Cornelia Funke - Inkdeath

"Yes, you'll have to look for a new master, Four-Eyes!" Thumbling came out from behind the hangings of the bed and gave him a hawkish smile. Orpheus saw the ring that the Adderhead had used to seal death sentences on his lean hand. Thumbling was also wearing the Silver Prince's sword.

"Let's hope the stink washes out!" he murmured to Orpheus in a confidential tone as he flung his master's heavy velvet coat over his shoulders. Then he strode away, down the corridor where Dustfinger's fire whispered along the walls.

But Orpheus stood there feeling the tears run down his nose. All was lost! He'd staked everything on the wrong card, he'd put up with the stench of the rotting prince, bowed low to him, and wasted his time in this dark castle, all for nothing! It wasn't he who had written the last song but Fenoglio; who else could it have been? And presumably the Bluejay featured as the hero again, while Orpheus was the villain. No, worse! He played the ridiculous part of the loser!

He spat in the Adderhead's rigid face and stumbled back to his room, where the useless words still lay on the table. Trembling with rage, he picked up the inkwell and poured its contents over what he had written.

"Master, master! Have you heard?" The glass man, out of breath, was standing in the doorway. He was quick on his spidery legs, you had to give him that.

"Yes, I know, the Adderhead's dead! What about the Bluejay?"

"They're Fighting! He and the Piper are fighting."

"Aha. Well, perhaps Silvernose may run him through yet. That would at least be something." Orpheus snatched up his things and stuffed them into the fine leather bag he had brought from Ombra: pens, parchment, even the empty inkwell, the silver candelabrum that the Adderhead had given him, and of course the three books – Jacopo's, and the two about the Bluejay. He wasn't giving up yet, not he.

He picked up the glass man and put him in the pouch at his belt.

"What are you going to do, master?" asked Ironstone anxiously.

"We'll summon the Night-Mare and get out of this castle!"

"The Night-Mare's gone, master! They say the Fire-Dancer sent it up in smoke!"

Damn, damn, damn. Of course. That was why fire was burning on the walls again! Dustfinger had recognized the Night-Mare. He had seen who was breathing there in the heart of darkness! Well, Orpheus, you'll just have to read yourself another Night-Mare out of Jacopo's book, he thought. It wasn't all that difficult. Only this time he must give it a name that Dustfinger didn't know!

He listened for sounds in the corridor. Nothing. The rats had deserted the sinking ship. The Adderhead was alone in death. Orpheus went back into the bedchamber where his bloated corpse lay and stole what silver he could find, but Thumbling hadn't missed much. Then he hurried with the wailing glass man to the tunnel that had brought the Piper to the castle. Water was running down the stone walls as if the passage were sticking in the lake's moist flesh like a thorn.

The guards posted on the bank to keep watch on the way out were gone, but a few dead soldiers lay among the rocks. In the end they had clearly killed one another in their panic. Orpheus took a sword from one of the dead men, but threw it away again when he discovered how heavy it was. Instead he took a knife from another dead man's belt and put the soldier's coarse cloak over his shoulders. It might look ugly, but it was warm.

"Where are we going, master?" faltered Ironstone. "Back to Ombra?"

"Why would we want to go back there?" was all that Orpheus replied as he looked up at the dark slopes barring the way to the north.

To the north… he had no idea what to expect there. As with so much else in his book, Fenoglio had written nothing about it, and that was just why he would go north. The mountains looked far from inviting, with their snowy peaks and bleak slopes. But it was the best way to go now that Ombra, he supposed, would soon belong to Violante and the Bluejay. To hell with that wretched bookbinder, to the hottest hell the human mind can imagine, he thought. And may Dustfinger freeze in eternal ice until his treacherous fingers break off!

Orpheus looked back at the bridge one last time before making for the trees. There went the Silver Prince's soldiers, running away. And what were they running away from? Two men and their white guardian angels. And their lord's bloated body.

"Master, master, couldn't you put me on your shoulder? Suppose I fall out of this pouch?" the glass man wailed.

"Then I'll need a new glass man!" Orpheus replied.

Northward into unwritten country. Yes, he thought as his feet, with difficulty, sought a way up the steep slope. Maybe that part of this world will obey my words.

The Piper's sword had cut deep into Resa's arm, but Brianna had learned a good deal from her mother, even though she liked singing to Violante better than growing herbs in stony fields.

"The arm will heal," she said as she bound up the wound. But the bird would never leave Resa now. Silvertongue knew that as well as Dustfinger.

The Piper had done his best to send the Bluejay after his master to his death. He had wounded him in the shoulder and on the left arm, but in the end he alone had followed the Adderhead, and Dustfinger made the fire consume both his body and his master's.

Pale-faced, Violante stood at Silvertongue's side as the Adderhead and the Piper turned to ashes. She looked younger, as if she had shed a few years in the cell where her father had flung her – almost as forlorn as a child – yet when she turned away at last from the fire devouring her father, she put her arm around her son. Dustfinger had never seen her do a thing like that before. Everyone still disliked Jacopo, though he had saved them all. Even Silvertongue with his soft heart felt the same, though he was ashamed of it. Dustfinger saw it in his face.

There were still a dozen of Violante's child-soldiers alive. They found them in the dungeon cells, but the Adderhead's soldiers had all gone, like the White Women. Only their abandoned tents still stood on the banks of the lake, with the black coach and a few riderless horses. Jacopo claimed that his great-grandfather's man- eating fish had come up from the lake and eaten some of the men as they ran for their lives over the bridge. Neither Silvertongue nor Violante believed him, but Dustfinger went out onto the bridge and found a few shimmering scales on the wet stones, as large as linden leaves. So they didn't take the bridge, but left the Castle in the Lake by the tunnel down which the Piper had come.

It was snowing when they stepped out into the open, and the castle disappeared behind them among the swirling snowflakes as if it were dissolving into the whiteness. The world around them was as still as if it had used up all words, as if all the tales there were to tell in this world had now been told. Dustfinger found Orpheus's tracks in the frozen mud of the bank, and Silvertongue looked at the trees into which they disappeared as if he could still hear Orpheus's voice inside him.

"I wish he were dead," he said quietly.

"A clever wish," replied Dustfinger. "But I'm afraid it's too late to make it come true." He had looked for Orpheus after the Piper was dead, but his room had been empty, like Thumbling's. The world looked so bright this cold morning. They were all so light at heart. But the darkness remained, and would go on telling its part of the story.