Fearless (Mirrorworld) - By Cornelia Funke Page 0,26

them alive at the last inn, so they’d decided to sleep outside. They were on their way to the coast to catch a ferry to Albion.

‘Everything all right?’ Fox looked worried.

‘Yes. Just a bad dream.’ An owl screeched in the oak above them. Fox was still looking anxious. Of course, Jacob. Now that she knows the truth, every sneeze sounds like dying. He took her hand and placed it over his heart. ‘Feel it? Strong and regular. Maybe Fairy curses only work on those who were born in this world.’

Fox attempted a smile, but it wasn’t very convincing. They both knew what she was thinking: his brother had also not been born into this world, and yet he’d grown a skin of jade.

They’d left the mine four days earlier and had not rested since. Jacob was quite certain he knew what the inscriptions on the tomb floor meant, but the only proof would be holding the crossbow in his hands. They’d both seen the mutilated corpse and had immediately realised that head, hand and heart were missing to make something disappear. It was a common enough spell. But it was the alabaster words that had revealed to them that it wasn’t merely the crossbow that Guismond had made vanish. Fox and Jacob had turned and twisted the words every which way, until they were convinced it could mean only one thing.

The Witch Slayer had three children. His elder son, Feirefis (or Firefist, as he later called himself ), had claimed the crown of Albion while his father lay on his deathbed. Albion lay to the west. His younger brother, Gahrumet, the one who’d supposedly been saved by the crossbow, was made King of Lotharaine, the southern part of Guismond’s empire. Guismond’s only daughter, Orgeluse, had founded the dynasty of Austrian Emperors by marrying one of her father’s knights and bearing him two sons. Austry lay to the east.

THE HEAD IN THE WEST.

THE HAND IN THE SOUTH.

THE HEART IN THE EAST.

Feirefis had received his father’s head. Gahrumet the hand. Orgeluse his heart.

TOGETHER THEY SHALL POSESS WHAT EACH DESIRES.

It wasn’t hard to guess that this was the crossbow.

CONCEALED WHERE THEY ALL BEGAN.

Guismond’s children had all been born in the palace above the Dead City, which he’d built and which had been nothing but an empty plain since the day of his death. To conceal the crossbow, the Witch Slayer had made an entire palace disappear, and he’d left macabre clues as a riddle to his children. If the madness to which he’d succumbed in the final years of his life had convinced him this would sow peace among his offspring, then that wish was not to be granted. They’d hated each other as strongly as they’d hated their father. Some stories claimed that their mother was a Witch and that she was the reason for Guismond’s deep hatred of all Witches. Others claimed the Witch had been his second wife and that she had revealed to him the path by which he became a Warlock. Whichever was true, Guismond’s children had warred with one another without ever solving their father’s riddle, and it was quite likely that they’d never even read the inscriptions in his tomb. But the Bastard had, and Jacob had no illusions about whether the Goyl had also deciphered them. The only question left now was who’d be faster finding the three macabre keys.

Head, hand, heart. West, south, east.

Fox had suggested they make the longest journey first. That meant Albion. With any luck, they would be there in two days, provided the ferries were running. This early in the year, storms often kept them in port. Two, three months. Maybe less. It was going to be tight, even if the Bastard didn’t manage to find any of Guismond’s gruesome parting gifts before they did.

Fox pulled the fur dress from her saddlebag.

‘Who do you think the Bastard’s working for?’

She still shifted nearly every night, even though she realised herself how quickly the fur stole her years. But he couldn’t presume to say anything about it. He’d never stopped going through the mirror – not for his mother’s sake, nor for Will’s – and he definitely wouldn’t have done it in exchange for a less perilous and potentially longer life. When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer. The heart, the soul, whatever it was . . .

‘He usually works for the onyx, as far as I know,’ Jacob said. He pulled from his saddlebag