She could feel Charter Magic building, too, strong marks floating in the air like pollen, their usual internal light dampened. She could sense Charter and Free Magic working together, winding and twisting about her, weaving some spell she couldn’t even begin to identify.
Fear began to knot in Lirael’s stomach, slowly spreading to paralyze her lungs. She wanted to breathe, to force air slowly in and out, to calm herself with the steadiness of her own breath. But the air was heavy with strange magic, magic she could not—would not—breathe in.
Then lights began to sparkle in the air; tiny, fragile balls of light made up of hundreds of hair-thin spines, like luminous dandelion clocks, wafting about on some breeze Lirael couldn’t feel. With the lights, the taint of Free Magic abated, the Charter Magic began to strengthen, and Lirael took a slight, cautious breath.
In the strangely mottled, constantly changing light, Lirael saw that she was in an octagonal chamber. A large room, but not of cold, carved stone as she’d expected, here in the heart of the mountain. The walls were tiled in a delicate pattern of golden stars, towers, and silver keys. The ceiling was plastered and painted with a night sky, full of black, rain-fat clouds
advancing upon seven bright and shining stars. And there was carpet under her bare feet, Lirael realized. A deep blue carpet, soft and warm under her toes after the cold, wet stone of the bridge.
In the middle of the room, a redwood table stood in solitary splendor, its slender legs ending in silver, three-toed feet. On its rich, polished surface there were three items, arranged in a line: a small metal case about the size of Lirael’s palm; a set of what looked like metal panpipes; and a book, bound in deep blue leather with silver clasps. The table, or the items on it, were clearly the focal point for the magic, for the dandelion lights swarmed thickest there, creating an effect like luminous fog. “Off you go, then,” said the Dog, sitting back on her haunches. “That looks like what we’ve come for.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lirael suspiciously, drawing a series of deep and calming breaths. She felt reasonably safe now, but there was a lot of magic in the room that she didn’t know, and she couldn’t even begin to guess what it was for or where it came from. And she could still taste Free Magic at the back of her mouth and on her tongue, a cold iron tang that just wouldn’t go away.
“The doors opened for you; the path lit up for you; the guardians here didn’t destroy you,” said the Dog, nuzzling Lirael’s open hand with her cold, damp nose. She looked up at Lirael knowingly and added, “Whatever’s on that table must be meant for you. Which equally means it’s not meant for me. So I’m going to sit down here. Or lie down, actually. Wake me up when it’s time to go.”
With that, the Dog stretched luxuriously, yawned, and lowered herself to the carpet. Comfortably settled on her side, she swished her tail a few times and then, to all appearances, fell deeply asleep.
“Oh, Dog!” exclaimed Lirael. “You can’t sleep now!
What’ll I do if something bad happens?”
The Dog opened one eye and said, with the least possible jaw movement, “Wake me up, of course.”
Lirael looked down at the sleeping Dog, then over at the table. The Stilken was the worst thing she’d encountered in the Library. But she’d found other dangerous things over the past few years—fell creatures, old Charter-spells that had unraveled or become unpredictable, mechanical traps, even poisoned book bindings. All these were the regular hazards of a librarian’s life, but nothing like what she faced now. Whatever these items were, they were guarded more heavily, and with stranger and more powerful magic, than anything Lirael had ever seen.
Whatever magic was concentrated here was very old, too, Lirael realized. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, the carpet, the table—even the air in the room—were saturated with layer upon layer of Charter marks, some of them at least a thousand years old. She could feel them moving everywhere, mixing and changing. When she closed her eyes for a moment, the room felt almost like a Charter Stone, a source of Charter Magic rather than just a place upon which many spells had been cast. But that was impossible, at least as far as she knew. . . . Suddenly made dizzy by the thought, Lirael opened her eyes again. Charter marks flowed against her skin, into her breath, swam in her blood. Free Magic floated between the marks. The dandelion lights spread out towards her like tendrils, wrapped gently around her waist, and slowly reeled her in towards the table.
The magic and the lights made her feel light-headed and dazed, as if she’d woken from the final moments of a dream. Lirael fought the feeling for a moment, but it was a pleasant
feeling, not at all threatening. She let the sleeping Dog lie and walked forward slowly, swathed in light.
Then she was suddenly at the table, with no memory of crossing the intervening space. Her hands were resting on the cool, polished surface of the table. As could be expected of a Second Assistant Librarian, she reached for the book first, her fingers touching the silver clasp that held it shut as she read the title embossed in silver type upon the spine: The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting.
Lirael undid the clasp, feeling Charter Magic there, too, noting the marks that chased each other across the silver surface and deep in the metal itself. Marks of binding and closing, burning and destruction.
But the clasp was open by the time she realized what the marks were, and she stood unharmed. Carefully, she turned back the cover and the title page, the crisp, leaf-thin paper turning easily. There were Charter marks inside the pages, put there at the time of the paper’s making. And Free Magic, constrained and channeled into place. Magic of both kinds lay in the boards and leather of the cover, and even in the glue and stitching of the spine.
Most of all, there was magic and power in the type. In the past, Lirael had seen similar, if less powerful, books, like In the Skin of a Lyon. You could never truly finish reading such a book, for the contents changed at need, at the original maker’s whim, or to suit the phases of the moon or the patterns of the weather. Some of the books had contents you couldn’t even remember till certain events might come to pass. Invariably, this was an act of kindness from the creator of the book, for such contents invariably dealt with things that would be a burden to recall with every waking day.
The lights danced around Lirael’s head as she began to read, making shadow patterns from her hair flicker across the page. She read the first page, then the next, then the one after. Soon Lirael had finished the first chapter, as her hand reached out every few minutes to turn the page. Behind her, the Dog’s heavy, sleepy breath seemed to match the slow rhythm of the turning pages.
Hours later, or even days—for Lirael had lost all knowledge of time—she turned what seemed to be the last page and closed the book. It latched itself shut, the silver clasp snapping. Lirael drew back at the snap but didn’t leave the table.
Instead, she picked up the panpipes, seven small tubes of silver, ranging in size from the length of her little finger to a little shorter than her hand. She held the pipes up to her lips, but didn’t blow. They were much more than they appeared.
The book had told her how the pipes were made, and how they should be used, and Lirael now knew that the Charter marks that moved in the silver were only a veneer on the Free Magic that lurked within.
She touched each of the pipes in turn, smallest to largest, and whispered their names to herself before putting the instrument back on the table. Then she picked up the last item, the small metal case. This was silver, too, etched with pleasing decorations as well as Charter marks. The latter were similar to those on the book, all threatening retribution if the box were opened by someone not of the True Blood. It didn’t say which particular blood, but Lirael thought that if the book opened for her, the case would, too.
She lightly touched the catch, recoiling a little as she felt the heat of Free Magic blazing within. The case remained shut. Briefly, she thought that the book might be wrong, or she might have misread the marks, or not have the right blood. She shut her eyes and firmly pressed the catch.
Nothing terrible happened, but the case shivered in her hand. Lirael opened her eyes. The case had sprung open into two halves, hinged in the middle. Like a small mirror, to be balanced on a shelf or table.
Lirael opened it completely and placed it, vee-shaped, on the table. One side of it was silver, but the other was something she couldn’t describe. Where the bright reflective surface of a mirror would be, there was a nonreflective rectangle of . . . nothing. A piece of absolute darkness, a shape of something made from the total absence of light.
The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting called it a Dark Mirror, and Lirael had read, at least in part, how it might be used. But the Dark Mirror would not work in this room, or in any part of the world of Life. It could be used only in Death, and Lirael had no intention of going there, even if the book professed to show her how to come back. Death was the province of the Abhorsen, not the Clayr, even though the peculiar use of the Dark Mirror could possibly be related to the Clayr’s gift of Sight.
Lirael snapped shut the Dark Mirror and laid it on the table. But her fingers still rested upon it. She stood there like that for a full minute, thinking. Then she picked it up and slipped it into her left waistcoat pocket, to join the company of a pen nib, a length of waxed string, and a seriously foreshortened pencil. After another moment of hesitation, she picked up the panpipes and put them in her right pocket with the clockwork mouse. Finally, she picked up the Book of Remembrance and Forgetting and tucked it into the front of her waistcoat.
She walked back to the Disreputable Dog. It was time for the two of them to have a very serious talk about what was going on. The Book, the Dark Mirror, and the panpipes had
lain here for a thousand years or more, waiting in the dark for someone the Clayr of long ago had known would come.
Waiting in the dark for a woman named Lirael.
Waiting for her.
Chapter Twenty-Three. A Troublesome Season
Prince Sameth stood shivering on the narrow sentry walk of the Palace’s second tallest tower. He was wearing his heaviest fur cloak, but the wind still cut through it, and he couldn’t be bothered to cast a Charter-spell for warmth. He half wanted to catch a cold, because it would mean escaping from the training schedule Ellimere had forced upon him.
He was standing on the sentry walk for two reasons. The first reason was that he wanted to look out in the hope that he would see either his father or his mother returning. The second was that he wanted to avoid Ellimere and everyone else who wanted to organize his life.
Sam missed his parents, not just because they might free him from Ellimere’s tyranny. But Sabriel was constantly in demand away from Belisaere, flying her red and gold Paperwing from one trouble spot to the next. It was a bad winter, people repeatedly said in Sam’s hearing, with so much activity from the Dead and from Free Magic creatures. Sam always shivered inside as they said it, knowing their eyes were on him and that he should be studying The Book of the Dead, preparing himself to help his mother.
He should be studying now, he thought glumly, but he continued to stare out over the frosted roofs of the city and through the rising smoke of thousands of cozy fires.
He hadn’t opened the book at all since Ellimere had given it to him. The green and silver volume remained safely locked in a cupboard in his workroom. He thought about it every day, and looked at it, but couldn’t bring himself to actually read it. In fact, he spent the hours he was supposed to be studying it trying to work out how he could tell his mother that he couldn’t. He couldn’t read the book, and he couldn’t face going into Death again.
Ellimere allowed him two hours a day for study of the book, or “Abhorsen prep” as she called it, but Sam did no reading. He wrote instead. Speech after speech in which he tried to explain his feelings and his fears. Letters to Sabriel. Letters to Touchstone. Letters to both parents. All of them ended up in the fire.
“I’ll just tell her,” announced Sam to the wind. He didn’t speak too loudly in case the sentry on the far side of the tower heard him. The guards already thought he was a miserable excuse for a Prince. He didn’t want them thinking he was a mad Prince as well.
“No, I’ll tell Dad, and then he can tell her,” he added after a moment’s thought. But Touchstone had barely returned from Estwael when he had had to ride south to the Guard Fort at Barhedrin Hill, just north of the Wall. There had been reports that the Ancelstierrans were allowing groups of Southerling refugees to cross the Wall and settle in the Old Kingdom—or in actuality, to be killed by the creatures or wild folk who roamed the Borderlands. Touchstone had gone to investigate these reports, to see what the Ancelstierrans were up to, and to save any of the Southerlings who might have survived.
“Stupid Ancelstierrans,” muttered Sam, kicking the wall.
Unfortunately, his other foot slipped on the icy stone, and he skidded into the wall, smacking his funny bone.
“Ow!” he exclaimed, clutching his elbow. “Blast it!”
“You all right, sir?” asked the guard, who came at a run, his hob-nailed boots providing much better purchase than Sam’s rabbit-fur slippers. “You don’t want to break a leg.” Sam scowled. He knew that the prospect of his dancing the Bird of Dawning provided no end of amusement for the guards. His sense of self-worth wasn’t helped by their badly disguised snickering or the ease with which Ellimere practiced her own future role, acting as co-regent with grace and authority—at least to everyone except Sam.
Sam’s stumbling rehearsals for the Bird of Dawning part in the Midwinter and Midsummer Festivals was only one of the many areas in which he displayed himself as poorer royal material than his sister. He couldn’t pretend enthusiasm for the dances, he often fell asleep in Petty Court, and while he knew he was a very competent swordsman, he somehow didn’t feel like stretching his ability at practice with the guards.