Lirael

by Garth Nix

  “But what if the ward doesn’t work?” protested Lirael. “You’re already wounded—”

  “It’ll work,” said Sam, moving up, so Lirael had little choice but to get out of the way. “I used to practice with the Guard every day. Only a spelled arrow or bolt can get through.”

  “But it might be spelled,” said Lirael, quickly re-stringing her bow with a dry string from a waxed packet. The black and white bolt had not carried any scent of magic, but that did not mean the next would be unspelled.

  “It still has to be stronger than the ward,” said Sam confidently—much more confidently than he actually felt. He had cast arrow wards many times, but never in an actual fight. Touchstone had taught him the spell when Sam was only six years old, and the arrows fired to test it were mere toys with cushioned heads made from the rags of old pajamas. Later, he had graduated to blunted arrows. He had never been tested against a war bolt that could punch through an inch of plate steel.

  Sam sat by the tiller and turned to face the stern. Then he began to reach for the Charter marks he needed. He usually used his sword to trace the ward in the air, but he had been taught to use only his hands if need be, and that worked just as well.

  Lirael saw his hands and fingers move swiftly and surely, Charter marks beginning to glow in the air. They hung there, shining, just beyond the arc his fingertips were describing. Whatever else he might be, she thought, Sam was a very powerful Charter Mage. And he might be afraid of Death and the Dead, but he wasn’t a coward. She wouldn’t want to be sitting there with only a spell between her and the razored edges of a crossbow bolt traveling with killing speed. She shivered. If it were not for Finder, she would probably already be dead, or bleeding to death in the scuppers.

  Lirael’s stomach muscles tightened at that thought, and she paid careful attention to nocking her arrow. Whoever the hidden killer was, Lirael would try her best to make sure he didn’t get more than one shot.

  Sam finished describing the full circle of the arrow ward but remained crouched at the stern. His hands continued to move, drawing Charter marks that fled his fingers to join the glowing circle above and behind him.

  “Have to keep it going,” he said, panting. “Bit of a drawback. Get ready! We’ll be out in a sec—”

  They suddenly burst out into sunshine, and Sam instinctively shrank to present a smaller target.

  Lirael, kneeling by the mast and looking up, was momentarily blinded. In that second, the assassin fired. The bolt flew true. Lirael screamed a warning, but the sound was still in her throat when the black-feathered quarrel hit the arrow ward—and vanished.

  “Quick!” gasped Sam, the strain of maintaining the spell showing in his face and straining chest.

  Lirael was already searching for the crossbowman. But there were many windows and openings up there, either in the stone of the Bridge itself or in the buildings that were built upon it. And there were people all over the place, too, in windows, on balconies, leaning over railings, swinging on platforms roped to plaster walls. . . . She couldn’t even begin to find the shooter.

  Then the Dog moved up next to Lirael, raised her head—and howled. It was an eerie, high tone that seemed to echo across the water, up the sides of the river gorge, and everywhere across the town itself. It sounded as if scores of wolves had suddenly appeared on the river, in the town, and all around.

  Everywhere, people stopped moving and stared. Except in one window, about halfway up. Lirael saw someone there suddenly fling the shutters wide open, one hand still clutching a crossbow.

  She drew and shot as he stood there, but her arrow was caught by an errant breeze and went wide, striking the wall above his head. As Lirael nocked another arrow, the assassin stood up in the window frame, precariously balanced on the sill.

  The Dog drew breath and howled again. The assassin dropped his crossbow so he could jam his fingers in his ears. But even then he couldn’t block out the terrible sound, and his legs moved of their own accord, stepping out into space. Desperately, he tried to hurl his upper body backwards into the room, but he seemed to have no control at all below the waist. A moment later, he fell, following the crossbow down four hundred feet into the water. He kept his fingers in his ears all the way down, and his legs kept moving even though there was nothing to tread but air.

  The Dog stopped howling as the assassin’s body hit the water, and both Sam and Lirael flinched as they felt him die. They watched the ripples spread till they met Finder’s wash and disappeared.

  “What did you do?” asked Lirael, carefully replacing her bow. She’d never seen or felt anyone actually die before. She had only attended Farewells, with the death made distant, all wrapped up with ceremony and tradition.

  “I made him walk,” growled the Dog, sitting back on her haunches, a ridge of hair along her back stiff and angry. “He would have killed you if he could, Mistress.”

  Lirael nodded and gave the Dog a quick hug. Sam watched them warily. That howl was pure Free Magic, with no Charter Magic in it at all. The Dog seemed friendly and appeared to be devoted to Lirael, but he could not forget how dangerous she was. There was also something about the howl that reminded him of something, some magic he had experienced that he couldn’t quite place.

  At least Mogget’s case was straightforward. He was a Free Magic creature, bound and safe while he wore the collar. The Dog appeared to be a free-willed blend of the two magics, which was completely beyond anything Sam had ever heard about. Not for the first time, he wished that his mother were here. Sabriel would know what the Dog was, he felt sure.

  “We’d better swap places again,” said Lirael urgently. “There’s another guardboat ahead.”

  Sam quickly scrunched down, on the opposite side from the Dog, who looked at him and grinned, showing a very sharp, very white, and very large set of teeth. Sam forced himself to smile back, remembering the advice he’d been given about dogs when he was a boy. Never let them know you’re afraid. . . .

  “Ugh! There’s a lot of water here,” he complained as he lay down, squelching, and drew the sodden blanket towards him. “I should have bailed it out in the tunnel.”

  He was just about to draw the blanket over his face when he saw Mogget, still sunning and grooming himself on the bow.

  “Mogget!” he commanded. “You should hide, too.”

  Mogget looked pointedly at the water swishing around Sam’s legs and stuck out his small pink tongue.

  “Too wet for me,” he said. “Besides, the guardboat will stop us for sure. They will have been signaled from the town after this canine show-off’s demonstration of vocal talents—though hopefully no one will recognize what that actually was. So you might as well sit up.”

  Sam groaned and sloshed upright. “You might have told me before I lay down,” he said bitterly, picking up a tin cup and beginning to bail.

  “It would be best if we can get past without being stopped,” the Dog commented, sniffing the air. “There may be more enemies concealed aboard this guardboat, too.”

  “There’s more room to maneuver up ahead,” said Lirael. “But I don’t know if it’s enough to evade the guardboat.”

  The eastern side of the river was the main river-port for High Bridge. Twelve jetties of various lengths thrust out into the river, most of them cluttered with trading boats, whose masts made a forest of bare poles. Behind the jetties, there was a quay carved into the stone of the gorge, a long terrace cluttered with cargoes being readied to go aboard the boats or up to the town. Beyond the quay, there were several steep stairways that ran up the cliff-face to the town, in between the derrick cables that lifted up the multitude of boxes and chests, barrels and bales.

  But the western side of the river was open, save for a few trading boats ahead of them downstream, and the one guardboat, which was already slipping its mooring. If they could get past the guardboat and keep ahead, there was nothing to stop them.

  “They’ve got at least twenty archers on that boat,” said Sam doubtfull
y. “Do you think we can just sail past?”

  “I suppose it depends how many—if any—of them are agents of the Enemy,” said Lirael as she hauled the mainsheet tighter, trimming the sail for more speed. “If they’re real guards, they won’t shoot at a royal Prince and a Daughter of the Clayr. Will they?”

  “I suppose it’s worth a try,” muttered Sam, who couldn’t think of an alternative plan. If the guards were real guards, the worst that would happen was that he would be returned to Belisaere. If they weren’t, it would be best to stay as far away as possible. “What if the wind drops?”

  “We’ll whistle one up,” said Lirael. “Are you much of a weather-worker?”

  “Not by my mother’s standards,” replied Sam. Weather magic was mostly performed with whistled Charter marks, and he was no great whistler. “But I can probably raise a wind.”

  “This is not a brilliant plan, even by your mother’s standards,” commented Mogget, who was watching the guardboat raise its sail, obviously intent on an intercept. “Lirael doesn’t look like a Daughter of the Clayr. Sameth looks like a scarecrow, not a royal Prince. And the commander of this guardboat may not recognize Finder. So even if they are all real guards, they probably will just feather us with arrows if we try to sail past. Personally, I don’t want to be made into a pincushion.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” said Sam slowly. “If even two or three of them belong to the Enemy, they will attack. If we can conjure up enough of a wind, we might be able to stay out of bowshot anyway.”

  “Fine!” muttered Mogget. “Wet, cold, and full of holes. Another fun day on the river.”

  Lirael and Sam looked at each other. Lirael took a deep breath. Charter marks flowered in her mind, and she let them flow into her lungs and throat, circling there. Then she whistled, and the pure notes leapt up into the sky.

  Answering the whistle, the river behind them darkened. Ripples and white peaks sprang up across the water and streaked across towards Finder and her waiting sail.

  A few seconds later, the wind hit. The boat heeled over and picked up speed, the rigging adding its own whistle at the sudden pressure. Mogget hissed his lack of appreciation and hastily sprang back from the bow as spray flew over where he’d been a moment before.

  Still Lirael whistled, and Sam joined in, their combined weather spell weaving the wind behind Finder’s quarter, at the same time stripping it away from the guardboat, whose sail lay limp and airless.

  But the guardboat had oars, and expert rowers. The cantor sped his call, and the oars dipped in faster rhythm as the galley rushed forward to intercept Finder, water suddenly foam-ing around its bow, the bright metal of the ram gleaming in the sun.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Free Magic and the Flesh of Swine

  “They’ll be within bowshot in a few minutes,” warned Mogget gloomily, gauging with a jaundiced eye the distance to the galley, and then the proximity of the western shore. “I suppose we’ll end up having to swim for our miserable lives.”

  Lirael and Sam exchanged glances of concern, reluctant to agree aloud with the cat. Despite their spell-woven wind and their current scudding run across the water, the galley was still too fast. They were as close as they dared to the shore, and were rapidly running out of river to maneuver in.

  “I guess we’d better heave to and risk the presence of enemies among the guards,” said Sam, who was acutely aware that he had already injured two constables. “I don’t want any of us to get shot because they think we’re smugglers or something, and I definitely don’t want to hurt any guards. Once they find out I am who I am, I’ll order them to let you go. And who knows? I might be lucky. Maybe Ellimere hasn’t ordered my arrest after all.”

  “I don’t know—” Lirael started to say, her voice anxious. There was still a slight chance they might get past. But she’d hardly said a word when the Dog barked in interruption.

  “No! There are at least three or four Free Magic creatures aboard that boat! We mustn’t stop!”

  “Smells all right to me,” said Mogget, shuddering as more spray spumed in over the bow. “But then I don’t have your famous nose. However, as I can see a half dozen archers getting ready to shoot, perhaps you actually can smell something.”

  Sam saw that Mogget was quite correct. The guardboat was angling to cross their path, but six archers were already formed up on the forward deck, arrows nocked. Obviously they intended to shoot first and make polite enquiries later.

  “Are the archers human?” asked Sam quickly.

  The Dog sniffed the air again before replying. “I cannot tell. I think most of them are. But the captain—the one with the plumed hat—has only the semblance of a man. It is a construct, made from Free Magic and the flesh of swine. That odor I cannot mistake.”

  “We have to show the human archers who they’re shooting at!” Sam exclaimed. “I should have brought a shield with the royal blazon or something. They’d never dare shoot at us then, even if they’re ordered to.”

  “Of course!” said Lirael, suddenly slapping herself on the forehead. “Here, take this!”

  “What!” shouted Sam, throwing himself back to clutch at the tiller as Lirael let go. “What do I do? I don’t know how to sail!”

  “Don’t worry, she steers herself,” Lirael shouted back as she crawled forward to the storage box in the forepeak. It was a matter of only twelve feet, but Lirael found it hard going, since Finder was heeled over at a sharp angle and the boat kept leaping up and then coming down with a bone-jarring smack every few yards.

  “Are you sure?” Sam shouted again. He could feel the pressure on the tiller, and he felt that only his white-knuckled grip was keeping them from veering sharply into the riverbank. Experimentally, he opened his fingers for a second, ready to grab hold again immediately. But nothing happened. Finder kept her course, the tiller barely moving. Sam sighed in relief, but his sigh became a choking cough as he saw a flight of arrows snap away from the guardboat—straight at him.

  “Too far yet,” said the Dog, casting a professional eye on the arrows’ flight, and sure enough, the arrows plunged into the water a good fifty yards away.

  “Not for long,” grumbled Mogget. He jumped yet again to try to find a drier spot. He seemed to have found it near the mast when a slight twitch of the tiller—without Sam’s cooperation—caught a small wave and neatly sloshed it in and over his back.

  “I hate you!” hissed Mogget in the general direction of the boat’s figurehead as the water drained away from his feet. “At least that rowboat looks dry. Why don’t we just let ourselves be captured? We’ve got only the Dog’s nose to say the captain is a construct.”

  “They’re shooting at us, Mogget!” said Sam, who wasn’t entirely sure whether Mogget was joking.

  “There are two other constructs on board besides the captain,” growled the Dog, whose nose was still vigorously sampling the air. She was getting bigger, Sam noticed, and fiercer-looking. Clearly she expected a fight, discounting whatever Lirael thought she was doing up at the bow.

  “Got it!” exclaimed Lirael, as another flight of arrows sped towards them. This time, they splashed into the river no more than two arms’ lengths away. Sam could probably have touched the closest one.

  “What?” shouted Sam. He simultaneously reached into the Charter to begin making an arrow ward. Not that it would be much use against six archers at once. Not when he wasn’t up to his full strength.

  Lirael held up a large square of black cloth and let it flap into the breeze, revealing a brilliant silver star shining in the middle of it. The wind almost tore it from her grasp, but she clutched it to her chest and began to crawl back to the mast.

  “Finder’s flag,” she shouted as she pulled out a halyard and started to unscrew the pin in a shackle so it could be put through an eyelet in the banner. “I’ll have it up in a minute.”

  “We don’t have a minute!” screamed Sam, who could see the archers about to loose again. “Just hold it out
!”

  Lirael ignored him. Quickly she fitted the shackles at each end, screwing in the pins with what looked like deliberate slowness to Sam. He was about to lunge forward and grab the damned flag when Lirael suddenly let it go and pulled on the halyard—as five more arrows leapt towards them from the guardboat.

  Finder reacted first, nudging the tiller over to turn the bow into the wind. Instantly, she lost speed, the sail flapping and clapping like maniacal applause. Sam ducked as she did it, and the tiller smacked him in the jaw, hard enough to make him think he’d been shot—at least for a moment. Then it swung back again, just missing him, as the boat returned to her original course.

  But those few seconds of lost speed had been vital, Sam realized, as the arrows that should have struck them plunged into the water only a few feet ahead.

  Then the great silver star of the Clayr billowed out from the mast, shining in the sun. Now there could be no doubt about whose boat this was, for the flag was not just a thing of cloth but, like Finder herself, was imbued with Charter Magic. Even in the darkest night, the starry banner of the Clayr would shine. In the bright day, it was almost blinding in its brilliance.

  “They’ve stopped rowing,” announced the Dog cheerily, as the guardboat suddenly lost way in a confusing pick-up-sticks jumble of oars. Sam relaxed and let the beginnings of the arrow ward fade away, so he could start checking whether he’d lost any teeth.

  “But two archers are still going to shoot,” the Dog continued, making Sam groan and hurriedly try to reach for the Charter marks he’d just let go.

  “Yes . . . no . . . the other four are overpowering them. The captain is shouting . . . it has revealed itself!”

  Sam and Lirael looked back at the guardboat. It was a mess of struggling figures, accompanied by shouting, screaming, and the clash of weapons. In the middle of it, a column of white fire suddenly appeared, with a whoosh loud enough to make the Dog’s ears crinkle back and to make the others flinch. The column roared up twelve feet or more, then slid sideways and arced over the side.