But the total absence of Aunt Kirrith was the worst sign. That meant that whatever she’d done was punishable by something far worse than extra kitchen duties. Lirael couldn’t even imagine what sort of punishment required the presence of the entire Watch. She’d never even heard of them leaving the Observatory, not all together.
“Stand up, Lirael,” said one of the twins. Lirael realized that she was crouching, still supported by the two Clayr. Gingerly, she stood up, trying to avoid meeting their gaze, not to mention all the other blue and green eyes that she was sure were noting just how brown and muddy her own eyes were.
Words rose up in her mind, but her throat closed when they tried to pass. She coughed, and stuttered, then finally managed to whisper, “I . . . I didn’t mean to come here. It just . . . happened. And I know I missed dinner . . . and the midnight rounds. I’ll make it up somehow. . . .”
She stopped as Sanar and Ryelle glanced at each other and laughed. But it was kind, surprised laughter, not the scorn she feared.
“We seem to have established a tradition of meeting you in strange places on your birthday,” said Ryelle—or perhaps it was Sanar—looking down at the book poking out of Lirael’s shirt and the silver panpipes glinting from her waistcoat pocket. “You need not worry about the rounds or a missed dinner. You seem to have claimed a birthright of sorts tonight, one that has waited long for your coming. Everything else is of little consequence.”
“What do you mean by a birthright?” asked Lirael. The Sight was the Clayr’s birthright, not a trio of strange magical devices.
“You know that alone amongst the Clayr you have never been Seen in the visions,” the other twin began. “Never a glimpse, at least till now. But an hour ago, we—that is, the Nine Day Watch—Saw that you would be here, and in another place also. None of us even suspected that this bridge existed, nor the room beyond. But it is clear that while the Clayr of today have not Seen you in their visions, the Clayr of long ago Saw enough to prepare this place and the things you hold. To prepare you, in fact.”
“Prepare me for what?” asked Lirael, panicked by the sudden attention. “I don’t want anything! All I want is to be . . . to be normal. To have the Sight.”
Sanar—for it was Sanar who had spoken last—looked down at the young woman, seeing the pain in her. Since their first meeting five years before, she and her sister had kept a cautious eye on Lirael, and they knew more about her life than their young cousin suspected.
She chose her words carefully.
“Lirael, the Sight may yet come to you in time, and be the stronger for the waiting. But for now you have been given other gifts, gifts that I am sure will be sorely needed by the Kingdom. And as all of us of the Blood are given gifts, we are
also laden with the responsibility to use them wisely and well. You have the potential for great power, Lirael, but I fear that you will also face great tests.”
She paused, staring into the billowing cloud of mist behind Lirael, and her eyes seemed to cloud, too, as her voice grew deeper and became less friendly, more impersonal and strange. “You will meet many trials on a path that lies unseen, but you will never forget that you are a Daughter of the Clayr. You may not See, but you will Remember. And in the Remembering, you will see the hidden past that holds the secrets of the future.”
Lirael shivered at the words, for Sanar had spoken with the truth of prophecy, and her eyes were sparkling with a strange, icy light.
“What do you mean by great tests?” Lirael asked, when the last faint echo of Sanar’s words were lost, drowned in the roar of the river.
Sanar shook her head and smiled, the moment of the vision lost. Unable to speak, she looked at her sister, who continued. “When we Saw you here this evening, we also Saw you somewhere else, somewhere we have labored for many years to See, without success,” said Ryelle. “On the Red Lake, in a boat of woven reeds. The sun was high and bright, so we know it will be in summer. You looked much as you do now, so we know it is in the summer coming that you will be there.”
“There will be a young man with you,” continued Sanar.
“A sick or wounded man, one we were asked to seek for the King. We do not know exactly where he is now, or how or when he will come to the Red Lake. He is surrounded by powers that cloak our vision, and his future is dark. But we do know that he lies at the center of some great and terrible danger. A danger not just to him but to all of us, to the Kingdom. And he will
be there with you, in the reed boat, at the height of summer.”
“I don’t understand,” whispered Lirael. “What’s that to do with me? I mean, the Red Lake, this man, and everything? I’m just a Second Assistant Librarian! What have I got to do with it?”
“We don’t know,” answered Sanar. “The visions are fragmented, and a dark cloud spreads like spilt ink across the pages of possible futures. All we know is that this man is important, for both good and ill, and we have Seen you with him. We think that you must leave the Glacier. You must go south and find the reed boat on the Red Lake, and find him.”
Lirael looked at Sanar’s lips, still moving, but she could hear no sound save the cry of the river. The sound of the water rushing to be free of the mountain, flowing away, away to some distant and unknown land.
I’m being thrown out, she thought. I don’t have the Sight, I’ve grown too old, and they’re throwing me out—
“We have also had another vision of the man,” Sanar was saying as Lirael’s hearing came back. “Come, we will show you, so you will know him at the proper time, and know something of the danger he is in. But not here—we must go up to the Observatory.”
“The Observatory!” exclaimed Lirael. “But I’m not . . .
I haven’t Awoken—”
“I know,” said Ryelle, taking her hand to lead her. “It is difficult for you to gaze upon your heart’s desire when you may not possess it. If the danger were any less, or someone else could shoulder the burden, we would not press you so. If the vision were not of this place that resists us, we could probably show you elsewhere, too. But now we need the power of the Observatory, and the full strength of the Watch.”
They walked back along the Rift, with Sanar and Ryelle on either side of an unprotesting Lirael. Lirael briefly felt what the Dog had called her sense of the Dead, a sort of pressure from all the dead Clayr buried throughout the Rift, but she paid it no heed. It was like someone far away calling someone else’s name. All she could think of was that they were making her leave. She would be alone again, because the Disreputable Dog might not come. The Dog might not even be able to exist outside the Clayr’s Glacier, like a sending that couldn’t leave its bounds.
Halfway back along the Rift towards the door where she’d come in, Lirael was surprised to see that a long bridge of ice had spanned the depths. The Clayr were walking back across it and then into a deep cave-mouth on the other side of the Rift. Ryelle saw her look and explained, “There are many ways to and from the Observatory, when we have need. This bridge will melt when we have all crossed.”
Lirael nodded dumbly. She’d always wondered where the Observatory actually was, and had tried to find it on more than one occasion. She’d had many daydreams of finding her way there, and finding her Sight within. But all those daydreams were destroyed now.
Across the bridge, the cave-mouth led into a rudely dug tunnel that sloped up quite steeply. It was hard going, and Lirael was hot and out of breath when the tunnel finally flattened out. Ryelle and Sanar stopped then, and Lirael wiped the sweat from her eyes before she looked around. They had left stone behind. Now there was nothing but ice all around, blue ice that reflected the Charter lights the Clayr carried. They had come to the heart of the Glacier.
A gate was carved in the ice, flanked by two guards in full mail, holding shields that bore the golden star of the Clayr. Their faces were stern under their open helms. One carried an
axe that gleamed with Charter marks, the other a sword that shone brighter than the lights, casting a thousand tiny reflections in the ice. Lirael stared at the guards, for they were clearly Clayr, but no one she knew, which she had thought impossible. There were less than three thousand Clayr in the Glacier, and she had lived here all her life.
“I See you, Voice of the Nine Day Watch,” said the woman with the axe, speaking in a strange, formal tone. “You may pass. But the other with you has not Awoken. By the ancient laws, she must not be allowed to See the secret ways.”
“Don’t be silly, Erimael,” said Sanar. “What ancient laws? It’s Lirael, Arielle’s daughter.”
“Erimael?” whispered Lirael, peering at the severe face, sharply defined by the edges of her helm. Erimael had joined the Rangers six years ago and hadn’t been seen since. Lirael had thought Erimael must have been killed in an accident and that she’d missed her Farewell, as she had missed so many other events that required her to don the blue tunic.
“The laws are clear,” said Erimael, still in the same stern voice, though Lirael saw her gulp nervously. “I am the Axe—Guard. She must be blindfolded if you wish her to pass.”
Sanar snorted and turned to the other woman. “And what says the Sword-Guard? Don’t tell me you agree?”
“Yes, unfortunately,” said the other woman, who Lirael realized was much older. “The letter of the law is strict. Guests must be blindfolded. Anyone who is not an Awoken Clayr is a guest.”
Sanar sighed and turned to Lirael. But Lirael had already hung her head, to hide her humiliation. Slowly, she undid her head scarf, folded it into a narrow band, and bound it around her head, covering her eyes. Behind the soft darkness of the cloth, she wept silently, the blindfold soaking up her tears.
Sanar and Ryelle took her hands again, and Lirael felt the sympathy in their touch. But it did not matter. This was even worse than when she was fourteen, standing alone in her blue tunic, suffering the public shame of not being a Clayr. Now she was irrevocably marked as an outsider. Not a Clayr at all, of any kind. Only a guest.
She asked only two questions as Ryelle and Sanar led her through what felt like a complicated, maze-like passage.
“When will I have to go?”
“Today,” replied Ryelle, as she stopped Lirael and prepared her for another sharp turn by gently pushing her elbow till she was facing the right way. “That is to say, as soon as possible. A boat is being prepared for you. It will be spelled to take you down the Ratterlin to Qyrre. From there you should be able to get some constables or even some of the Guard to escort you to Edge, on the Red Lake itself. It should be a fast and uneventful journey, though we wish we could See some of it beforehand.”
“Am I to go alone?”
Lirael couldn’t see, but she sensed Sanar and Ryelle exchanging glances, silently working out who would speak. At last Sanar said, “That is how you have been Seen, so I’m afraid that is how you will have to go. I wish it were otherwise. We would fly you down by Paperwing, but all the Paperwings have been Seen elsewhere, so the river it must be.”
Alone. Without even her one friend, the Disreputable Dog. It didn’t really matter what happened to her now.
“There are some steps down here,” said Ryelle, stopping Lirael again. “About thirty, I think. Then we will be in the Observatory, and you can take the blindfold off.”
Lirael mechanically went with the twins down the steps.
It was unsettling, not being able to see where her feet were going, and some of the steps seemed lower than the others. To make it worse, there was a weird rustling noise all around, and occasionally the hint of whispers or smothered conversations. Finally, they arrived on level ground and took a half dozen steps forward. Sanar helped untie her blindfold.
Light was the first thing Lirael noticed, and space, and then the massed ranks of the Clayr, silently standing in their white, rustling robes. She stood in the center of a huge chamber carved entirely out of ice, a vast cave easily as large as the Great Hall she knew and hated so much. Charter Magic lights shone everywhere, reflecting from the many facets of the ice, so that there was not a hint of darkness anywhere.
Lirael instinctively looked down when she saw all the other Clayr, so she couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. But as she cautiously peered out from behind her protective fall of singed hair, she saw that they were not looking at her. They were all looking up. She followed their gaze and saw that the angled ceiling was perfectly smooth and flat, one single enormous sheet of clear ice, almost like an enormous, opaque window.
“Yes,” said Sanar, noting Lirael’s stare. “That is where we focus our Sight, so all the fragments of the vision can become one, and everyone can See.”
“I think we may begin,” announced Ryelle, looking around at the massed, silent ranks of the Clayr. Nearly every Awoken Clayr was there, to join a Watch of Fifteen Sixty-Eight. They stood in a series of ever-wider circles around the small central area where Lirael, Sanar, and Ryelle stood, like some strange concentric orchard of white trees that bore silver and moonstone fruit.
“Let us begin!” cried Sanar and Ryelle, and they lifted their wands and clashed them together like swords. Lirael jumped
as all the gathered Clayr shouted back, a great bellow that she felt through her bones.
“Let us begin!”
As one, the Clayr in the closest circle joined hands, snapping together as in a military drill. Then the next circle joined hands, and the next, a wave of movement rippling from the center to the farthest circle in the Observatory, till all was still again.
“Let us See!” cried Sanar and Ryelle, clashing their wands again. This time, Lirael was prepared for the shout that came back, but not for the magic that followed. Charter marks seemed to well up out of the icy floor, flowing up through the Clayr of the first circle, till there were so many, they brimmed over and flowed into the next circle, and then the one after that. Charter marks that flowed like thick golden fog up the Clayr’s bodies and along their arms.