Lirael

by Garth Nix

  A blue-waistcoated First Assistant Librarian was bending over her, peering closely at her face. Lirael blinked and wondered why this strange person was moving her hand backwards and forwards in front of Lirael’s eyes. But it wasn’t a strange person after all. It was Amerane, whom she had worked with for a few days last month.

  “What happened?” asked Amerane, concern in her voice. “Does anything feel broken?”

  “I hit my head,” whispered Lirael, and she felt tears springing up in her eyes. She hadn’t cried before, but now she couldn’t stop, and her whole body started to shake as well, no matter how hard she tried to stay still.

  “Does anything feel broken?” Amerane repeated. “Does it hurt anywhere else aside from your head?”

  “N-no,” sobbed Lirael. “Nothing’s broken.”

  Amerane didn’t seem to trust Lirael’s opinion, because she lightly felt all the way up and down the girl’s arms and legs, and gently pressed against her fingers and feet. Since Lirael didn’t scream and there seemed to be no grating of bones or abnormal lumps or swellings, Amerane helped her get up.

  “Come on,” she said kindly. “I’ll help you get to the Infirmary.”

  “Thanks,” whispered Lirael, putting her arm around Amerane’s shoulders and letting her take most of her weight. Her other hand went to her pocket, fingers wrapping around the little stone dog, its smooth surface a source of comfort, as Amerane carried her away.

  Chapter Nine

  Creatures by Nagy

  At first, Lirael thought she would be out of the Infirmary within a day. But even three days after her “fall,” she could barely speak, and she had lost all her energy, not even wanting to get up. While the pain in her head and throat lessened, fear grew everywhere else, sapping her strength. Fear of the silver-eyed, hook-handed monster that she could almost see waiting for her amidst the red daisies. Fear of her trespasses being found out, forcing the loss of her job. Fear of the fear itself, a vicious circle that exhausted her and filled what little sleep she got with nightmares.

  On the morning of the fourth day, the Chief Healer clicked her teeth together and frowned at the patient’s lack of progress. She called in another healer to look at Lirael, who bore this patiently. They both decided, in Lirael’s hearing, that they would need to call Filris down from her dreaming room.

  Lirael started nervously at this announcement. Among other things, Filris was the Infirmarian, and the oldest of the Clayr still living. For all of Lirael’s life, Filris had spent most of her time in her dreaming room, and presumably working in the Infirmary as well, though Lirael had never seen her on either of the two occasions she had been hospitalized with childhood illnesses.

  She had never seen any of the really old Clayr, the ones old enough to retire to dreaming rooms of their own. They needed such rooms because the Sight tended to grow progressively more difficult with age, sending more and more frequent visions, but in smaller splinters, which could not be controlled, even with the focusing powers of ice and the Nine Day Watch. It was not uncommon for some of the more ancient Clayr to perceive only these fragmented futures and not be able to interact with the present at all.

  However, when Filris arrived an hour later, she came alone and clearly needed no help with the ordinary world. Lirael eyed her suspiciously, seeing a short, slight woman with hair as white as the snow atop Starmount and skin like aged parchment, the underlying veins a delicate tracery upon her face, counterpoint to the wrinkles of extreme age.

  She inspected Lirael from head to foot, without speaking, her paper-dry hands gently prodding her to move in the directions she required. Finally, she looked down Lirael’s throat, staring at it for some time, a small bauble of Charter-Magicked light floating an inch from Lirael’s stiffening jaw. When Filris finally stopped looking, she sent the Healer from the ward and sat beside Lirael’s bed. Silence crept over them, for the ward was empty now. The other seven beds were vacant.

  Eventually, Lirael made a noise that was halfway between clearing her throat and a sob. She moved her hair away from her face and nervously looked at Filris—and was caught in the gaze of her pale blue eyes.

  “So you are Lirael,” said Filris. “And the healer tells me you fell down the stairs. But I do not think your throat was damaged by a scream. To be frank, I am surprised you are still alive. I know of no other Clayr your age—and few of any age—who could speak such a mark without being consumed by it.”

  “How?” croaked Lirael. “How can you tell?”

  “Experience,” replied Filris dryly. “I have worked in this Infirmary for over a hundred years. You are not the first Clayr I have seen suffer from the effects of attempting overambitious magic. Also, I am curious as to how you came by these other injuries at the same time, particularly since the glass dug out of your feet is pure crystal, and certainly not the same as that of the glasses from the Zally Fountain.”

  Lirael swallowed, but didn’t speak. The silence returned. Filris waited patiently.

  “I’ll lose my job,” whispered Lirael at last. “I’ll be sent back to the Hall.”

  “No,” said Filris, taking her hand. “What passes between us here shall go no further.”

  “I’ve been stupid,” said Lirael huskily. “I’ve let something out. Something dangerous—dangerous to everyone. All the Clayr.”

  “Hmph!” snorted Filris. “It can’t be that bad if it hasn’t done anything in the last four days. Besides, ‘all the Clayr’ can look after its collective self very well. It’s you I’m concerned about. You are letting your fear come between you and getting better. Now start from the beginning, and tell me everything.”

  “You won’t tell Kirrith? Or the Chief?” asked Lirael desperately. If Filris told anybody, they’d take her away from the Library, and then she’d have nothing. Nothing at all.

  “If you mean Vancelle, no I won’t,” replied Filris. She patted Lirael’s hand and said, “I won’t tell anybody. Particularly since I am coming to the conclusion that I should have looked in on you long ago, Lirael. I had no notion you were more than a child . . . but tell me. What happened?”

  Slowly, her voice so soft that Filris had to lean close, Lirael told her. About her birthday, about going up to the terrace, meeting Sanar and Ryelle, getting her job and how much it had helped her. She told Filris about waking the spells in the bracelet, about the sunburst and crescent-moon doors. Her voice grew softer still as she spoke of the horror in the glass-roofed coffin. The statuette of the dog. The struggle up the spiral and the plans she had made as her mind wandered. Her faked fall.

  They spoke for more than an hour, Filris questioning, bringing out all Lirael’s fears, hopes, and dreams. At the end of it, Lirael felt peaceful and no longer afraid, emptied of all the knotted pain and anguish that had filled her.

  When Lirael finished talking, Filris asked to see the dog statuette. Lirael took the little stone dog from under her pillow and reluctantly handed it over. She had grown very attached to it, for it was the one thing that bought her some comfort, and she was afraid that Filris would take it away or tell her it must go back to the Library.

  The old woman took the statuette in both hands, cupping it so only the snout was visible, thrusting out between her withered fingers. She looked at it for a long time, then gave a deep sigh and handed it back. Lirael took it, surprised by the warmth the stone had gained from the old woman’s hands. Still, Filris didn’t move or speak, till Lirael sat up straighter in bed, attracting her attention.

  “I’m sorry, Lirael. I thank you for telling me the truth. And for showing me the dog statuette. It has been a long time coming, so long that I had thought I would be lost in the future, too mad to see it true.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lirael uneasily.

  “I saw your little dog long ago,” explained Filris. “When the Sight still came clearly to me. It was the last vision that came to me whole and unbroken. I Saw an old, old woman, peering closely at a small stone dog clasped in her hands. It took
me many years to realize that the old woman was myself.”

  “Did you See me, too?” asked Lirael.

  “I Saw only myself,” said Filris calmly. “What it means, I’m afraid, is that we shall not meet again. I would have liked to help you defeat the creature you have released, by counsel if not by deed, for I fear that it must be dealt with as soon as you can. Things of that ilk do not wake without reason, or without help of some kind. I would also like to see your dog-sending. I regret that I will not. Most of all I regret that I have not lived enough in the present these last fifteen years. I should have met you sooner, Lirael. It is a failing of the Clayr that we tend to forget individuals sometimes, and we ignore their troubles, knowing that all such things will pass.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lirael. For the first time in her life, she’d felt comfortable talking to someone about herself, about her life. Now it seemed that this was only a tantalizing taste of the intimacy other people enjoyed, as if she were fated to never have what other Clayr took for granted.

  “Every Clayr is given the gift to See some portent of her death, though not the death itself, for no human could bear that weight. Almost twenty years ago I Saw myself and your little dog, and in time I realized that this was the vision that foretold my final days.”

  “But I need you,” said Lirael, weeping, throwing her arms around the slight figure. “I need someone! I can’t keep going on my own!”

  “You can and you will,” said Filris fiercely. “Make your dog your companion, to be the friend you need. You must learn about the creature you released and defeat it! Explore the Library. Remember that while the Clayr can See the future, others make it. I feel that you will be a maker, not a seer. You must promise me that it will be so. Promise me that you will not give in. Promise me that you will never give up hope. Make your future, Lirael!”

  “I’ll try,” whispered Lirael, feeling the fierce energy of Filris flowing into her. “I’ll try.”

  Filris gripped her hand, harder than Lirael would have thought possible with those thin, ancient fingers. Then she kissed Lirael on the forehead, sending a tingle of energy through her Charter mark, right though her body and out the soles of her feet.

  “I was never close to Arielle, or her mother,” Filris said quietly. “Too much a Clayr, I suppose, too much in the future. I am glad I was not too late to speak to you. Goodbye, my great-great-granddaughter. Remember your promise!”

  With that, she walked out of the ward, straight-backed and proud, so that someone who didn’t know her age would never guess that she had worked in these wards for more than a hundred years, and lived half as long again.

  Lirael never saw Filris again. She wept with many others at the Farewell in the Hall, forgetting her distaste for the new blue tunic, hardly noticing that she stood a full head higher than all the other children and many of the white-clad Clayr who had newly Awoken to their gift.

  She was unsure how much she cried for Filris and how much she cried for herself, left alone again. It seemed to be her fate that she would have no close friends. Only countless cousins, and one aunt.

  But Lirael didn’t forget Filris’s words and was back at work the next day, though her voice was still weak, and she had a slight limp. Within a week, she managed to secretly obtain copies of On the Making of Sendings and Superior Sendings in Seventy Days, as The Making and Mastery of Magical Beings proved too difficult to spirit out of its locked case. The bestiaries proved troublesome too, as all the ones she could find were chained to their shelves. She dipped into them when no one was around, but without immediate success. Clearly, it would take some time to find out exactly what the creature was.

  Whenever she could, she passed the sunburst door and felt for her spell, checking that her magic still remained, binding door, hinges, and lock into the surrounding stone. The fear always rose in her then, and sometimes she thought she smelled the corrosive tang of Free Magic, as if the monster stood on the other side of the door, separated from her only by the thin barrier of wood and spells.

  Then she would remember Filris’s words, and hurry back to her study to work on her dog-sending; or to the latest bestiary she’d found, to see if it might describe a woman-like creature with eyes of silver fire and the claws of a praying mantis, a creature of Free Magic, malice, and awful hunger.

  Sometimes she would wake in the night, a nightmare of the door opening fading as she struggled out of sleep. She would have checked the door more often, but following the day of the Watch of Fifteen Sixty-Eight, the Chief Librarian had ordered that all librarians must go into the Old Levels only in pairs, so it was harder to sneak there and back. The Watch had not Seen anything conclusive, Lirael heard, but the Clayr were obviously worried about something close to home. The Library was not the only department to take precautionary measures: extra Rangers patrolled the glacier and the bridges, the steampipe crews also now worked in pairs, and many internal doors and corridors were closed and locked for the first time since the Restoration.

  Lirael checked the door to the flower-field room forty-two times over seventy-three days before she found a bestiary that told her what the creature was. In those ten weeks of worry, study, and preparation, she had searched through eleven bestiaries and done most of the preliminary work needed to create her dog-sending.

  In fact, it was the dog-sending that was mostly on her mind when she finally did find a mention of the monster. She was thinking about when she could cast the next lot of spells even as her hands opened the small, red-bound book that was simply titled Creatures by Nagy. Flicking through the pages without expectation, her eye was caught by an engraving that showed exactly what she was looking for. The accompanying text made it clear that whoever Nagy was, or had been, he or she had encountered the same sort of monster Lirael had released from the glass-covered coffin.

  It stands higher than a tall man, generally taking the shape of a comely woman, though its form is fluid. Often the Stilken will have great hooks or pincers in the place of forearms, which it uses with facility to seize its prey. Its mouth generally appears human till it opens, revealing double rows of teeth, as narrow and sharp as needles. These teeth may be of a bright silver, or black as night. The Stilken’s eyes are also of silver, and burn with a strange fire.

  Lirael shivered as she read this description, making the chain that held the book to the shelf rattle and clank. Quickly she looked around to see if anyone had heard and would come looking between the shelves. But there was no sound save her own breathing. This room was rarely used, housing a collection of obscure personal memoirs. Lirael had come here merely because Creatures by Nagy was cross-indexed in the Reading Room as a bestiary of sorts.

  Stilling her hands, she read on, the words filling only part of her mind. The rest was struggling with the fact that, now that she had the knowledge she sought, she must face the Stilken and defeat it.

  The Stilken is an elemental of Free Magic, and so it cannot be harmed by earthly materials, such as common steel. Nor can human flesh touch it, for its substance is inimical to life. A Stilken cannot be destroyed, except by Free Magic, at the hands of a sorcerer more powerful than itself.

  Lirael stopped reading, nervously swallowed and read the last line again. “Cannot be destroyed, except by Free Magic,” she read, over and over again. But she couldn’t do any Free Magic. It wasn’t allowed. Free Magic was too dangerous.

  Unable to think of what she could do, Lirael read on—and breathed a long sigh of relief as the book continued.

  However, while destruction is the province solely of Free Magic, a Stilken may be bound by Charter Magic and imprison’d within a vessel or structure, such as a bottle of metal or wrought crystal (simple glass being too fragile for surety) or down a dry well, covered by stone.

  I have essayed this task myself, using the spells I list below. But I warn that these bindings are of terrible force, drawing as they do on no fewer than three of the master Charter marks. Only a great adept—which I am not—would dar
e use them without the assistance of an ensorceled sword or a rowan wand, charged with the first circle of seven marks for binding the elements, and in the case of fire and air, the second circle too, and all of them linked with the master mark—

  Lirael swallowed again, her throat suddenly sore. The notation Nagy used was for the same master mark that had burnt her. Worse than that, she didn’t know the second circle of marks for binding fire and air, and she had no idea how they could all be put into a sword or a rowan wand. She didn’t even know where she could find a rowan tree, for that matter.

  Slowly, she shut the book and placed it back on the shelf, careful not to rattle the chain. Part of her was frustrated. Having finally found out what the creature was, she still had to find out more. Another part of her was relieved that she would not have to confront the Stilken. Not yet.

  She would have time to create her dog-sending first. At least then she would have something . . . someone to talk to about all this. Even if it couldn’t talk back, or help her.

  Chapter Ten

  Dog Day

  The final spell to create the dog-sending required four hours to cast, so Lirael had to wait for another opportunity when most of the librarians would be away. If she were interrupted during the casting, all her work of the previous months would be wasted, the delicately connected network of Charter-spells broken into their component marks, rather than brought together by the final spell.

  The opportunity came sooner than Lirael had expected, for whatever the Clayr were trying to See obviously still eluded them. Lirael heard other librarians muttering about the de-mands of the Observatory, and it was clear that the Nine Day Watch was growing in size again, starting with a ninety-eight. This time, as each new, larger Watch was called, Lirael carefully observed the time of the summons and noted when the Clayr returned. When the full Fifteen Sixty-Eight was called—amidst considerable grumbling in the Reading Room—she estimated she had at least six hours. Time enough to finish her sending.