by Garth Nix
Kirrith would never leave the Glacier to travel who knew where, only to return seven months gone with child. Lirael scowled at Kirrith’s door. Not that Kirrith had ever told her that. Kirrith wouldn’t talk about her younger sister. The little Lirael knew about her mother came from eavesdropping on her closer cousins’ conversations. The ones during which they discussed what to do about a girl who so obviously didn’t belong.
Lirael scowled again at that thought. The scowl didn’t go away, even when she was scraping her face with pumice stone in the hot bath. Only the shock of the cold plunge in the long pool finally smoothed the lines away.
The lines came back, though, as Lirael combed her hair in the communal mirror in the changing room next to the cold pool. The mirror was a rectangle of silver steel, eight feet high and twelve feet wide, rather tarnished around the edges. Later in the morning it would be shared by up to eight of the fourteen orphans currently in the Hall of Youth.
Lirael hated sharing the mirror, because it made yet another difference more obvious. Most of the Clayr had brown skin that quickly tanned to a deep chestnut out on the glacier slopes, as well as bright blond hair and light eyes. In contrast Lirael stood out like a pallid weed among healthy flowers. Her white skin burnt instead of tanning, and she had dark eyes and even darker hair.
She knew she probably took after her father, whoever that had been. Arielle had never identified him, yet another shame for her suffering daughter to carry. The Clayr often bore children fathered by visiting men, but they didn’t usually leave the Glacier to find them, and they made no secret of the fathers. And for some reason, they almost always had girls. Fair-haired, nut-brown girls with pale blue or green eyes.
Except for Lirael.
Alone in front of the mirror, Lirael could forget all that. She concentrated on combing her hair, forty-nine strokes to each side. She was feeling more hopeful. Perhaps this would be the day. A fourteenth birthday marked by the best possible present. The gift of the Sight.
Even so, Lirael had no desire to eat breakfast in the Middle Refectory. Most of the Clayr ate there, and she would have to sit at a table with girls three or even four years younger, sticking out like a thistle in a bed of well-tended flowers. A blue-clad thistle. Everyone else her age would be dressed in white, sitting at the tables of the crowned and acknowledged Clayr.
Instead, Lirael crossed two silent corridors and descended two stairways that spiraled in opposite directions, down to the Lower Refectory. This was where the traders ate, and the supplicants who came to ask the Clayr to look into their futures. The only Clayr here would be those on the kitchen or serving rosters.
Or almost the only Clayr. There was one other who Lirael hoped would come. The Voice of the Nine Day Watch. As she walked down the last steps, Lirael imagined the scene. The Voice striding down the main stairs, striking the gong, then stopping to make her announcement that the Nine Day Watch had Seen her—Seen Lirael—being crowned with the circlet of moonstones, had Seen her gaining the Sight at last.
The Lower Refectory wasn’t very busy that morning. Only three of the sixty tables were occupied. Lirael went to a fourth, as far away from the others as possible, and drew out the bench. She preferred to sit alone, even when she was not among the Clayr.
Two of the tables were occupied by merchants, probably from Belisaere, talking loudly of the peppercorns, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon they had imported from the far North and hoped to sell to the Clayr. Their conversation about the quality and strength of their spices was all too evidently meant to be heard by the Clayr working in the kitchens.
Lirael sniffed the air. Their claims might even be true. The scent of cloves and nutmeg from the merchants’ bags was very strong, but pleasant. Lirael took it as another good omen.
The third table was taken up by the merchants’ guards. Even here, inside the Clayr’s Glacier, they wore armored coats of interlocking scales and kept their scabbarded swords close by, under the benches. Obviously, they thought bandits or worse could easily follow the narrow path along the river gorge and force the gate that led to the Clayr’s vast complex.
Of course, they would not have been able to see most of the defenses. The river path crawled with Charter marks of hiding and blinding, and under the flat paving stones there were sendings of beasts and warriors that would rise up at the slightest threat. The path also crossed the river no less than seven times, on slender bridges of ancient construction, apparently spun from stone. Easily defended bridges—with the river Ratterlin running below, deep enough and fast enough to keep any Dead from crossing.
Even here in the Lower Refectory there was Charter Magic lying dormant in the walls, and sendings that slept in the rough-hewn stone of floor and ceiling. Lirael could see the Charter marks, faint as they were, and puzzle out the spells they made up. The sendings were harder, because only the marks to trigger them were clear. Of course, there were clearly visible marks as well, the ones that shed light here and everywhere else within the Clayr’s underground domain, bored into the rock of the mountain, next to the icy mass of the Glacier.
Lirael scanned the visitors’ faces. Without helmets, their close-cropped hair made it easy to see that none had the Charter mark upon their foreheads. So they almost certainly couldn’t see the magic that surrounded them. Instinctively, Lirael parted her own rather too-long hair and felt her mark. It pulsed lightly under her touch, and she felt the sense of connection, the feeling of belonging to the great Charter that described the world. At least she was something of a Charter Mage, even if she didn’t have the Sight.
The merchants’ guards should trust more in the Clayr’s defenses, Lirael thought, looking at the armored men and women again. One of them saw her glance, and met her eyes for an instant, till she looked away. In that fleeting moment, she saw a young man, his head even more closely shaven than the others, so his scalp shone when it caught the light from the Charter marks in the ceiling.
Though she tried to ignore him, Lirael saw the guard get up and walk across, his scale coat too big for someone who would not see his real growth for several years. Lirael scowled as he approached, and turned her head away even more. Just because the Clayr did occasionally take lovers from amongst the visitors, some people thought that any of the Clayr visiting the Lower Refectory would be hunting for a man. This notion seemed particularly strong among young men of sixteen or thereabouts.
“Excuse me,” said the guard. “May I sit here?”
Lirael nodded reluctantly, and he sat, a cascade of scales rattling down his chest in a slow waterfall of metal.
“I’m Barra,” he said cheerfully. “Is this your first time here?”
“What?” asked Lirael, puzzled and shy. “In the Refectory?”
“No,” said Barra, laughing and stretching his arms out to indicate a much larger vista. “Here. In the Clayr’s Glacier. This is my second visit, so if you need someone to show you around . . . though I guess your parents might trade here often?”
Lirael looked away again, feeling bright spots burn into her cheekbones. She tried to think of something to say, some snappy rejoinder, but all she could think was that even outsiders knew she wasn’t really a Clayr. Even a stupid, undergrown, rattling clod like this one.
“What’s your name?” asked Barra, oblivious to the blush and the terrible emptiness that had grown inside her.
Lirael swallowed and wet her lips, but no answer came. She felt as if she didn’t have a name to give, or an identity at all. She couldn’t even look at Barra because her eyes were full of tears, so she stared at the half-eaten pear on her plate instead.
“I just wanted to say hello,” said Barra uneasily, as the silence stretched out between them.
Lirael nodded, and two tears fell on the pear. She didn’t look up or try to wipe her eyes. Her arms felt as limp and useless as her voice.
“I’m sorry,” Barra added as he clanked to his feet. Lirael watched him go back to his table, her eyes partly covered by a protective fall of
hair. When he was a few feet away, one of the men said something, not loud enough to hear. Barra shrugged, and the men—and some of the women—burst into laughter.
“It’s my birthday,” Lirael whispered to her plate, her voice more full of tears than her eyes. “I must not cry on my birthday.” She stood up and clumsily stepped over the bench, taking her plate and fork to the scullery hatch, being careful not to catch the eye of whichever first, second, or third cousin worked there.
She was still holding the plate when one of the Clayr came down the main stairs and struck with her metal-tipped wand the first of the seven gongs that stood on the bottom seven steps. Lirael froze, and everyone in the Refectory stopped talking as the Clayr descended, striking each gong in turn, the different notes of the gongs merging into one before they echoed away into silence.
At the bottom step, the Clayr stopped and held up her wand. Lirael’s heart leapt inside her, while her stomach knotted in anxiety. It was exactly as she had imagined. So like it that she felt sure that it hadn’t been imagination, but the onset of the Sight.
Sohrae, as her wand declared, was currently the Voice of the Nine Day Watch, the Voice who made the announcements when the Watch Saw something of public importance to the Clayr or the Kingdom. Most important, the Voice also announced when the Watch had Seen the girl who would be next to gain the Sight.
“Know one, know many,” proclaimed Sohrae, her clear voice carrying to every corner of the Refectory and the kitchens and the scullery beyond. “The Nine Day Watch with great gladness announce that the Gift of Sight has Awoken in our sister . . .”
Sohrae took a breath to go on, and Lirael shut her eyes, knowing that Sohrae was about to say her name. It must, it must, it must be me, she thought. Two years later than everyone, and today my birthday. It has to—
“Annisele,” intoned Sohrae. Then she turned and went up the stairs again, lightly striking the gongs, their sound a soft undercurrent to the talk that had resumed among the visitors.
Lirael opened her eyes. The world had not changed. She did not have the Sight. Everything would go on as it always had. Miserably.
“Can I have your plate, please?” asked the unseen cousin behind the scullery hatch. “Oh, Lirael! I thought you were a visitor. You’d better hurry back upstairs, dear. Annisele’s Awakening will start inside the hour. This is the Voice’s last stop, you know. Whyever did you eat down here?”
Lirael didn’t answer. She let the plate go and crossed the Refectory like a sleepwalker, her fingers listlessly brushing the table corners as she passed. All she could think of was Sohrae’s voice, running over and over in her head.
“The gift of Sight has Awoken in our sister Annisele.”
Annisele. Annisele would be the one to wear the white robe, to be crowned with the silver and moonstones, while Lirael once again would have to put on her best blue tunic, the uniform of a child. The tunic that no longer had a hem because it had been let out so many times. The tunic that was still too short.
Annisele had just turned eleven ten days ago. But her birthday would be nothing compared to this day, the day of her Awakening.
Birthdays were nothing, Lirael thought, as she mechanically put one foot in front of the other, up the six hundred steps from the Lower Refectory to the Westway, along that path for two hundred paces, and then up the hundred and two steps to the backdoor of the Hall of Youth. She counted every step, and looked no one in the eye. All she saw was the sweep of white robes and the flash of black-slippered feet, as all the Clayr rushed to the Great Hall to honor the latest girl to join the ranks of those who Saw the future.
By the time she reached her room, Lirael found that any small joy to be had from her birthday was gone. Extinguished, snuffed out like a candle. It was Annisele’s day now, Lirael thought. She had to try to be happy for Annisele. She had to ignore the terrible sorrow that was welling up in her own heart.
Chapter Two
A Future Lost
Lirael threw herself on her bed and tried to overcome her despair. She really should get dressed for Annisele’s Awakening. But every time she started to get up, she felt unable to continue, and sat back down. For the moment, getting up was impossible. All she could do was relive the awful moment in the Lower Refectory when she had not heard her name. But she managed to wrestle her mind away from that, to think about the immediate future, not the past. Lirael made a decision. She wouldn’t go to Annisele’s Awakening.
It was unlikely anyone would really miss her, but there was a chance somebody might come to get her. This thought gave her enough strength to finally get off the bed and investigate hiding places. Under the bed was traditional, but the underside of Lirael’s simple trestle bed was both cramped and very dusty, since she hadn’t followed the standard cleaning routine properly for weeks.
She considered the wardrobe for a little while. But its spare, box-like shape and pine-plank construction made her think of it as an upended coffin. This was not a new thought for Lirael. She had always had what her cousins considered a morbid imagination. As a small child she had liked to playact dramatic death scenes from famous stories. She had stopped playacting years ago, but had never stopped thinking about death. Her own, in particular.
“Death,” Lirael whispered, shivering to hear the word aloud. She said it again, a little louder. A simple word, a simple way to avoid all the things that plagued her. She could avoid Annisele’s Awakening, but she probably couldn’t avoid all the ones that would come after that.
If she killed herself, Lirael reasoned, she wouldn’t have to watch girls increasingly younger than herself gaining the Sight. She wouldn’t have to stand with a bunch of children in blue tunics. Children who all peeked at her under their lashes during the Awakening ceremony. Lirael knew that look and recognized the fear in it. They were afraid that they might be like her, doomed to lack the only thing that really mattered.
And she wouldn’t have to put up with the Clayr who looked at her with pity. The ones who always stopped and asked how she was. As if mere words could describe how she felt. Or as if even if she had the words, Lirael could tell them what it was like to be fourteen and without the Sight.
“Death,” Lirael whispered again, tasting the word on her tongue. What else was there for her? There had always been the hope that one day she would gain the Sight. But now she was fourteen. Who had ever heard of a Clayr Sightless at fourteen? Things had never seemed quite so desperate as they were today.
“It’s the best thing to do,” Lirael pronounced, as if she were informing a friend of a vital decision. Her voice sounded confident, but inside she wasn’t so sure. Suicide wasn’t something the Clayr did. Killing herself would be the final, terrible confirmation that she just didn’t belong. It probably was the best thing. How would she actually do it? Lirael’s eyes strayed to where her practice sword hung in its scabbard on the back of the door. It was blunt, soft steel. She could probably fall on its point, but that would lead to a very slow and painful death. Besides, someone would almost certainly hear her screaming and get help.
There was probably a spell that would still her breath, dry up her lungs, and close her throat. But she wouldn’t find that in the school texts, her workbook of Charter Magic, or the Index of Charter Marks, both of which lay on the desk a few paces away. She’d have to search the Great Library for such a spell, and that sort of magic would be locked away by charm and key.
That left two reasonably accessible means of ending it all: cold and height. “The glacier,” whispered Lirael. That would be it, she decided. She would climb the Starmount Stair while everyone else was at Annisele’s Awakening, and then throw herself onto the ice. Eventually, if anyone bothered to look, they would find her frozen, broken body—and then they would all realize how hard it was to be a Clayr without the Sight.
Tears filled her eyes as she imagined a great crowd silently watching as her body was carried through the Great Hall, the blue of her child’s tunic transformed to white by the ice and snow encru
sted upon it.
A knock at the door cut short her morbid daydream, and Lirael jumped up, relieved. The Nine Day Watch must have finally Seen her, for the first time ever. They’d Seen her climb out onto the glacier and go plunging down, so they’d sent someone to prevent that future, to tell her that she would gain the Sight one day, that everything would be fine.
Then the door opened, before Lirael could say “Come in.” That was enough to tell her that it wasn’t a Nine Day Watcher concerned for her safety. It was Aunt Kirrith, Guardian of the Young. Or more the other way round, since she never treated Lirael any differently from the others, and particularly didn’t show her the affection you might expect from an aunt.
“There you are!” boomed Kirrith unnecessarily in her annoying, falsely jolly voice. “I looked for you at breakfast, but there was such a crush I just couldn’t find you. Happy birthday, Lirael!”
Lirael stared at Kirrith and at the present she was holding out. A large, square package, wrapped in red and blue paper dusted with gold. Very pretty paper, too. Aunt Kirrith had never given her a present before. She explained this by saying that she never accepted presents either, but Lirael thought that this missed the point. It was all about giving, not receiving.
“Go on, open it,” exclaimed Kirrith. “We haven’t got much time till the Awakening. Fancy it being little Annisele!”
Lirael took the package. It was soft, but quite heavy. For a moment, all her thoughts of killing herself were gone, driven away by curiosity. What could the present be?
Then, as she felt the package again, a terrible presentiment stuck her. Quickly, she tore a hole in the corner of the paper, and saw the telltale blue. “It’s a tunic,” said Lirael, the words seeming to come from someone else, and a long way away. “A child’s tunic.”
