Goldenhand (10 page)

At Sea, Approaching Yellowsands

A
high-pitched, long drawn-out scream echoed across the sea. The figure on the bow of the raider fell backward, and the scream became a series of shouts and oaths, likely from the same person. The rhythm of the rowers and the chanting did not change in the slightest.

“Only wounded,” said Ferin with disappointment and some embarrassment, despite the difficulty of the shot. She drew her arm in clumsily, feeling her weakness, almost dropping her precious bow over the side. It had been made for her only a dozen moons past, by the finest bowyer of the clan, using the best of her stock of horn, sinew, and mulberry wood, the latter particularly precious because it did not grow in the Athask people's high preserves and had to be traded for, or stolen in raids.

“Good shooting, nevertheless,” said Karrilke. The captain had her head up, nose sniffing the wind. “If that was their wind-eater . . .”

Ferin nodded. She hoped it was the wind-eater and they were wounded enough to be put out of action, for she had no strength for another shot. She tried to settle down to an easier position, keeping her leg still. She had never felt so weak, and never felt such pain.

“Nothing,” said Karrilke, with regret. The air remained completely still, the raider drawing closer, close enough to hear the groan of the oars, the slap of the blades on the sea, and that chanting, now very clear. It didn't come from human rowers at all, the cadence, Ferin suddenly realized. It was the sorcerers keeping time
for their Free Magic constructs.

“Push me over the side,” croaked Ferin. All was lost now. Her message, the Athask people . . . but there was no reason for these kind fisher-folk to die as well. “It's me they want. They'll not pursue.”

Karrilke didn't reply for a moment. When she spoke, her words came at the same time as a fresh, spray-laden gust of wind. The nor'easter was back, and the captain was not answering Ferin.

“Haul! Haul fast!” roared Karrilke to her crew, leaning on the tiller to send the boat slanting on her best possible course. Ferin choked back a scream as the bow plunged through the crest of a wave and the hull shuddered, sending yet another stab of still greater pain through her leg.

But even with the wind in their sails, the fishing boat was not yet sure of escape. The Free Magic sorcerers aboard the raider sped up the rhythm of their chant, urging their inhuman constructs to row faster.

A moment later an arrow narrowly missed Karrilke at the tiller. She ducked down, but it was hard to stay low and manage the heavy oar. Ferin twisted around to look. A dim bent-over shape at the bow of the raider was about to straighten up, probably after nocking a new arrow. Almost certainly it was the keeper of the sorcerer Ferin had wounded. Keepers were rarely good archers, but that first arrow had passed very close to Karrilke.

Or so Ferin thought, until the next shot flew a handsbreadth over her head, and she realized the archer was not only very good, he or she wasn't aiming at the captain.
Ferin
was the target, and only the vagaries of breeze and darkness had caused the last shot to miss.

She let herself fall back, only a moment before another arrow hit the hull with a loud
thock
. A few inches higher and it would have hit her in the head.

The next arrow went wide, as Karrilke steered the boat a little off the wind and then on again, their wake showing a sudden kink. The
arrow after that went into the sea, a dozen paces short. Even rowing at ramming speed, the raider was now falling back, unable to keep up with the nor'easter lifting the fishing boat south.

“Lown! Take hold here!”

Lown came back to the tiller. Karrilke bent down over Ferin.

“You're a brave lass, and your shot saved us, I reckon,” said the captain. “Nothing's ever sure at sea, but there's a good chance now we'll have you ashore soon after dawn, and to the healer.”

“How far is it from your Yellowsands to the place where the . . . the Clayr are?” asked Ferin. “In the ice.”

“The Clayr's Glacier?”

Karrilke scratched her head. Ferin noticed that all the while they were talking, the captain kept a sharp eye over the stern. The chanting and the splash of oars from the raider could still be heard, though more faintly.

“I don't rightly know,” continued Karrilke. “I suppose you'd take the south road to Navis, and keep going southwest to Sindle and from there north again, following the Ratterlin. On the royal roads, that is. There'd be lesser ways, I suppose, going west from Navis. Maybe five or six days, mounted. Someone'll have a map in Yellowsands.”

“Good,” said Ferin. She tried to say more, to fend off what she thought of as shamefully passing out, but was unable to resist the tide of weakness and pain that was rising in her body.

Karrilke caught Ferin's head as the young woman's eyes rolled back and she slumped sideways. Laying her carefully on the deck, the captain looked over the stern again. The raider was still lit by the red fires that were not fires; the oars were pulling at the same swift pace, as called by the sorcerers. But it was falling behind with every minute.

Despite this, the raider was
still
following them.

For the first time, Karrilke wondered what would happen if it
followed them all the way into Yellowsands. The Sky Horse raiders had never done so before, not in her memory, but then Karrilke had also never been pursued before by a raider full of Free Magic things that rowed all night and did not rest . . .

Yellowsands was a fishing village, not a walled and garrisoned town. The fisher-folk would fight to defend it, of course, but even if most of the boats were in, there would only be sixty or seventy people of fighting age, with perhaps half a dozen Charter Mages. And these latter were not expert in fighting spells; they knew only simple magic, mostly to do with the sea and fishing, like Karrilke herself.

Presuming the wind kept up, as it promised to do, Karrilke reckoned they would get to Yellowsands soon after dawn, perhaps an hour or even two ahead of the raider. But that was very little time to prepare a defense against a dozen wood-weirds and as many shamans and witches, in addition to their keepers.

The closest Guard post was in Navis, sixty leagues south. There was a rural constable in Yellowsands, but only one. Megril, a young annoyance if ever there was one, always poking her nose into honest fisher-folks' business. Karrilke tried to remember if Megril had the keeping of a message-hawk for emergencies. Long ago, Yellowsands had maintained its own militia and message-hawks, but there had been peace for years, ever since King Touchstone and the Abhorsen Sabriel had set everything back to rights.

Karrilke cleared her throat, and tried to speak conversationally. She was never really afraid at sea, or had long ago trained herself not to show it, but the thought of Free Magic constructs rampaging through her village scared her. She had three more children at home, and her husband, a woodcutter . . . he would be first into the fighting with that long double-bladed axe of his . . .

“Lown,” she said. “Do you recall if that Megril has a message-hawk? Or anyone in the village?”

Lown made a face, the usual reaction to the mention of the rural constable.

“Don't know about Megril,” he said. “Doesn't Aulther have a pair, for the markets?”

“Aye, I'd forgot,” said Karrilke, brightening. Aulther was the fisher-folks' factor and banker, who sold most of their catches to the Fishmonger's Guild in Belisaere and arranged the cargo vessels that took the salted batith south. His birds probably only flew to and from the fish market in the city, but it would be a way to send a warning and to ask for help.

Not that any help could possibly arrive before the raider.

“As soon as we berth, you run to Aulther,” said Karrilke. “Ask him to send a bird to the closest Guard post if he can, or to the fishmonger's if he can't, asking for help along as the village is about to be attacked by a dozen Free Magic constructs, their sorcerers and keepers, from the Sky Horses and maybe other tribes with them.”

“We are? I mean, we will be?” asked Lown. He was young and had never seriously fought against anyone, so he was more excited than afraid. For the moment.

“I reckon,” said Karrilke. “Soon as you done that, you run home and have Da gather up everything for traveling he can get together real quick and meet us by the Charter Stone. Tell him about the raiders, and to pack food and water for all of us, three days, for traveling.”

“Food and water? Traveling?”

“We can't fight off a dozen wood-weirds,” said Karrilke. “Have to get everyone in the village out, take the road and try and stay ahead of 'em, get to the old tower on the south road. Tolther and Huire will bring the girl to the stone, I'll go to Megril and get her to sound the alarm, and I'll fetch up Astilaran. Oh, get my harpoon from the house, and the old leather cuirass. It's hanging up with the garden tools.”

“What . . . what about the catch?” asked Lown.

“We leave it.”

“We . . . leave it?” asked Lown, his voice squeaking high in surprise.

“Better to stay alive,” said Karrilke. She slapped the deck affectionately with her bare foot. “No point dying over salted fish. Besides, it'll keep, provided she stays afloat.”

“What do we do if they sink her?” asked Lown. He was the least imaginative of Karrilke's children, which was helpful sometimes, sometimes not.

“Raise her,” said Karrilke. “Build another. Worry about that if and when it happens. How long till Yellowsands, you think?”

Lown looked up at the sky, roughly fixing their position in relation to the six stars that made up The Beggar; cross-checked that with the Buckle of the North Giant's Belt, sometimes called Mariner's Cheat; and finally imagined an invisible line drawn through Uallus, the fixed red star a little east of north. After that he sniffed the air a few times, and gazed out upon the sea, taking note of the swell and other indications. A land-dweller would have sworn all the sea looked the same: dark and mysterious, barely illuminated by stars and moon. But to Lown it was familiar, and he knew where they were.

“Reckon we should hear the Mouth Buoy soon,” he said. “Even over that racket those raiders are making.”

The “racket” was the continuing chanting of the sorcerers, now only a far-off conjoined sound, that could have been some great seabird calling in the night.

“Aye,” said Karrilke. “Listen for it and make the turn. I'm going for'rard to talk to Tolther and Huire.”

“Will do, Captain,” said Lown. He bent his attention ahead, listening for the harsh ring of the cracked bell that swung atop the ancient barrel buoy, once a tun of western wine, triple-caulked with tar to keep it afloat. The buoy marked the mouth of the Yellowsands channel, the only sure entrance to the winding way through the
treacherous drifts and bars of sand that gave the village its name.

Karrilke had considered silencing the bell on the buoy, so the channel entrance would be harder to find, but she dismissed the notion as it would take precious time. The raider was a shallow draft vessel and so could pass many of the sandbars anyways, and she suspected the Sky Horse raiders were following them by some sorcerous means in any case.

The captain forgot the buoy and went forward, one eye on the sails, ready to call for them to be trimmed if she saw them shiver or heard them flapping.

Ferin lay on the deck near Lown's feet. She was quiet, no longer writhing with fever. Simply a lump under her fur cloak, the only sign she was still alive the occasional quiver of her lower lip as she breathed in and out.

Flying to the Clayr's Glacier

N
icholas Sayre woke slowly, his teeth aching and his eyes blurred from a cold wind that was blowing hard across his face. For several seconds he couldn't work out where he was, because there was only blue sky above and when he tried to move he found himself restrained, tied around the waist and secured behind his back. He was sitting, too, which was strange, particularly as he was also slumped at an angle, his head hanging down over the edge of something . . .

He tried to sit up straight, and found that as he did so, he moved out of the freezing-cold wind into an area of still, warm air. His dulled mind processed that he was sitting behind someone; he was tied to some sort of hammock-like suspended chair, which was in . . . in the open cockpit of an aircraft.

Nicholas had flown before, several times, he had an interest in aviation and the physics of flight, and in consequence had gone for joyrides with the barnstormers from the flying circus who visited the ten-acre field near his family home on regular occasions. But this was no Heddon-Hare or Beskwith. It was completely silent, to begin with. There was also warm air in the cockpit, which was impossible, since there wasn't even a windshield.

Looking around, the flimsy contraption seemed to be little more than a kind of canoe body, with long, hawklike wings that were far too frail to sustain flight. And as he examined the side closest to him,
he saw the hull was made of something very insubstantial, some kind of thin laminated plywood or something even lighter.

Still dazed, feeling like his arm was much heavier than usual, he tapped the person in front of him on the shoulder. Whoever it was started and turned her head to look back. Even in his confused state, Nick recognized her.

“Lirael!”

As he spoke her name, memory came flowing back, like a river returning to its course after some temporary dam had burst. First came small trickles of thought, images and sounds, and then the whole lot swept into his mind. Dorrance Hall, the creature in the case, the pursuit north, making the monster drink his blood, and then . . . Lirael. She had finished off the creature . . . no, banished it for a while . . . with her thistle-tipped spear. But everything after that was lost. He had a dim recollection of golden light, light all around, like waking to sunshine through a bedroom window, so bright you can't immediately open your eyes, not until you look away.

Now he had opened his eyes.

To find himself in a silent, far too fragile-looking aircraft that presumably worked by the magic he had for many years refused to recognize as being possible. Piloted by a young woman who he had dreamed about ever since meeting her, or even before meeting her, since he didn't know that his encounter with Lirael near the Red Lake had actually happened.

“Are you all right?” asked Lirael. He could hear her easily; somehow the wind created by their speedy flight was diverted around the cockpit.

“I . . . I think so,” said Nick. “But I can't remember what happened . . . after you got rid of that creature.”

“The Hrule,” said Lirael. “You've been in a healing sleep since then. We brought you through the Wall and then this morning
loaded you aboard this paperwing.”

Nick put his hand against the thin material at his side. Small symbols of golden light emerged where his fingers touched, flashed brightly, and then receded again.

“This craft is made of
paper
?” he asked.

“Laminated paper,” said Lirael. “And a great deal of Charter Magic. Hold on a moment, I need to catch a higher wind.”

She looked to the front again, and whistled: pure, clear notes that seemed to echo inside Nick's head, and out of the corner of his eye he saw more of the strange, shimmering gold symbols appear in her exhaled breath, apparently in answer to the whistling, only to whisk away out of sight as he peered forward to try to get a better look at them.

The paperwing tilted back and to the side as it began to spiral upward, passing through a wispy cloud that Nick observed parted in front of the paperwing's long nose. He saw thousands of tiny droplets of moisture spatter the wings, but none came in the cockpit.

“How . . . how do we stay warm and keep the wind and moisture out?” Nick asked when Lirael stopped whistling, and the paperwing settled into level flight once more.

“Where we sit—Sabriel calls it the cockpit—is spelled for warmth and to divide the wind,” answered Lirael. “But it works only up to a point. If we go much faster you'll feel the wind, and heavy rain comes through, after a fashion. I'm fairly new to this, so we're flying lower and slower than Sabriel or Touchstone would.”

Nick looked over the side. He could see green fields below, sprinkled with small groups of trees, and a few buildings, probably farmhouses. Some distance to his left there was a broad river, the water bright under the sun. It was hard to tell how high they were, but it looked to be at least a few thousand feet.

“You haven't been flying very long?” he asked.

“Not long,” said Lirael. Though he hadn't sounded worried, she
added, “But I do know what I'm doing, and to be honest, this paperwing could fly itself.”

“Oh,” said Nick. “It can fly by itself?”

“Yes,” said Lirael.

There was silence for a minute or so. Nick tried to gather his fragmented thoughts. He'd wanted to come to the Old Kingdom for many reasons, not least a desire to see Lirael again, though he had not fully recognized that himself. But he had not thought through what he would do once he got here, in part because it had seemed he would have time to write to Sam before he would be allowed to cross the Wall, and that everything would take a long time and allow careful thought and consideration.

Now here he was, feeling weak and stupid, tied to a kind of hammock chair in a silent flying vehicle that worked by magic. With Lirael, but not in circumstances where he felt he could easily talk to her, or impress her. In fact, he feared quite the reverse. He'd helped a Free Magic creature escape from its prison, inadvertently begun the process of making it even more powerful, and had only been saved by Lirael's arrival, when she had immediately and competently taken care of matters.

Nick shut his eyes and groaned inwardly. She probably already thought of him as a dangerous fool for his prior involvement with Orannis, a reputation he'd now enhanced, or possibly dehanced or whatever the word might be, by his freeing and empowering the Hrule. Once again meddling in things he didn't understand and endangering others.

“Um, I'm taking you to the Clayr's Glacier,” said Lirael, after several more minutes of rather uncomfortable silence. “Do you . . . do you know about the Clayr?”

“Sam's been writing to me,” said Nick. “About lots of things. I was . . . well, I was just ordinarily stupid before, when we were at school. I mean, I didn't want to believe any of Sam's stories. It didn't
fit with what I knew about science and everything. And then . . . then when I first came here . . . it's all rather vague, my memory, but I seemed to get even worse, refusing to acknowledge what was in front of my face—”

“But that wasn't your fault!” protested Lirael. “You had the shard of Orannis in your heart, controlling you.”

“It was in my heart!” exclaimed Nick. He couldn't help but look down, almost feeling some phantom pain in his chest. “Sam didn't tell me that! But surely it would have killed me when it came out?”

“No . . .” said Lirael. “It traveled through your bloodstream, reversing the course it must have taken to go in, and then burst from your finger, to rejoin the hemispheres.”

Nick lifted his hand and looked at his forefinger. There was a star-shaped scar there above the top joint, and it was always somewhat numb, though he could feel a pinprick or other sharp pain. He had wondered what caused that numbness, and the scar.

“Sam should have told me,” he said quietly. “I suppose he thought it would be too upsetting . . . um, the Clayr . . . the women who can See the future, in the ice. They live in an underground city, built around a glacier. Is that right?”

“Yes, for what it's worth,” said Lirael. “It's more complicated than that, of course.”

“But why are you taking me there?” asked Nick. “I mean, I'm grateful, very grateful, don't get me wrong. Thank you for dealing with that thing, the Hrule. I wouldn't want any more people to suffer from my stupidity, which seemed likely . . . there . . .”

His voice trailed off and he shook his head, wondering why he found it so difficult to talk intelligently to Lirael. He never had any problems talking nonsense to the debs at the balls in Corvere, or pretending academic conversations with the bluestockings at Sunbere, or even taking part in intelligent discourse with the students who saw through his act. Everyone said he was charming. It couldn't
all be to do with his powerful and influential family, which meant nothing here. Could it?

“
I'm
curious how you ended up by the Wall with the Hrule,” said Lirael. She didn't sound at ease, either, Nick thought miserably. He was probably just a task she had to take care of, part of her duty as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. Though he was very glad it was she who'd come along, not Sabriel. He was intimidated by Sabriel, though she had always been perfectly nice to him on the rare occasions she'd visited Sam at school.

“It all started with me visiting Dorrance Hall,” Nick began, continuing in a rather disjointed way to tell Lirael the story of how the Hrule had been brought there in the first place as a kind of museum exhibit and the mad Alastor Dorrance had tried to bring it back to life with Nick's blood, all too successfully.
*

“So now you know about my latest idiocy. . . . Why are you taking me to the Clayr's Glacier?”

“I'm taking you there because . . .” Lirael continued, then stopped. She cleared her throat, seemingly uncertain about what she wanted to say. “I'm taking you to the Clayr because, as you probably know, there is still a remnant of Free Magic power within you, left over from the shard of Orannis. Which would normally be incredibly dangerous. You would be a Free Magic sorcerer for sure, unable to resist using that power. But in your case, the . . . my friend the Disreputable Dog . . . she baptized you with the Charter mark, and somehow it took, so you are a part of the Charter
and
you have Free Magic within you. Which is . . . unusual . . . and the best place to have such things, I mean situations . . . or . . . circumstances . . . looked into is at the Glacier, where there are many very learned Charter Mages of all kinds, and also the Great Library, where there might be books or other . . . sources . . . of knowledge that can help
you. I mean us. All of us, that is. Not just the two of us . . . so that's why we're going to the Glacier. We should be there before nightfall.”

Nick could only see the back of Lirael's neck, but he noticed a blush spread across her pale skin, above the high collar of her armored coat. He grimaced, thinking it was even worse than he thought. Not only had he caused trouble, he
was
trouble, and Lirael was embarrassed to have to tell him so.

Change the subject, he thought. Change the subject!

“Um, this kind of flying is much better than back home,” he said, grimacing again at how vacuous this sounded. But he pressed on. “I mean, in our airplanes, it's very noisy. Last time I went up I was covered in oil from the engine, sprayed all over me. And it was freezing, even with a fur coat. This . . . ah . . . paperwing is a far superior way to fly.”

Lirael didn't answer, but the paperwing responded to the compliment by suddenly dropping forty or fifty feet and wiggling its wings, both of which scared Nick quite a lot but did not upset Lirael in the least.

“I do like flying in paperwings,” she said affectionately, reaching out to pat the side of the fuselage. “It's much more comfortable and far easier than flying in owl shape.”

“Owl shape?” repeated Nick quietly to himself, with an intense feeling of déjà vu. Lirael's voice and the memory of an owl, the two together, resonated in his mind, though he couldn't quite place the connection. An owl with golden eyes. And a dog with wings . . . was that something that had actually happened?

He was thinking about the owl and the dog with wings when he finally noticed Lirael's golden hand again, still resting on the lip of the cockpit. It looked almost like normal flesh and blood, save for the faint golden tinge, until he stared at it, mesmerized by how it did look almost normal, and not quite, all at the same time. This was because every few seconds there would be a faint shimmer and
Charter marks would move, revealing a glimpse of the metal structure underneath the illusion of flesh.

“Your new hand,” said Nick. “It's . . . quite incredible. And to think Sam made it. He wasn't that great at woodwork classes in school.”