind with every step his horse took, even if he did it knowing that the farther away he was, the safer they were. Don't think about them, he told himself. Don't wonder when or whether you'll see them again. Tell yourself the Bluejay never had a wife or a daughter. Just for a while.
Violante turned in the saddle as if to make sure she hadn't lost him. Brianna whispered something to her, and Violante smiled. Her Ugliness had a beautiful smile, although you seldom saw it. It showed how young she still was.
They were riding up a densely wooded hill. Sunlight fell through the branches of the almost leafless trees, and in spite of the snow covering the moss and roots farther up the slopes, there was still a smell of autumn here, of rotting leaves and the last fading flowers. Fairies, drowsy with the onset of winter, flitted through the grass, which was yellow now and stiff with frost. Brownie tracks crossed their path, and Mo thought he heard wild glass men scurrying about under the bushes that grew on the slope above them. One of Violante's soldiers began to sing quietly, and the sound of his young voice made Mo feel as if everything he had left behind were fading: his concern for Resa and Meggie, the Black Prince, the children of Ombra and the threat of the Piper, even his bargain with Death. There was only the path, the endless path winding up into the strange mountains, and the desire in his heart that he couldn't tame, a wish to ride farther and farther on into this bewildering world. What did the castle to which Violante was leading them look like? Were there really giants in the mountains? Where did the path end? Did it ever end at all? Not for the Bluejay, a voice inside him whispered, and for a moment his heart beat like the heart of a ten-year-old boy, as fearless and as fresh.
He sensed Dustfinger's eyes resting on him. "You like this world of mine."
"Yes. Yes, I do." Mo himself could hear the guilt in his voice.
Dustfinger laughed louder than Mo had ever heard him laugh before. He looked so different without the scars – as if the White Women had healed his heart as well as his face. "And you're ashamed of it!" he said. "Why? Because you still think everything here is just made of words? It is indeed a strange thing: Look at you! Anyone might think you belonged here as much as me. Are you sure someone didn't just read you over into that other world of yours?"
Mo didn't know whether or not he liked that idea. "Fairly sure," he answered.
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."