The Book of Lies

by James Moloney

  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.

  Then a distraction. Something flew wildly about the dragon’s head, stealing its attention.

  Gadfly! But how could she fly without the Book?

  Marcel saw the answer instantly. The little pouch was tied around her neck, and yes, when he took a closer look he could make out the tiny shape of Bea herself, clutching fearlessly on to the untidy mane. Gadfly beat her wings, swerving and dipping like the insect she was named after, and miraculously the dragon’s head swerved away from the helpless children below. But Gadfly and Bea were in grave danger themselves now, as the beast focused its fury on them alone.

  “Get behind him!” Marcel shouted desperately to Bea, though whether he could be heard amid the soldiers” screams and the dragon’s mighty roar there was no way to tell. But at the last moment, the horse ducked sharply, just as the terrible flames shot out into the night. On the ground below, the children felt the fire’s heat, but it was so high above their heads that it died harmlessly in the night air.

  “Run!” cried Nicola urgently, and they began to flee as fast as they could before the dragon could take another breath. All except Fergus. Starkey’s dagger still lay where he had dropped it, and holding it by the blade Fergus took aim and sent it spinning towards the beast.

  Marcel watched in awe as the dagger tumbled end over end and then struck not one of the impregnable scales, but the fleshy back of the creature’s claw. A bellow of rage split the night air, and in that same terrifying moment the Book of Lies fell from the dragon’s grasp. The Book dropped heavily to the ground only a few strides from Marcel and Fergus, but by then the beast was already breathing in again.

  “Come on!” Fergus turned, certain that his brother would follow on his heels.

  But Marcel did not move. He wasn’t looking at the horror above him. He was more concerned with what he could hear. Voices, a dozen, no, a hundred, or was it a thousand? All speaking at once and all coming from the Book of Lies. He knew what they were. Every lie the Book had ever heard, all the deceit that had corrupted it, was trying to escape before it could be destroyed by the fiery breath of the dragon it had unleashed.

  Lord Alwyn was gone and there was no Master of the Books to take his place. There was only a young prince who had taught himself the sorcerer’s arts. He had no robes of black and green embroidered with a rampant dragon above an open book, but Marcel knew he was the only one who could take Lord Alwyn’s place. It was that symbol which told him what to do now.

  The magic of the Book of Lies was Lord Alwyn’s magic. For all the dragon’s power, it was part of a waning sorcery, which Marcel knew was doomed to the as Lord Alwyn had done. The Kingdom’s fate lay in new and untried hands.

  Marcel raised his arm towards the beast and felt his untested magic touch its fiery skin. He reached further, right into that surging chest, and found the creature’s evil and tormented heart. He took hold and let the camp around him fade away, until the sensation of power that surged through him was enough to make him cry out. His mind lost all connection with his body. All that existed for him now was the dragon hovering over the open Book.

  A bone-crushing roar filled his head, a cry of anguish loud enough to drive the dead from their graves. Towering over him, the grotesque figure of Starkey, transformed into the image of his own heart’s desire, no longer held any fear for him. His magic had taken hold of this creature’s heart and slowly, relentlessly, he drove its evil strength away into the night, out towards the distant mountains, out of his father’s kingdom.

  Instantly, the beast began to change, to shrink, not into its human form but into a swirling cloud. The Book of Lies fanned its pages all the more frantically, and as Marcel watched, fascinated, the cloud was sucked down between its covers. When it was gone, a burst of flame erupted from within the Book, burning fiercely as the voices of a thousand liars slowly died.

  Marcel stood alone for many minutes until Bea brought Gadfly gently to the ground, close enough for him to stroke her nose. His brother and sister came back to stand at his side. Nicola whispered in amazement, “You saved us all, Marcel. Your magic destroyed Mortregis.”

  “No, Mortregis cannot be destroyed. All I’ve done is drive him out of the Kingdom.”

  Zadenwolf’s soldiers could be seen fleeing into the night, not even stopping to grab their weapons. Their leader had died a horrible death and the dragon’s single breath of flame had also set fire to much of the camp. The invading army was scattered in every direction across the scorched landscape, all thought of conquest forgotten, hoping only for a safe return to the mountains of Lenoth Crag.

  At dawn, Long Beard and his elfish army arrived to join a battle that would never take place, and King Pelham emerged with a small party of soldiers from behind the city walls. Both kings found that the only occupants of the enemy camp were the four exhausted children. They were sitting in a circle around a pile of white and smouldering ashes. This was all that remained of the great Book of Lies.

  Epilogue

  MARCEL STOOD BEFORE THE grave of his mother, with his father beside him and his sister a pace in front. “I wish I had some memory of her at least, as you do,” he said to the King. In those tumultuous hours in the Great Hall, he had taken part of Lord Alwyn’s memory for himself. But it would be wrong to steal the memory of his mother from his own father’s mind, no matter how much he longed to conjure up the image of her face.

  He looked for Fergus, who lingered behind them, uncomfortably quiet as he had been ever since their return to the palace two days before. Memory or not, these four now shared a common grief.

  “Is there any news of Damon?” Fergus asked his father.

  “He is still at large,” came the reply.

  Marcel knew, as they all did, that Damon had managed to escape amid the fear and confusion created by the rampant dragon. Eleanor had not been so lucky. Abandoned by her cousin, her blue gown had stood out among the many roughly dressed soldiers fleeing towards the high country. Some disgruntled villagers had dragged her, weeping, before the King. “Don’t put me back in that prison!” she’d pleaded in anguish. “I couldn’t bear it!”

  But Pelham had turned away unmoved and sent her back to the chamber only ten paces from where they now stood. Eleanor had not been a prisoner there for long, however.

  “Have they discovered how she did it?” Nicola asked.

  “Some berries were found in a small bag beside her body. The apothecary says they are the same poison that killed your mother.”

  “The kind of death she deserved, then,” said Nicola, her voice as cold as her mother’s gravestone. “We won’t mourn for her.”

  Marcel had to agree. Did he still hate Eleanor, even now? Ever since his first day with Mrs Timmins, his heart had rolled about inside his chest like a fishing boat in an angry storm. He wasn’t sure whether Eleanor’s death had taken him to the crest of a wave or down to the deepest trough. He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping for calm, but it wouldn’t come to him. Not yet.

  They walked through the rose garden and back towards the main entrance to the palace. Once inside, the King joined his advisers in the Great Hall, leaving the children to return to their rooms. When Nicola slipped through the heavy velvet curtain, the two boys were left to themselves, and each went to his bed and lay flat on his back, hands behind his head. For Marcel this was difficult, as Termagant instantly jumped on to his chest and sat there like a triumphant soldier who had conquered the castle.

  “Marcel –” Fergus called tentatively, but before he could continue his brother cut him off.

  “There’s no need to say it again. I know
you’re sorry about the fight. I’ve told you a hundred times, you didn’t know the truth.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Fergus responded, rolling on to his side. “I’ve been thinking about what happened before then. Do you remember what I said to the Book of Lies? “I am the son of Prince Damon”, that’s what I said, and it glowed so brightly I could barely look at it.”

  “It couldn’t resist the evil inside it. It was trying to deceive, like it did in the Great Hall all those months ago, when Father tested our loyalty. It was so full of lies it wanted to cause havoc.”

  This was what Marcel told his brother, but secretly he hadn’t been able to brush aside the same nagging uneasiness.

  Perhaps it was something in his voice, or maybe Fergus was better at detecting his brother’s moods than Marcel was aware. “You’ve been thinking about it too. You used your own magic that night, didn’t you? You made the Book of Lies keep to the truth; not just what was in my heart, but every kind of truth, like it was supposed to do.”

  There had been too many lies for Marcel to deny it. He nodded slowly and without a word. He had forced the Book of Lies to do its job faithfully, as Lord Alwyn had created it to do, and yet it had not written down Fergus’s words. I am the son of Prince Damon.

  Fergus grimaced and moved to the window, where he could look out again at their mother’s grave and the chamber where the cousins had been kept prisoner. “I’ve thought of something else that doesn’t make sense. Do you remember the night we came to rescue Damon and Eleanor from down there?” He waved at the view through the window, prompting his brother to join him. “You and Nicola were too slow, so I tried to open the door on my own. The handle wouldn’t budge, Marcel. The door wouldn’t open for me any more than it would for Starkey.”