by Garth Nix
In her study, the dog statuette sat benignly, surveying Lirael’s preparations from the top of her desk. Lirael spoke to it as she locked the door, with a spell since she wasn’t senior enough to rate a key or bar.
“This is it, little dog,” she said cheerfully, reaching over to stroke the dog’s stone snout with one finger. The sound of her own voice surprised her, not because of the huskiness that still remained from her damaged throat, but because it sounded strange and unfamiliar. She realized then that she hadn’t spoken for two days. The other librarians had long accepted her silence, and she had not recently been taxed with any conversation that required more than a nod, a shake of the head, or simply instant application to an ordered task.
The beginning of the dog-sending was under her desk, hidden by a draped cloth. Lirael reached in, removed the cloth, and gently slid out the framework she had built to start the spell. She ran her hands over it, feeling the warmth of the Charter marks that swam lazily up and down the twisted silver wires that formed the shape of a dog. It was a small dog, about a foot high, the size constrained by the amount of silver wire Lirael could easily obtain. Besides, she thought a small dog-sending would be more sensible than a big one. She wanted a comfortable friend, not a dog large enough to be a guard-sending.
Aside from the framework of silver wire, the dog shape had two eyes made from jet buttons and a nose of black felt, all of them already imbued with Charter marks. It also had a tail made from braided dog hair, clipped surreptitiously from several visiting dogs down in the Lower Refectory. That tail was already prepared with Charter marks, marks that defined something of what it was to be a dog.
The final part of the spell required Lirael to reach into the Charter and pluck forth several thousand Charter marks, letting them flow through her and into the silver-wire armature. Marks that fully described a dog, and marks that would give the semblance of life, though not the actuality.
When the spell was finished, the silver wire, jet buttons, and braided dog hair would be gone, replaced by a puppy-sized dog of spell-flesh. It would look like a dog till you got close enough to see the Charter marks that made it up, but she wouldn’t be able to touch it. Touching most sendings was like touching water: the skin would yield and then re-form around whatever touched it. All the toucher would feel was the buzz and warmth of the Charter marks.
Lirael sat down cross-legged next to the silver-wire model and started to empty her mind, taking slow breaths, forcing them down so far that her stomach pushed outwards as the air reached the very bottoms of her lungs.
She was just about to reach into the Charter and begin when her eye caught sight of the small stone dog, up on the desk. It somehow looked lonely up there, as if it felt left out. Impulsively, Lirael got up and set it in her lap when she sat back down. The small carving tilted slightly but stayed upright, looking at the silver-wire copy of itself.
Lirael took a few more breaths and began again. She had written out the marks she required, in the safe shorthand all Mages used to record Charter marks. But those papers stayed by her side, still in a neat pile. She found that the first marks came easily, and those after them seemed to almost choose themselves. Mark after mark leapt out of the flow of the Charter and into her mind, then as quickly out, crossing to the silver-wire dog in an arc of golden lightning.
As more and more marks rushed through her, Lirael slipped further into a trance state, barely aware of anything except the Charter and the marks that filled her. The golden lightning became a solid bridge of light from her outstretched hands to the silver wires, growing brighter by the second. Lirael closed her eyes against the glare, and she felt herself slip towards the edge of dream, her conscious mind barely awake. Images moved restlessly between the marks in her mind. Images of dogs, many dogs, of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Dogs barking. Dogs running after thrown sticks. Dogs refusing to run. Puppies waddling on uncertain paws. Old dogs shivering themselves upright. Happy dogs. Sad dogs. Hungry dogs. Fat, sleepy dogs.
More and more images flashed through, till Lirael felt she had seen glimpses of every dog that had ever lived. But still the Charter marks roared through her mind. She had long lost track of where she was up to, or which marks were next—and the golden light was too bright for her to see how much of the sending was done.
Yet the marks flowed on. Lirael realized that not only did she not know which mark she was up to—she didn’t even know the marks that were passing through her head! Strange, unknown marks were pouring out of her into the sending. Powerful marks that rocked her body as they left, forcing everything else out of her mind with the urgency of their passage.
Desperately, Lirael tried to open her eyes, to see what the marks were doing—but the glow was blinding now, and hot. She tried to stand up, to direct the flow of marks into the wall or ceiling. But her body seemed disconnected from her brain. She could feel everything, but her legs and arms wouldn’t move, just as if she were trying to wake herself from the end of a dream.
Still the marks came, and then Lirael’s nostrils caught the terrible, unmistakable reek of Free Magic, and she knew something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.
She tried to scream, but no sound came out, only Charter marks that leapt from her mouth towards the golden radiance. Charter marks continued to fly from her fingers, too, and swam in her eyes, spilling down inside her tears, which turned to steam as they fell.
More and more marks flew through Lirael, through her tears and her silent screaming. They swarmed through like an endless flight of bright butterflies forced through a garden gate. But even as the thousands and thousands of marks flung themselves into the brightness, the smell of Free Magic rose, and a crackling white light formed in the center of the golden glow, so bright it shone through Lirael’s shut eyelids, piercing her brimming eyes.
Held motionless by the torrent of Charter Magic, Lirael could do nothing as the white light grew stronger, subduing the rich golden glow of the swirling marks. It was the end, she knew. Whatever she’d done now, it was much, much worse than freeing a Stilken; so much worse that she couldn’t really comprehend it. All she knew was that the marks that passed through her now were more ancient and more powerful than anything she had ever seen. Even if the Free Magic that grew in front of her spared her life, the Charter marks would burn her to a husk.
Except, she realized, they didn’t hurt. Either she was in shock and already dying, or the marks weren’t harming her. Any one of them would have killed her if she’d tried to use them normally. But several hundred had already stormed through, and she was still breathing. Wasn’t she?
Frightened by the thought that she might not be breathing, Lirael focused all her remaining energy on inhaling—just as the tremendous flow of marks suddenly stopped. She felt her connection to the Charter sever as the last mark jumped across to the boiling mass of gold and white light that had been her silver-wire dog. Her breath came with sudden force, and she overbalanced, falling backwards. At the last moment, she caught the edge of the bookshelf, almost pulling that on top of her. But the shelf didn’t quite go over, and she pulled herself back up to a sitting position, ready to use her newly filled lungs to scream.
The scream stayed unborn. Where the Free Magic and Charter marks had fought in their sparking, swirling brilliance, there was now a globe of utter darkness that occupied the space where the wire dog and the desk had been. The awful tang of Free Magic was gone, too, replaced by a sort of damp animal odor that Lirael couldn’t quite identify.
A tiny pinprick star appeared on the black surface of the globe, and then another, and another, till it was no longer dark but as star-filled as a clear night sky. Lirael stared at it, mesmerized by the multitude of stars. They grew brighter and brighter, till she was forced to blink.
In the instant of that blink, the globe disappeared, leaving behind a dog. Not a cute, cuddly Charter sending of a puppy, but a waist-high black and tan mongrel that seemed to be entirely real, including its impressive teeth. It had no
ne of the characteristics of a sending. The only hint of its magical origin was a thick collar around its neck that swam with more Charter marks that Lirael had never seen before.
The dog looked exactly like a life-size, breathing version of the stone statuette. Lirael stared at the real thing, then down at her lap.
The statuette was gone.
She looked back up. The dog was still there, scratching its ear with a back foot, eyes half-closed with concentration. It was soaking wet, as if it had just been for a swim.
Suddenly, the dog stopped scratching, stood up, and shook itself, spraying droplets of dirty water all over Lirael and all over the study. Then it ambled across and licked the petrified girl on the face with a tongue that most definitely was all real dog and not some Charter-made imitation.
When that got no response, it grinned and announced, “I am the Disreputable Dog. Or Disreputable Bitch, if you want to get technical. When are we going for a walk?”
Chapter Eleven
Search for a Suitable Sword
The walk that Lirael and the Disreputable Dog took that day was the first of many, though Lirael never could remember exactly where they went, or what she said, or what the Dog answered. All she could recall was being in the same sort of daze she’d had when she’d hit her head—only this time she wasn’t hurt.
Not that it mattered, because the Disreputable Dog never really answered her questions. Later, Lirael would repeat the same questions and get different, still-evasive answers. The most important questions—“What are you? Where did you come from?”—had a whole range of answers, starting with “I’m the Disreputable Dog” and “from elsewhere” and occasionally becoming as eloquent as “I’m your Dog” and “You tell me—it was your spell.”
The Dog also refused, or was unable, to answer questions about her nature. She seemed in most respects to be exactly like a real dog, albeit a speaking one. At least at first.
For the first two weeks they were together, the Dog slept in Lirael’s study, under the replacement desk that Lirael had been forced to purloin from an empty study nearby. She had no idea what had happened to her own, as not a bit of it remained after the Dog’s sudden appearance.
The Dog ate the food Lirael stole for her from the Refectory or the kitchens. She went walking with Lirael four times a day in the most disused corridors and rooms Lirael could find, a nerve-wracking exercise, though somehow the Dog always managed to hide from approaching Clayr at the last second. She was discreet in other ways as well, always choosing dark and unused corners to use as a toilet—though she did like to alert Lirael to the fact that she had done so, even if her human friend declined to sniff at the result.
In fact, apart from her collar of Charter marks and the fact that she could talk, the Disreputable Dog really did seem to be just a rather large dog of uncertain parentage and curious origin.
But of course she wasn’t. Lirael sneaked back to her study one evening after dinner, to find the Dog reading on the floor. The Dog was turning the pages of a large grey book that Lirael didn’t recognize, with one paw—a paw that had grown longer and separated out into three extremely flexible fingers.
The Dog looked up from the book as her supposed mistress froze in the doorway. All Lirael could think of were the words in Nagy’s book, about the Stilken’s form being fluid—and the way the hook-handed creature had stretched and thinned to get through the gate guarded by the crescent moon.
“You are a Free Magic thing,” she blurted out, reaching into her waistcoat pocket for the clockwork mouse, as her lips felt for the whistle on her lapel. This time she wouldn’t make a mistake. She’d call for help right away.
“No, I’m not,” protested the Dog, her ears stiffening in outrage as her paw shrank back to its normal proportions. “I’m definitely not a thing! I’m as much a part of the Charter as you are, albeit with special properties. Look at my collar! And I am definitely not a Stilken or any other of the several hundred variations thereof.”
“What do you know about Stilken?” asked Lirael. She still didn’t enter the study, and the clockwork mouse was ready in her hand. “Why did you mention them in particular?”
“I read a lot,” replied the Dog, yawning. Then she sniffed, and her eyes lit up with expectation. “Is that a ham bone you have there?”
Lirael didn’t answer but moved the paper-wrapped object in her left hand behind her back. “How did you know I was thinking about a Stilken just then? And I still don’t know you aren’t one yourself, or something even worse.”
“Feel my collar!” protested the Dog as she edged forward, licking her chops. Clearly the current conversation wasn’t as interesting as the prospect of food.
“How did you know I was thinking about a Stilken?” repeated Lirael, giving each word a slow and considered emphasis. She held the ham bone over her head as she spoke, watching the Dog’s head tilt back to follow the movement. Surely a Free Magic creature wouldn’t be this interested in a ham bone.
“I guessed, because you seem to be thinking about Stilken quite a lot,” replied the Dog, gesturing with a paw at the books on the desk. “You are studying everything required to bind a Stilken. Besides, you also wrote ‘Stilken’ fourteen times yesterday on that paper you burnt. I read it backwards on the blotter. And I’ve smelled your spell on the door down below, and the Stilken that waits beyond it.”
“You’ve been out by yourself!” exclaimed Lirael. Forgetting that she had been afraid of whatever the Dog might be, she stormed in, slamming the door behind her. In the process, she dropped the clockwork mouse, but not the ham bone.
The mouse bounced twice and landed at the Dog’s feet. Lirael held her breath, all too aware that the door was now shut at her back, which would greatly delay the mouse if she needed help. But the Dog didn’t seem dangerous, and she was so much easier to talk to than people were . . . except for Filris, who was gone.
The Disreputable Dog sniffed at the mouse eagerly for an instant, then pushed it aside with her nose and transferred her attention back to the ham bone.
Lirael sighed, picked up the mouse, and put it back in her pocket. She unwrapped the bone and gave it to the Dog, who immediately snatched it up and deposited it in a far corner under the desk.
“That’s your dinner,” said Lirael, wrinkling her nose. “You’d better eat it before it starts to smell.”
“I’ll take it out and bury it later, in the ice,” replied the Dog. She hesitated and hung her head a little before adding, “Besides, I don’t actually need to eat. I just like to.”
“What!” exclaimed Lirael, cross again. “You mean I’ve been stealing food for nothing! If I were caught I’d—”
“Not for nothing!” interrupted the Dog, sidling over to butt her head against Lirael’s hip and look up at her with wide, beseeching eyes. “For me. And much appreciated, too. Now, you really should feel my collar. It will show you that I am not a Stilken, Margrue, or Hish. You can scratch my neck at the same time.”
Lirael hesitated, but the Dog felt so like the friendly dogs she scratched when they visited the Refectory that her hand almost automatically went to the Dog’s back. She felt warm dog skin and the silky, short hair, and she began to scratch along the Dog’s spine, up towards the neck. The Dog shivered and muttered, “Up a bit. Across to the left. No, back. Aahhh!”
Then Lirael touched the collar, just with two fingers—and was momentarily thrown out of the world altogether. All she could see, hear, and feel were Charter marks, all around, as if she had somehow fallen into the Charter. There was no leather collar under her hand, no Dog, no study. Nothing but the Charter.
Then she was suddenly back in herself again, swaying and dizzy. Both her hands were scratching the Dog under the chin, without her knowing how they had got there.
“Your collar,” Lirael said, when she got her balance back. “Your collar is like a Charter Stone—a way into the Charter. Yet I saw Free Magic in your making. It has to be there somewhere . . . doesn’t it?”
She fell silent, but the Dog didn’t answer, till Lirael stopped scratching. Then she turned her head and jumped up, licking Lirael across her open mouth.
“You needed a friend,” said the Dog, as Lirael spluttered and wiped her mouth with both sleeves, one after the other. “I came. Isn’t that enough to be going on with? You know my collar is of the Charter, and whatever else I may be, it would constrain my actions, even if I did mean you any harm. And we do have a Stilken to deal with, do we not?”
“Yes,” said Lirael. On an impulse, she bent down and hugged the Dog around the neck, feeling both warm dog and the soft buzz of the Charter marks in the Dog’s collar through the thin material of her shirt.
The Disreputable Dog bore this patiently for a minute, then made a sort of wheezing sound and shuffled her paws. Lirael understood this from her time with the visiting dogs, and let go.
“Now,” pronounced the Dog. “The Stilken must be dealt with as soon as possible, before it gets free and finds even worse things to release, or let in from outside. I presume you have obtained the necessary items to bind it?”
“No,” said Lirael. “Not if you mean the stuff Nagy mentions: a rowan wand or a sword, infused with the Charter marks—”
“Yes, yes,” said the Dog hastily, before Lirael could recite the whole list. “I know. Why haven’t you got one?”
“They don’t just lie around,” replied Lirael defensively. “I thought I could get an ordinary sword and put the—”
“Take too long. Months!” interrupted the Dog, who had started pacing to and fro in a serious manner. “That Stilken will be through your door spell in a few days, I would think.”
