Fearless (Mirrorworld) - By Cornelia Funke Page 0,99

treated like intruders.

Jacob wouldn’t have been surprised if the gate had melted the skin off his fingers. There were legends of monsters that came forth from its iron. The bodies around them did look like they’d encountered just that. Yet as soon as he reached out his hand, the metal burst open like the skin of an overripe fruit. It split into two wings, and each wing sprouted a handle, like an iron bud. They were shaped like wolves’ heads, and even as their teeth were still growing from their pointy snouts, Jacob could feel the wind brushing across the glowing metal until the entire gate was again back to its cool shimmering grey.

YOU DON’T NEED THE PRINCE’S HAIR.

What had Earlking meant by that? A lie, to see Jacob killed like the ragged men around them? Whatever . . .

Fox and Jacob exchanged a glance.

The passion for the hunt. Was that what bound them, more than anything else?

She smiled at him. Fearless. Yet Jacob could still recall the white fear he’d made her drink in the Bluebeard’s chamber. Over the past months, they had both learnt the limits of their fearlessness.

He closed both hands around the wolves’ heads. He thought he’d need all his remaining strength to open the heavy iron gates, but they opened without resistance, with a sigh that sounded like the death rattle from the gilded lips of Guismond’s head.

The air rushing towards them was icy, and the darkness that awaited them behind the gate was so complete that Jacob was blind for a few steps. Fox took his arm until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The hall they had entered was empty, except for the pillars that supported a ceiling somewhere in the darkness above. The echo of their steps bounced between the high walls like the flapping of stray birds.

Fox looked around as the cries of a child came through the silence. The screams of a woman soon joined them. Then the voices of quarrelling men.

‘Stop!’ Jacob whispered to Fox.

The voices faded, as though they were moving away, but they would be audible for hours before they died away completely. The Steps of the Dead. A Dark Witch spell. Every step they took stirred the past: words spoken, screamed, or whispered in the palace. And not just words. Pain. Anger. Despair. Madness. Every emotion would become manifest. The darkness surrounding them was woven from sinister threads. They were going to have to be very quiet, lest they get choked by them.

Jacob could make out three corridors in the dark. As far as he could see, they were in no way different from one another. He pulled from his pocket the pale yellow candles Valiant had given him. He and Fox had used candles like these before in places where they’d had to split up. If one of them was snuffed out, so was the other. Fox got out some matches. Then she silently took the burning candle from Jacob’s hand. The voices again grew louder as their steps rang out on the tiles. Guismond had killed most of the Witches, whose blood and magic he’d stolen, in the dungeons of this palace. The screams were becoming so loud that Fox clearly had trouble walking on. She looked around at Jacob one last time, and then the light of her candle disappeared into one of the corridors. She had chosen the middle one.

Left or right, Jacob? He turned left.

CHAPTER SIXTY

THE RIGHT SKIN

One of the Preachers had a fresh sword wound. Nerron shot him dead before his filthy fingers could write his madness on to his skin. The Waterman had already been touched by one, but that didn’t seem to worry him. Maybe he felt immune to human madness. Eaumbre had soon realised that the tracks they were following were not Louis’s, but he didn’t turn around. The palace that had risen above the ruins was too tempting.

It reminded Nerron of the fortresses a clan of moonstone Goyl had built a long time earlier against the onyx. Kami’en now used the strongholds as prisons, for they were particularly deep underground.

The ragged lunatics were the only danger they faced in the empty streets, and most of them just let themselves get shot by the Waterman like clay pigeons. It seemed the centuries had weathered the Witch Slayer’s magic, like the city he’d once ruled. Eaumbre was disconcerted by the stone faces staring at them from the walls, but Nerron was not affected. They just proved how