Lirael forced her tired legs up another step. Annisele’s walk wouldn’t be tiring at all. Just a few hundred steps, with smiling faces on all sides. Then, when the circlet was placed on her head at last, the tumult as all the Clayr rose to their feet, followed by the great cheer that would echo through the Hall and beyond. The Awakening of Annisele, a true Clayr, a mistress of the Sight. Acclaimed by one and all.
Unlike Lirael, who was, as always, alone and unregarded.
She felt like crying but brushed the tears away. Only another hundred steps to go, and she would be at the Starmount Gate. Once through the gate and across the wide terrace in front of it, Lirael would stand on the edge of the glacier, looking down into icy death.
Chapter Three. Paperwings
At the top of the Starmount Stair, Lirael rested for a while, till the chill coming through the stone got too much to bear. Then she donned her outdoor gear, turning the world green as she slipped on her goggles. Last, she drew a silk scarf from the pocket of her coat, tied it across her nose and mouth, and folded down the earflaps of her cap.
Dressed like that, she might be one of the Clayr. No one could see her face, hair, or eyes. She looked exactly like any other Clayr. When they found her body, they wouldn’t even know who it was till cap, scarf, and goggles were removed. Lirael would look like one of the Clayr for the last time. Even so, she hesitated before the door that led from the Stair to the Paperwing hangar and the Starmount Gate. It probably wasn’t too late to go back, to say she’d eaten something that disagreed with her so she’d had to stay in her room. If she hurried, she’d almost certainly be back before everyone returned from the Awakening.
But nothing would have changed. There was nothing to look forward to down there, Lirael decided, so she might as well go and look at the cliffs. She could make her final decision there.
She took her key out again, clumsy in her gloves, and unlocked the door. A visible one, this time, but magically guarded as well. Lirael felt the Charter Magic inside it flow out through the key, through the fur of her gloves and into her hands. She tensed for a moment, then relaxed as it ebbed away again. Whatever it guarded against, the spell wasn’t interested in her.
It was colder still past the door, though Lirael was still inside the mountain. This large chamber was the Paperwing hangar, where the Clayr kept their magical aircraft. Three of them slept nearby. They looked rather like slim canoes, with hawk-wings and tails. Lirael felt an urge to touch one of them, to see if it really did feel like paper, but she knew better than that. Physically, the Paperwings were made from thousands of sheets of laminated paper. But they were also made with considerable magic, and were partially sentient as a result. The painted eyes at the front of the closest green and silver craft might be dull now, but they would light up if she touched it. Lirael had no idea what it might do then. She knew the craft were controlled by whistled Charter marks, and she could whistle, but she didn’t know the marks or any special technique that might be required.
So Lirael crept past the Paperwings, across to the Starmount Gate. It was huge—big enough for thirty people or two Paperwings to pass abreast—and easily four times as tall as Lirael. Fortunately, she didn’t have to even try to open it, because there was a smaller sally port cut into the large Gate’s left quarter. A moment’s work with her key, the touch of the guarding spell, then the door was open, and Lirael stepped outside. Cold and sunshine hit her at the same time, the former strong enough to feel even through her heavy clothes, and the 33
latter fierce enough to make her half-close her eyes, even behind goggles.
It was a beautiful summer day. Lower down in the valley, below the glacier, it would be hot. Here it was cold, the chill mainly coming from the breeze that blew along the glacier and then up, over, and around the mountain.
Ahead of Lirael, a broad, unnaturally flat terrace was carved into the mountainside. It was about a hundred yards long and fifty yards wide, and snow and chunks of ice were piled up all around it in deep drifts. But the terrace itself had only a light dusting of snow. Lirael knew it was kept like that by Charter sendings—magically created servants who shoveled, raked, and repaired all the year round, oblivious to the weather. There were none to be seen now, but the Charter Magic that would send them into action lurked beneath the paving stones of the terrace.
On the far side of the terrace, the mountain fell away in a sheer precipice. Lirael looked across to it but saw nothing but blue sky and a few wisps of low cloud. She would have to cross the terrace and look down to see the main bulk of the glacier a thousand feet below. But she didn’t cross. Instead, she pictured what might happen if she jumped. If she threw herself out far enough, she would fall free, down to the waiting ice and a speedy end. If she fell short, she would hit a spur of rock maybe only thirty or forty feet down, then slide and tumble the rest of the way, breaking a new bone with every momentary impact.
Lirael shivered and looked away. Now that she was actually here, only a few minutes’ brisk walk from the precipice, she wasn’t sure that making her own death was such a good idea. But every time she tried to think of a continuing future for herself, she felt weak and blocked, as if all the ways forward 34
were closed off by walls too high to climb.
For now, she forced herself to move and take a few steps across the terrace, to at least look at the drop. But her legs seemed to have a life of their own, walking her along the length of the terrace instead, without getting any closer to the cliffside. Half an hour later, she headed back to the Starmount Gate, having walked the length of the terrace four times without once daring to go anywhere near the cliff on the far side. The closest she’d got was the sudden drop at the end of the terrace, where the Paperwings actually took off. But that was a fall of only a few hundred feet, down a much less steep face of the mountain, and not onto the glacier. Even then she hadn’t gone within twenty feet of the edge.
Lirael wondered how the Paperwings would launch off that far end. She had never seen one take off or land, and she spent some time trying to imagine how it would look. Obviously, they would slip along the ice and then at some point leap into the sky, but where exactly? Did they need a long run-up like the blue pelicans she’d seen on the Ratterlin, or could they shoot straight up like falcons?
All these questions made Lirael curious about how the Paperwings actually worked. She was thinking of risking a closer look at one back in the hangar when she realized that the black speck she’d noticed high above wasn’t a product of her imagination, or a tiny storm cloud. It was a real Paperwing, and it was obviously coming in to land.
At the same time she heard the deep rumble of the Starmount Gate as it started to swing open. She looked back at it, then at the Paperwing again, her head moving in frantic starts. What was she going to do?
She could run across the terrace and throw herself off, but she really didn’t feel like doing that. The moment of her darkest despair had passed, at least for now.
She could just stand on one side of the terrace and watch the Paperwing land, but that would almost certainly lead to a serious scolding from Aunt Kirrith, not to mention several months’ worth of extra kitchen duties. Or some even worse punishment she didn’t know about.
Or she could hide and watch. After all, she had wanted to see a Paperwing land.
All these options raced through her mind, and it took only an instant for the last one to be chosen. Lirael ran to a snowdrift, sat down in it, and started to drag snow across herself.
Soon she was almost completely hidden, save for the line of footprints that led across the snow to her hiding place.
Quickly, Lirael visualized the Charter, then reached into its eternal flow to pull out the three marks she needed. One by one they grew into brilliance inside her mind, filling it until she could think of nothing else. She drew them into her mouth, then puffed the marks out towards her tracks in the snow. The spell left her as a whirling ball of frosted breath that grew until it was an arm’s span wide. It drifted back across her path, sweeping her footsteps clean. Then, its work done, the ball let itself be taken by the wind, breath and Charter marks dissolving into nothing.
Lirael looked up, hoping whoever was in the Paperwing hadn’t seen the strange little cloud. The aircraft was closer now, the shadow of its wings passing along the terrace as it circled once more, losing height with every pass.
Lirael squinted, her sight obscured by goggles and the snow that covered nearly all her face. She couldn’t quite see who was in the Paperwing. It was a different color from the ones used by the Clayr. Red and gold, the colors of the Royal House. A 36
messenger, perhaps? There was regular communication between the King in Belisaere and the Clayr, and Lirael had often seen messengers in the Lower Refectory. But they didn’t normally arrive by Paperwing.
Some whistled notes, redolent with power, drifted down to Lirael, and for a nausea-inducing moment she felt as if she herself were flying and must turn into the wind. Then she saw the Paperwing come swooping down once more, turn into the wind, and come to a sliding, snow-spraying stop on the terrace—much too close to Lirael’s hiding place for comfort. Two people climbed wearily out of the cockpit and stretched their arms and legs. Both were so heavily wrapped in furs that Lirael couldn’t see whether they were male or female. They weren’t Clayr, though, she was certain, not in those clothes. One wore a coat of black and silver marten fur, the other a coat of some russet-red fur Lirael didn’t recognize. And their goggles were blue lensed, not green.
The russet-furred one reached back into the cockpit and pulled out two swords. Lirael thought he—she was reasonably certain this one was a he—would hand one over, but he buckled both onto his broad leather belt, one on either side of his waist.
The other person—the one in black and silver—was a woman, Lirael decided. There was something about the way she took off her glove and rested her palm on the nose of the Paperwing, like a mother checking the temperature of a child’s forehead.
Then the woman also reached into the cockpit, and she pulled out a leather bandolier. Lirael craned forward to see better, ignoring the snow that fell down inside her collar. Then she almost gasped and gave herself away, as she recognized what was in the pouches on the bandolier. Seven pouches, the 37
smallest the size of a pillbox, the largest as long as Lirael’s hand. Each pouch had a mahogany handle sticking out of it. The handles of bells, bells whose voices were stilled in the leather. Whoever this woman was, she carried the seven bells of a necromancer!
The woman put the bandolier on and reached for her own sword. Longer than the ones the Clayr used, and older, too. Lirael could feel some sort of power in it, even from where she was hidden. Charter Magic, in the sword, and in both the people.
And in the bells, Lirael realized, which finally told her who this person must be. Necromancy was Free Magic, and forbidden in the Kingdom, as were the bells that necromancers used. Except for the bells of one woman. The woman who was charged with undoing the evil that necromancers wrought. The woman who put the Dead to rest. The woman who alone combined Free Magic with the Charter.
Lirael shivered, but not from cold, as she realized that she was only about twenty yards away from the Abhorsen. Years ago, the legendary Sabriel had rescued the petrified prince Touchstone and with him defeated the Greater Dead creature called Kerrigor, who had almost destroyed the Kingdom. And she had married the Prince when he became King, and together they had—
Lirael looked at the man again, noting the two swords and the way he stood close to Sabriel. He must be the King, she realized, feeling almost sick. King Touchstone and the Abhorsen Sabriel here! Close enough to go and talk to—if she was brave enough.
She wasn’t. She settled further back into the snow, ignoring the damp and the cold, and waited to see what would happen. Lirael didn’t know how you were supposed to bow or 38
curtsy or whatever it was, or what you were supposed to call the King and the Abhorsen. Most of all, she didn’t know how to explain what she was doing there.
Having equipped themselves, Sabriel and Touchstone drew close together and spoke quietly, their muffled faces almost touching. Lirael strained her ears but couldn’t hear anything. The wind was blowing their words the wrong way. However, it was clear that they were waiting for something—or someone.
They didn’t have to wait long. Lirael slowly turned her head towards the Starmount Gate, careful not to disturb the snow packed around her. A small gathering of the Clayr was issuing out of the Gate and hurrying across the terrace. They’d obviously come straight from the Awakening, because most of them had simply thrown cloaks or coats over their white robes, and nearly all of them still wore their circlets.
Lirael recognized the two in front—the twins Sanar and Ryelle—the flawless embodiment of the perfect Clayr. Their Sight was so strong they were nearly always in the Nine Day Watch, so Lirael hardly ever crossed paths with them. They were both tall and extremely beautiful, their long blond hair shining even more brightly than their silver circlets in the sun. Behind them came five other Clayr. Lirael knew them all vaguely and, if pressed, could recall their names and their familial relationship to her. None was closer than a third cousin, but she recognized all of them as being particularly strong in the Sight. If they weren’t part of the Nine Day Watch right now, they would be tomorrow, and probably had been last week.
In short, they were seven of the most important Clayr in all the Glacier. They all held significant ordinary posts in addition to their Sighted work. Small Jasell, for example, bringing 39
up the rear, was First Bursar, in charge of the Clayr’s internal finances and its trading bank.
They were also the very last people Lirael wanted to meet somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.
Chapter Four. A Glint in the Snow