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"Look at them!" Violante picked up the nearest book and held it out to him, tears in her eyes "They’re all like that!"

Mo took the book froether in a single blackened, es like foa wasn’t a book anymore

-- it was the corpse of a book, and for a ht that he had condemned the Book he had bound for the Adderhead to the same fate Did it look as bad as this one by now? Hardly, or it would have killed the Adderhead long ago, and the White Woie

"I’ve looked at so many of them Hardly any of them are in a better state! How can it have happened?"

Mo put the ruined book back with the others

"Well, wherever the library originally was, I’m afraid there’s no safe place for books in this castle Even if your grandfather tried to forget the lake outside, it’s still there

The air is so da, and since no one kne to save them I suppose they were put in this room, in the hope that they’d dry out more quickly here than in the library A bad mistake They must have been worth a fortune"

Violante pressed her lips together and passed her hand over the cru a dead pet’s coat for the last time "My mother described them to me even more vividly than the rest of this castle! Luckily, she took soht with her, and then I took most of those to Ombra As soon as I arrived I asked my father-in-law to send for the other books, too After all, this castle had been eirl? ‘Forget the books, and the castle where they stand,’ that’s what he said whenever I asked hi my men to a place like the Castle in the Lake, not for the finest books in the world

Haven’t you heard of the fish your grandfather bred in the lake, and the eternal iants hadn’t disappeared froluttonous fool!" Anger took the sadness from her voice

Mo looked around The idea of the treasures that had once been hidden between all these wrecked covers nauseated him more than the stench offor the books now, can you?"

He shook his head "No There’s no reh you say that the Adderhead has found one I don’t suppose you knohat it is?"

"Oh yes But you won’t like it" Violante picked up one of the spoiled books This one would still open, but the pages fell apart in her fingers "He’s had the White Book dipped in fairy blood They say that if that hadn’t worked he’d have tried human blood"

Mo felt as if he could see the blank pages he had cut in the Castle of Night soaking up the blood "That’s appalling!" he said

It obviously amused Violante that such a ridiculous piece of cruelty could shake him

"Apparently, my father mixed the fairy blood with the blood of fire-elves so that it would dry more quickly," she went on, unmoved "Their blood is very hot, did you know that? Hot as liquid fire"