The Book of Lies (36 page)

“Cold and remote, like Lenoth Crag,” said Marcel. “This valley is warmer than where he comes from. And more fertile too, in spite of the drought. Why would he be content with a bit of forest when he could have everything? How can you be sure he hasn’t come to take the throne for himself?”

At an angry nod from Starkey, Hector strode across the tent, and with a vicious flick of his hand he silenced the boy’s mouth at last.

Sickening colours blundered into one another behind Marcel’s eyes as Nicola helped him to his feet again. Now the tent had become deathly silent. Zadenwolf had not said a word and the expression on Starkey’s face had begun to change from sly confidence to a raw and nervous doubt.

“Won’t you deny it, then?” Fergus taunted Zadenwolf, taking up the attack.

Nicola joined in. “Is it true? Have you played all three of them for fools?”

At last the reluctant King spoke up. “It is all as we agreed. You three will be the powers in this land. I will not betray you.”

It was what Starkey and the royal cousins had longed to hear. But even as they tried to pretend that they had never doubted, the Book of Lies erupted. The cover flew open and the pages began to fan rapidly, inevitably, until the last page
lay revealed. Close to the bottom edge of the paper, words began to appear, Zadenwolf’s words.

It is all as we agreed.

The unseen quill reached the end of the line and began the next. It would certainly be the last, because no more words would fit on the page after this. The magical script looped and coiled, repeating the King’s words, proving them to be a lie.

You three will be the powers in this land.

Finally, there was less than half a line left, with precisely the right number of words to fill it. They were written into place, and at last the Book of Lies was full, with the last words recorded on its pages forming the most wicked lie of all.

I will not betray you.

Zadenwolf himself knew nothing of how this strange book worked, and it was only the shocked response of the others that warned of how he had been exposed.

Eleanor’s eyes grew round and wild. She fixed them on him with a fury that might have sent a lesser man lurching backwards in dismay.

“He’s tricked us!” cried Starkey, enraged.

Damon drew his sword, but Zadenwolf was ready for him. His own weapon flashed in the candlelight, knocking Damon’s from his hand before he could attack.

“Sergeant!” he roared, and before Hector or Starkey could lunge at the treacherous King, three burly soldiers burst into the tent. “Take their weapons,” he ordered sharply, and when it was done, “Set up a guard around this tent. These three are my prisoners, and the children and Starkey’s bowman too. If they show their faces outside this tent tonight, kill them.”

“You can’t do this!” Eleanor stormed. “This kingdom is mine by right!”

This was the first of a dozen frenzied accusations from her and Damon, each more vehement than the last.

Zadenwolf dismissed them all with contempt. “You were fools, both of you, and you as well, Starkey. Did you truly think I would risk my army against Pelham’s in return for a scrap of land fit only for elves to live in? These children here have more sense than the three of you.”

“What will you do with us?” asked Nicola fearfully from where she stood huddled with Marcel, Fergus and Bea.

“Haven’t you guessed?” he goaded them. “Tomorrow I do battle with Pelham, with the elves as my allies, but what is the use of killing one king if there are still others alive who can claim his throne?”

With this cruel announcement still ringing in his captives’ ears, Zadenwolf swept through the open doorway, a gloating
smile on his face. His soldiers followed, leaving the prisoners alone, though the squeak of leather and the clink of metal all around the tent told them that they were well guarded.

“This is outrageous! We can’t just wait here to die!” Damon snarled.

“You heard him,” snapped Eleanor. “One step outside and you’ll the tonight instead of tomorrow.”

Then she turned on him. “It’s all your fault, you know!
You
persuaded us to trust him!”

Damon had no answer to this and his brief defiance quickly foundered. He turned away from the rest, nursing his wretchedness in private. Seeing this, Eleanor’s courage failed as well. She slumped in a corner of the tent and began to weep tears of self-pity.

Marcel was stunned to see them turn so rapidly from indignation to cowardly, snivelling despair. He found himself quickly losing heart as well, and there seemed little comfort in the downcast faces of his brother and sister. Not even Bea, for all her courage, could force the defeat from her gaze. They would all the in the morning; and after them, who could say how many others, some wearing the alien attire of Zadenwolf’s army, the rest in the red livery of his father, the true King. As Marcel stared around the tent, full of desolate and hopeless figures, he saw that the real enemy was not Zadenwolf at all. It was Mortregis himself, returned from his sleep.

His thoughts were interrupted by a voice he had come to loathe more than any other: Starkey’s. What had he said? Others in the silent tent had not listened either, but every face was turned towards him as he spoke a second time. “Our only hope now is the Book.”

“What are you talking about?” Marcel responded furiously. “If it weren’t for the Book this evil would never have entered the Kingdom. You should destroy it now. See? Its last page is full. Its magic is finished.”

“Yes, the Book is full, Marcel. It is free at last to create its
greatest
magic, the magic promised by the verses,” he declared, becoming excited in a way that repelled the children. He stabbed his finger at one of its golden lines.
“When all my pages fill with lies,”
he quoted. “Say it, Marcel. You know the verses by heart, just as I do. Say the next line.”

“Let slip the Beast and see it rise,”
Marcel muttered, though in the confines of the tent they could all hear him clearly.

“All we need is one who understands the verse,” Starkey went on, poking his finger now at the final two lines. “You, Marcel. You understand it. You will help me conjure Mortregis from his sleep and then I will deal with these kings, Pelham and Zadenwolf both.”

“No. I can’t do it.”

“Can’t!” shouted Starkey. “You won’t, that’s what you mean. Alwyn left the secret in your hands and you know that it will defeat your father.”

“No, you don’t understand! You can’t have what the verses promise!”

“We’ll soon change that.” Starkey swept aside his cape to reveal the ruby-handled dagger, overlooked when Zadenwolf’s soldiers disarmed them earlier. He snatched it from his belt, and grabbing Nicola from Marcel’s side, he held its deadly blade to her throat.

“Don’t help him, Marcel!” she gasped, her voice determined but her eyes betraying her fear.

Eleanor looked on, unconcerned, as Nicola’s fate hung in the balance. “No, Starkey. Try the elf-girl. He’s even more devoted to her than to his sister.”

Bea stood brave and unflinching as Starkey came at her with his deadly blade, his teasing sneer replaced by a grim mask that sent a chill through Marcel.

“Please don’t hurt her!” he begged.

“Her life is entirely in your hands. Turn your mind to the Book and show me what Alwyn taught you. You understand these verses, I know you do.
Let slip the Beast,”
Starkey quoted, “and your little friend will go free.”

Fergus threw himself at Starkey, but before he could grab at the knife Hector hauled him away. Fergus appealed to Damon, the man he had once trusted with a son’s blind loyalty. “Don’t let him do this.”

“What does it matter if the girl dies? We’ll all be dead in the morning if your brother holds back his magic.”

My magic, thought Marcel. It had been enough to overwhelm Lord Alwyn, but the old wizard had been close to death, his powers weakened and almost gone. What did Marcel really know of his own magic – a single book, so much of it confusing and only half-learned? There was only one page of it that was truly part of him. It had survived even when Lord Alwyn took away everything else that he was and everything that he had taught himself. The words that began his own book of sorcery.

My fate is my own, my heart remains free
Not magic but wisdom reveals destiny

Wisdom
– all that he had come to know and all that he knew to be true. He had already used it to unmask Zadenwolf. But what did he know of the Book of Lies? More perhaps than even its creator, he saw now. He looked up at Starkey, whose expectant face somehow grew more grotesque and distorted each time he saw it. “There is no dragon,” he told him plainly. “The Book has deceived you, just as it tricked my father and Lord Alwyn himself.”

“You’re lying!” Starkey thundered. “What else could the verses speak of but Mortregis? The beast’s very name means ‘Death of a King’.”

“Yes, it’s Mortregis, but he’s not what you think he is. You’ve already conjured this dragon, Starkey.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look outside this tent, if you dare. We’re surrounded by soldiers ready for battle. They are armed with swords and arrows, just like in the poem.

“With swords for teeth and skin of steel
With arrowed claw and poisoned heel

“And you yourself set fire to the land we passed through today. You see?

“A Beast will touch the land with flame

“Every line in the verses is the truth, but at the same time a lie. Don’t you understand?” He stepped forward suddenly and pressed his hand down on the cover of the Book. “Mortregis is the war you’ve brought on us all.”

Marcel did not need to look down. He could feel the warmth of the Book’s glow on his open palm. He also sensed a cruel pleasure rising from it. The evil on its pages was delighted with the mayhem it had brought to the world of its creator.

But Starkey’s darting, desperate eyes
were
drawn inevitably towards it. “No!” he roared, and with a savage lunge he pushed Marcel away and placed his own hands on the Book. “The dragon is real!”

With even greater delight, it seemed to Marcel, the Book of Lies responded immediately. It writhed in an endless frenzy, streaming through its pages from one cover to the other, then reversing itself as it searched in vain for a space to record just one more lie. The flapping and fanning became hysterical laughter that seemed to mock them, Starkey most of all.

“No, it hasn’t betrayed me! I won’t believe it! There’s a dragon to be conjured up from these pages still.”

At first he tried to close the cover, but the Book’s urge to find a place for his words was more powerful than human hands could resist. When he realised his attempts were futile, Starkey picked up the Book and hugged the open covers to his chest, like a father with an infant child. “It promised me the power of a dragon,” he cried demonically, hugging it even more tightly against his heart. “I can feel its heat in my bones.
I must have the power of that dragon!
”

None of them could quite believe what happened next. With the open Book still thrashing against his chest, Starkey began to rise up, huge and repulsive beyond all description. His feet grew into massive claws; his skin gave way to scales the size of a knight’s heavy shield. That sharp and angular face took on a new form, his mouth and nose shaping themselves into a hideous snout as his mane of black hair hardened into a row of vicious spines ranged down the back of his elongated neck. The emerging creature was too much for the tent, which
became a shroud over its head until, with a sweep of its vicious tail, the canvas was ripped aside.

Marcel and the others were forced back by the sheer size of the monster, now as tall as ten men stacked on each other’s shoulders. In its claws, once Starkey’s human hands, the Book of Lies writhed chaotically, the white of its crowded pages standing out starkly against the dragon’s dark and steely hide.

The bravest of Zadenwolf’s soldiers took aim, but their arrows were no match for those scales. Wings spread out ominously from behind the beast’s shoulders, and with a surge that blew many of the fleeing soldiers off their feet, it rose into the air, hovering above them and picking them out with its devilish eyes. To their terror, the dragon began to fill its lungs, leaving no doubt about what was to come.

Zadenwolf suddenly appeared and tried to rally his terrified troops. The beast’s eye fell on him, alone in the circle of deserted tents, a sword in his hand as he shouted orders that no man would stop to obey. The dragon con torted its wrinkled neck and, when the aim was perfect, opened its jaws like a snake about to strike. Flames poured from its throat, a long, deadly tongue of the brightest fire. There was no time for Zadenwolf to run, and no hiding place that could save him. The flames struck his face and chest, searing the fur from his collar and the hair from his head. Even the metal of the sword that remained clutched in his hand began to melt. By the time the flames subsided,
there was nothing left but a charred skeleton and the echo of a blood-curdling scream.

The dragon took another breath and looked about for others who deserved its vengeful wrath. It found Marcel, with Nicola and Fergus beside him. They knew that when the dragon breathed out again, a sheet of flame would char the flesh from their bones, just as it had done to Zadenwolf. The three of them would all the together. The creature’s snout lunged towards them so it would make no mistake with its aim, its massive belly heaving, its neck distended.