Lirael

by Garth Nix

  “You could give it to me,” suggested the Dog, without moving her gaze from the hand that held the cake.

  “I don’t think so,” said Sam, taking a bite and making an effort to chew. Then he held out the uneaten half and said, with his mouth full, “But I’ll trade you this half for a close look at your collar.”

  Before he finished speaking, the Dog lunged forward, gulped the cake, and put her chin on Sam’s thigh, her neck in easy reach.

  “Why do you want to look at the Dog’s collar?” asked Lirael.

  “It has Charter marks I’ve never seen,” replied Sam, reaching down to touch it. It looked like leather with Charter marks set upon it. But as his fingers met the surface, Sam realized it wasn’t leather at all. It was nothing but Charter marks, a great sea of marks, stretching into forever. He felt as if he could push his whole hand into the collar, or dive in himself. And within that great pool of magic, there were very few Charter marks that he actually knew.

  Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away, and then, on a whim, scratched the Dog’s head between the ears. She felt exactly as a normal dog should, just as Mogget felt like a cat. But both were intensely magical beings. Only Mogget’s collar was a binding-spell of great force, and the Dog’s collar was something very different, almost like a part of the Charter itself. It had something of the same feel as a Charter Stone.

  “Excellent,” sighed the Dog, responding to the scratching. “But do my back as well, please.”

  Sam complied, and the Dog stretched out under his fingers, luxuriating in the treatment. Lirael watched, suddenly struck by the realization that she’d never before seen the Dog with another person. The hound had always disappeared when any other people were around.

  “Some of the Charter marks in your collar are familiar,” said Sam idly, as he scratched and watched the morning sun play across the water. It was going to be another very hot day, and he’d lost his hat. It must have come off when he fell down the steps of the mill’s landing stage.

  The Dog didn’t answer, merely wriggling to direct Sam’s scratching hand farther down her back.

  “Only I can’t think where I’ve seen them,” continued Sam, pausing to concentrate. He didn’t know what the Charter marks were for, but he had seen them somewhere else. Not in a grimoire or a Charter Stone, but on some object or something solid. “Not in Mogget’s collar—those are quite different.”

  “You think too much,” growled the Dog, though not angrily. “Just keep scratching. You can do under my chin as well.”

  “You’re a very demanding Dog for a supposed servant of the Clayr,” said Sam. He looked at Lirael and added, “Is she always like this?”

  “Pardon?” asked Lirael, who had started thinking about The Book of the Dead again. It took an effort for her to pay attention to Sam, and for a moment she wished she were back in the Great Library, where no one spoke to her unless they had to.

  Sam repeated his question, and Lirael looked at the Dog. “She’s usually worse,” she replied. “If it’s not food she’s after, it’s scratching. She’s incorrigible.”

  “That’s why I’m the Disreputable Dog,” said the Dog smugly, wagging her tail. “Not just the Dog. But you’d better stop scratching now, Prince Sameth.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can smell people,” replied the Dog, forcing herself up. “Beyond the next bend.”

  Sam and Lirael looked, but couldn’t see any sign of habitation or another vessel on the river. The Ratterlin had turned into a wide bend, and the riverbanks were rising into high bluffs of pinkish stone, obscuring the view ahead.

  “I can hear roaring, too,” added the Dog, who was now perched on the bow, her ears erect and quivering.

  “Like rapids?” asked Lirael nervously. She trusted Finder, but didn’t fancy shooting any waterfalls in her—or in any boat, for that matter.

  Sam stood up next to her, keeping one hand on the boom for balance, and tried to see ahead. But whatever was there lay beyond the bend. He took another look at the riverbanks, noting that they’d risen up to become real cliffs, and that the river was getting narrower, and was perhaps only a few hundred yards wide ahead.

  “It’s okay,” he said, and then, seeing her puzzlement at the Ancelstierran expression, he added, “I mean it’s all right. We’re coming to the High Bridge Gorge. The river gets a lot narrower, and faster, but not so bad that boats can’t get through. And the river is lower than it should be at this time of year, so I bet it won’t be too fast.”

  “Oh, High Bridge,” said Lirael, with considerable relief. She’d read about High Bridge, and had even seen a hand-colored etching of it. “We actually sail under the town, don’t we?”

  Sam nodded, thinking. He’d been to the town of High Bridge only once, over a decade ago, with his parents. They’d reached it overland, not on the Ratterlin, but he did remember Touchstone pointing out the guardboats that patrolled upstream of the town, and in the pool beyond High Bridge, where the river widened again. They not only kept at least that part of the Ratterlin free of river pirates but also exacted tolls from traders. Ellimere had probably already given the river-guards orders to “escort” him ashore and return him to Belisaere.

  Which would be one way of reaching safety, he thought, and it would make Ellimere responsible for whatever happened next. But he would have to face up to his fight with the constables, and it would mean a delay in any attempt to rescue Nick. And he had no doubt Lirael would choose to go on without him.

  “We do, don’t we?” repeated Lirael. “Sail under it?”

  “What?” asked Sam, who was still wondering what would be the best thing for him to do. “Yes . . . yes, we do. Um, I’d better lie down under a blanket or something before we’re in sight of the town.”

  “Why?” asked Lirael and the Dog at the same time.

  “Because he’s a truant Prince,” yawned Mogget, walking up and stretching on his back paws to look ahead. “He ran away, and his sister wants him back for the Belisaere Festival, to play the Summer Fool or some such.”

  “The Bird of Dawning,” corrected Sam with embarrassment as he got down into the scuppers, ready to hide.

  “When you said you’d left Belisaere to look for Nicholas, I thought you meant you’d been sent by your parents!” exclaimed Lirael, unconsciously taking on the tone she used to scold the Dog. “The way I’ve been sent by the Clayr. You mean they don’t even know what you’re doing?”

  “Er . . . no,” replied Sam sheepishly. “Though Dad might have guessed that I’ve gone to meet Nick. If they know I’ve gone, that is. It depends where they are in Ancelstierre. But I’ll explain when we send messages. The only problem is that Ellimere has probably ordered all the Guard and the Constabulary to send me back to Belisaere if they can.”

  “Great,” said Lirael. “I was counting on your being useful if we did need to get help along the way. A royal Prince, I thought—”

  “Well, I could still be useful—” Sam began to say, but at that moment they rounded the bend, and the Dog let out a warning bark. Sure enough, a guardboat was moored to a large buoy mid river—a long, slim galley of thirty-two oars in addition to its square-rigged sail. As Finder appeared round the bend, a sailor cast off from the buoy, and others raised the red sail, the golden tower of the royal service gleaming upon it.

  Sam hunkered down still lower, pulling the blanket across his face. Something touched his cheek as he settled down, and he started, thinking it was a rat. Then he realized Mogget was slinking under the blanket, too.

  “No sense in their wondering why an aristocratic cat would share deck space with a mangy dog,” whispered Mogget, close to Sam’s ear under the stifling blanket. “I wonder if they’ll do that old trick city guards do with hay wagons, when they suspect smuggling.”

  “What’s that?” Sam whispered back, though he had the feeling he didn’t want to know.

  “They stick everything with spears to make sure there’s nothing—or no one—hidden there,”
said Mogget absently. “Mind if I move under your arm?”

  “They won’t do that,” said Sam, firmly. “They’ll see this is one of the Clayr’s boats.”

  “Will they? They might—but Lirael doesn’t look like a Clayr, does she? You yourself suspected her of stealing this boat.”

  “Quiet down there,” woofed the Dog, close by Sam’s other ear. Then he felt her bulk settle in at his side—on top of the blanket. It moved again after that, as Lirael tugged on it so it looked like covered baggage rather than a body.

  Nothing happened for at least ten minutes. Mogget seemed to go back to sleep, and the Dog rested more of her weight against Sam’s side. Sam found that while all he could see was the underside of the blanket, he could hear all sorts of sounds he hadn’t noticed before: the creak of the clinker-built hull, the splash of the bow wave, the faint hum of the rigging, and the clatter of the boom as they turned into the wind and stopped.

  Then he heard another sound—the heavy splash of many oars moving in unison, and a voice calling the time. “With a will, and a way, that’s a stroke and a lay, with a will, and way . . . oars up and in!”

  There came a shout, so loud and close it almost made Sam flinch.

  “What vessel, and where are you bound?”

  “The Clayr’s boat Finder,” Lirael said, but her voice was lost in the rush of the river. She forced herself to shout, surprised by the strength of her own voice. “The Clayr’s boat Finder. Bound for Qyrre.”

  “Oh, aye, I know Finder,” replied the voice, less formal now. “And she obviously knows your hand, Mistress—so you may pass. Will you be stopping to climb up to town?”

  “No,” said Lirael. “I travel on urgent business for the Clayr.”

  “No doubt, no doubt,” replied the guardboat commander, nodding at Lirael across the forty feet of water that separated the two vessels. “There’s trouble brewing, for sure. You’d best beware of the riverbanks, for there have been reports of Dead creatures. Just like the old days, before the return of the King.”

  “I’ll be careful,” shouted Lirael. “Thank you for the warning, Captain. May I go on now?”

  “Pass, friend,” shouted the guard, waving his hand. At that motion, the oars dropped in again, the men straining at their benches. The steerswoman put the rudder over, and the guardboat drove hard away, bow slicing through the current. Lirael saw something metallic glisten under the water as the galley rose up, and she realized it was a long steel ram. The guardboat clearly had the means to sink any craft that didn’t stop at its hail.

  As they passed, one of the guards looked at Lirael strangely, and she saw his hand creeping to the string of his bow. But none of the others so much as looked at her, and after a moment, the strange guard turned away, leaving Lirael with a feeling of unease. For a moment, she felt she had smelled the metallic tang of Free Magic. She looked at the Dog, and saw that she was staring back at the same guard, all the hair on her back on end.

  Sam listened to the steady swish of the oars as the galley drew away, and the receding voice of the cantor. “Are they gone?”

  “Yes,” said Lirael slowly. “But you’d better stay hidden. They’re still in sight, and we’re coming up to High Bridge now. And there was something not quite right about one of them. I caught the hint of Free Magic, as if it might not have been a man at all.”

  “It can’t have been Free Magic,” said Sam. “The river is flowing too strongly.”

  “Unlike the Dead, not all things of Free Magic turn back from running water,” said Mogget. “Only those with common sense.”

  “The cat speaks truly,” added the Disreputable Dog. “Running water is no bar to those of the Third Kindred, or anything infused with the essence of the Nine. I would not expect such things here, but I did smell something of that ilk aboard the guardboat, Prince Sameth. Something that had only the semblance of a man. Fortunately, it did not dare reveal its presence among so many. But we must be on our guard.”

  Sam sighed and fought back the temptation to peel the blanket aside just a little bit. It was very hard to lie in darkness going into possible danger. And he’d never seen High Bridge from the water, and it was supposed to be one of the most spectacular sights in the Kingdom.

  Lirael certainly thought so. Despite the increasing current, she was content to let Finder steer, choosing to gape, instead.

  High Bridge had originally been an enormous natural bridge of stone, resting upon the cliffs of the gorge, with the Ratterlin rushing under it four hundred forty feet below. Over the centuries, the natural grandeur of the bridge had been augmented by the human buildings upon it. The first of the buildings constructed there was a castle, built to take advantage of the protection offered by so much deep running water beneath it. No Dead creatures could come against its walls, for they must also pass above the river’s swift waters.

  This had proved to be an enormous attraction during the years of the Interregnum, when the great majority of Charter Stones in the Kingdom were broken and the villages that depended upon them for safety destroyed, leaving the Dead and those in league with them free to do as they chose. Within a few years, the original castle had been surrounded by houses, inns, warehouses, windmills, forges, manufactories, stables, taverns, and all manner of other buildings. Many were actually dug down into the bridge itself, for the stone was several hundred feet thick. The bridge was more than a mile broad, too, though not very long, the distance between the eastern and western cliffs once being famously covered in a single bowshot by the archer Aylward Blackhair.

  Lirael was staring up at this strange metropolis when she heard a woman’s shout, seemingly from the figurehead at the front of the boat. At the same time Finder’s tiller shot out of her hand, pushing hard over to the left. Instantly, the boom swung violently across and the boat heeled over to the right, her starboard quarter almost in the river, spray and water foaming in across the side.

  Sam found himself piled up against the starboard rail. Somehow both Mogget and the Dog had ended up on top of him, along with what felt like everything else. And water was pouring in on him in bucketloads.

  Sam thrust his hands out of the blanket and clawed along the side of the boat, reaching out for the rail. But his hands went straight into rushing water, and Sam realized that Finder was heeled over so far she must be about to capsize. Desperately he struggled to free himself of Mogget, Dog, baggage, and blanket, at the same time as he shouted, “Lirael! Lirael! What’s happening?”

  Chapter Forty

  Under the Bridge

  Lirael was too busy pulling herself back into the boat to answer. The boom had caught her on the shoulder, knocking her overboard before she even knew what was happening. Fortunately, she’d managed to grab the rail and hang on, looking up fearfully as Finder’s hull towered above her, so far over it seemed certain the boat would capsize—with Lirael underneath.

  Then, as quickly as she’d heeled over, Finder righted herself, the sudden lurch helping Lirael fling herself back in, to end up in a terrible tangle of blanket, Sam, Dog, Mogget, lots of odds and ends, and sloshing water.

  At the same time, Finder passed under High Bridge, moving out of sunlight into the strange, cool twilight, as the Ratterlin streamed into the vast tunnel made by the bridge of stone high overhead.

  “What happened?” spluttered Sam when he finally got free of the wet blanket. Lirael was already by the tiller, completely drenched, her hand gripped around something projecting from the stern.

  “I thought Finder had gone mad,” said Lirael. “Till I saw this.”

  Sam shuffled back, cursing the blanket that was still tangled around his legs. It wasn’t exactly dark under High Bridge, because light did come in from either end, but it was a strange light, like sun slowly breaking through fog, soft and diffused by the water. The Dog rushed over to look too, but Mogget sniffed and padded to the bow, to begin the long process of licking himself dry.

  The Dog saw what Lirael held before Sam did, and growled.
There was a splintered hole through the port side of the stern, under the gunwale, where Lirael had been sitting before Finder had knocked her over with the boom. In her hand Lirael held the crossbow bolt that had made the hole. Its shaft was painted white, and it was fletched with raven feathers.

  “It must have just missed you!” exclaimed Sam, as he put three of his fingers through the hole.

  “Only thanks to Finder,” said Lirael, stroking the tiller gently. “Look at what it did to my poor boat.”

  “It would have gone straight through you, even if you’d had armor on,” said Sam grimly. “That’s a war bolt—not a hunting quarrel. And a very good shot. Too good to be natural.”

  “They’ll probably try again on the other side—or before,” said Lirael, looking up with alarm at the stone high above them. “Are there any openings above us, do you know?”

  “No idea,” said Sam. He followed her gaze and could see only unbroken yellow stone. But the bridge was several hundred feet above them, and the light bad. There could be any number of dark openings he just couldn’t see.

  “I can’t see any, Mistress,” growled the Dog as she craned her head back, too. “But we’ll be through in a few minutes, with this current.”

  “Do you know how to cast an arrow ward?” Sam asked Lirael. The current was indeed taking them along at a rapid rate, and the bright, sunlit arch that marked the other side of the bridge was getting closer all too quickly.

  “No,” said Lirael nervously. “I was probably supposed to. I skipped fighting arts quite a lot.”

  “All right,” Sam said. “Why don’t we swap places? I’ll sit here and steer, but with an arrow ward at my back. You get ready with your bow, prepared to shoot back. Mogget—you’ve got the best eyes—you spot for Lirael.”

  “The Horrible Hound, or whatever she calls herself, can do that,” declared Mogget, from the bow. “I’m going back to sleep.”