Cornelia Funke - Inkdeath

How they grinned at one another! The Bluejay would kill them all. Every man of them.

"He's asleep. Get out."

"He can't sleep, you idiot!" Jacopo's shrill voice rose. Only a few months ago he would have stamped his foot, but he'd learned that that didn't work particularly well. "Thumbling sent me. I'm to take him his sleeping medicine."

The guards exchanged uncertain glances. Luckily, he was cleverer than any of them. Much cleverer.

"Very well, in you go!" growled one of them. "But mind you don't start carrying on about your mother to him, because if you do I'll chuck you into that cell with my own hands, understand?"

You're a dead man, thought Jacopo as he walked past the guard. Dead. Dead. Dead. Don't you know that yet? Oh, how good this felt!

"What do you want?" His grandfather was sitting on the bed with two servants beside him, wiping the fairy blood off his legs. His eyelids were heavy from the poppy juice he took when he wanted to sleep. And why shouldn't he sleep now? The Bluejay was caught and was binding Death into another book for him.

"What are you going to do to the Bluejay when he's finished?" Jacopo knew exactly what kinds of stories his grandfather liked to tell.

The Adderhead laughed and impatiently waved the servants away. Bowing and scraping, they made their way to the door.

"Maybe you do take after me, even if you look like your father." The Adderhead let himself drop on his side, groaning. "What would you do to him first?" His tongue was already as heavy as his eyelids.

"I don't know Pull out his fingernails?"

Jacopo went over to the bed. There it was, the cushion that the Adderhead always had with him. To prop up his sick flesh, they said. But Jacopo knew better. He'd often seen his grandfather put his hand under the heavy fabric to feel the leather binding with his fingers. Once he had even caught a glimpse of the blood-soaked covers. No one paid any attention to what a child saw. Not even the Adderhead, who trusted no one but himself.

"His fingernails? Hm. Painful, yes. I hope my son will get ideas like that once he's your age. Although why does a man need a son when he's immortal? I ask myself that question more and more frequently. Why does a man need a wife? Or daughters…"

The last words were barely audible. The Adderhead opened his mouth, and a snore came out. The lizardlike eyelids closed, and his left hand clutched the cushion in which his death was hidden. But Jacopo had small, slender hands, not at all like his grandfather's. Very carefully, he undid the ribbons tying the fabric, put his fingers inside the cushion, and took out the Book, the White Book – although it really should be called the Red Book now. His grandfather turned his head, and his breath rattled in his sleep. Jacopo reached under his tunic for the volume he had taken from the Lost Library and exchanged it for its red twin.

"My grandfather's asleep," he told the guards when he came out of the room. "And you'd better not wake him or he'll pull out all your fingernails."

Resa had flown away to Silvertongue in the Hall of a Thousand Windows. "The bird will never leave you again, Resa!" Dustfinger had warned her, but she had put the seeds into her mouth all the same.

He had had great difficulty in dragging her out of the bedchamber before the Silver Prince came back. The despair in her face went to his heart. They had not found the White Book, and both of them knew what that meant: It wasn't the Adderhead who would die, but the Bluejay – by the hand of the Piper, Thumbling, or the White Women coming for him because he hadn't been able to pay the price Death demanded for his life.

Resa had flown to him so that Silvertongue would not be alone when he died. Or did she still hope for some miracle to save him? Perhaps. Dustfinger had not told her that Death was going to take him again, too – and then her daughter.

"If you don't find the Book," Silvertongue had whispered to him before sending him away to lay the fiery trail for the

Piper, "then at least let us try to save our daughters."

Our daughters… Dustfinger knew where to find Brianna, but how was he to protect Meggie from the Piper or the White Women themselves?

Of course the Piper's men had tried to hold him fast once he'd led them to the Bluejay, but it was easy to escape them. They were still looking for him, but the darkness in the castle hid the Adderhead's enemies as well as eased the pain in his eyes.

Orpheus seemed very sure that his black dog was enough to guard Brianna. Two torches burned beside the cage where she sat, crouching like a captive bird. But there was no soldier on guard. The real guard lurked somewhere in the shadows, in a place that the torchlight didn't reach.

How in the world had Orpheus managed to tame it?

"Don't forget, he read it out of a book," Silvertongue had said. "A book for children, too, although I'm not sure that Fenoglio made the Night-Mare any less dangerous because of that. But it's made of words, and I'm sure that Orpheus himself used words to make it obey him. Just a few rearranged words, a couple of slightly twisted sentences, and the terror in the night becomes an obedient dog."

But, Silvertongue, Dustfinger had thought, have you forgotten that everything in this world is made of words? He knew only that this Night-Mare was not less dangerous, but even more sinister, than those found in the Wayless Wood. It would not, like its fellows, be driven away by fairy dust and fire – it was woven of darker stuff. What a pity you didn't ask the White Women its name, he said to himself as he slowly made his way toward the cages. Don't the songs say that's the only way to kill a Night-Mare? For that was what he had to do: destroy the creature so that Orpheus could not call it back. Forget the songs, Dustfinger, he told himself as he looked around. Write your own, just as the Bluejay must write his now.

At the sound of his whispering the torches flared up as if to welcome him, weary of the darkness surrounding them. And Brianna raised her head.

How beautiful she was, as lovely as her mother.

Dustfinger looked around again, waiting for the darkness to start moving. Where was it?

He heard a snuffling sound, felt cold breath, panting like a large dog's. To his left the shadows grew and became blacker than black. His heart began to beat painfully fast. Ah. So the fear was still there, even though he so seldom felt it now.

Brianna got to her feet and stumbled away until her back was up against the bars. Behind her, a painted peacock spread its tail on the gray wall. "Go away!" she whispered. "Please! It will eat you!"

Go away. A tempting idea. But he had once had two daughters, now he had only one… and he would keep her, not forever but perhaps for a few years yet. Precious time. Time – whatever that was.

All was cold behind him, dreadfully cold. Dustfinger called up the flames and wrapped himself in their warmth, but the cold made the fire burn low and go out, leaving him alone with the shadow.

"Please! Please go away!" Brianna's voice urged, and the love in it, that she usually hid so well, warmed him more than the fire ever could. He called on the flames again, more sternly this time, reminding them that he and they were brothers, inseparable. Hesitantly, they licked up from the ground, trembling as if a cold wind were blowing through them, but they burned, and the Night-Mare retreated and stared at him.

Yes, what the songs said about him and his like was true. It must be true. The songs said Night-Mares were made entirely of the blackness of the soul, of evil that could not be forgotten or forgiven until they were snuffed out, consuming themselves and taking with them everything they had ever been.