“She is long gone,” replied the Dog. “Though I suppose something might linger. . . .”
“She?” asked Lirael and Sameth together.
“You know the well in the rose garden?” asked the Dog. Sameth nodded, while Lirael tried to remember if she’d seen a well as they’d crossed the island to the House. She did vaguely recall catching a glimpse of roses, many roses sprawled across trellises that rose up past the eastern side of the lawn closest to the House.
“It is possible to climb down the well,” continued the Dog. “Though it is a long climb, and narrow. It will bring us to even deeper caves. There is a way through them to the base of the waterfall. Then we will have to climb back up the cliffs again, but I expect we will be able to do that farther west, bypassing Chlorr and her minions.”
“The well is full of water,” said Sam. “We’ll drown!”
“Are you sure?” asked the Dog. “Have you ever looked in it?”
“Well, no,” said Sam. “It’s covered, I think. . . .”
“Who is the ‘she’ you mentioned?” asked Lirael firmly. She knew very well from past experience when the Dog was avoiding an issue.
“Someone once lived down there,” replied the Dog. “Someone who had considerable and dangerous powers. There might be some remnant of her there.”
“What do you mean, ‘someone’?” asked Lirael sternly. “How could someone have lived deep underneath Abhorsen’s House?”
“I refuse to go anywhere near that well,” interjected Mogget. “I suppose it was Kalliel who thought to dig into forbidden ground. What use to add our bones to his in some dark corner of the depths?”
Lirael’s gaze flicked across to Sam for an instant, then back to Mogget. She regretted it instantly, for it showed her own doubts and fears. Now that she was the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, she had to set an example. Sam had been open about his fear of Death and the Dead, and his desire to hide out here in the heavily protected House. But he had overcome his fear, at least for now. How could Sam continue to be brave if she didn’t set an example?
Lirael was also his aunt. She didn’t feel like an aunt, but she supposed that it carried certain responsibilities towards a nephew, even one who was only a few years younger than herself.
“Dog!” ordered Lirael. “Answer me plainly for once. Who . . . or what . . . is down there?”
“Well, it’s difficult to put into words,” said the Dog. She shuffled her front paws again. “Particularly since there’s probably no one down there at all. If there is, I suppose that you would call her a leftover from the creation of the Charter, as am I, and so many others of varying stature. But if she is there, or some part of her, then it’s possible she is as she was, which is dangerous in a very . . . elemental . . . way, though it’s all so long ago and really I’m only telling you what other people have said or written or thought. . . .”
“Why would she be down there?” asked Sameth. “Why under Abhorsen’s House?”
“She’s not exactly anywhere,” replied the Dog, who was now scratching at her nose with one paw and totally failing to meet anybody’s eyes. “Part of her power is invested here, so if she were to be anywhere, it’s likely to be here, and that’s where if she were anywhere she’d be.”
“Mogget?” asked Lirael. “Can you translate anything the Dog has said?”
Mogget didn’t answer. His eyes were shut. Somewhere in the space of the Dog’s answer he had curled up and gone to sleep.
“Mogget!” repeated Lirael.
“He sleeps,” said the Dog. “Ranna has called him into slumber.”
“I think he only listens to Ranna when he feels like it,” said Sam. “I hope Kerrigor sleeps more soundly.”
“We can look, if you like,” said the Dog. “But I am sure we would know if he had woken. Ranna has a lighter hand than Saraneth, but she holds tightly when she must. Besides, Kerrigor’s power lay in his followers. His art was to draw upon them, and his downfall was to depend upon it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lirael. “I thought he was a Free Magic sorcerer who became one of the Greater Dead?”
“He was more than that,” said the Dog. “For he had the royal blood. Mastery of others ran deep in him. Somewhere in Death, Kerrigor found the means to use the strength of those who swore allegiance to him, through the brand he burned upon their flesh. If Sabriel had not accidentally used a most ancient charm that severed him from this power, I think Kerrigor would have triumphed. For a time, at least.”
“Why only for a time?” asked Sam. He wished he had never mentioned Kerrigor in the first place.
“I think he would eventually have done what your friend Nicholas is doing now,” said the Dog. “And dug up something best left alone.”
No one said anything to that.
“We’re wasting time,” Lirael said finally.
She looked out at the fog on the western bank again. She could feel many Dead Hands there, more than could be seen, though there were plenty enough of those. Rotting sentries, wreathed in fog. Waiting for their enemy to come out.
Lirael took a deep breath and made her decision.
“If you think we should climb down the well, Dog, then that is the way we will go. Hopefully we will not encounter whatever remnant of power lurks below. Or perhaps she will be friendly, and we can talk— “
“No!” barked the Dog, surprising everyone. Even Mogget opened an eye but, seeing Sam looking at him, hastily shut it again.
“What?” asked Lirael.
“If she is there, which is very unlikely, you musn’t speak to her,” said the Dog. “You must not listen to her or touch her in any way.”
“Has anyone ever heard or touched her?” asked Sam.
“No mortal,” said Mogget, raising his head. “Nor passed through her halls, I would guess. It is madness to try. I always wondered what happened to Kalliel.”
“I thought you were asleep,” said Lirael. “Besides, she might ignore us as we ignore her.”
“It is not her ill will I am afraid of,” said Mogget. “I fear her paying us any attention at all.”
“Perhaps we should—” said Sam.
“What?” asked Mogget nastily. “Stay here all nice and safe?”
“No,” replied Sam quietly. “If this woman’s voice is so dangerous, then perhaps we should make earplugs before we go. Out of wax, or something.”
“It wouldn’t help,” said Mogget. “If she speaks, you will hear her through your very bones. If she sings . . . We had best hope she will not sing.”
“We will avoid her,” said the Dog. “Trust to my nose. We will find our path.”
“Can you tell us who Kalliel was?” asked Sam.
“Kalliel was the twelfth Abhorsen,” replied Mogget. “A most untrusting individual. He kept me locked up for years. The well must have been dug then. His grandson released me when Kalliel disappeared, and he inherited his grandsire’s bells and title. I do not wish to share Kalliel’s doom. Particularly down a well.”
Lirael twitched as she suddenly felt some shift out in the fog. The brooding presence that had been lurking farther back was moving. She could sense it, a being far more powerful than the Shadow Hands who were beginning to flicker in and out of the edge of the fog.
Chlorr was coming closer, almost down to the riverbank. Or if not Chlorr, someone of equal or greater power. Perhaps it was even the necromancer she had encountered in Death.
Hedge. The same necromancer who had burned Sam. Lirael could still see the scars on Sam’s wrists, through the slits in the sleeves of his surcoat.
That surcoat was another mystery—for another day, Lirael thought wearily. A surcoat that quartered the royal towers with a device that had not been seen for millennia. The trowel of the Wallmakers.
Sam caught her glance and picked at the heavy golden thread where the Wallmakers’ symbol was woven through the linen. It was only slowly entering his head that the sendings hadn’t made a mistake with the surcoat. For a start, it was new made, not some old thing they’d dragged out of a musty cupboard or centuries-old laundry basket. So he probably was entitled to wear it for some reason. He was a Wallmaker as well as a royal Prince. But what did that mean? The Wallmakers had disappeared millennia ago, putting themselves into the creation of the Wall and the Great Charter Stones. Quite literally, as far as Sam knew.
For a moment, he wondered if that would be his destiny too. Would he have to make something that would end his life, at least as a living, breathing man? For the Wallmakers weren’t exactly dead, Sam thought, remembering the Great Charter Stones and the Wall. They were more transformed or transfigured.
Not that he fancied that, either. In any case, he was far more likely to simply get killed, he thought, as he looked out to the fog and felt the cold presence of the Dead within it.
Sam touched the gold thread on his chest again and took comfort from it, his fear of the Dead receding. He had never wanted to be an Abhorsen. A Wallmaker was much more interesting, even if he didn’t know what it meant to be one. It would have the added benefit of driving his sister, Ellimere, crazy, since she would never believe he didn’t know and couldn’t, rather than wouldn’t, explain what it was to be a Wallmaker.
Presuming he ever saw Ellimere again . . .
“We’d best be moving,” said the Dog, startling both Lirael and Sam. Lirael had been staring out into the fog again too, lost in her own thoughts.
“Yes,” said Lirael, tearing her gaze away. Not for the first time, she wished she were back in the Great Library of the Clayr. But that, like her lifelong wish to wear the white robes and the silver-and-moonstone crown of a fully fledged Daughter of the Clayr, had to be pushed away and buried deep. She was an Abhorsen now, and there was a great and momentous task ahead of her.
“Yes,” she repeated. “We’d best be moving. We will go by way of the well.”
Chapter Two
Into the Deep
IT TOOK LITTLE more than an hour to prepare for their departure, once the decision had been made. Lirael found herself wearing armor for the first time since her Fighting Arts lessons many years before—but the coat the sendings brought her was much lighter than the mail hauberks the Clayr kept in their schoolroom armory. It was made of tiny overlapping scales or plates of some material Lirael didn’t recognize, and despite its length to her knees and its long, swallow-tailed sleeves, it was quite light and comfortable. It also didn’t have the characteristic odor of well-oiled steel, for which Lirael was grateful.
The Disreputable Dog told her the scales were a ceramic called “gethre,” made with Charter Magic but not magic in itself, though it was stronger and lighter than any metal. The secret of its making was long lost, and no new coat had been made in a thousand years. Lirael felt one of the scales and was surprised to find herself thinking, “Sam could make this,” though she had no real reason to suppose that he could.
Over the armored coat, Lirael wore the surcoat of golden stars and silver keys. The bell-bandolier would lie across that, but Lirael had yet to put it on. Sam had reluctantly taken the panpipes, but Lirael kept the Dark Mirror in her pouch. She knew it was very likely that she would need to look into the past again.
Her sword, Nehima, her bow and quiver from the Clayr, and a light pack cleverly filled by the sendings with all manner of things that she hadn’t had a chance to look at completed her equipment.
Before she went to join Sam and Mogget downstairs, Lirael paused for a moment to look at herself in the tall silver mirror that hung on the wall of her room. The image that faced her bore little resemblance to the Second Assistant Librarian of the Clayr. She saw a warlike and grim young woman, dark hair bound back with a silver cord rather than hanging free to disguise her face. She no longer wore her librarian’s waistcoat, and instead of a library-issue dagger, she had long Nehima at her side. But she couldn’t completely let go her former identity. Taking the end of a loose thread from her waistcoat, she drew out a single strand of red silk, wound it around her little finger several times to make a ring, tied it off, and tucked it into the small pouch at her belt with the Dark Mirror. She might not wear the waistcoat any longer, but part of it would always travel with her.
She had become an Abhorsen, Lirael thought. At least on the outside.
The most visible sign of both her new identity and her power as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting was the bell-bandolier. The one Sabriel had given to Sam after it had mysteriously appeared in the House the previous winter. Lirael loosened the leather pouches one by one, slipping her fingers in to feel the cool silver and the mahogany, and the delicate balance between Free Magic and Charter marks in both metal and wood. Lirael was careful not to let the bells sound, but even the touch of her finger on a bell rim was enough to summon something of the voice and nature of each bell.
The smallest bell was Ranna. Sleeper, some called it, its voice a sweet lullaby calling those who heard it into slumber.
The second bell was Mosrael, the Waker. Lirael touched it ever so lightly, for Mosrael balanced Life with Death. Wielded properly, it would bring the Dead back into Life and send the wielder from Life into Death.
Kibeth was the third bell, the Walker. It granted freedom of movement to the Dead, or it could be used to make them walk where the wielder chose. Yet it could also turn on a bell-ringer and make her march, usually somewhere she would not wish to go.
The fourth bell was called Dyrim, the Speaker. This was the most musical bell, according to The Book of the Dead, and one of the most difficult to use as well. Dyrim could return the power of speech to long-silent Dead. It could also reveal secrets, or even allow the reading of minds. It had darker powers, too, favored by necromancers, for Dyrim could still a speaking tongue forever.