“The man Nicholas is the key,” said Sanar. “Once you find him, we think, you will know what to do.”
“But he’s with a necromancer!” exclaimed Lirael. “They’re digging up something terrible! Shouldn’t we tell the Abhorsen?”
“We have sent messages, but the Abhorsen and the King are in Ancelstierre, where they hope to avert a trouble that is also probably connected with whatever is in the pit that you Saw. We have also alerted Ellimere and her co-regent, and it is possible they will also act, perhaps with Prince Sameth, the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. But whatever they do, we know that it is you who must find Nicholas. It seems a little thing, I know, a meeting between two people on a lake. But it is the only future we can See now, with all else hidden from us, and it offers our only hope to avert disaster.”
Lirael nodded, white-faced. Too many things were happening, and she was too tired and emotionally exhausted to cope. But it did seem that she was not just being thrown out. She really did have something important to do, not just for the Clayr, but for the whole Kingdom.
“Now, we must prepare you for the journey,” added Sanar, obviously noting Lirael’s weariness. “Is there anything personal you wish to take, or something special we can provide?”
Lirael shook her head. She wanted the Disreputable Dog, but that didn’t seem possible, if the Clayr hadn’t Seen her. Perhaps her friend was gone forever now, the spell that had brought her meeting some condition that triggered its end.
“My outdoor things, I suppose,” she whispered finally. “And a few books. I suppose I should take the things I found, too.”
“You should,” said Sanar, obviously curious as to what exactly they were. But she didn’t ask, and Lirael didn’t feel like talking about them. They were just more complications. Why had they been left for her? What use would they be out in the wide world?
“We must also outfit you with a bow and sword,” said Ryelle. “As befits a Daughter of the Clayr gone a-voyaging.”
“I’m not very good with a sword,” Lirael said in a small voice, choking a little at being called a Daughter of the Clayr. Those words, so long sought, sounded empty to her now. “I’m all right with a bow.”
She didn’t explain that she was competent with the laminated short bow used by the Clayr only because she shot rats in the Library, using blunted arrows so as not to puncture books. The Dog liked to retrieve the arrows but wasn’t interested in eating the rats, unless Lirael cooked them with herbs and sauce, which she naturally refused to do.
“I hope you will need neither weapon,” said Sanar. Her words seemed loud, echoing out into the huge cavern of ice. Lirael shivered. That hope seemed likely to be false. Suddenly it was cold. Nearly all the Clayr had gone, all fifteen hundred of them, in a matter of minutes, as if they had never been there. Only two armored guards remained, watching from the end of the Observatory. One had a spear and the other a bow. Lirael didn’t need to get closer to know that these were also weapons of power, imbued with Charter Magic.
They had stayed, she knew, to make sure she was blindfolded. She looked away and took her scarf off, folding it with slow, deliberate movements. Then she tied it across her eyes and stood stiffly, waiting for Sanar and Ryelle to take her arms.
“I am sorry,” said Sanar and Ryelle, at the same time, their voices blending into one. They sounded to her as if they were apologizing not just for the blindfold, but for Lirael’s whole life.
By the time they reached her small chamber off the Hall of Youth, Lirael had not slept or eaten for more than eighteen hours. She was staggering with fatigue, so Sanar and Ryelle continued to support her. She was so tired that she didn’t even realize Aunt Kirrith was present until she was taken into a sudden, unwelcome, extremely tight embrace.
“Lirael! What have you done now!” Aunt Kirrith exclaimed, her voice booming from somewhere above Lirael’s head, which was kept firmly pressed into her aunt’s neck. “You’re too young to go off into the world!”
“Aunt!” protested Lirael, trying to free herself, embarrassed to be treated like a little girl in front of Ryelle and Sanar. It was typical of Aunt Kirrith to try to hug her when she didn’t want her to, and to not hug her when she did want to be hugged.
“It’ll be just like your mother all over again,” Kirrith was saying, seemingly as much to the twins as to Lirael. “Going off who knows where and getting involved in who knows what with who knows whom. Why, you might even come back—”
“Kirrith! Enough!” snapped Sanar, surprising Lirael. She had never heard anyone speak to Kirrith like that. It was clearly a shock to Kirrith too, because she let go of Lirael and took a deep, dignified breath.
“You can’t talk to me like that, San . . . Ry . . . which-ever one you are,” Aunt Kirrith finally said after several deep breaths. “I’m Guardian of the Young, and I am in authority here!”
“And we, for the moment, are the Voice of the Clayr,” replied Sanar and Ryelle in unison, lifting the wands they still held. “We have been invested with the powers of the Nine Day Watch. Do you challenge our right, Kirrith?”
Kirrith looked at them, tried to take an even deeper breath, and failed, her breath wheezing out of her like that of a toad that has been stepped on. It was clearly a recognition of their authority, if not a very dignified one.
“Fetch the things you want to take, Lirael,” said Sanar, touching her on the shoulder. “We must soon go down to the boat. Kirrith, perhaps if we could speak outside?”
Lirael nodded wearily and went to the chest that held her clothes, while the others went out and shut the door. Without looking, she reached in. Her hand hit something hard, and her fingers were around it before she looked and gave a little gasp of recognition. It was the old soapstone carving of the hard-bitten dog, the one she’d found in the Stilken’s chamber, the one that had vanished when the Disreputable Dog had appeared.
Lirael hugged it close to her chest for a moment, a faint hope breaking through her weariness. It was not the Dog, but it was a hint that the Dog could be summoned again. Smiling, she put the statuette in the pocket of a clean waistcoat, making sure its soapstone snout could not be seen poking out. She put the Dark Mirror in the same pocket and the panpipes in the other one, and transferred The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting to a small shoulder bag that seemed exactly made for it. The clockwork emergency mouse she put in a corner of the chest, followed by the whistle. Neither of them could help her where she was going now.
As she undressed and quickly washed, thankful for the larger room and simple bathroom she’d moved to on her eighteenth birthday, Lirael considered changing her clothes completely, to wear something that did not identify her as a Clayr. But when it came time to dress, she once again donned the working clothes of a Second Assistant Librarian. That was what she was, she told herself. She had earned the right to the red waistcoat. No one could take that away, even if she wasn’t a proper Clayr.
She had just rolled some spare clothes into her cloak, and was thinking about her heavy wool coat and its likely usefulness in late spring and summer, when there was a knock on the door, followed immediately by Kirrith.
“I didn’t mean any nastiness about your mother,” Kirrith said from the doorway, sounding subdued. “Arielle was my little sister, and I loved her well. But she was outlandish, if you know what I mean, and prone to trouble. Always getting into scrapes and . . . well . . . it’s not been easy, what with being Guardian and having to keep everyone in line. Perhaps I haven’t shown you . . . well, it’s hard when you can’t See how others feel or will feel about you. What I mean to say is that I loved your mother—and I love you, too.”
“I know, Auntie,” replied Lirael, not looking back as she threw her coat back in the chest. Even a year ago she would have given anything to hear those words, to feel that she belonged. Now it was too late. She was leaving the Glacier, leaving it as her mother had done years before, when she had abandoned her daughter seemingly without a care.
But that was all his
tory, Lirael thought. I can leave it behind, start my story afresh. I don’t need to know why my mother left, or who my father was. I don’t need to know, she repeated to herself.
I don’t need to know.
But while she mumbled those words under her breath, her mind kept turning to The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting in the bag at her side, and the pipes and Dark Mirror in her waistcoat pockets.
She didn’t need to know what had happened in the past. But while she had always been alone among the Clayr for her blindness to the future, now she was alone in another way as well. In a perverse reversal of all her hopes and dreams, she had been granted the exact opposite of her heart’s desire.
For with the Dark Mirror, and her new-found knowledge, she could See into the past.
Chapter Thirty-One
A Voice in the Trees
Hidden a mere hundred yards into the fringe of the forest, Prince Sameth lay like a dead man, sprawled where he’d fallen from his horse. One leg was caked with drying blood, and black-red blotches marked the green leaves of the bushes that shivered around him in the breeze. Only a close inspection would have shown that he was still breathing.
Sprout, proving less neurotic than expected, grazed quietly nearby. Occasionally her ears twitched and her head went up, but all through the long day nothing disturbed her contented munching.
In the late afternoon, when the shadows began their slow crawl out from the trees to stretch and join together, the breeze picked up and relieved the heat of the late-spring day. It blew over Sam, partly covering him with leaves, twigs, wind-caught spiderwebs, beetle carcasses, and feathery grasses.
One thin blade of grass caught up against his nose and was trapped there, tickling his nostril. It rustled this way, then that, but didn’t shift. Sameth’s nose twitched in response, twitched again, then finally burst out in a sneeze.
Sam woke up. At first he thought he was drunk, hungover, and suffering. His mouth was dry, and he could taste the stench of his own breath. His head ached with a fierce pain, and his legs hurt even more. He must have passed out in someone’s garden, which was incredibly embarrassing. He had been this drunk only once before, and hadn’t wished to repeat the experience.
He started to call out, but even as the dry, pathetic croak left his lips, he remembered what had happened.
He’d killed two constables. Men who were trying to do their duty. Men who had wives, family. Parents, brothers, sisters, children. They would have left their homes in the morning with no expectation of sudden death. Perhaps their wives were even now waiting for them to come home for the evening meal.
No, thought Sameth, levering himself up to look bleakly at the red light of the setting sun filtering through the trees. They had fought early in the morning. The wives would know by now that their husbands were never coming home.
Slowly, he pushed himself further upright, brushing the forest debris from his clothes. He had to push the guilt down, too, at least for the moment. Survival required it.
First of all, he had best cut away his trouser leg and look at the wound. He dimly remembered casting the spell that had undoubtedly saved his life, but the wound would still be fragile, liable to reopen. He had to bind it up, for he was far too weak to cast another healing spell.
After that, he would somehow stand up. Stand up, catch the faithful Sprout, and ride deeper into the forest. He was somewhat surprised that he hadn’t already been discovered by the local constabulary. Unless he had laid a more confusing trail than he’d thought, or they were waiting for reinforcements to arrive before they started looking for what they assumed to be a murderous necromancer.
If the constables—or even worse, the Guard—found him now, he’d have to tell them who he was, Sam decided. And that would mean a shameful return to Belisaere, there to be tried by Ellimere and Jall Oren. Public disgrace and infamy would be sure to follow. The only other alternative would be a dishonorable covering up of his awful deed.
Either situation would be intolerable. The disappointment he could already imagine on his parents’ faces would be too much to bear. No doubt his inability to be the Abhorsen-in-Waiting would also come out, and they would despair of him completely.
Better that he disappear. Go into the forest and hide out while he recovered, then continue to Edge with a newly conjured visage, for he was sure Nick still needed help. At least he would be able to do that. Not even Nick could get into more trouble than Sam had managed to get into himself.
Making the decisions proved easier than putting them into practice. Sprout backed away from him, her nostrils flaring, as he tried to grab her reins. She didn’t like the smell of blood, or the occasional grunts of pain Sam let out as he accidentally put weight on his wounded leg.
Finally, he managed to push her into a sort of natural cul de sac, where three trees prevented any further retreat. Mounting proved to be another challenge. Pain flared as he swung his leg over, gasping at the hurt.
Now Sam was faced with another problem. It was rapidly getting dark, and he had no idea where to go. Civilization and all it offered lay east, north, and south, but he dared not go until he was strong enough to cast another spell to change his and Sprout’s looks. Westward, there were many forest paths of doubtful use and direction. There might be some settlements or lone houses somewhere within the forest, but he couldn’t visit them with any safety, either.
Worse, he had only a single canteen of yesterday’s water, a hunk of very stale bread, and a lump of salted beef, his emergency provision in case he needed a snack between inns. The ginger cakes were long gone, eaten on the road.
It began to rain, the wind having brought clouds over from the sea—only a light spring shower, but it was enough to make Sam curse and wrestle with his saddlebags, trying to pull out his cloak. If he caught a cold on top of his existing hurts, there was no knowing how he’d end up. In a forest grave, most likely, he thought bitterly, not dug by human hands. Just a mound of wind-borne bits and pieces, linked by the grass growing up around his pathetic remains.
He was just thinking about this dismal future when his fingers, pulling at the cloak, felt leather and cold metal instead of wool. Instantly, he snatched his hand away, the tips of his fingers cold and already turning blue. The knowledge of what he’d just touched made him bend over his saddle horn and let out a great sob of despair and fright.
The Book of the Dead. He’d left it behind in his workroom, but it had refused to be left. Just like the bells. He would never be rid of them, even wounded and alone in this dark forest. They would follow him forever, even into Death itself.
He was just about to let himself break down when a voice came from the darkness between the trees.
“A little lost princeling, weeping in the forest? I would have thought you had more steel in your spine, Prince Sameth. Still, I am often wrong.”
The voice had an electric effect on Sameth and Sprout. The Prince shot bolt upright in the saddle, gasped at the pain, and tried to draw his sword. Sprout, equally surprised, leapt forward into an instant canter, weaving amid the trees without a thought for her rider and low-slung branches.
Horse and rider raced along in a cacophony of breaking branches, shouts, and whinnies. They continued in this fashion for at least fifty yards before Sameth got Sprout under control and managed to turn her back in the direction the voice had come from.
He also managed to draw his sword. It was half-dark now, the tree-trunks pale ashen streaks in the gathering gloom, supporting branches where leaves hung like heavy clots of darkness. Whoever . . . whatever . . . had spoken could easily creep up on him now, but it was better to face it than be knocked off by a branch in panicked flight.
The voice had been unnatural. He’d tasted Free Magic in it, and something else. It wasn’t a Dead creature—no, not that. But it could be a Stilken or Margrue, Free Magic elementals that occasionally hungered for the taste of Life. He wished now that he had read the book that he’d been given for his birthday, the one on bi
nding, by Merchane.
Something rustled in the leaves of the closest tree, and Sam started again, lifting his sword to the guard position. Sprout fidgeted, kept in check only by the pressure of Sam’s knees. The effort sent bolts of pain up Sam’s side, but he did not ease off.
There was something moving all right, moving up the trunk—there—no, there. It was jumping from branch to branch, moving behind him. Maybe more than one. . . .
Desperately, Sam tried to reach the Charter to draw out the marks needed for a magical attack. But he was too weak, the pain in his leg too strong, too fresh. He couldn’t keep the marks in his mind. He couldn’t remember the spell he wanted to form.
Perhaps the bells, he thought in desperation, as whatever it was moved again. But he didn’t know how to use the bells against the Dead, let alone Free Magic beings. His hand shook at the thought of using the bells, and he was reminded of Death. At the same time a fierce determination rose in him. Whatever ill luck had dogged him, he would not just lie down and die. He might be afraid, but he was a royal Prince, the son of Touchstone and Sabriel, and he would sell his life as dear as his strength could make it.
“Who calls Prince Sameth?” he shouted, words harsh in the darkling forest. “Show yourself, before I wreak a spell on you of great destruction!”
“Save the theatrics for those who respond to them,” replied the voice, this time accompanied by the flash of two piercing green eyes, reflecting the last of the sun on a branch high above Sam’s head. “And count yourself lucky that it’s only me. You’ve left blood enough around to call a brace of hormagants.”
With that speech, a small white cat leapt from the tree, catapulted off a lower branch, and landed a cautious distance from Sprout’s forefeet.
“Mogget!” exclaimed Sam, peering down at him with dizzy incredulity. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” said the cat. “As should be startlingly obvious to even the most dull-witted Prince. Loyal servant of the Abhorsen, that’s me. Ready to baby-sit at a moment’s notice. Anywhere. No trouble at all. Now get off that horse and make a fire, just in case there actually are some hormagants about. I don’t suppose you’ve been sensible enough to bring anything to eat?”