The Flame in the Mist (41 page)

“Is that so? Well, show it to me. If you don’t, I may just have to alert my dear sister, who will pry the information from you. But if you do”—he smiled—“perhaps I’ll help you.”

The diamond Mark on his cheek flared. He was exuding deviousness, but Jemma saw no alternative. She picked up the book and gave it to him.

“Eth
Groethnott Gnos
. What the …?” Feo flipped it open, his roughness loosening the book from its binding.
“Calling Rime of Sae … Saewel …”
He tutted in exasperation and turned the page, tearing it. “Nothing but dots and lines! Looks like a load of old codswallop to me.”

“No. I mean, yes. It is. Codswallop.” Jemma bit her lips as another page ripped.

“Why would you want to read it, then?” Feo snapped the book shut and shoved it into his pocket. “So. My side of the bargain. Why I’m here. There’s something I need to tell you, Jemma, before it’s too late. You see, I always liked you, the way you were so different, so dreamy and independent. Even when they all thought you were airy-headed, I didn’t. I could never have had the guts to be like you, refusing to do cruel things in the Ceremonies.”

“But … I thought you loved the Offerings!”

Feo laughed and tossed his head. “I wanted their approval,” he said. “What was I to do? Mama and Papa have always thought I was weak. You looked down on me. Even my own twin despises me! If I’d stood up to them and been like I
wanted to be—more like you—it would’ve been worse, don’t you see? So I played along, while hoping, like Papa did, that somehow, miraculously, you’d come over to our side, and that someday …” He blushed, his diamond Mark darkening. “I knew you weren’t really my sister, you see, but until you knew the truth, I had to hide my feelings for you, and play along with them. But oh, Jemma, how I detested it, detested!”

“Then why did you want to hear all those gory details about Marsh this morning?” she said. “You acted as though you believed my story—”

“I did believe it! I thought you really had changed. But it was perfect, don’t you see?” His black eyes blazed in the candlelight. “You’d come back—I was so happy! I thought all I had to do for you to like me, just a little—while still keeping in Mama and Papa’s favor, which Shade was so conveniently destroying for herself—was to pretend I was relishing it all.”

Jemma was flabbergasted by his lucidity. He’d rarely strung more than a few words together before, much less expressed any emotion. “If that’s really true” she said, “you’re a better liar than either Shade or me—”

“Yes, it’s true!” Feo fixed Jemma’s gaze. Darkness seemed to deepen around him. He stepped closer and sighed. “Your eyes are amazing, Jemma, do you know that?” A smooth pinkish hue appeared around him, then floated toward her and engulfed her in its silky embrace. It made her skin crawl, yet she was transfixed, and Feo looked so hungry for affection that she felt almost sorry for him.

“Feo,” she said, clutching the bars, “it must have been awful for you—”

“Jemma!” Feo grabbed her hands and held them to his chest, pulling her up against the bars. His face was inches from hers, the scent of wolfmint sweet on his breath. “So you
do
care! Oh, Jemma, we’re so alike, really.” His eyes misted. “I could help you, you know.…” He twined his fingers through hers.

Jemma’s heart raced. “Would you, Feo? I mean, help?”

“Yes,” he whispered, “yes! At least, I would have, before.… But it’s too late, isn’t it? Unless … unless you give me a reason to persuade them, convince them …” His fingers twined more fervently. “You could, couldn’t you? Stay. With me …”

“Oh!” The full force of Feo’s meaning finally hit Jemma, and she quickly changed the subject. “But you’re not really like them, Feo, are you? Everything you’ve said—how you hate the Ceremonies, and can’t be yourself—shows that. So why stay here? You could get the keys from Shade! And then come with us—”

“With us?” Feo’s expression suddenly changed. The pinkish hue shrank back around him, turning jagged and muddy, but his fingers kept twining around hers. “Oh, no, no, no! Not after seeing you with … that …” His eyes flickered down the corridor toward Digby’s cell. His top lip curled back. “For years, I’ve allowed myself to hope that you and I … Still, I was glad for you when you escaped. Glad, do you hear? Mord knows what I was thinking! But when you returned, I felt sure my time had come. And now you dare suggest that I’d help you—and
him
? Oh, Jemma, Jemma! The way you touched his face … In one fell action, you killed all my hope. You and that Hazebury dross!” He gripped her fingers, hard.

“Ouch! Feo—”

“That’s what I came to tell you, Jemma. I’m over it, over you!” Feo snatched his hands away. “You’ve taught me what I needed to know: how to harden my heart and really be like them. At last, I belong!”

“Feo, no! Think about it: years ahead of cruelty, brutal Ceremonies—is that what you want?”

“Yes, it’s what I want! It’s all that’s left to me now.”

“Feo, please!” Jemma lunged through the bars and tried to grab Majem’s book.

“Oh, so you
do
want this!” He sneered and backed away, yanking the book from his pocket and waving it in the air. “Then it’s not such nonsense, after all … some formula to destroy us, perhaps? Or do you expect me to just let you go? Oh Jemma, how blind you can be! You see, my family is all I have now. I can’t let you escape, my little vixen, for their disdain of me would turn to hatred. Besides, the end of you will bring an end to the longing I’ve suffered. At last, I shall be free of you, free of this constant pain in my heart!” His black eyes flashed at her; then he opened the book and shot a fuming gaze at it. The pages burst into flames, and he flung the book’s blazing remains down the corridor.

“There! You didn’t know I could do that, did you?” Feo laughed at Jemma’s gasp of horror. “It may not be much compared to your powers, Jemma, but if I’ve upset you then so much the better!” He turned abruptly and strode away as the flames sputtered into darkness.

“No!” Jemma yelled into the gloom, rattling the cell door.
“Noooooo!”

“Jem!” Digby’s voice drifted up the corridor. “Jem, don’t. You’ll only make it worse.”

His voice was joined by the triplets’ drowsy chorus.
“Digby, Jemma, what’s happenin’? Where are you? What’s that burnin’ smell?”

“It’s nothin’,” Digby said cheerily, “an’ I’m next door to you. Can’t see you at the moment, though. Me and Jem, we’re playin’ a game. Hidin’, in’t we, Jem?”

Jemma put her hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs.

“I’m scared,” Tiny said. “Will you tell us a story?”

Digby’s voice fell to a murmur. Jemma guessed from his tone that this was a familiar tale, one he knew would calm his brothers and sister and lull them back to sleep. She curled up in the straw. Soon his voice trailed off. Where were Gordo and Drudge? Gordo must be frantic, his worst fear, and Berola’s, about to become reality.

She had failed them. Failed them all. Her last shred of hope flickered and died.

Jemma yearned for Drudge’s company, even though he couldn’t possibly help her now. She thought of the silky white strands of hair, his ancient face, his yellow eyes and teeth, and his wisdom, his extraordinary Vision. The love she felt for him lifted her spirits slightly, and all at once, the elusive few words of the Releasing Rime tumbled into her head:
All Orbs held here in Captivitee … Release thy Bondes—be thou free!

Free. There was no chance of that now. Like Majem’s book, her life and theirs would soon be nothing but ashes. She may as well give in and let herself drift away now, steeped in the dungeons’ dark silence … drift, as if on a river, dissolving into nothing. Was this what it was like to die—light, bodiless, at the end of everything? She was becoming the water, like the Stoat River winding its way around Mordwin’s Crag and down the valley, toward an endless ocean.

Away down the valley Jemma flowed, far from Agromond Castle and into a world of peace. A tiny point of light appeared like a star in the center of her vision. It rose upward, drawing her with it, separating her from the waters, then expanded around her into an evanescent blue sphere. The sphere flattened and elongated, transforming into a tube, and she was pulled into it, falling like quicksilver, images flashing by of her childhood, other childhoods, other ages, faster and faster, until she flew through a small window into an attic room where a dark-haired young woman, dressed in the full-skirted clothing of long ago, was sitting at a small desk, quill in hand.

The woman was writing. A man stood behind her, his long, flame-red hair falling around his shoulders. Then Jemma was dissolving into him, merging with him.
I feel you here
, he said, wordlessly.
Now take heed, and remember well the words you see
.

She looked down billowing white shirtsleeves to long delicate hands that were resting on the woman’s wooden chair back, and watched as words flowed from her quill:
Si ti neto di od nise. Wom styn ob nege.… Rel tethe es nubne …

The words Jemma had read not an hour before—the final words of Majem’s book.

“Now is it complete,” the woman said, “and I trust that the Fire One will understand it, for thou hast Seen that she shall be as adept at the unraveling of anagrams as I. Thus may she reveal the Truth hid in the confusion of appearances, and fulfill the Prophecy you have dreamed.” She blotted the ink, then closed the notebook she was writing in. The man picked it up, and Jemma felt its moleskin cover as though it was in her own hand.

A rustling sound distracted the woman. Two golden-furred rats with ruby eyes appeared on her writing table, and she picked them up. “Ah, my Rattusses,” she murmured.

Then Jemma was flooded with sorrow; the sorrow of parting, never to return. “My dearest,” rumbled a low voice in her chest, the chest of the man she was inhabiting, “I shall go forthwith, and await the time.”

“I shall miss thy works and thy wisdom, Gudred,” the woman said, “as well as thy love. Would that thou could’st go when thou art old, and not have to wait such long years in that dark place! To think of thee, witnessing the horrors, without being able to prevent them.…”

“It must be now”—Jemma felt the rumbling again—“for the magic of Mordwin’s Crag will sustain me better if I go while I am yet young. Besides, when I am old, I shall not have the strength to withstand the Mist, nor the wits to fool it. As for the horrors, you know it must be so, for if I intervene, I shall be discovered. And I must survive, for the child. The Fire One.”

“Then go,” the woman’s voice quavered, and she handed him a note. “Take this too, to remind you how well that I love you, Gudred Solvay, and shall always remember thee.”

“I too shall remember.…” His voice trailed into echo:
Remember … remember …

The room shimmered and went dark. Jemma felt as though she was being sucked out of the window, speeding back up through the tube, the wind whispering,
Si ti neto … Remember …
as seasons rushed by. Another sound began thrumming through her—the castle bell, tolling. One, two …
Remember …
three, four, five … The spicy smell of Drudge’s porridge wafted to meet her. Six … a rustling sound, nearby. Seven … seven, already? Jemma was freefalling through the castle roof, past Nocturna’s room, down to the dungeons, touching the edge of Digby’s dream of open fields and the confusion of monsters and fire swimming through the triplets’ young minds.

More rustling. Straw scratched her face, the flagstones cold and hard beneath her. The rustling got louder. Something small, cold, and damp nudged her cheek. Nudge. Nudge. A cold, damp … 
snout
? Jemma’s heart leapt against her sternum. Her eyes shot open and were met by four ruby-red dots blazing at her in the pale dawn light, interspersed by two small noses and whiskers, attached to two golden-furred bodies—

“Noodle, Pie!” Jemma sat up. “My Rattusses, you’re alive!” Images flashed into her mind’s eye: driftwood buffeting the river’s edge; Noodle and Pie leaping ashore, then scurrying up Mordwin’s Crag, focused, like two homing pigeons, intent on finding her.

The rats hurled themselves into Jemma’s arms and nuzzled into her neck as she held them to her, tears of joy streaming down her face. For several moments more they ran over
her, up to her shoulders, through her hair, and down to her lap, rolling around and squealing with glee. Then they lay on their backs, tiny paws in the air, ears alert as she garbled about all that had happened, and the disastrous predicament they were in now.

“But with you back again, Rattusses,” she said, rubbing their tummies, “I feel as though anything can happen!”

Just then Drudge shuffled into view through the kitchen door, carrying a tray of the Agromonds’ empty porridge bowls. He clattered them down onto the table.

“Drudge!” Jemma stood and went to the door, a rat in each hand. “Look who’s here!”

Drudge nodded as if it was no surprise to him, then hobbled over. “Gorrrd … plan—”

“Gordo! Where is he? Is he all right?”

“Ysssss! Trusssst.” He gesticulated toward the Pickle Corridor. “Agrmm … zzz … Come. Sssoon.” He paused for breath. “Lissssn. You, dream. Mjjjm.
Si … ti neto …
”

“Yes! But … Drudge, how do you know about it?”

“Rememm …,” he said, “Rememmbr.” He fixed his eyes on Jemma and suddenly she was looking through them at the quill moving over the page, the words taking form.

“Mother of Majem!” she gasped, realization surging through her as the letters of Drudge’s name reordered in her head. “Me
 … Good … red.…
How many times have you tried to tell me? You’re Gudred—the Visionary who disappeared! It was
you
in my dream just now … and, and, it was you I dreamed of all those weeks ago—you, when you were a young man, coming through the Mist to the castle, almost three hundred years ago! It wasn’t somebody who was out to get me at all … but
you
! Oh, Drudge, if only I’d realized!”

Drudge’s eyes filled with tears, like an old mariner who’s finally been recognized and pulled ashore after centuries of being adrift. “Came … for her. To help … you,” he whispered.