White sparks geysered from the wound with a sound like a massive snake hissing. The wood-weird snapped down at Young Laska as she spun away, but Swinther swung his axe again, knocking the certainly fatal bite aside.
“Back! Swinther! Back!” shouted Young Laska, grabbing her bow and crawling away along the path as fast as she could. Ferin also retreated, sending another useless shaft into the wood-weird, the arrow again simply bouncing off and falling down the hillside.
Swinther backed up, swinging his axe in fast diagonals, but the blade did not cut; no wood chips flew. He could knock the forelimbs aside, but that was all. The wood-weird continued after him, though it did not move as swiftly as before. White sparks continued to fountain from its eyes and joints, but otherwise it did not seem to be much damaged.
“Go!” shouted Swinther. “I will slow it! Go!”
In answer, Ferin reached off the path and grabbed the corner of a slab of shale half her own size, though only three or four inches thick.
“Help me!”
Young Laska saw at once what Ferin intended. Dropping her bow again, she picked up the other side of the stone.
“Duck!” they shouted together, and as Swinther dropped low, they heaved the stone against the wood-weird’s already damaged foreleg. Once again, it did not affect the ensorcelled timber. But the stone broke into pieces and fell under the creature’s questing forelimbs, making it pause for a dozen seconds as its long rootlike legs tentatively felt for solid ground amid the rubble.
Useful seconds, which allowed Swinther to back away and Ferin and Young Laska to retreat several more paces around a corner where the ridge and the path upon it turned sharply north.
“Small stones!” shouted Ferin. “Break them in front of it!”
She started picking up smaller pieces of shale, hurling them to shatter in front of the wood-weird. Young Laska copied her, both of them picking up and throwing slabs as quickly as they could, covering the path with pieces of broken stone.
The wood-weird, blinded by the still-sparking Charter-spelled arrows in its eye sockets, came on cautiously, feeling about in the broken shale with its forelegs. It moved more erratically now, the Charter-spelled arrows working away in the joints to sever the Free Magic that articulated and drove the cleverly fashioned timber.
Swinther retreated around the turn in the path, dropped his axe behind him, crouched down, and started to throw slabs of shale as well. Ferin and Young Laska were now using both hands to scoop and throw, so that the path ahead of the creature was piled high with broken shale.
The wood-weird, blind and probing with its crippled forelimbs, and now confused by the shale everywhere and no clear path to find, missed the turn. It continued straight ahead, several steps too far. Its forelimbs slipped and it fell forward, rear legs scrabbling as the shale in front collapsed. For a moment it looked as if it might draw back, but then a whole great layer of shale slid down the hill, precipitating a sudden avalanche of stone.
The wood-weird surfed down the side of the ridge amid a clattering wave of broken shale, until it came to a halt several hundred feet below with a sickening crack. A second later it was buried by the several tons of shale that came down after it, and a great cloud of grey stone-dust rose up to the sky.
As the dust rose, there was a scream of rage from farther back along the ridge. A shaman climbed up to the path, ignoring the keeper who was heaving on the silver chain about his neck to keep him still. The shaman tried to run toward Ferin and the others, but only managed two or three steps before the neck-ring closed and he fell, choking.
The keeper climbed up behind the fallen shaman, knelt on his back, and jerked the chain savagely several times, as a warning or to ensure compliance. Then she let go, dropped the chain, and stood up to take the bow from her back.
Even before this keeper could take an arrow from the case at her side, she was struck by one of Young Laska’s ordinary, unspelled arrows. The yard-long shaft should have killed her, piercing her through and through, but just before it hit, some unseen force sent it spinning away.
“Charmed!” spat Young Laska, and sent three shafts in quick succession at almost exactly the same target: high on the left of the keeper’s chest.
Two arrows spun away like the first, diverted by the Free Magic charm. But the power of the defense failed with the last arrow, or at least did not entirely work. The arrow veered, but only by a few inches, and the keeper fell, transfixed through the neck by a bloodied shaft.
Ferin had drawn too, but not shot, thinking she was likely to miss at that range, and with the wind blowing.
The shaman, freed from the restraint of his keeper’s silver chain, slowly got to his feet. He paused for a moment, then came staggering along the path, face set in a mask of anger. He was just beginning to raise one hand in a spell-casting gesture when Young Laska sent three quick arrows at him as well. Either he had no defensive charm, or it was not ready, for all three struck. The shaman was spun about and fell from the ridge with one last screech of pain and anger, his descent accompanied by a cascade of shale. A few seconds later the stone-dust rose again, just as it had for the wood-weird he had made.
“Eleven to go,” said Ferin.
“I have no more Charter-spelled arrows,” said Young Laska in a matter-of-fact tone. “And only eight ordinary shafts.”
“We’d best not let them catch us, then,” said Swinther. He was examining the front of his leather jerkin, which had been ripped open by the sharp foreleg of the wood-weird, and was bloody underneath.
“You’re wounded?” asked Ferin. Her ankle was hurting much more, as Astilaran had predicted, but it was still nothing like as painful as it had been. She could move without restraint.
“No . . .” replied Swinther, wiping his bloodied hand on his breeches. “It swiped me, sure, but those limbs were strangely hot. It cauterized as it cut. A bite would have been a different matter, those snaggled, splintered teeth. . . . Stay still, I will come around you. The path grows very narrow soon and forks with a false dead-end ridge in the offing. Then there is the sharpest part of the ridgeline to pass, where we will need our hands and bare feet to grip. I do not think even that eight-legged creature could cross there.”
Young Laska looked up at the clouds that were drawing closer, and then down below. She was puzzled by what she saw, for only one silver-chained figure and his or her keeper were beginning to ascend, and they had no wood-weird with them. The other keepers were gathered close, their sorcerers kept in a huddle between them. From the look of all the gesticulating and the faint sound of shouts, there was an argument under way, one that had so far fallen short of blows.
“There’s only one sorcerer and keeper coming up,” said Ferin.
“Can you see which tribes the keepers are from, in the main body?” asked Young Laska.
“No. They are too distant to see the colors on their sashes,” said Ferin. She gestured back along the path. “That one you killed, he was Yrus. Sky Horse. Are you thinking they will fight each other? They will not, not when they are under orders from the Witch With No Face.”
“I think they don’t want to send their wood-weirds up the shale,” said Young Laska. She pointed where the ring of keepers was suddenly expanding, sorcerers being dragged back by chains, wood-weirds rising up on their tree-root legs. “Look, they are heading back toward the village.”
“To loot and burn, most likely,” said Swinther heavily. “Still, better we lose our houses and boats than our lives.”
“They will not go away unless they are sure I will be taken or killed,” said Ferin, a note of puzzlement in her voice. “But to send only one shaman, one keeper, not even with a wood-weird . . .”
Young Laska looked up at the clouds again—darkening clouds, moving quite rapidly toward the sun—and then she gazed back down at that lone shaman.
“I would hazard a guess their wind-eater is also a wind-caller,” she said slowly. “And not only that, a necromancer to boot. I can think of n
o other reason they would want to block the sun.”
As she spoke, the shadow of the clouds rolled over them, blotting out the sun, and the ridge was suddenly cool. Ferin stared down at the shaman below, who was still in sunshine for a few more seconds, and saw that he did indeed wear the seven bells of a necromancer in a bandolier across his chest, and his head was helmetless and freshly bandaged around the ear, testament to the closeness of the arrow she had shot from the fishing boat. In addition to his bells, the shaman had a strange tarred box upon his back, doubtless containing some adjunct to his dark art.
He did not wear traditional garb, and it took Ferin a moment to work out that the off-white coat he wore was a kind of armor, made from hundreds of small bones, linked with dark iron rings. It was almost certainly imbued with charms against ordinary arrows, and other mundane weapons too.
The keeper behind him was a woman. Ferin knew her sash colors, and observed that she kept a very tight hold of the silver chain, and in her gloved right hand she carried an unwrapped spirit-glass arrow, a thin coil of white smoke rising from its tip.
“He is a necromancer,” said Ferin. “The keeper is of the Ghost Horse clan; they are one of the three tribes that keep necromancers. He must be very powerful, she is so fearful of him she must carry a spirit-glass arrow at the ready, in addition to the neck-ring and chain. They will both have stronger charms against arrows.”
“Something to test, if the opportunity presents,” said Young Laska. “But for now, I suggest we open the range, rather than closing it.”
“Yes,” said Ferin. She looked at the necromancer again, then at Swinther. “Are there dead buried up here at all?”
Swinther thought for a moment, knowing all too well why Ferin was asking. A necromancer needed something to work with: bodies, a cemetery, a battlefield, a place of many deaths . . .
“Not on the ridge itself,” he said. “But below this hill, to the north, there were once a dozen farms in the valley, maybe more. One was bigger than the others, a place called Nangan Rest. There was a feast there; everyone for leagues around attended. No one knows what happened, but they fell to fighting each other, and nearly all were killed. Nangan Rest was burned to the ground, farmhouse, outbuildings, tower and all. Later, the bodies were put into the ground and a mound raised. This is fifty . . . fifty-four years gone, you understand. In the bad times, when there was no King.”
“How many farmers died?” asked Ferin. “And how close, exactly?”
“Hundreds, to hear the tale,” said Swinther. “Just below us, as I said. You can see the mound still, that small green hill, perhaps half a league beyond the last of the shale.”
He paused, then added, “And . . . there are also those who have died along the ridge. One every few years or so. The farm boys will do it as a sort of initiation, they always have, and sometimes ours will join in, as I did myself, long ago. The fallen will be under the shale; the bodies can never be recovered.”
“He will have plenty to call on, then,” said Young Laska. “And the closest swift water?”
“Where the others are, the tower built over the estuary to the south,” answered Swinther. He had not seemed overly frightened by the wood-weird, but he was pale now, and there was sweat on his forehead despite the sudden drop in temperature that had come with the disappearance of the sun.
The prospect of encountering the Dead had that effect upon the living.
“Can we get there?” asked Ferin. She had to work hard to keep her voice even. She had never seen a Dead creature, but she had heard tales. The Athask people did not approve of necromancers, and would not allow their kept sorcerers to dabble in necromancy. But every now and then someone would encounter a free-willed Dead thing in their mountains. Caves and narrow mountain ravines were good places for creatures that feared the sun.
“Can’t go back, of course,” said Swinther. “We might be able to get down from High Kemmy—that’s the third peak along—there’s a better path down from there at least, and then we could cut across the valley. If . . .”
His words trailed off. There was no need to speak the “ifs” aloud, for there were too many. Night was coming early, and soon the necromancer behind them would be summoning the Dead . . .
Chapter Twenty
OLD FURNITURE AND THE PROSPECT OF BATHS
Clayr’s Glacier, Old Kingdom
There was an easier but much slower way down from the paperwing hangar than the Starmount Stair. Called the Long Stretches, it was a series of switchbacked, gently inclined corridors that gained their name from the two and a half leagues they took to drop two thousand paces. It was a long way to walk after a day’s flying, much too far for Nick in his current state. He was once again put into a hammock-like stretcher, and carried by four rangers at a time, taking turns. There were eight rangers walking with them now, Mirelle having summoned more of an escort. The commander accompanied them, but stayed well ahead like a racehorse that can’t help but be in front.
Lirael trudged by Nick’s stretcher, sunk in weariness and deep in her own thoughts. No one talked, and they did not meet anyone, hardly a surprise this high up in the Clayr’s abode. Any sensible person with business in the paperwing hangar would take the stairs.
At least it was pleasantly warm in the Long Stretches. As in most of the Clayr’s vast subterranean habitat, the corridors were heated by steam pipes from the hot springs far below. Ancient clever engineering was aided by judicial use of Charter Magic and the constant labors of the usually rather grimy engineers from the Steamworks. Charter marks in the ceiling and walls, refreshed and recast every decade or so, also provided the soft, constant light.
Though she had rarely used the Long Stretches, walking in that particular Charter light and feeling the unique, humid warmth provided by the steam pipes stirred up Lirael’s confused feelings of both being home and not being at home. She had always felt something of an outsider here, but growing up had known nowhere else. Back then she had never considered the possibility of living away from the Glacier, or having a life that was not as one of the Clayr. This had lasted right up until the final revelation that she would never have the Sight, and instead had an entirely different destiny as an Abhorsen.
Now she was experiencing what it was to return to the place of her childhood, where she had always desperately hoped she would one day permanently and properly belong. With it came the clear understanding that though this was her heritage, it was only that: something of her past that would not come again. She had become someone and something else, whose life and future lay apart from being one of the Clayr.
Lirael was thinking about this, and how she now felt so different from her younger self, as if she was an entirely new person in a way. She was thinking so deeply about this she was slow to notice a party of librarians coming up the Long Stretches to meet her and the new addition to the library collection.
When she did see them, the sight made Lirael’s heart leap in a joyful recognition that had not come with her entrance into the halls of the Clayr. She smiled to see the familiar uniforms and faces, and most particularly at one of the junior librarians at the back who was trying to read and walk at the same time, thinking herself far enough behind to be hidden from view.
It was a formal procession. The party was led by the imposing figure of Vancelle the Chief Librarian herself, in a night-black waistcoat with the sword Binder at her side; followed by two deputies in white waistcoats, ceremonial axes on their shoulders—though these were only ceremonial in the sense of being gilded and adorned, they were still useful weapons; then four First Assistants, their waistcoats blue and their ceremonial weapons short-staved halberds with blue tassels; eight Second Assistants with curved scimitars, in red waistcoats like Lirael’s own, which was in a chest with camphor balls back in the palace in Belisaere; and a gaggle of Third Assistant Librarians in yellow waistcoats, bearing long spears, the heads bright with new-laid Charter marks placed there only on very special occasions.
All
of them, of course, bore dagger, whistle, and clockwork emergency mouse, the standard equipment of the Clayr’s librarians. They would not set foot outside the great Reading Room far below without these essential items.
Lirael had herself been a member of such ceremonial parties, as a Third and then Second Assistant Librarian, greeting notables such as the King himself, or Sabriel, or the Lord Mayor of Belisaere. But always far back in the throng, like the Third Assistant who was still reading her book. Lirael had never thought to be at the forefront, or to be greeted in such a way herself.
Both groups stopped a dozen paces short of each other, and Vancelle came forward and bowed to Lirael, who returned the greeting. But that done, the Librarian moved closer and embraced the younger woman, which was a surprise.
“You have done great things,” said Vancelle. “And all of us in the Library are very, very proud of you.”
“Thank you,” said Lirael. She fought back the tears in her eyes, because though she no longer felt she was one of the Clayr, she still felt she was a librarian and always would be, no matter what else she had become as well.
“We have some gifts, long prepared for your return,” said Vancelle, indicating two First Assistants who carried ornate boxes: one long and thin; the other almost a cube. Both were made of dark red cedar with elaborately cast hinges, edges, and lockplates of shining gold. One of the First Assistants was Lirael’s old friend Imshi, who had carried out Lirael’s induction to the Library almost six years before, assigning her dagger, whistle, and mouse. Imshi smiled and waggled her little finger in greeting, all she could move without dropping the box.
“But perhaps having waited these last months, they can wait a little longer, until you are settled,” said Vancelle, noting the weariness in Lirael’s eyes. She peered past the young Abhorsen-in-Waiting to where Nick was asleep in his hammock, looking very pale and sick. “That is Nicholas Sayre? The young man from Ancelstierre who was an unwitting servant of Orannis? And you bring him to us for examination?”