Goldenhand (26 page)

“Why wouldn't it be?” asked Nick.

Quickly, Lirael told him what had happened when they crossed the Wall. Nick listened intently, his forehead creased with both concern and thought. He looked so much better, thought Lirael. The healing spells had brought back his natural color, but it was more than that. He seemed so incredibly alive now, so full of excitement and joy.

“I can tell when whatever is inside me wants to . . . to join with Charter Magic,” said Nick. “And I can let it go, or force it back. I'm getting better at it all the time. So even with a Charter Stone, if I'm conscious and trying to control the reaction . . . it should be all right.”

“There will be many very experienced Charter Mages there, in any case,” said Lirael. “I mean, besides the King and Sabriel, Vancelle, Sanar and Ryelle I expect, perhaps Mirelle and some of the other senior office holders.”

“Am I dressed appropriately?” asked Nick. He was wearing a dark blue tunic the same color as Lirael's waistcoat, without the silver keys, trousers of a similar color, and doeskin shoes that buttoned up at the sides with blue buttons. “Do I need a sword?”

“You can have my old one, from Belisaere,” said Lirael. She thought for a second. “Though it is Charter-spelled.”

“I could practice with it while you have some breakfast,” said Nick eagerly. “It's by the front door, isn't it? I'll get it; meet you in the dining room!”

He whirled out the door, leaving Lirael reaching at air to hold him back for one more kiss. She smiled and shrugged, and was just about to follow him when she noticed something on the floor, its snout pressed up against the window.

Her little dog statuette.

Lirael picked it up, feeling the familiar soapstone, and looked around. How had it gotten there? Two Sendings stood in the corners
of the room, behind the long leather lounge that was arranged for comfortable viewing.

“How did this get here?” asked Lirael. But neither Sending answered in any way. Lirael looked at the little dog again, then out the window. It was a clear day, and she could see the Ratterlin, a long line of brilliant blue shot with bright reflections. A small boat was sailing up the river, doubtless going to the Clayr's dock, for it was well past anywhere else it might land. It was not an easy task against the current, and the spring flood; the way the boat moved suggested magical assistance.

There was nothing else of note to see.

Lirael frowned again, tucked the statuette into one of the upper pockets of her waistcoat, and went to see about what would need to be a very hasty breakfast.

Clayr's Glacier, Old Kingdom

T
he Map Room was a vast domed chamber, the ceiling of the dome decorated with a mosaic that incorporated a great deal of Charter Magic, so that each tile had many different iterations of design and color. The whole thing was a map of the Old Kingdom, from the far northwest to the southeast waters by the Wall, but it hardly ever displayed all at once. Rather, the ceiling would show the detail of a town, or a mountain range, or a nautical map with soundings of some part of the Sea of Saere. As it had been made perhaps a thousand years ago, sometimes it showed towns or villages that no longer existed, a forest long since cleared, or curious details that could not easily be understood by the Clayr of the current times.

Apart from this vast, changing map on the ceiling, the Map Room did not seem to contain any maps. Right in the center, under the top of the dome some eighty paces above, there was a round table of great antiquity. Made of a deep red wood become almost black with age and centuries of polish, it was thirty paces in diameter and could seat forty around it in its companion chairs, made of the same timber, though many had been repaired here and there and the upholstery was fresh and new, the eleventh time the dark green cloth had been replaced.

The table had a hole cut in its center, for here a Charter Stone rose up from the paved floor—not a grey stone, as was usual, but an obelisk of black basalt. Its surface roiled as normal with Charter
marks, which rose to the surface to flash gold or more rarely silver and then sank beneath or, even more rarely, left the stone to rise to the mosaic map overhead.

Apart from the central table, there were a dozen desks lined up in rows of three at the northern end, but they had no maps laid upon them either. Unlike the usual green leather surfaces found elsewhere in the Library, these desks were topped with clean white marble.

At the southern end, perhaps a third of the Map Room was taken up with many curious long racks, each as tall as two Clayr. The racks held thousands of suspended ribbons, each ribbon imprinted with two letters and four numerals in some sort of code. From each ribbon there hung an ivory cube, redolent with Charter marks.

Lirael was used to this, and simply strode in through the main doors of beaten bronze, which had been pushed fully open on this occasion; normally the librarians used a much smaller ordinary door to the left. But Nick stopped on the threshold, staring up at the ceiling and then around the vast room. As they were holding hands, Lirael was jerked back; she trod on Nick's foot and he said, “Ouch!”

Everyone looked at them, from where they were gathered in a crowd around one of the desks. The King, Sabriel, Ferin on her crutches, Vancelle, Sanar and Ryelle, Mirelle, the Infirmarian, and half a dozen other very important Clayr. Beyond this inner circle were more than twenty more seers of less exalted rank, there as note-takers, attendants, and messengers. Clayr from the Mews, the Rangers, the Library, the Observatory, the Storerooms . . .

“Hello,” called out Lirael, her voice echoing under the dome. She was a bit out of breath since they had run the last few hundred steps down the Second Back Stairs. Hand in hand. Remembering this, she gently let go, as did Nick, though their hands stayed close together. “Sorry we're late.”

She didn't mention why they were late. Nick had been rather too optimistic about how he would interact with Lirael's Charter-spelled
sword, and the blade had erupted into actual flames before Lirael could quell it, but not before the hilt had grown so hot Nick had to drop it. There was a sword-shaped scorch mark on one of the carpets in the Abhorsen's Rooms now.

However, Nick was wearing a sword now, the majordomo Sending having brought him one of ordinary steel, without any magic, just as they were leaving. This reminded Lirael that she had yet to properly explore all the Abhorsen's Rooms, because there had to be an armory there, as well as the wine cellar Imshi had mentioned. Explaining the carpet burn to Sabriel would have to come first. Lirael hoped her sister's general lack of interest in furniture and haberdashery would also apply to ancient Abhorsen carpets. . . .

They hurried over to the central group by the desk.

“Do I bow or go on one knee or anything?” whispered Nick as they gave the central Charter Stone and the round table a wide berth to approach the King and Sabriel, the lesser Clayr quietly moving aside to create an alley for them.

“No,” said Lirael. “They don't go for much ceremony, except on special occasions.”

Sabriel came forward and removed Nick's doubts by taking Lirael on each shoulder and kissing her on the cheeks, and then offered her hand in Ancelstierran fashion to Nick.

“Welcome,” she said. “A long way from Somersby, I think, Mr. Sayre?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Nick, rather flustered. The last time he'd properly met Sabriel he'd been in the Fifth Form and thought himself very grown up.

“Call me Sabriel. You haven't formally met my husband, I think? He didn't visit the school. Touchstone, this is Sameth's friend Nicholas Sayre.”

“An honor to meet you, sir,” said Nick, shaking hands. He couldn't help himself glancing down at Touchstone's bare knees and
blushed as Touchstone saw him do so, and laughed.

“Always worn a kilt,” he said. “It was the fashion in my day, and a fine, comfortable garment it is. I've been trying to reintroduce it ever since, but when even my son won't wear one, I suppose my efforts are wasted! Sameth should be here shortly, by the way; his boat is tying up now.”

“Sam's here?” asked Nick.

“Yes, come to see what is going on with you, I suppose,” said Touchstone. “While we are all trying to find out about a host of other things. The first step being for you to meet a messenger, Lirael. Allow me to present Ferin of the Athask people.”

Lirael looked to the odd one out in the group around them, the young woman in strange, red-stitched clothes made of some kind of soft leather, her right foot recently amputated from the look of the bandages and evidence of healing spells Lirael knew well, though the way she moved so well on her crutches suggested the amputation had taken place a week or more ago.

She was a very young woman, perhaps only sixteen or seventeen. She was considerably shorter than Lirael but looked very wiry and tough, despite or perhaps even because of the many scratches on her face and hands and the way she ignored the absence of a foot, immediately swinging forward on her crutches to bow before Lirael.

“I bring a message from the Witch in the Cave,” said Ferin. “To her daughter, Lirael of the Clayr.”

“Thank you,” said Lirael. “I can see it has not been an easy task.”

Ferin shrugged, no small achievement on crutches.

“I have come by land and sea and air,” she said, with a slight sniff as if this was nothing. “But done no more than the Elders of the Athask would expect. I will tell you the message now?”

“Please,” said Lirael. She felt her heart begin to speed up, thumping in her chest. What could her long-departed and years-dead mother possibly have to say to her?

Ferin drew in a deep breath, and then, in the voice she clearly believed to be appropriate for a message of great import, recited a surprisingly short missive.

“Lirael. These words come from your mother. I am dead now, from the wasting sickness. But I have Seen you in the frozen waterfall. An Abhorsen like your father, and Remembrancer, wielder of the Dark Mirror. You have done great things, but there is more to do. A terrible threat builds against the Kingdom, one that will bring death and ruin to many, many, in both south and north, including my friends of the Athask. I will say more, knowing you will hear me in the past, as I See you in the future I will not live for. Come listen, on the third moon of winter, in the year of your tenth birthday.”

There was silence for a few seconds before Lirael spoke.

“That's all? My mother who abandoned me thinks I have ‘more to do' and wants me to go and listen to her in the past, using the Dark Mirror?” asked Lirael, unable to hide the anger and hurt on her face. Arielle hadn't even bothered to say anything personal, or send her love. Just instructions. “Has anyone else Seen this ‘terrible threat'?”

“We have not,” said Sanar calmly, seeing the emotion on Lirael's face. “But as you know, the Watch is depleted. Many of our best seers either have the influenza or are recovering from it, and in the North, concentrations of Free Magic may cloud our vision.”

She hesitated, then added, “It is also possible Arielle succumbed to false visions. She says she was already very ill, near to death. In such circumstances, we of the Clayr often See a great many possible futures, and indeed, even many impossible ones.”

“There may be something to it,” said Sabriel. “A number of things suggest the Clayr's vision has been intentionally clouded. Even this influenza is untimely, and it started with a party of merchants from the steppe.”

“Can Free Magic make a disease?” asked Nick curiously.

“No, but it can be used to influence an existing one, and there is
always influenza in the North in winter that typically travels slowly to us and is in full force by late spring,” said Lealla. “It is very early this year, as were the merchants. It may be only a coincidence.”

“And Ferin tells us her clan elders were ordered by the ‘Witch With No Face' to send the entire fighting strength of the clan to a muster,” said Touchstone. “To gather at the Field Market. If this same message went to the other clans, it can have only one purpose: a massed attack upon the Greenwash Bridge.”

“I mean no offense to our visitor,” said Mirelle, bowing to Ferin. “But if none of this has been Seen, can we be sure
any
of the clans are sending their warriors to this muster? Or have been asked? And who is this ‘Witch With No Face'?”

“The Bridge Company reports nothing unusual,” said Touchstone. “But they do not scout so far as the Field Market until summer. As for the ‘Witch With No Face' . . .”

He turned to Sabriel.

“It has to be Chlorr of the Mask,” said Sabriel. “She came from the North. I had wondered how she extended her life, and it seems by a similar method to Kerrigor.”

There was a stir among her listeners as she mentioned that name. Nick noted it to ask Lirael later. He vaguely recalled Sam mentioning it once, but he'd thought it was merely the name of some pet. A cat. Though perhaps it was a cat like Mogget, he thought. Not a cat after all.

“In fact, she may even have taught it to him; he was known to travel in the North. But in short, many centuries ago Chlorr must have put her original body into a state between Life and Death, suspended there by Free Magic, and her spirit moved into a new body. These she would need to replace every few decades, and it seems she has long done so by demanding offerings from the clans. Our new friend Ferin was bound for such a fate, and indeed, takes her name from being such an offering. When I slew Chlorr's most recent body,
she became a Dead spirit, but with her original body hidden somewhere she could not die the final death. Not even when compelled by my bells, or Lirael's. Anchored in such a way, she has been able to consume other Dead and Free Magic powers, to become greater still. I had not thought of this, and presumed she would stay in the North, only needing to be dealt with if she was foolish enough to cross the Greenwash. But if what Ferin tells us is true, or if what Arielle hints at is likewise true, then I was utterly wrong and we must ready ourselves against Chlorr and for the first time in our history, the full strength of all the Northern clans.”

“If true,” muttered Mirelle.

“I suppose the first step is to find out what else my mother wants to tell me,” said Lirael. She looked at Sabriel. “Will you come into Death with me?”

“I will,” said Sabriel. Her eyes flickered, noticing Nick's instinctive move closer to Lirael, as if he might protect her. “Indeed I wish to go into Death to investigate something else related to the Witch With No Face.”

She took a small bronze box out of her belt pouch and touched it with two fingers, a Charter mark for unlocking quickly conjured at her touch. The box sprang open, revealing a spindle of bone that flickered with small Free Magic fires. Several people retreated a few steps as it was unveiled, and the acrid hot-metal stench wafted across them. But none of the senior Clayr moved, nor Lirael or Ferin. Nick gulped audibly, and Lirael felt him shift his feet, but he did not step back.

“This is a charm or fetish I removed from Ferin,” said Sabriel. “It has several purposes, but perhaps of most interest is the necromantic magic it holds, which I suspect links Ferin in some way to the Witch With No Face. I need to examine it in Death; it may provide a clue as to why Ferin was pursued with such strength, and so far. A dozen wood-weirds and their keepers is no small force. When we return,
we will know much more, I think.”