There was more laughter. The smoke above the rooftops seemed to have been forgotten. Cockerell put his hand over Fenoglio's mouth.
"Once again, and I hope this will be the last time, " said Capricorn to Meggie, "start reading! The prisoners have waited long enough for their executioner. "
Silence fell again, and once more it smelled of fear.
Meggie bent over the book on her lap. The letters seemed to dance on the pages.
Come out, thought Meggie, come out and save us! Save us alclass="underline" Elinor and my mother, Mo and Farid. Save Dustfinger if he's still alive, and save Basta, too, for all I care.
Her tongue felt like a little animal that had found refuge in her mouth and was now butting its head against her teeth.
"Capricorn had many men, " she began. "And every one of them was feared in the surrounding towns and villages. They stank of cold smoke, they stank of sulfur and everything that reminds you of fire. Whenever one of them passed by people closed their doors and hid under the stairs with their children. They called them Firefingers and Bloodhounds – Capricorn's men had many names. They were feared by day, and by night they made their way into dreams and poisoned them. But there was one who was feared even more than Capricorn's villains. " Meggie felt as if her voice was growing stronger with every word she read. It seemed to grow until it filled the arena. "Folk called him the Shadow. "
Two more lines at the bottom of the page, then turn it over. Fenoglio's words were waiting. "Look at this, Meggie!" he had whispered when he showed her the sheet of paper. "What an artist I am, eh? Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness. Keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth… all those glorious words. "
Taste every word, Meggie, whispered Mo's voice inside her, savor it on your tongue. Do you taste the colors? Do you taste the wind and the night? The fear and the joy? And the love. Taste them, Meggie, and everything will come to life. "Folk called him Capricorn's Shadow. " How the sh hissed as it passed her lips, how darkly the sound of the o formed in her mouth.
"He came only when Capricorn called him, " she read. "Sometimes he was red as fire, sometimes gray as the ash to which fire turns all that it devours. He darted out of the earth as fast as flames lick their way up wood. His fingers and even his breath brought death. He rose before his master's feet, soundless, faceless, scenting his way like a hound on the trail and waiting for his master to point to the victim. It was said that Capricorn had commanded one of the trolls who understand the whole art of fire and smoke to create the Shadow from the ashes of his victims. No one was sure, for it was also said that Capricorn had ordered those who called the Shadow to life to be killed. All that everyone knew was that he was immortal, invulnerable, and pitiless, like his master. "
Meggie's voice died away as if the wind had blown it from her lips.
Something was rising from the gravel that covered the foot ball field. It grew taller, it stretched its ashen limbs. The night air suddenly stank of sulfur. That stench burned Meggie's eyes so that the letters blurred, but she must go on reading while the eerie creature grew taller and taller. "Yet one night, a mild and starlit night, the Shadow heard not Capricorn's voice when it was called forth, but the voice of a girl, and when she called his name he remembered; he remembered all those from whose ashes he was made, all the pain and all the grief -"
The Magpie reached over Meggie's shoulder. "What's this? What are you reading?" But Meggie jumped up and backed away before the old woman could snatch the sheet of paper from her. "He remembered, " she read on in a loud, clear voice, "and he was determined to be avenged – avenged upon those who were the cause of all this misfortune, whose cruelty poisoned the whole world. "
"Make her stop!"
Was that Capricorn's voice? Meggie almost fell off the rostrum as she tried to keep away from the Magpie. Darius stood there, staring at her in astonishment, the casket in his hands. Then suddenly but deliberately, as if he had all the time in the world, he put down the casket and wrapped his thin arms firmly around the Magpie from behind. Nor did he let go, no matter how hard she struggled and cursed. And Meggie read on as the Shadow stood, watching her. The figure had no face, that was true, but it had eyes, terrible eyes, red as the embers of a hidden fire.
"Get the book away from her!" shouted Capricorn. He was standing in front of his chair, bent double as if he feared his legs would refuse to obey him if he took so much as a step toward the Shadow. "Get it away from her!"
But none of his remaining men moved, none of the boys and none of the women came to his aid. They had eyes for nothing but the Shadow as he stood there listening to Meggie's voice, as if she were telling him a long-forgotten tale.
"Indeed, he wanted revenge, " Meggie read on. If only her voice weren't shaking so much, but it wasn't easy to kill, even if someone else was going to do it for her. "So the Shadow went to his master and reached out to him with ashen hands…"
How soundlessly it moved, that terrible, gigantic figure!
Meggie stared at Fenoglio's next sentence. And Capricorn fell down on his face, and his black heart stopped beating – She couldn't say it. She couldn't. It had all been in vain.
Then, suddenly, someone else was standing behind her. She hadn't even noticed him climbing up onto the rostrum. The boy was there, too, holding a shotgun aimed at the benches – but no one sitting there stirred. No one so much as lifted a finger to save Capricorn. And Mo took the book from Meggie's hands, ran his eyes over the lines Fenoglio had added, and in a firm voice read to the end of what the old man had written.
"And Capricorn fell down on his face, and his black heart stopped beating, and all those who had gone burning and murdering with him disappeared – blown away like ashes in the wind. "
57 . A DESERTED VILLAGE
In books I meet the dead as if they were alive,
in books I see what is yet to come…
All things decay and pass with time…
all fame would fall victim to oblivion
if God had not given mortal men the book to aid them.
Richard de Bury, The Philobiblon
So Capricorn died, just as Fenoglio had written, and Cockerell disappeared at the same moment his master fell to the ground, and with him more than half the men on the benches. The rest ran away, all of them, the boys and women, too. Those heading toward the village met some of Capricorn's men running back from extinguishing the fire. Their faces were smeared with soot and full of horror, and not because of the flames that had been licking around Capricorn's house, for they had put those out. No. They had seen Flatnose and several other men vanish into thin air before their very eyes. They were gone, as if the darkness had swallowed them up, as if they had never existed. And perhaps that was the truth of it. The man who had made them had now destroyed them, erased them like mistakes in a drawing, like marks on white paper. They were gone, and the others, the men who had not been born of Fenoglio's words, were hurrying back to tell Capricorn what had happened. But Capricorn lay on his face with gravel clinging to his red suit, and never again would anyone tell him anything – about fire and smoke, about fear and death. Never again.
Only the Shadow still stood there, a figure so tall that the men running across the parking lot saw him from afar, gray before the black night sky, his eyes two blazing red stars, and they forgot the master they had been going to serve. Every one of them ran for the cars. They wanted only to get away, far away, before the being who had been summoned like a dog turned and devoured them all.