The Dark Flight Down

by Marcus Sedgwick

  For some reason, the jailer stood waiting while they both ate, and when they had finished, he took their bowls from them.

  “By the way, you’re to go free,” he said, in an offhand manner.

  Boy leapt to his feet.

  “When?” he cried. “Please, when?”

  The jailer tilted his head to one side.

  “Not you,” he said. “Him.”

  Boy put his hands up and lightly touched the bars of his cell. He turned to Bedrich, forcing a smile.

  “Did you hear? That’s good.”

  Bedrich had heard.

  A smile washed across his face, but it was quickly followed by a frown.

  He looked hard at the jailer, but it was impossible to read that blind expression.

  “You mean it?” he croaked. “This isn’t a trick or—”

  “Do you want to argue about it?” the jailer said. “I’m sure we can change their minds if you’d rather stay.”

  “No!” cried Bedrich. “No! Only I just . . .”

  He stopped.

  Boy looked at the jailer.

  “Why? Why are they letting him go? Will you ask about me? Please will you ask when I’m going to be let out?”

  “No,” said the jailer bluntly. “Not my business. Yours. As for him, I don’t know. Maybe he’s been pardoned for his crimes. Going now.”

  With that he went.

  Bedrich called after him.

  “When? When?”

  There was no answer, but it seemed enough for now to know.

  “Boy!” he cried. “Did you hear that, Boy? They’re going to let me out!”

  Boy watched Bedrich, thinking, waiting, judging. The last time they had spoken Bedrich had been surly. Boy needed Bedrich now. He needed him to speak; he needed his help.

  Watching Bedrich, Boy finally remembered the song Bedrich had been singing. It was the “Linden Song,” which he and Willow and Valerian had heard the miserable cart driver sing as they hunted for the book in that desolate village in the snow-laden countryside.

  Like falling snow, its words floated freely through his head now as he relived the horror of that frozen churchyard, and inside the church itself, the discovery of Gad Beebe’s grave, where they had believed the book lay. And so it had, once. But someone had beaten them to it. Kepler.

  It was no surprise that Boy’s thoughts had drifted to the book, no surprise at all. He was sure that his destiny lay entwined with it. He knew it would hold an answer for him. If only he could get to it, there was still a chance for him.

  It was no use, this nameless life. He had spent enough time as a rootless being, without home, or heritage. He had come to accept Valerian’s abuse of him as normal, but Willow had shown him enough love to make him see that it was not. He had to find answers now. He needed to know who his parents were. Maybe he would never know who his mother was, but one look in the book would at least tell him the truth about Valerian.

  Boy watched as all sorts of feelings passed through Bedrich’s mind, as he contemplated what it would be like to be free after untold years.

  “I need your help,” Boy said, trying to judge Bedrich’s mood. Boy was pleased to see he seemed calm.

  Bedrich nodded.

  “When you get out. Will you do something for me?”

  Bedrich nodded again.

  “Yes,” he said, gently. “Of course. I’ll try.”

  “Thank you,” said Boy. “Thank you. I need you to find someone for me. And take her a message. Can you do that?”

  “Oh yes,” said Bedrich. “Whatever you say!”

  Encouraged, Boy went on.

  “I need you to find a girl, a girl called Willow. She works at an orphanage called St. Stephen’s, it’s run by a woman called Martha.”

  “Martha, Martha. Yes,” said Bedrich.

  “When you find Willow, tell her where I am. Tell her to steal the book and bring it here.”

  Bedrich looked at Boy, staring him straight in the eyes for almost the first time since they had met.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  Something in his manner put Boy on his guard, instantly. He thought about what he had said.

  “I said . . . tell Willow to —”

  “Not that,” said Bedrich. “What you said after that.”

  “There’s . . . a book,” Boy said, slowly. He had only dared talk of it to Bedrich because he believed it could mean nothing to him. “It’s very powerful and—”

  “And it’s dangerous,” said Bedrich. He held up his hand, to stop Boy from speaking. “Oh yes, I know about the book. Only I thought it had been dealt with. Long, long ago.”

  13

  “Maxim!” yelled Frederick. “Dammit, Maxim! Where are you?”

  “Coming, sire, coming!”

  Frederick sat up in bed, propped on dozens of small velvet cushions. His bed was a vast thing, far too big for such a little man. In his white nightgown and nightcap he looked like a sailor marooned in a sea of silken sheets.

  “Blast this bed!” he cursed. “Why can’t I have something more comfortable?”

  Maxim hurried from his own impressive rooms a little way down the corridor to Frederick’s chambers, the most sumptuous part of the palace.

  He strode down the corridor oblivious to the spectacular views across the rest of the palace, and then down over the City.

  “Max-im!” screeched the emperor from his bedchamber.

  Maxim rushed through the doorway and almost slipped on the ridiculously polished floor.

  “Sire?” he said.

  “Maxim. Why are you always so slow? Anyone would think you are trying to kill me. Don’t you understand I have needs?”

  “My apologies, sire,” Maxim said, trying to keep any note of irritation from his voice. “I was attending to some other matters.”

  “Well, don’t,” Frederick snapped. “You attend to me and me alone.”

  “Indeed, sire. The matters I speak of were concerned with—”

  “I’m not interested, Maxim. Understand me! Now listen. I want to see some progress. You’re dragging your heels.”

  “Sire?” Maxim said, with too much of a question in his voice.

  “Don’t question me! I want to see some results! Bring the court seers to me. I want to see what they think about what you’re doing. Or what you’re not doing . . .”

  Frederick stared straight at Maxim. The tall man looked at the floor, his eyes burning. He thought about the useless wretches Frederick insisted on maintaining at court and fumed, but he said nothing.

  “You’ve been dragging your heels and I want results. And soon. I’m getting older by the day and I don’t feel at all well. This bed hurts me, for a start. You’ve no conception of it. None at all.”

  “I will have it—”

  “Just listen to me. You know what I asked you to do, so do it. If not, I’ll find someone else who can. In the meantime, bring the seers to me. Let’s see what they have to say. If you had only kept that boy perhaps you might have got somewhere by now.”

  “The . . . boy, sire? The boy from the magician’s house?”

  “Yes, yes, of course the boy from the magician’s house. Who else do you think I mean? If you hadn’t had him killed . . .”

  Maxim cursed the whims of the emperor, but restrained himself from saying what he really thought. He wasn’t going to let this chance go by, however.

  “Ah . . . but Your Highness is absolutely right. Fortunately, it was . . . not possible to dispatch the boy as you wished. He is still in our dungeons. . . .”

  Frederick looked up at him sharply.

  “As I wished, Maxim? As I wished? I made no such decision. I told you to lock him up until we were ready to see him, and you know I never change my mind! You know that to disobey me would mean your death, do you not? Is that not right?”

  “No! No, sire,” said Maxim, hurriedly. How was he supposed to win with this cantankerous old swine? “Of course I do everything you require of me, yet maybe I
am . . . misremembering your instructions. Fortunately everything is as you wish. He is indeed incarcerated in our dungeons. If you wish to see the boy . . . ?”

  “No, I do not,” Frederick said. “Well, not yet. Have him cleaned and then bring him to court. Let us see what he knows. And then, if he still proves useless, you can drown him.”

  Maxim swore silently at the floor as he averted his face from Frederick’s view once more.

  “Very good, sire,” he said. “At once.”

  He left, shutting the door behind him, just a little too hard.

  14

  Willow hurried through the darkening City streets yet again, headed south, over the river, her companion at her side.

  Kepler.

  As they crossed the wide street known as the Parade, Willow pulled her shawl about her more closely as she was struck by a sharp cold wind that sent the snowflakes into flurries.

  An hour or so later they turned into a rancid little alley called the Bucket, named after a low-life drinking den halfway along it. At the far end the river lay before them.

  They crossed at St. Olaf’s Bridge, a fantastic span of three powerful arches, wide and noble in its construction. At each of the two piers where stone thrust its way into the riverbed, the thoroughfare widened into a bay, where the ponderous or weary might consider the flow of water and time passing below them. On each pier was a small cage, just big enough to permit a man’s body to be forced inside. Willow shuddered as she passed them, but fortunately, it had been many years since they had been used.

  At the far bank, the street plummeted rapidly back into the chaos of the City’s maze, and any sense of architectural order given by the bridge vanished.

  But after a turn or two, there was the palace mound ahead of them, pressed against a bend in the river.

  After she had bumped into Kepler by the North Gate the day before, they had returned to his house, arguing all the way. Yet each knew they needed the other.

  They had made their way back across the City as fast as they could, for the night and the snow were deepening. Even without Kepler’s company Willow would have known her way unerringly.

  On reaching the house, Kepler had provided some bread and cheese, for which Willow was truly grateful. Kepler was an intelligent man, a great intellect, but he had seemed clumsy and slow as he prepared the food for Willow, as if it was something he never did. It was no feast, but had been enough to sustain her.

  As soon as dawn had come, Kepler had collected things in a large shoulder bag, and they had set out once more for the palace.

  This morning the arguments had stopped; they had barely spoken.

  “We must hurry,” Kepler said, as he got things together. “He’s in danger there.”

  “I know,” Willow replied.

  “Do you? You don’t know anything of the palace! The people inside. And there’s one to be most feared.”

  “Who?”

  “A man called Maxim. He’s the emperor’s right hand. He has a reputation.”

  “What?” asked Willow.

  “It would frighten you to know, child,” Kepler said.

  Willow stopped and waited for Kepler to notice that she had. After a few paces he saw that she was no longer with him and turned.

  “You think it will scare me?” Willow shouted. “After all I’ve been through?”

  Kepler shook his head.

  “Maybe not,” he said. “But there is little to tell. Maxim is a dangerous man, with great influence over the emperor and life in court. We must be most careful of him.”

  “Why?” asked Willow.

  “Listen, girl,” Kepler snapped. “You ask too many questions. I’ve agreed you may be able to help me find Boy, and that’s enough for now. So be silent!”

  Kepler would say no more. He turned and walked on, and Willow had no choice but to follow.

  Now they were deep in their own thoughts, which were more similar than they might have known. Both were thinking about Boy, though as they walked Willow glanced from time to time at Kepler’s sack. They had agreed on their plan the night before, but Willow couldn’t help wondering what, exactly what, it was that Kepler had brought with him.

  15

  Boy struggled to believe what Bedrich was saying.

  “Yes, I know about the book. I thought it had been dealt with, long ago.”

  “How?” cried Boy. “How can you know about it?”

  “I know it!” Bedrich said, firmly. “I know the book. I once looked into it myself. . . .”

  He stopped, took a deep breath.

  “It did me no good. It has done others much worse.”

  That was true. Boy thought of Valerian. The book hadn’t saved him after all, though it might have done at the cost of Boy’s life.

  “But how?” asked Boy. “When?”

  Bedrich looked at Boy, held his eyes for a long time.

  “What does a poor wretch like you know about it?” he asked. “A street child like you.”

  Boy shook his head.

  “I don’t live on the streets, not anymore. I live with . . . lived with a man. A great man, called Valerian.”

  “The magician?” asked Bedrich, raising an eyebrow.

  “You knew him?” Boy asked.

  “No. Only by reputation. Fifteen, maybe twenty years ago. He was a scholar at the Academy, but was disgraced.”

  Boy ignored this.

  “Valerian wanted the book,” he said. “We searched for it. In nasty places.”

  “The book is power. That much I know. But why exactly did he want it?”

  “He was in trouble. He . . .”

  Boy stopped. It seemed impossible to explain everything that had happened in the last few weeks.

  “You speak of him as if he has gone,” Bedrich said. “He is dead?”

  Boy nodded.

  “So he didn’t get the book, to save him from this trouble?”

  Boy shook his head.

  “No, he did get it. He did, but . . .”

  “But? What happened?”

  “To save himself . . . to save himself would have meant killing me. . . .”

  “And he refused? What a noble gesture!”

  Boy shrugged. It wasn’t quite like that, but in the end Valerian had died instead of him. Bedrich sensed Boy’s hesitation.

  “But he must have been a great man, to die instead of you. Why else would he have done it?”

  “He was my father,” Boy said.

  The words sounded strange on his lips. He knew he might be lying, that he didn’t really know the truth. But it was easier to tell Bedrich that, than to have to explain it all to him.

  “What a strange boy you are!” Bedrich declared.

  Boy said nothing.

  “So you know about the book, about its power. And its danger.”

  “Willow always said it was dangerous, right from the start, but I don’t see why. It’s full of knowledge, and knowledge is good. Valerian always said so, and he was never wrong.”

  “But the book is different. Maybe if it revealed the whole truth of a matter, it would be a good thing. But it does not. It is treacherous, and malevolent. It reveals only some of the truth. It shows something different to each person. Sometimes it shows nothing at all, but when it does reveal something, you have to be very careful to understand that what it is telling you is only part of the picture.”

  “But Willow looked into it. She looked over Valerian’s shoulder, and saw he was about to try to . . .”

  He stopped. He didn’t want to tell Bedrich that Valerian had tried to kill him.

  “What?” asked Bedrich. “What is it? Are you beginning to understand? The doubtful nature of what the book reveals, the dangers?”

  Boy nodded. He was happy to change the subject. “That song you were singing. How do you know it? And how do you know about the book? I thought it was a secret.”

  “It was. It should have been,” said Bedrich. “But things change, obviously. I know about the book,
for it was once here. In the palace.”

  “Here?” Boy cried.

  “Shhh!” Bedrich hushed him. “Not so loud. Yes, the book was here. It’s all so long ago now, such a long time. It’s hard to remember it all.”

  “Try,” Boy urged. “Please, try.”

  Bedrich put his head in his hands briefly, then looked up at Boy, blinking.

  “The book. It came here. It was brought here, to please the emperor. You won’t have seen the emperor. . . .”

  Boy shook his head. “No. I have. Briefly,” he said. “I was amazed. I thought Maxim had to be the one in charge. Frederick doesn’t look like he could be in charge of anything.”

  Bedrich shook his head.

  “That’s what you think? Then you are mistaken. He’s a hard and powerful man, despite his age, despite his weaknesses.”

  “Some people don’t even believe he’s still alive. No one’s seen him in years, in the City.”

  “They wouldn’t have, he never goes outside the palace. I used to tell him he should go out. Take the air, exercise. It might have stopped him brooding over his health all the time. He was obsessed by his health. His heart, his nerves, his stomach. It was hard being his doctor, especially when he set so much store in those alchemists and necromancers of his. . . .”

  Boy felt Bedrich was drifting away again.

  “The book,” he said. “What about the book?”

  “Yes. The book. Well, in a way it’s all part of the same thing. Frederick was old even then. He must be ancient by now. Even in those days he was possessed by one concern: the imperial line.”

  “What?” asked Boy.

  “The line. He is the last of the imperial line. There is no one to succeed him when he dies. Desperate for children, but with no heir to the throne, he began to worry that he would die and leave the empire without an emperor. Empire! What nonsense! This pox-ridden city is all that’s left of it. But nonetheless, all those dukes and lords were upstairs waiting to fight it out when he goes! You see?”

  “Yes”—Boy nodded—“yes, but what about the book?”

  “I’m getting to it,” said Bedrich. “It’s all part of the same thing. He was obsessed about having an heir. And everyone in court was trying to placate him, and please him, all the while hoping for favors in return, money, a title, things like that. One day, a musician arrived in court, from the countryside. A handsome man, and of reasonable breeding. He came with a song, and a present. First he sang the song, and the emperor was even gracious enough to seem to enjoy it. He must have been in a rare good mood that day.”