The Book of Lies

by James Moloney

  “You named her yourselves, using a word from the fables Queen Ashlere told you. A termagant is a wild and angry woman. Perhaps you had already guessed what secrets lay in her heart.”

  “What sort of magic could make this happen?” Nicola asked breathlessly.

  “A magic you have already encountered,” was Lord Alwyn’s cryptic reply. He was testing them, urging them to guess the answer, as he had done with their brother’s bed.

  Marcel stared at Termagant’s sleek and awesome lines until his eyes fell on the familiar pouch around her neck. “That pouch. Does it hold something from the Book of Lies?”

  “Ah, you have guessed it. A whole page torn from the back of the Book, folded many times to make it fit,” Lord Alwyn announced with a hint of impish delight that astonished them almost as much as Termagant’s sudden metamorphosis. “The Book’s power is to know a heart’s desire. For men, it can tell when that desire is to deceive, but for animals it is less predictable. In her own mind, your little pet is a great beast, savage and feared by all. She was just the kind of guard I needed with me in Fallside, ferocious to anyone who came near and fearsome enough to make you obey me.”

  He waved languidly towards Termagant and she snarled suddenly, sending the children staggering backwards.

  “Unfortunately, Marcel, I did not anticipate the courage that you and your little friend would find to defy me.”

  At a further nod from her master, Termagant’s growl died as quickly as it had appeared and she became calm and docile.

  Marcel watched her, his mind still trying to catch up with what his eyes had seen. All the terror this beast had brought him had been for nothing. The claws that he had imagined slicing into his flesh were meant to scare him, not hurt him. Would there be any end to the way his world was turning inside out?

  Before Marcel could make sense of his confusion, Nicola challenged the old wizard. “You said you wanted to protect us. But why did you take so much away from us – our names, who we were, all our memories of life here in the palace?”

  “I was only doing what your father wanted, to save you from great harm and misery. Yes, to protect you. That was why he insisted that I go with you to that remote foundling home in the high country. He is a good man who loves you dearly, just as he has been a good king, loved by his people, for his justice most of all.”

  Nicola could not bear any more of this. “His justice!” she shouted. “How can you say that? He poisoned our mother, his own wife!”

  Lord Alwyn winced at her words. “There is much still that you do not know – and even more that you can never know, by the terms of my own magic. If you want to know the source of the evil done within this kingdom, then look to Starkey and those two cousins you helped to release from their prison. Is it any wonder that your own father distrusts you? Those two want his throne at any cost, and Starkey is determined to win it for them, so that he can share in their power and its spoils.”

  Marcel did not need to be told what drove Starkey or Eleanor, and he had long since guessed that Damon was just the same. What surprised him, though, were the things he was learning about Lord Alwyn. He had feared the man since he first set eyes on him back at the orphanage. He had hated him for almost as long. But much had changed since Gadfly had touched down in Elstenwyck – amazingly, less than an hour ago. Where once Marcel had seen an enemy, now the wizard seemed to offer him the truth.

  Both wonderful and shocking, that truth told him that Eleanor, Damon and especially Starkey, whom he had once trusted so completely, were the ones to fear now.

  Gazing at Lord Alwyn’s ravaged face, Marcel wondered if he dared trust this man instead. What could he find in those eyes? Should he confide in the wizard about what he knew?

  “Lord Alwyn,” he began in a faltering voice, “Damon and Eleanor are in Lenoth Crag, trying to raise an army to take the throne. King Zadenwolf is too cautious to help them, but in these last few days Starkey has spoken of another way. He wants to conjure a great dragon. He even knows its name, Mortregis. He wants to summon it up and use it to defeat King Pelham… my father,” he added softly, finding the words strange on his tongue.

  “Mortregis!” Lord Alwyn responded with a contemptuous snort. “The beast has been gone for centuries. As Master of the Books, it is my job to see that he never returns.”

  “But Starkey is convinced that he can conjure Mortregis from the Book of Lies.”

  “Nonsense! The Book of Lies cannot make Mortregis rise up again.”

  There was more Marcel could say, but should he? He turned to Nicola, who knew immediately what he was thinking.

  “He will find the verses soon enough, whether we tell him or not,” she whispered.

  Lord Alwyn had heard her in any case. “What are you two talking about? Verses?”

  There was no going back now, and besides, Nicola was right. It was only a matter of time, whether they trusted Lord Alwyn or not. “Some strange verses have appeared in the Book,” Marcel answered reluctantly. “Right before our eyes, in letters of gold. They are still there now.”

  At the mention of Mortregis, Lord Alwyn had remained calm, even regaining a little of the disdain that he so often showed for the world around him. But when Marcel spoke of the mysterious verses, he could not hide his distress.

  “Show me,” he demanded as he slipped the heavy sack from his shoulder and took out the Book of Lies. Marcel opened the back cover and there were the verses, the letters shining even more brightly than when he had last seen them.

  Lord Alwyn’s eyes raced urgently over the words, but once he had arrived at the last lines his confidence rapidly returned. “It is nothing to worry about,” he declared categorically.

  Marcel was baffled. Surely the wizard could see the danger threatened in those words. “But the meaning seems so clear, Your Lordship. Starkey must be right. Mortregis is more powerful than any king. There it is on your robe,” he said, nodding at the intricate embroidery that circled the wizard’s legs.

  “If you understood these verses as I do, Marcel, you would know there is nothing to fear.”

  “But Starkey thinks I can summon Mortregis,” Marcel confessed. “He insisted that I had some kind of magic in me.”

  Lord Alwyn laughed openly now. “Your magic was just for show, Marcel.”

  His magic! Those simple words, uttered with such condescension, had startled him. “You mean I do have some magic in me?”

  “Yes, you dabbled in such things,” Lord Alwyn admitted in the same patronising tone. “You showed considerable aptitude for the tricks you learned. I wished my apprentices had displayed as much skill for more powerful magic.”

  He saw their amazement at the mention of apprentices. “Yes, I tried to teach many a young man over the years, but they proved a poor lot. In the end I dismissed them all.”

  “All of them?”

  “None was worthy of the power sorcery bestows. Oh, yes, each of them wanted to become Master of the Royal Books after me, and swore to protect the Kingdom as the Master must do. But they failed the tests I set for them. I could not let any of them take my place.”

  He had grown solemn and distant as he told them this, but finding Marcel’s eye on him, he permitted himself a tight- lipped smile. “And I could not let you play too much with sorcery. As a prince, your destiny lay elsewhere.

  “I taught you a few tricks, nothing more. That is why you have so many books beside your bed. You borrowed them from me. See this one?” He picked up a volume from the top shelf. “It is a book of charms and incantations. Simple magic, for entertaining your brother and sister. You can probably still manage the easiest of them. Go ahead, try it.”

  “What shall I do?”

  Lord Alwyn glanced around the chamber until his eyes settled on Marcel’s bookcase itself. “Those books on their side are untidy. Stand them upright on the shelves. Here, I will find the words for you,” and with a sweep of his hand, the pages of the book began to fan back and forth, reminding Marcel of a far m
ore powerful book close by.

  The magic stopped, and on the page that lay open before him, Marcel found a simple couplet.

  Lines and angles, flat and bland Raise these volumes, make them stand

  He spoke them under his breath, prompting a gentle rebuke from Lord Alwyn. “Out loud, boy. The simpler the charm, the louder it must be heard.”

  Marcel tried again, with more strength in his voice this time. As he spoke, a strange sensation filled his skull. The words became echoes crashing noisily against his own thoughts, knocking them aside so that they would not distract him. Concentrate. That was what the feeling was telling him, and closing his eyes, he began to focus on the bookshelves and nothing else.

  Was it working? A gasp from Nicola almost made him open his eyes again, but he sensed the spell would be broken if he did. He could feel an energy leaving his body now, not enough to exhaust him, but sweat was beading on his brow and his breathing had quickened. Without a view of the bookcase, somehow he knew, nonetheless, that one by one the fallen books were righting themselves.

  The door to the room opened suddenly and a woman’s voice called, “Your Lordship, I’ve been sent up with something for the Prince and the Princess to eat.”

  Marcel could not block out the sounds and their meaning, trivial though they were. He felt the words inside his head fade instantly, and opening his eyes he was just in time to see book after book rain heavily on to the floor. Only one weighty volume remained stubbornly in place, in the centre of the top shelf.

  “Ah, you let the world intrude upon your spell. So like the young and the weak of mind,” Lord Alwyn announced, like a father whose baby son had fallen on to his bottom while learning to walk.

  “Just like when he was little, always leaving his books all over the floor for me to pick up,” tut-tutted the plump, motherly maid as she entered and saw the mess Marcel had made. “Put those things here,” she instructed the other servants who now appeared behind her, carrying a splendid table and three matching chairs. When these were arranged in the centre of the room, the maid placed the steaming tray she bore on the table and stood back.

  The delicate fingers of a delicious aroma were already tickling Nicola’s nostrils. She inched closer to the table. Despite the wonder of what he had just discovered, Marcel was doing the same. It was now mid-afternoon, and he realised he had not eaten anything since breakfast.

  “Your Lordship, the King is waiting for you to join him in the Great Hall,” said the maid.

  “I must leave you,” Lord Alwyn said immediately to the children. At a wave of his hand, the fallen books rose, one by one, and returned to their places in Marcel’s bookcase. “But listen to me, both of you. You are not trusted, even if you do not understand why. You must not leave this room.”

  “Termagant!” he called as he opened the door and let the maid and the other servants precede him into the corridor. The two soldiers standing on guard saw the creature appear at the old wizard’s side and staggered backwards in white-faced terror.

  “You may go,” he commanded. “This beast will guard the children better than any man.” He waved his hand towards Termagant and the creature was instantly more alert, snarling at the children with unmistakable malice. “She obeys my magic. Once she would not have harmed you, but if you try to leave now, she will ensure you take no more than three paces beyond this door.”

  With that, he turned and hurried away as well as his ageing legs would allow towards his appointment with the King.

  Termagant’s familiar growl had set Marcel’s pulse racing. As he closed the door and dragged himself back to the middle of the room, it took a few minutes for his heartbeat to slacken.

  He and Nicola gulped down the soup and freshly baked bread then went to check on Bea. They were relieved to find her breathing easily, the colour in her face strengthening with every breath.

  “We’re the same now, all three of us,” said Nicola, looking down at her with a sigh. “Our mothers are dead and we have no memory of them, not even a face in our minds or the memory of a hand touching us.”

  The melancholy in her voice brought a lump to Marcel’s throat. “Starkey told us we had the same mother, but it’s taken that gravestone among the rose bushes to really make us brother and sister.”

  Nicola turned to him, letting him see the tears in her eyes. All she could manage in reply was a nod of her head, but she took his hand as well. Once, he would have snatched it away, but not now.

  “We know who we truly are now, but we’re no better off than when we thought we were orphans, back at Mrs Timmins’,” Marcel said bitterly. “We’re still prisoners, with the same terrible guard watching over us, and we still have no idea why.”

  “That’s what he need to know most of all, Marcel. Why.”

  This question, and many others like it, preoccupied them as the afternoon sun waned and slowly gave way to darkness. This had been the longest day either of them could remember, and they did not stay awake late. Nicola slipped through the curtain to her own room and Marcel climbed into his bed among the books, a thousand reflections swirling through his head. It wasn’t long, though, before exhaustion overtook him and he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 19

  The Tapestry

  MARCEL!

  The call stirred him from his sleep and made him sit up blearily in bed. He couldn’t tell what time it was, but the silence of the palace told him it must be well after midnight.

  “Bea, is that you?” he called across the darkened room.

  No answer.

  He threw the bedcovers aside and went to check, but she was sleeping calmly.

  Perhaps it was Nicola. He pushed through the heavy curtain and hurried to her bedside, but his sister was fast asleep as well.

  Who had called him? The word had been so clear, so loud inside his head. Yes, inside his head. Had he really heard it with his ears at all? Very strange. He settled back into the warmth of his bed, hoping to fall back to sleep quickly.

  Thump!

  He sat up again. It was just a book falling on to its side on the bookcase. He lay his head back on to the pillow, only to hear a second book fall. Before he could get out of bed, a third toppled over, then a fourth. By the time he was on his feet, every book on the shelves had toppled and fallen on the floor.

  The feeble moonlight spilling through the window was not enough to see by. He groped his way to the writing desk and lit the candle he had noticed there earlier. Then he discovered something stranger still. Not all of the books on the shelves had fallen after all. There was one that remained upright, the same hefty book that had stayed in place when his rudimentary magic had swept the rest on to the floor earlier.

  He reached up, expecting it to stick doggedly to the shelf. But no, when he grasped it the book moved easily. In fact, it felt light in his hand, too light for a tome of this size. He took it to the writing desk to examine it more closely. An impulse he could not explain drove him to turn the pages frantically, ten at a time, until he was a third of the way through the book. Then he stopped, open-mouthed in amazement. The pages of the larger book had been carefully cut away at their centre to create a deep hollow, and sitting inside this hollow was another book, not bound in the aged and wrinkled red leather of the Book of Lies, but with a soft and supple cover stained the colour of the evening sky.

  Cautiously, Marcel took this book out of its hiding place and this time he did open the very first page. Only two lines were written there, in the very centre, in a slow and deliberate handwriting.

  My fate is my own, my heart remains free

  Not magic but wisdom reveals destiny

  He turned the page. Spells, enchantments, detailed instructions decorated with meticulous diagrams… he stared more closely at one illustration where a cat played peacefully with a mouse. There was no doubting which cat it was. Beneath the picture lay the magical words that could make this miracle happen, all in the same sloping script.

  He took the
quill, dipped it in the inkwell and began to copy the first line of the spell further down on the same page. He managed only three words before the nib ran dry, but by then he knew. The handwriting was identical, and that could only mean he had written everything in this book himself.

  Here was proof that he had done more than dabble in the simple tricks that Lord Alwyn had scoffed at. The boy who wrote these words knew more of sorcery’s secrets than the old wizard ever imagined.

  His eyes were eager for the words, and as he read each rhyme, each incantation, it quickly settled within him, as though he had always known it. Soon he realised he was not just reading this book, his hungry mind was devouring it, page after page. He read on, for many hours, while around him the palace, the city and the entire Kingdom slept.

  He became so absorbed that the tiny night-sounds of the palace fell unnoticed on his ears, until he heard a familiar growl that was too much for him to ignore. Someone had surprised Termagant. He heard a deep voice whisper to the beast, expecting obedience. Was it Lord Alwyn?

  He left the book on the writing desk and crept to the door, daring himself to press down on the handle. He widened the gap to an inch but no more. There was Termagant, staring down the corridor, which was lit with candles hanging from brackets on the walls. Marcel’s eye followed just in time to see a tall figure round the corner at the corridor’s end. In that instant, he glimpsed a red robe, fringed in gold.

  “The King!” he gasped. But before he could decide whether he was imagining things, Termagant saw him and growled again, warning him not to open the door any wider.

  That familiar terror prickled beneath his skin, but he did not close the door immediately. There was something fascinating about Termagant now. He had once drawn a picture of the real Termagant in his book of sorcery. He had not been afraid of her then. Was he afraid of her now? After all, she was no more than a simple cat, made huge and frightening by her own grand dreams and the magic in that pouch around her neck. Marcel had rediscovered a magic of his own in these past hours, from his own book, and as he stood there, peering through the door, he could feel it coursing faintly through his entire body.