“No, I’m not,” protested the Dog, her ears stiffening in outrage as her paw shrank back to its normal proportions. “I’m definitely not a thing! I’m as much a part of the Charter as you are, albeit with special properties. Look at my collar!
And I am definitely not a Stilken or any other of the several hundred variations thereof.”
“What do you know about Stilken?” asked Lirael. She still didn’t enter the study, and the clockwork mouse was ready in her hand. “Why did you mention them in particular?”
“I read a lot,” replied the Dog, yawning. Then she sniffed, and her eyes lit up with expectation. “Is that a ham bone you have there?”
Lirael didn’t answer but moved the paper-wrapped object in her left hand behind her back. “How did you know I was thinking about a Stilken just then? And I still don’t know you aren’t one yourself, or something even worse.”
“Feel my collar!” protested the Dog as she edged forward, licking her chops. Clearly the current conversation wasn’t as interesting as the prospect of food.
“How did you know I was thinking about a Stilken?”
repeated Lirael, giving each word a slow and considered emphasis. She held the ham bone over her head as she spoke, watching the Dog’s head tilt back to follow the movement. Surely a Free Magic creature wouldn’t be this interested in a ham bone.
“I guessed, because you seem to be thinking about Stilken quite a lot,” replied the Dog, gesturing with a paw at the books on the desk. “You are studying everything required to bind a Stilken. Besides, you also wrote ‘Stilken’ fourteen times yesterday on that paper you burnt. I read it backwards on the blotter. And I’ve smelled your spell on the door down below, and the Stilken that waits beyond it.”
“You’ve been out by yourself!” exclaimed Lirael. Forgetting that she had been afraid of whatever the Dog might be, she stormed in, slamming the door behind her. In the process, she dropped the clockwork mouse, but not the ham bone.
The mouse bounced twice and landed at the Dog’s feet.
Lirael held her breath, all too aware that the door was now shut at her back, which would greatly delay the mouse if she needed help. But the Dog didn’t seem dangerous, and she was so much easier to talk to than people were . . . except for Filris, who was gone.
The Disreputable Dog sniffed at the mouse eagerly for an instant, then pushed it aside with her nose and transferred her attention back to the ham bone.
Lirael sighed, picked up the mouse, and put it back in her pocket. She unwrapped the bone and gave it to the Dog, who immediately snatched it up and deposited it in a far corner under the desk.
“That’s your dinner,” said Lirael, wrinkling her nose.
“You’d better eat it before it starts to smell.”
“I’ll take it out and bury it later, in the ice,” replied the Dog. She hesitated and hung her head a little before adding, “Besides, I don’t actually need to eat. I just like to.”
“What!” exclaimed Lirael, cross again. “You mean I’ve been stealing food for nothing! If I were caught I’d—”
“Not for nothing!” interrupted the Dog, sidling over to butt her head against Lirael’s hip and look up at her with wide, beseeching eyes. “For me. And much appreciated, too. Now, you really should feel my collar. It will show you that I am not a Stilken, Margrue, or Hish. You can scratch my neck at the same time.”
Lirael hesitated, but the Dog felt so like the friendly dogs she scratched when they visited the Refectory that her hand almost automatically went to the Dog’s back. She felt warm dog skin and the silky, short hair, and she began to scratch along the Dog’s spine, up towards the neck. The Dog shivered and muttered, “Up a bit. Across to the left. No, back. Aahhh!”
Then Lirael touched the collar, just with two fingers—and was momentarily thrown out of the world altogether. All she could see, hear, and feel were Charter marks, all around, as if she had somehow fallen into the Charter. There was no leather collar under her hand, no Dog, no study. Nothing but the Charter.
Then she was suddenly back in herself again, swaying and dizzy. Both her hands were scratching the Dog under the chin, without her knowing how they had got there.
“Your collar,” Lirael said, when she got her balance back. “Your collar is like a Charter Stone—a way into the Charter. Yet I saw Free Magic in your making. It has to be there somewhere . . . doesn’t it?”
She fell silent, but the Dog didn’t answer, till Lirael stopped scratching. Then she turned her head and jumped up, licking Lirael across her open mouth.
“You needed a friend,” said the Dog, as Lirael spluttered and wiped her mouth with both sleeves, one after the other. “I came. Isn’t that enough to be going on with? You know my collar is of the Charter, and whatever else I may be, it would constrain my actions, even if I did mean you any harm. And we do have a Stilken to deal with, do we not?”
“Yes,” said Lirael. On an impulse, she bent down and hugged the Dog around the neck, feeling both warm dog and the soft buzz of the Charter marks in the Dog’s collar through the thin material of her shirt.
The Disreputable Dog bore this patiently for a minute, then made a sort of wheezing sound and shuffled her paws. Lirael understood this from her time with the visiting dogs, and let go.
“Now,” pronounced the Dog. “The Stilken must be dealt with as soon as possible, before it gets free and finds even
worse things to release, or let in from outside. I presume you have obtained the necessary items to bind it?”
“No,” said Lirael. “Not if you mean the stuff Nagy mentions: a rowan wand or a sword, infused with the Charter marks—”
“Yes, yes,” said the Dog hastily, before Lirael could recite the whole list. “I know. Why haven’t you got one?”
“They don’t just lie around,” replied Lirael defensively. “I thought I could get an ordinary sword and put the—”
“Take too long. Months!” interrupted the Dog, who had started pacing to and fro in a serious manner. “That Stilken will be through your door spell in a few days, I would think.”
“What!” screamed Lirael. Then she said more quietly,
“What? You mean it’s escaping?”
“It will soon,” confirmed the Dog. “I thought you knew.
Free Magic can corrode Charter marks as well as flesh. I suppose you could renew the spell.”
Lirael shook her head. Her throat still hadn’t recovered from the master mark she’d used last time. It would be too risky to chance speaking it again before she was completely better. Not without the added strength of a Charter-spelled sword—which brought her back to the original problem.
“You’ll have to borrow a sword, then,” declared the Dog, fixing Lirael with a serious eye. “I don’t suppose anyone will have the right sort of wand. Not really a Clayr thing, rowan.”
“I don’t think swords redolent with binding spells are, either,” protested Lirael, slumping into her chair. “Why couldn’t I just be an ordinary Clayr? If I’d got the Sight, I wouldn’t be wandering around the Library getting into trouble! If I ever do get the Sight, I swear by the Charter I am never going to go exploring, ever again!”
“Mmmm,” said the Dog, with an expression Lirael couldn’t fathom, though it seemed to be loaded with hidden meaning. “That’s as may be. On the matter of swords, you are in error. There are a number of swords of power within these halls. The Captain of the Rangers has one, the Observatory Guard have three—well, one is an axe, but it holds the same spells within its steel. Closer to home, the Chief Librarian has one, too. A very old and famous sword, in fact, most appropriately named Binder. It will do nicely.”
Lirael looked at the Dog with such a blank stare that the hound stopped pacing, cleared her throat, and said, “Pay attention, Lirael. I said that you were in error about—”
“I heard what you said,” snapped Lirael. “You must be absolutely mad! I can’t steal the Chief’s sword! She always has it with her! She probably sleeps with it!”
“She does,” replied the Dog smugly. “I checked.”
“Dog!” wailed Lirael, trying to keep her breathing down to less than one breath a second. “Please, please do not go looking in the Chief Librarian’s rooms! Or anywhere else! What would happen if someone saw you?”
“They didn’t,” replied the Dog happily. “Anyway, the Chief keeps the sword in her bedroom, but not actually in bed with her. She puts it on a stand next to her bed. So you can borrow it while she’s asleep.”
“No,” replied Lirael, shaking her head. “I’m not creeping into the Chief’s bedroom. I’d rather fight the Stilken without a sword.”
“Then you’ll die,” said the Disreputable Dog, suddenly very serious. “The Stilken will drink your blood and grow stronger from it. Then it will creep out into the lower reaches of the Library, emerging every now and then to capture librarians, to take them one by one, feasting on their flesh in some dark corner where the bones will never be found. It will find
allies, creatures bound even deeper in the Library, and will open doors for the evil that lurks outside. You must bind it, but you cannot succeed without the sword.”
“What if you help me?” asked Lirael. There had to be some way of avoiding the Chief, some way that didn’t involve swords at all. Trying to get Mirelle’s sword, or the ones from the Observatory, would not be any easier than the Chief’s. She didn’t even know exactly where the Observatory was.
“I’d like to,” replied the Dog. “But it is your Stilken. You let it out. You must deal with the consequences.”
“So you won’t help,” said Lirael sadly. She had hoped, just for a moment, that the Disreputable Dog would step in and fix everything for her. She was a magical creature, after all, possibly of some power. But not enough to take on a Stilken, it seemed.
“I will advise,” said the Dog. “As is only proper. But you will have to borrow the sword yourself, and perform the binding. Tonight is probably as good a time as any.”
“Tonight?” asked Lirael, in a very small voice.
“Tonight,” confirmed the Dog. “At the stroke of midnight, when all such adventures should begin, you will enter the Chief Librarian’s room. The sword is on the left, past the wardrobe, which is strangely full of black waistcoats. If all goes well, you will be able to return it before the dawn.”
“If all goes well,” repeated Lirael somberly, remembering the silver fire in the Stilken’s eyes, and those terrible hooks. “Do you . . . do you think I should leave a note, in case . . . in case all does not go well?”
“Yes,” said the Dog, removing the last small shred of Lirael’s self-confidence. “Yes. That would be a very good idea.”
Chapter Twelve. Into the Lair of the Chief Librarian
When the great water-powered clock in the Middle Refectory showed fifteen minutes to midnight, Lirael left her hiding spot in the breakfast servery and climbed up through an air shaft to the Narrow Way, which would in turn take her to the Southscape and Chief Librarian Vancelle’s rooms.
Lirael had dressed in her librarian’s uniform in case she met anyone, and carried an envelope addressed to the Chief. A skeleton staff of librarians did work through the night, though they didn’t usually employ Third Assistants like Lirael. If she was stopped, Lirael would claim she was taking an urgent message. In fact, the envelope contained her “just in case” note, alerting the Chief to the presence of the Stilken.
But she didn’t meet anyone. No one came down the Narrow Way, which lived up to its name by being too narrow for two people to pass abreast. It was rarely used, because if you did meet someone going the other way, the more junior Clayr would have to backtrack—sometimes for its entire length, which was more than half a mile.
The Southscape was wider, and much more risky for Lirael because so many senior Clayr had rooms off its broad expanse. Fortunately, the marks that lit it so brightly during the day had
faded to a glimmer at night, producing heavy shadows for her to hide in.
The door to the Chief’s rooms, however, was brightly lit by a ring of Charter marks around the book-and-sword emblem that was carved into the stone next to the doorway.
Lirael looked at the lights balefully. Not for the first time, she wondered what she was doing. It probably would have been better to confess months ago when she initially got into trouble. Then someone else could deal with the Stilken—
A touch at her leg made her jump and almost scream. She stifled the scream as she recognized the Disreputable Dog. “I thought you weren’t going to help,” she whispered, as the Dog jumped up and attempted to lick her face. “Get down, you idiot!”
“I’m not helping,” said the Dog happily. “I’ve come to watch.”
“Great,” replied Lirael, trying to sound sarcastic. Secretly, she was pleased. Somehow, the lair of the Chief Librarian seemed less threatening with the Dog along.
“When is something going to happen?” the Dog asked a minute later, as Lirael still stood in the shadows, watching the door.
“Now,” said Lirael, hoping that saying the word would give her the courage to begin. “Now!”
She crossed the corridor in ten long strides, gripped the bronze doorknob, and pushed. No Clayr needed to lock her door, so Lirael wasn’t expecting any resistance. The door opened, and Lirael stepped in, the Dog whisking past her on the way.