Clariel

by Garth Nix

  Clariel climbed on the table and then pulled herself up to crouch on the bedhead, now a kind of shelf seven feet up the wall. It shook a little but the table seemed to be holding it firm, so Clariel stood up.

  With that head start, she began to scrape away at the mortar around a brick at waist-height. This would be her first toehold, she thought, and she would have to make fingerholds as high as she could reach. It would get much, much more difficult after that, because she would have to hold on and scrape one-handed, making small advances up the wall.

  Even if she did get to the top, she might not be able to open the shutters, or the windows for that matter. But that was another problem, to be surmounted when she made the climb.

  It was likely she would fall, she knew, but Clariel almost welcomed that. Better to die trying than to just lie in the dark, remembering what had happened over and over again.

  chapter nineteen

  a mouthful of earth

  Clariel did fall. Twice. Both times she landed on the table, which was a small blessing compared with hitting the floor, though in the second fall she also struck one of the stumpy legs of the bed on the way down.

  After the second fall, Clariel didn’t have the strength to start climbing again. Nursing her bruises, she dragged the table slowly back into place and tipped the bed back down. Sitting on it, she drank some water and dabbed a little on a strip of cloth torn from a bed sheet to wash her bloodied fingertips and toes. Then she used the chamber pot and laid down, the precious metal button under her pillow.

  She didn’t mean to go to sleep, and would have thought it impossible, as her mind still grappled with the enormity of what had happened, with her parents’ deaths. But sleep did come, almost as soon as her head went on the pillow.

  It was a restless sleep. Clariel woke several times, each time in panic, raised from a dream of death, her heart pounding with terror. It was made no better by waking in complete darkness. Each time, she calmed herself, following the breathing and mental exercises outlined in The Fury Within.

  When she finally awoke properly, there had been no change in the darkness. Clariel had no idea how much time had passed, save that she needed to drink again and use the chamber pot and that she was hungry, though it was the kind of nervous hunger that says your body needs to be fed even though you are too upset to eat.

  She washed her fingers and toes once more. They felt sore, but she couldn’t really tell how badly bruised or cut they were. There were scabs and extra sore places, but no free-flowing blood. Even so, she didn’t think she could try climbing and mortar-scraping for a while.

  Clariel was thinking about that when there was thud on the shutters high above, followed by a sudden, narrow shaft of sunlight. She cried out as much from relief as from the sudden pain in her eyes, but stopped herself from leaping up and showing too much gratitude for the light. Deep inside, she knew that if this continued for too many days, there would come a time when she would beg for any chance of fresh air and sunlight, even whatever little might come down to her prison from above.

  ‘Stay on the bed!’ ordered a voice from above. Clariel recognised it, not favourably, as Reyvin. Once her guard. But she obeyed, blinking as the other shutters were raised, the central window was opened and then a long, thin ladder of what appeared to be lashed-together bamboo was lowered down.

  The ladder was held at the top by Reyvin and another guard, but the person who started climbing down with a large basket on her back was too small to be a soldier. Just a young girl, perhaps nine or ten years old, dressed like a kitchen servant in a plain tunic and apron, with wooden clogs that were giving her some trouble on the ladder. She stopped halfway down and looked fearfully at Clariel.

  ‘You won’t kill me, will you, milady?’

  ‘No!’ protested Clariel. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘They said you might,’ said the girl, gesturing upwards with her head. ‘To try to get up the ladder. But there’s lots of them up there, milady, and I’m the only one in the family has a job now –’

  ‘You’re perfectly safe from me,’ said Clariel. ‘Look, I’ll sit cross-legged here on the bed. Are you bringing me food?’

  ‘Yes, milady,’ answered the girl, continuing her descent. ‘Simple fare, and new water. I’m to empty your chamber pot too, even though I’m not a night-worker. I’m tenth in the Governor’s kitchen.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Clariel. She leaned back as if to yawn, and took a look at the wall to see if her handiwork of the night before was noticeable. It wasn’t too visible, not on the wall itself, but she was disturbed to see spots of fallen mortar on her blankets and sheets. In the daylight, the sprinkled mortar was quite a bright yellow, possibly even obvious enough to be seen from above.

  ‘Can’t say,’ said the girl cautiously. She shrugged the basket off her back and set it on the floor.

  ‘Sharrett!’ roared Reyvin from above. ‘Don’t talk to the prisoner!’

  Sharrett sighed and rolled her eyes. Clariel winked at her, and the girl smiled. She took a small loaf of plain bread and a round of soft cheese out of the basket and put them on the table, filled up the water jug from a bottle, and with her face screwed up and nostrils clamped as best she could, tied a string several times around pot and lid of the chamber pot to make sure it would stay shut in her basket and swapped it for a new one.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Clariel quietly. She was thinking about when she had been Sharrett’s age and much more carefree than this streetwise urchin. She had worshipped her father, and been both afraid and respectful of her mother, and the world had seemed an open, easy place. Even back then she had been drawn to the wild, and had spent many happy hours in Estwael’s parklands. In retrospect the age of nine or ten had been among the happiest times of her life.

  Sharrett finished sorting out the chamber-pot swap, and crouched down to settle the basket on her back before starting up the ladder. When she got to the top, she was helped up over the edge and then the guards pulled up the ladder. As they began to fix the shutters closed again, Clariel called out.

  ‘Hey! Can I have a candle and some friction lights?’

  ‘No!’ shouted Reyvin. ‘Orders!’

  The final shutter came down, and once again the prison was locked in darkness. Clariel shivered. With the dark, she felt the walls come closer, the air grow more still and dead. Worse still, she couldn’t imagine a way out. It felt like she had reached an ending in her life, that it had stopped with her parents’ death, and this was just a short continuation …

  ‘Enough!’ Clariel told herself. She got up and stretched, then carefully found her way to the bread and cheese and forced herself to eat and drink some water. Then she took a deep breath, stripped the bed of sheets and blanket – pausing to consider that it was surprisingly warm inside this prison, when it should be dank and cool – put the linen in one corner so it would be away from any falling mortar, moved water and chamber pot, dragged the table over, lifted the bed, took up her button and once again resumed the making of finger- and toeholds.

  Clariel did better this time, and several hours later made it to the top. There were beams there that supported the slanting roof, and she was able to hook a leg over one and pull herself up. She lay at a full stretch along the beam for a long time, her fingers completely numb and her muscles aching. Eventually, she forced herself to feel the window above her. Given that no one could expect a prisoner to climb up, she hoped it might not be locked, bolted or barred on the outside, and that the shutters above might be simply planks laid on top of the glass.

  Clariel pushed up. Shutter and window moved together, opening enough to admit a slight breeze, but no immediate light. She was puzzled for a moment, but as she peered through the gap she realised it was a little lighter outside. But it had to be early in the morning, likely just before dawn.

  Clariel held window and shutter open for some time, drinking in the breeze that came through. She also heard human noises carried by the wind, a yawn
or exhalation of breath, then a muttered comment, answered a moment later by someone else. Guards, she thought. Perhaps a dozen yards away, not right outside the window.

  Eventually Clariel slowly closed window and shutter. She lay on the beam and thought about what to do next. There was a good chance she could surprise whoever was directly outside, but she had heard at least two guards. She couldn’t fight two armed and armoured enemies, no matter how much she surprised them. But there was the faint possibility she might be able to sneak out in the night, if it was dark enough.

  Reluctantly, she concluded for the time being that she had to climb back down again to disguise the fact she could reach the top.

  If only I’d got here earlier in the night, she thought, feeling frustration and anxiety in equal measure.

  Clariel sighed and swung her legs over, feeling the wall with her toes. At least it would be easier to make the ascent the next time, since she’d dug out the finger- and toeholds. She could make them deeper and longer, perhaps even loosen some bricks enough to pull them out entirely, and a loose brick would be a weapon as well.

  She was about to start down when she heard an almighty crack below, like the sound of a flawed crucible breaking apart when it was quenched.

  ‘Clariel?’

  Clariel didn’t answer. The voice was monstrous and rasping, as if shaped in a larger and stranger mouth than any human could possibly have.

  ‘Clariel. Do not be alarmed. It is Kargrin. I am wearing the Charter skin of a giant mole. Where are – ah, I sense you. How did you get up there?’

  ‘Kargrin?’ whispered Clariel. It was still pitch black, but she could hear scuffling, and earth falling.

  ‘Yes. Come down! Quickly! We must be away!’

  The descent was difficult. Clariel had stiffened up, resting on the beam, and was more tired than she’d thought. She almost fell twice, the jolt of sudden fear providing just enough energy to keep her going. She was shaking by the time she put her feet on the raised bedhead and had only just begun to feel the relief of something solid under her when the bed suddenly moved. Surprised, Clariel lost her fingerholds on the wall. She teetered atop the upended bed for a second, then fell, crashed onto the table, bounced off it and rolled onto the floor.

  Or what used to be the floor. It was no longer level. One of the huge stone slabs had lifted up at one end. Clariel slid down it, scrabbling for a hold, successfully resisting the urge to scream. She ended up against the wall and crouched there, feeling out all around her, her hands sliding up the slab to discover it was on an angle of more than forty degrees from the horizontal.

  ‘Over here! They will have heard the stone crack above, I’m sure. Clamber over to me – I cannot come closer, or my Charter skin will be frayed by the prison’s spells.’

  Clariel heard the sound of the shutters being lifted up above. She hurtled forward on all fours, up and over the tilted slab and down into the muddy, bristly grip of something bestial, which held her tight and pulled her further down into a hole, and despite being almost certain that it was Kargrin in another shape, Clariel couldn’t help but struggle and cry out.

  ‘Keep still!’ came that strange voice. ‘Hard enough to carry you as it is. Tunnel. I just dug it.’

  Clariel forced herself to be still, feeling carefully with her hands, trying to get a tactile picture of whatever was carrying her. She could feel thick hair or fur on an arm that was as broad as her waist, and there was the same hair above her, undulating as muscles worked … She grimaced as she caught on that she was clutched to the belly of some giant ratlike creature …

  But it was taking her out of her prison.

  ‘Nearly there. Collapsing tunnel behind us. Hold your breath, shut eyes!’

  Clariel held her breath and shut her eyes. She felt soft, sticky stuff on her back that rose up around her shoulders and ribs and spread over her face, going up her nostrils and between her lips, no matter how tight she tried to keep her mouth shut. She started to panic again, thinking that she was going to be smothered in this dirt, or mud or whatever it was, and then she felt the hairy arm or paw and she dropped a few inches, her eyes and mouth opening with the sudden shock.

  There was light, and air. She choked and spat out dirt, and looked up at a red-eyed rodent creature the size of a horse that was looking back at her with a self-satisfied expression.

  They were in what appeared to be a cellar, because it was full of barrels. The light was coming from a Charter mark that had recently been cast into the timber frame of the door at the top of the five or six steps that led out. There was a huge mound of fresh earth in one corner, and a hole in the floor that they had just come out of – the exit to the tunnel she had just been dragged along.

  ‘I have got to take this off,’ said the giant mole-rat. ‘Clothes and such over there.’

  It gestured with one huge, muddy claw at a pack leaning up against the steps. Clariel limped over, brushed dirt from herself, and opened it up. There was a rough woollen robe and a pair of wooden clogs like Sharrett had been wearing. Clariel hesitated for a moment, then whipped off her dirt-smeared silk tunic and dragged on the robe, the kind of super-fast dressing she did on hunting expeditions, so as not to give the men ideas. But when she turned around, Kargrin was busy with his own undressing, taking off the Charter skin, and very strange it was too. Clariel stared at the weird combination of man and beast. It looked as if Kargrin was either being vomited out of the giant mole or was being eaten by it, since the top half of him was struggling out of … the back half of the mole. As he climbed out, he rolled back skin and fur, but as he rolled it tighter the very concrete illusion of that skin and fur instead became tightly interlocked Charter marks, thousands and thousands of marks all woven together.

  ‘Got to fold it up properly,’ grunted Kargrin. ‘Might need to use it again. Put on the pack. There’s a knife in the side pocket.’

  Clariel opened the pocket and took a simple, short knife of the kind anyone might have, in a plain leather scabbard on a cord. She hung the cord around her neck and put on the pack.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

  ‘Cellar of an inn near what was once the Winter Palace, when the current Palace was smaller and only used in summer,’ said Kargrin. He was nearly completely out of the Charter skin now; it looked like he was standing on a pair of giant mole feet that had been cleanly separated from the rest of its body.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘My rats followed Kilp,’ said Kargrin. ‘I knew about the prison holes, from when I was Castellan. They were filled with rubble when the Winter Palace was demolished more than a century ago, but yours was dug out by Kilp’s people. Fairly recently. I doubt it was planned for you. I suspect he probably had me in mind for it. How are you feeling? Up to running?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clariel. ‘And fighting, too.’

  ‘We’d best hope not,’ said Kargrin. He had folded the Charter skin down smaller and smaller until it was no larger than a pocket handkerchief. He carefully put this in a pouch on his belt – the Charter skin had been worn over his clothes, even including his sword and boots – and wriggled his shoulders and shook his feet. ‘Always feel grubby after wearing the moleskin. When we get the all-clear we can go upstairs. The innkeeper is a former Royal Guard. He’s shut up for the day. We can look out on the street from the common room. There shouldn’t be too long to wait. I hope.’

  ‘To wait for what?’ asked Clariel.

  ‘Bel is going to land a Paperwing in the street and pick you up,’ said Kargrin.

  ‘Really?’ asked Clariel. She had seen Paperwings a few times. They were magical craft made of laminated paper, every inch of their fabric deeply imbued with Charter marks. They flew like birds, and could carry two or even three people, presuming the Charter Mage flying the craft could successfully work the wind. ‘Is Bel strong enough to be doing that? Where could it land? The one I saw in Estwael came down in the park, it glided along the ground like a … a pelican landing on wat
er.’

  ‘I hope Bel is up to it,’ said Kargrin. ‘I would not ask it of him save that there is no one else who can fly the Paperwing. As for landing, we’re on Old Nevil Street here. It’s broad and straight, and there are few people about since Kilp announced a curfew and restricted the day workers to the Flat.’

  ‘What is happening?’ asked Clariel. ‘Kilp told me my mother survived, but I’m sure she couldn’t have.’

  Kargrin rubbed his nose and wrinkled it up and down a few times.

  ‘Mole lingering. Hmmm. That is interesting to know. What did happen at the Governor’s House?’

  ‘Kilp … he … they killed my parents …’

  Clariel found it very hard to say those words.

  ‘Go on,’ said Kargrin gently. ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t necessary. I had a rat there, looking through a crack in the wall, but its view was very limited.’

  ‘Mother touched a goblet Aronzo made, or said he made,’ said Clariel. ‘Sparks flew, white sparks … Mother said it wasn’t made by any mortal hand but by Free Magic … Kilp tried to talk about it, but Mother … she wouldn’t talk. She just never compromised, it was always her way and nothing else mattered –’

  Clariel burst into tears, full-blown crying, her breath coming in racking sobs that shook her whole body. But in just a few moments she had it under control again, was forcing her breathing into a regular pattern and wiping her eyes.

  ‘She was an Abhorsen again, in the end,’ said Kargrin gravely. ‘I hate to ask you … but are you sure both your father and mother were killed?’

  Clariel nodded once, then hesitated.

  ‘I … ah … I saw Father, and I felt him die,’ she said slowly. ‘He was hit by a quarrel, in the chest. Mother was charging at least half a dozen guards, flames in her hands, they were hacking at her … She made me run, I didn’t see … but she must have been killed.’