Clariel

by Garth Nix

  Halfway along a dim lane, her mother’s spell began to fade a little. This allowed Clariel to think, instead of simply running. She paused to look up at the stars to get her bearings. But there were no stars. The clouds hung dark and low, and a light rain was falling, less wet than the tears already on her face.

  There was a great hue and cry behind her, so she went the opposite way from the noise, running not quite so fast, saving her strength. There were people on the streets, as there always were, but few now, for it was full night. They parted before her, as soon as she was close enough to be seen in whatever light fell from house windows or street lanterns. No one wanted to get in the way of a bloodied, crazed-looking woman cradling an unsheathed dagger to herself as if it were a precious jewel.

  Eventually, the compulsion faded completely. Clariel came to her senses, or what passed for senses, given the hammerblow of her parents’ murder. She was shivering with shock, her hands ached, her feet were cut and bruised, her soft shoes in ribbons. She looked around wildly, seeing only the dark outlines of tall houses, relieved here and there by the glow of lamps and Charter lights. She was in a residential street, a good one, judging from the size of the houses near her, but she had no idea which one.

  Or where she should go. At least it was quiet. Wherever her pursuers were, they were not close. Perhaps she was no longer even pursued …

  Clariel looked around again, studying the skyline, the patterns of lights. Then she saw it, sticking up above the other houses: the darker, taller shadow of a tower. One of the towers of the old wall.

  Perhaps even Magister Kargrin’s tower. This could be … it looked like it was … the Street of the Cormorant … Somewhere she had run to unwittingly, her deeper self knowing where some hope of safety lay.

  The gold and a disguise, thought Clariel dully. Now I have to go, for there is nothing … no one left for me here.

  Nothing but death and trouble.

  Limping, she walked up the street, keeping to the shadows, crossing the road when a particularly well-lit house cast too bright a light out its many windows.

  Near Kargrin’s tower, she slowed, pushing the shock and grief away, forcing it deeper, till some other time. Kilp might well have Kargrin watched, she thought, as a known opponent. She might have to fight her way to the gate, and if it was at all possible, it would be best that Kilp not know where she was until she could be disguised and on her way again. Clariel had no idea how long a Charter Magic disguise would take to cast. Hours? She hoped it was quick, or there would be little chance for her to escape.

  Three houses up and across the street, she hid by the front door of a darkened house, and watched the gate of the tower. It was only when she tasted salt in her mouth that she realised it wasn’t just rain on her face. She was crying, the tears flowing for the father who, though he had disappointed her, she had always loved; and for her mother, whom she must presume to be dead.

  But she could not afford tears, not yet at any rate. Clariel wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and watched again. There was no movement on the street. All was quiet, and most of the nearer houses were dark. She could not wait longer, because any search would undoubtedly come here. Valannie knew everywhere she went, and doubtless she would have already told Kilp’s minions where to look.

  Clariel crossed the road at a run, went straight to the small portal in the gate and knocked on it as quietly as she dared. Even so, the knocks sounded very loud in the quiet, dark street. She gripped her dagger harder, ignoring the pain in her hand, tensing for a sudden attack from somewhere. An arrow, or a quarrel from one of the windows opposite, someone leaping out from that doorway –

  A head appeared suddenly through the door, thrust through the iron-studded timber. Clariel shrieked and jumped back, before she realised it was the Charter sending that had opened the door before. It looked at her, its eyes a bright concentration of Charter marks.

  ‘Kargrin,’ croaked Clariel. ‘I need to see Kargrin. Let me in. My name is Clariel. Please let me in!’

  The sending’s head withdrew. At the same time Clariel heard running footsteps on the street, hobnails sharp on the paving stones. She turned and saw half a dozen guards in Goldsmith livery approaching, long wooden staves in their hands rather than more deadly weapons.

  ‘Drop your dagger!’ commanded the leader.

  The sound of bolts being withdrawn came from within the tower. Clariel backed up against the door and hefted her dagger. The guards approached warily, staves at the ready.

  Clariel stamped backwards with her foot, hoping the door would budge. But it didn’t move.

  ‘Kargrin!’ she screamed, as loud as she could. But he didn’t answer, and no help came. She couldn’t fight six guards, not without help, and the berserk fury that might have made the difference felt far distant, banished by the shock of her parents’ death, or suppressed by the after-effects of Jaciel’s spell.

  The door groaned open. Clariel turned to duck through it, and in that instant, the guards struck. Several blows rained down on her back and shoulders, sending her sprawling across the threshold of the gate. She tried to crawl through, with the sending just standing there, doing nothing but holding the door open. She felt her legs grabbed as the guards dragged her back out. She twisted around and recognised Linel, who mouthed the word ‘sorry’ even as he was treading down hard on Clariel’s hand to make her drop the dagger, pain stabbing through her half-healed wound.

  Too much pain, and too much endured in too short a space of time. Clariel made one last, violent attempt to rise up and spring through the door, but she was held fast. Her arms were brought behind her back and roped together before she was picked up and carried away from her potential refuge, limp and no longer struggling. For a moment she gazed up at the night sky, crowded in by the buildings on the street. The sky seemed darker than it should, till she realised she was swimming in and out of consciousness, and then the darkness was complete.

  Magister Kargrin, flying above in the shape of a beggar owl, granted by wearing a Charter skin, saw the commotion on his street from afar, but despite the powerful beating of his grey wings, he could not arrive in time to tip the balance in Clariel’s favour. For a moment he did consider a rescue, but there were not only the six guards who had taken Clariel, but another dozen coming up the street. Some were Charter Mages, and there would not be time to argue rights and wrongs, so any aggressive magic he used would be countered or negated by these others, as was the nature of Charter Magic. And he could not physically fight more than four or five guards, on a good day, with luck.

  Luck had not been noticeably with him so far that night. He had been spying on the Governor’s House, watching the Trained Bands muster, for he knew the soldiers were not being gathered by Kilp to counter a riot in the Flat, since it and all other parts of the city were quiet. He’d seen Clariel come bursting out of the gate, but had lost her in the alleys, and then had lost precious time going to her home, not guessing she would go to his own tower.

  He was wondering whether he should follow the guards taking Clariel back to the Governor’s House, and attempt a rescue there, or do something else, when he caught the sound of a distant horn blast.

  The great baritone boom of the Charter-Magicked horn that hung on chains atop the gatehouse of the Palace.

  The Palace was under attack.

  Kargrin let out a screech that was the owl equivalent of violent swearing, and swooped up to catch the wind that would speed him to the northwest, to defend the King. He took one last, yellow-eyed look at Clariel down below, a forlorn figure carried on the shoulders of the guards like a casualty of battle.

  They would not harm her, he thought. Kilp needed Clariel, or her mother. Surely, they would not harm her …

  chapter eighteen

  unwanted climbing practice

  Clariel came back to consciousness in slow starts, like a fish rising to a baited hook with slow circling and tiny nibbles, till at last it struck and she, just like that hooked fish,
was hauled out of comforting dimness and into harsh light.

  She was on a low truckle-bed. Her hands were freshly bandaged, as were her feet, and she had on only the innermost of her long silk tunics, three layers of gold and white removed.

  The bed was in a small, circular room. Clariel sat up and looked about and corrected that observation. It was not a room, as such. It was either the base of a small, round tower, or a circular pit. The walls stretched up thirty feet, and ended in a slanted glass ceiling, which was currently admitting a lot of light, so the sun must be nearly directly overhead. Which meant it was late morning, or early afternoon, presumably the day after –

  ‘The day after my parents were murdered,’ whispered Clariel. But she could not continue with that thought, or dwell on it, because if she did she thought she might never pull herself together again. Instead, Clariel slid out of the bed and stood up to take stock of her limited surroundings. There was the bed, a simple chest at its foot, and a small table that from the characteristic scorch marks on its top had come from a goldsmith’s forge. There was an earthenware pitcher on the table, with a tin goblet next to it, and a lidded chamber pot under the table.

  She couldn’t see any entrance. There was no door or hatch, in wall or floor.

  All in all, it was clear she was in a prison. A moderately comfortable prison, with sunshine above, a bed and everything to meet modest needs. But nevertheless a prison.

  It was even shaped a little like a bottle, Clariel thought, remembering Aziminil and her plea not to be caught. The lower part of a bottle. Narrow and tall, with the walls pressing in and the air still and stagnant …

  A shadow crossed the floor, and Clariel looked up. Someone was looking down through the glass ceiling high above, but the glass was cloudy and she could not make out who it was, till the central pane was lifted up by unseen hands, and there was Kilp staring down at her with his horrible eyes.

  ‘Lady Clariel.’

  She didn’t answer, just stared back at him. He was leaning over and partially into the window, so there was some sort of walkway up there, suggesting she might be in the base of a tower and not a pit. Though she supposed it still could be a pit, with a raised upper portion. Like a well. It could be a well. A very wide one. Which might mean it extended much deeper below, and that could be useful …

  ‘Lady Clariel,’ Kilp said again. ‘May I say that I regret the circumstances that have led you here. They were not of my choosing.’

  Clariel didn’t answer. She looked away from him, up and along the brickwork. The bricks were small and very tightly packed, with hard mortar in between. But perhaps if she could pick that mortar out, to make toe- and fingerholds, then she could climb to the skylight window above. If she had something hard she could turn into a mortar-picking tool …

  ‘Regrettable things have happened,’ continued Kilp. ‘But let me assure that your mother is receiving the best care, a healer –’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Clariel, goaded into talking to him. ‘Mother’s dead.’

  ‘No, she is badly wounded, I grant you, but the healer says she will live,’ said Kilp. ‘And your father’s death was an accident. If only we could have all just talked about it!’

  ‘Talked about consorting with Free Magic creatures,’ snapped Clariel. ‘Against every law of the Kingdom and all common sense!’

  ‘In many ways I am now the law of the Kingdom,’ said Kilp. ‘And this so-called Free Magic, how does it differ from Charter Magic really? I employ Charter Mages. Why should I not employ a Free Magic entity?’

  ‘Because they are inimical to mortal life,’ said Clariel.

  ‘That is a story we are often told,’ replied Kilp easily. ‘But Az, as we called it, never harmed anyone, and it did much useful work.’

  ‘And how did you pay her … pay it?’ asked Clariel. ‘Blood?’

  ‘No, no. Some gold, some gems, nothing much different than any other in my employ.’

  ‘You’re lying!’ screamed Clariel. ‘Lying about everything!’

  ‘No,’ said Kilp. ‘I speak the truth. I deal with the world as it is, not as some would wish it to be. I would like to make an arrangement with you, Clariel. One of benefit to both of us, as all good trades are. But we cannot talk about it while you are in this aggressive frame of mind. I will come back tomorrow. And to help you concentrate your thoughts, I think we’d best give you more shade down there.’

  He snapped his fingers. Guards moved up next to him, lifting across large sections of planks. Shutters, Clariel saw with dread, shutters that were quickly fixed across two of the panes so that only the central, open window still admitted any sunlight.

  ‘I understand you are not the Mage your mother is,’ said Kilp. ‘Even so, you should know that Charter Magic will not help you escape this particular place. It was made so, long ago, and then forgotten. Till Az showed us. You see again how useful the creature could be? Think hard about being more conciliatory, young Clariel. As I said, we can help each other. Deal with what is, not dreams and fancies.’

  He stepped back, and the last shutter was fixed in place, plunging the deep chamber into total darkness.

  Clariel felt her way slowly back to the bed and sat on it.

  Could her mother still be alive? Kilp had sounded convincing, but she felt sure he always did. Surely, there was no way Jaciel could have survived, charging towards so many enemies, so many weapons raised and ready. They would have had no choice but to fight against her, for she would have given them no quarter … but Clariel had not felt her die, not as she had felt her father’s death. Perhaps she had been too far away …

  But what if Jaciel was alive?

  Clariel rested her head in her hands, massaging her temples, as if she could somehow force the memories of the night before out of her mind, make it as if it hadn’t happened.

  But it had happened, and she was sure both her parents were dead. Even if Jaciel had miraculously survived, that didn’t matter now, Clariel decided. She was never going to enter any arrangement with Kilp, no matter what. The only thing she would do with Kilp was hunt him down and kill him, and Aronzo too, as if they were crazed stoats that had to be got rid of before they killed again.

  That meant she had to escape, and soon.

  To test Kilp’s last comment, Clariel tried to conjure a Charter light. But when she sketched the first mark in the air and tried to draw it out of the Charter, she couldn’t make it appear. She could feel the Charter, could sense the flow of it, but she was somehow cut off, as if it could only be observed and not interacted with at all. At the same time, she became aware there were Charter marks deeply woven into the bricks, thousands and thousands of them, all joined together in some great and terrible spell. This place had been made by Charter Mages to contain one of their own … A nasty thought. But she supposed Charter Mages must go crazy from time to time, or otherwise need to be confined. Though it was surprising this prison wasn’t part of the Palace.

  So Charter Magic was out as an escape method, though to be honest with herself Clariel had not really considered that a likely aid in any case. She just didn’t have the knowledge or skill to cast anything very powerful.

  She would have to escape by more mundane means. Up to the skylight and out through the windows and the shutters. Or down, hoping to find a tunnel, a sewer or something that this well connected up with. If it was a well, and if there was a way to get through the floor.

  Clariel stamped her feet, hoping that the groan and creak of timbers would answer. But there was the dull, leaden sound of stone instead, and she hurt her feet testing it. To make sure, she got up and slowly stomped around, feeling her way with her outstretched hands. With every stomp she hoped to hear an echo or some give in the floor, indicating a trapdoor under a thin veneer of stone, or a timbered portion in one corner or something.

  There was no such echo. Even checking under the bed confirmed that the floor was stone, and solid stone at that. Her fingers told her there were four great slabs, each
covering a quarter of the room, and they were butted up so close together she couldn’t even get a fingernail between them. Each one would be far too heavy to lift or move anyway, even if she could find some purchase.

  That left climbing. Clariel sat down again and thought about a tool for picking mortar. It would need to be metal, and there was nothing metal in the chamber. She crawled over to the chamber pot to confirm that it was a soft terracotta, as was its lid and the water jug. So breaking them wouldn’t even provide a useful shard.

  The bed turned out to be pegged together. Clariel felt over every part of it, without finding any nails, screws or bolts.

  She went over to the wall and felt the bricks and tested various lines of mortar. None were crumbly enough to pick out with just fingers. A metal tool was absolutely necessary. Even then, the bricks were so close together that if she did somehow manage to pry out the mortar, the toe- and fingerholds would be thin, and extremely precarious. It was thirty feet to the top, and a fall from even halfway might be fatal …

  Clariel was thinking about that and regretting the absence of anything even vaguely useful when she remembered her silk tunic was fastened at the back of the neck with a metal button. Quickly, she felt for it, fearing it might have been torn off. The buttons looked gold, but they were only gilded, iron coated with a thin layer of gold. Jaciel did not approve of using soft gold for such utilitarian purposes as hidden buttons.

  Or rather, she hadn’t approved … Clariel fought against the hope that her mother was alive. She was certain Kilp had told her this to weaken her, and she would not be drawn into believing it.

  Jaciel and Harven were dead, and she was alone.

  Clariel tore the button from her tunic. She almost started to scratch at the mortar in a brick in front of her, but a moment’s thought sent her over to the bed, in her enthusiasm going too quickly and running into it, barking her shins. Hopping and cursing, she levered the bed up on its end and pushed it against the wall. Then after removing the water jug and chamber pot, she slid the table against the vertical bed to hold it in place, and clambered up. It was difficult to judge how precarious it all was without being able to see, but it felt solid enough.