“We’re drawing away,” he said. “Keep on this course?”
“For now,” said Karrilke. “Unless the wind shifts, which it shouldn’t.”
“We do anything for the girl?” shouted Tolther toward his mother, the wind blowing his words back into his face.
“Healing spell wouldn’t take,” Karrilke said. “Best leave the wound for now. If the wind doesn’t turn too much at dusk, we’ll be home by dawn. Let’s hope Astilaran can do something, save that foot.”
Ferin heard nothing of this, and did not feel the nor’easter that blew the fishing boat south. She was lost inside her own fevered mind, caught in a bubble of time from years ago. A very small part of her knew it was a dream, a memory, but that corner of her mind could gain no leverage to break her free and bring her to a conscious present.
She was in her own tent, made, like her clothes, of red-stitched goatskin. The dye for the red thread came from a scale insect in the oaks that grew on the lower slopes; the yarn was made from goat hair. Ferin neither spun nor dyed herself, nor did she look after goats, as would be normal for the children of the Athask people. All her time was spent in training and learning, readying her mind and body for its eventual occupation by the Witch With No Face.
In this fever dream, Ferin was having the Talk with the elder who had most to do with her, a woman named Jithelal, Jith for short. She thought of it as “the Talk” because it was a common subject, often returned to, particularly before the few festivals when Ferin was required to join the clan. At such a time she could almost feel she was another daughter, another sister, one of the Athask without difference.
“You are the Offering,” said Jith. “That means you are the best of us, or you will be. Strongest, fastest, most cunning.”
Ferin bent her head. She did not speak during the Talk.
“You live apart from us, not because you are not one of the Athask. You live apart because what you do is for all the people, not for one family. We are all your fathers and mothers, we are all your brothers and sisters, we are all the children you will not bear.”
Ferin bent her head again.
“You must be the best, for if we were to give less to the Witch With No Face, she would be displeased. In her anger, she would kill and despoil, perhaps slaying many of the Athask people. You, Offering, stand against her in the same way the strongest of a war party must turn against overwhelming pursuit, selling their life dearly so the others may escape. You are our hope, our shield.”
Ferin nodded again.
The dream blurred and changed, and all of a sudden Ferin was in the Offering’s Chair, which was really only a cushion set into the hollow in the middle of the great round stone that sat above the Athask people’s lower camp, where they wintered.
A huge bonfire burned on the flat before the stone, sparks flying up to the clear, cold sky and the full moon above, a ring of ice around its luminous disc. The dancing had finished, and now all the clan were engaged in the traditional act of gratitude to the Offering. The line had begun with the oldest, each person passing the Offering and taking her hands, just for a moment, to whisper their thanks for what she must do. Then the adults in their prime, the hunters, the warriors, the goat-herders, the spinners and dyers, the gatherers and others. Last came the children, those nearly full grown aloof and self-conscious; the middling ones tired and grumpy, and then the toddlers, last to come, for the babies were too small.
The very little ones, though they could walk, could not reach Ferin’s hands, and she was not allowed to bend down to them, for the Offering must bow to no one on this night. So they touched her feet and mumbled the words and toddled away to waiting embraces and straight to bed.
All save the last, who did not touch Ferin’s feet. Ferin looked down wonderingly, for this child did not look like the others. She felt a flash of fear as he . . . no, it . . . looked up, for instead of a face it had a mask of dull bronze, a half mask that did not cover its mouth, a mouth full of sharp teeth that it lowered upon her ankle and began to gnaw at Ferin’s flesh with horrible grunting noises, like a boar ripping with its tusks. Pain shot through Ferin and she choked trying not to scream, and then she kicked, trying to throw off this horrible thing that she knew was no child, but somehow the Witch With No Face herself, chewing on her leg—
Ferin woke up, still choking. For a moment she thought she was in another dream, for the night sky above was strangely slanted, and she smelled a scent she did not immediately know, until it came to her that it was salt, the salt of the sea, mixed with the reek of fish. She was on a boat, a fishing boat, and her ankle was not being chewed upon, but had been hit by a crossbow bolt.
“Drink again, if you can,” said someone, and a face came into view, a blurry face that sharpened as Ferin blinked, once, twice, three times.
“Tolther,” said the young man. “Remember? Feeling better? Your fever’s broke. That’s a good . . . good-ish sign.”
Ferin raised her head and tried to raise her injured leg at the same time. A stab of pain struck her in the head and she flopped back, gasping.
“No, best not move it,” said Tolther. He tucked the blanket back around her, careful not to touch her close. “You stay rested. We’ll be home safe at Yellowsands soon enough, get the healer to look at you . . .”
Something in his voice, some uncertainty or doubt she could hear, made Ferin turn her head toward him.
“There is trouble?” she asked.
“A raider follows us,” said Tolther. “Has been since before sunset. And they have a witch or shaman aboard, a wind-eater who keeps taking the breeze away from us, so they’re catching up.”
“A raider? Another boat?” asked Ferin. She struggled to sit up, Tolther helping her after a momentary hesitation. Her bow and arrow case were by her side, she noted, but it wasn’t light enough to see much else, save the dim outline of sails and rigging above.
“From one of the clans,” said Tolther. “Sky Horse. But that’s not what they call themselves. They come from the parts of the steppe nearest the shore north of here.”
“Ah,” said Ferin. “I know the clan. Sky Horse people . . . what they call themselves is Yrus, as we are Athask, though others call us Mountain Cat. I didn’t know the Yrus go to sea . . .”
“They don’t in spring, at least not normally,” said Tolther. “Only late in summer, into the autumn, and never in winter. At least I guess so; we lay up in winter as well, so maybe they’re out . . . but the storms are so bad I doubt it.”
“I feel the breeze now,” said Ferin. She could feel it on her face, cool and strong. “This wind-eater is not so strong, perhaps?”
Almost as she said the words, the breeze died away. Tolther grimaced.
“When the wind shifts, even by only a few points, we get it for a while, then whoever it is eats it up again.”
“Will they catch us?” asked Ferin.
“Not if I can help it,” said Karrilke, suddenly appearing next to her son. “Tolther, stand ready on the foresail sheet; trim it for any gust we can catch.”
“How close are they?” asked Ferin. She struggled to sit up higher, but found she couldn’t move her leg without suffering intense pain, which lessened if she kept still. Looking down, she saw it was greatly swollen around and above her ankle. Slowly, she looked away again, as if there was nothing of importance there, and instead picked up her bow. “Are they within bowshot?”
Karrilke looked down at her odd nomad passenger.
“Maybe for you,” she said. “From the stern. But I came to ask if you know how they can still be rowing at full pace. It’s been nine hours, more or less. The wind-eating, I’ve seen that before. Not often, but it’s known. But this rowing . . . any normal folk would have collapsed a long time since.”
“I know nothing of the sea,” said Ferin. “If you help me to the . . . the stern? I will look, and perhaps even kill the witch or shaman who steals our breeze.”
“You shouldn’t be moved,” said Karrilke. She he
sitated, then said, “As it is, the healer might have to take off your foot.”
Ferin shrugged.
“My foot, as my entire body, is nothing,” she said. “I must get the message I carry where it needs to go, and that means this boat must get to shore. Help me up.”
“It is easy to be brave when you are young,” said Karrilke. “And have little knowledge of pain. But you are right. Better to lose a foot than a life.”
The broad-shouldered woman bent down and lifted Ferin up under the arms. As her ankle dragged across the deck and her leg jerked and hung down when she was upright, Ferin blacked out from the sudden, intense pain. Only for a few seconds, but when she came back, the pain was still there, and she gasped several times as she tried to steady her breath. Her hand had also opened, and her bow had fallen.
“Bring . . . bow . . . and . . . arrow case,” Ferin managed to get out.
“I’ll go back for ’em,” muttered Karrilke. She maneuvered Ferin over her shoulder and carefully made her way astern, keeping one hand ready to grab at a stay or rail as the deck rolled and pitched under her feet, far less than she would have wanted, for it meant they were slowing again. There was almost no breath of wind, and the sails hung limp and useless.
The rowers’ chorus could be clearly heard now, even without the benefit of a breeze to blow their chant to the fishing boat. They were close, and closing.
Karrilke laid Ferin down by the post of the tiller, as gently as she could. Ferin hung over the rail, fighting back the pain, trying to focus her eyes on what lay behind, the dark mass that looked like a monster eating up the silver wake of their own passage.
There were small fires aboard the pursuing raider, spots of red light, that perhaps to some would suggest lit torches, a strange thing to have on a wooden ship. Ferin knew better. As she continued to look, and her eyes adapted to the starlight, she noted that most of the ship’s oars, though over the side, were held or lashed high. Only six oars a side stroked the water, but those six moved deep and with inexorable force.
“Only six a side are actually rowing,” she said. “But those twelve are wood-weirds, or something similar. Untiring, and easily four or five times as strong as the strongest warrior. There must also be at least twelve witches or shamans aboard, with their keepers. No, thirteen, for the wind-eater could not also command a wood-weird.”
“No ordinary raider,” said Karrilke, who had returned with Ferin’s bow and arrow case, and her fur cloak, which the captain laid over the girl’s legs.
“Sky Horse is a small clan; they could not have so many sorcerers. A dozen such: that is the full strength of two clans, at least,” said Ferin. She felt a leaden weight forming in her stomach, which she refused to accept as the beginnings of despair. “The tribes never normally ride together. And all sent to sea, which they hate and fear, as they do all deep water? This must be the doing of the Witch With No Face.”
“The Witch With No Face?” asked Karrilke.
“If we live, I will tell you of her,” said Ferin. She nocked an arrow, but did not draw, peering into the night while trying to ignore the pain that began in her ankle and coursed its way along her leg, stabbing at her in time with her heartbeat.
No targets presented themselves on the raider. It was directly in line behind them, some eighty paces back, but drawing a little closer with every dip and sweep of its oars, pushing ahead as the fishing boat wallowed with flapping sails.
The wind altered. A few points. Sails filled, Karrilke’s children hauled on sheets, Karrilke herself took the tiller and heaved it, hoping to catch as much of the wind as possible.
A silhouette, something a shade darker than the night sky, appeared atop the long curved prow of the raider, someone standing for a better look.
The wind-eater.
Ferin caught the acrid stench of Free Magic, carried in on that blessed wind, the wind that was already fading, pulled back from their sails by sorcery.
She was sitting, on a swaying platform, a drumbeat of pain echoing from ankle to leg to head, her eyes blurred. It was night.
Ferin drew and shot, and her arrow sped across the starlit waters.
Chapter Ten
THE THREAT OF FREE MAGIC
Northern Side of the Wall, the Old Kingdom
The bells fell silent as Lirael ran from the Wall. They quieted almost as soon as she left the northern gate, back into a warm spring evening and the last soft light of day, with the stars just beginning to be visible in the darkening sky. Despite the bells’ stillness, she ran on another fifty paces before she stopped and took her hands away from the bandolier. Her golden hand was glowing more brightly than usual, she noted, a corona of unknown Charter marks floating around her fingers, none that were anything to do with the spells Sam had cast there. But these marks faded as she glanced at them, and were gone even as she tried to memorize them for later research.
The guards came running out, six of them carrying Nick, or rather what she presumed must be Nick, because right now what they bore was a cocoon of golden fire, almost too bright to look upon. Marks from the northern face of the Wall were still rushing across to join this brilliant shroud of Charter Magic, but as the guards continued on, the rivers of light fell back. Then, a dozen or more paces away, the marks that enclosed Nick either faded or sank into him, and Lirael could see him again. Still unconscious and unaware of what had occurred in crossing the Wall.
Lirael cautiously walked toward the guards, as they moved toward her. She kept her hands across the bells, in case they should begin to stir again, but they did not. This confirmed her suspicion that it was an interaction that required the power inherent in the Wall, not just the Free Magic that lurked within Nicholas Sayre.
Captain Anlow came hurrying out of the gate, followed by the remainder of her detachment. She came straight to Lirael, looking more anxious than she wished to show, Lirael was sure. Up until a few minutes ago, the captain had been the very model of a tough officer of the Guard, willing to take on anything and, in the process, show the young Abhorsen-in-Waiting that she knew best.
“Is that going to happen again?” asked Anlow. “And . . . what was it?”
“I don’t know,” said Lirael. She gestured to the guards to lay Nick down, and knelt down next to him as they did so. She hesitated for a moment, then touched two fingers to his baptismal Charter mark.
She felt the warm welcome of the Charter and fell into the endless flow of marks. There was no corruption here, nothing that was anything different from when she touched any true mark. But she could feel a massive force of Free Magic behind the Charter . . . or under . . . or somehow kept back from somewhere else that was undefined . . . something she could not conceptually grasp, because the Charter was endless, but then there was something beyond or behind it . . .
A slight headache began to form between her eyes.
Lirael leaned back and stood up.
“I don’t know, Captain,” she said. “His Charter mark is unsullied, he is as much part of it as we are . . . but he is also deeply . . . deeply full of Free Magic. And he has lost a lot of blood. My healing spell still works upon him, but he is very weak . . .”
Lirael’s voice trailed off as she tried to think what she should do.
“Selemi’s back at Barhedrin,” said Anlow, her voice dubious. “Our chief healer. He has much experience with common wounds and illnesses, as healer and mage.”
“Thank you,” said Lirael. She was already forming a plan in her mind. It was one she was reluctant to adopt, though already she knew it was the only choice. “But this is a most uncommon . . . um . . . condition.”
“You’ll take him to Belisaere, then?” asked Anlow. Lirael could hear the relief in the captain’s voice.
Lirael had thought of that. But this wasn’t the kind of thing that even the most experienced of the healers in the city hospital could deal with. Even if Sabriel and Touchstone were there, she doubted they would know what was going on with Nick. They were both very po
werful Charter Mages, of course, and fine healers themselves. But this wasn’t a medical problem but a mystery, one rooted in the nature of Free Magic and the Charter.
The best place for solving any kind of mystery like that, or even beginning to work out the nature of such a mystery, was in the Great Library of the Clayr. And in conjunction with that, the very best healers of all the Kingdom were to be found in the Infirmary of the Clayr.
Which meant it was finally time for Lirael to go back to her childhood home, something she had been putting off for months, despite a number of invitations and even some quite pointed suggestions from Sabriel. To return to the Clayr’s Glacier, where she had been both extraordinarily unhappy, and never happier. But all those happy memories of the place were deeply entwined with memories of the Disreputable Dog, once her only and still her truest friend. Even though the Dog was no longer in the living world, and Lirael knew she would never see her again.
“No,” said Lirael slowly. “Not Belisaere.”
She took a deep breath, shutting away memories she hadn’t wanted to face, blocking off the feelings that rose in her when she thought of the Glacier, her life there, the Dog, all her cousins and aunts and relatives. The Clayr, the great family she had never really belonged to, and never would. Who had, in the end, effectively cast her out. Even if they didn’t think of it that way.
“No,” repeated Lirael, after a long pause. “Not Belisaere. I’ll take him to the Clayr’s Glacier. That’s the best place.”
“We’ll rig a proper stretcher between two horses, then,” said Anlow, visibly more cheerful with the prospect of this particular problem departing from her area of command. “You’ll fly him back in your paperwing?”
“Yes,” said Lirael. That was another thing. She’d grown somewhat used to flying paperwings, but it was only six weeks since she’d first flown alone, and she’d never flown with a passenger, let alone one who was some kind of Free Magic reservoir. Hopefully the paperwing would agree to carry him . . .