Clariel

by Garth Nix

  ‘You felt your father die?’ asked Kargrin. ‘You have the Abhorsen’s death sense?

  ‘I suppose so …’ faltered Clariel. ‘I never realised before that’s what it is …’

  ‘But you didn’t feel your mother die,’ said Kargrin. His forehead was crinkled with concern, and his voice showed he was trying to be kind, but was desperate to know the answer.

  ‘No,’ said Clariel. ‘But I was already on the stair. Her spell forced me to go. Otherwise I would have stayed to fight. I would have!’

  ‘I’m sure you would,’ said Kargrin. ‘But better you didn’t.’

  ‘Is there … Could Mother have survived?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Kargrin heavily. ‘Kilp was ever a master of misdirection. He’s put out a broadsheet claiming the King is dead, killed by insurrectionists, which is false of course. It also says that the King named Jaciel as his heir, with Kilp as “Lord Protector”, his name for an all-powerful regent. The coronation of the new Queen will take “some time” due to the “rebellion”, which is being suppressed by “loyal forces” under the Governor’s direction.’

  ‘So Mother might be alive,’ said Clariel wonderingly.

  Kargrin shook his head. ‘I very much doubt it. No one has seen her, supposedly because she’s grief-stricken over the King’s death. I think she was killed with your father. I am sorry, Clariel.’

  ‘I still can’t … It doesn’t seem real,’ whispered Clariel. ‘But how can Kilp say the King is dead?’

  ‘Easily,’ said Kargrin, with a shrug. ‘The Governor’s story is that rebels have seized the Palace and killed the King. The Trained Bands have surrounded the Palace. It’s not quite a siege, not yet, but no one can come out. They’re emplacing war engines now on Coiner’s Hill, bolt-throwers, to shoot down Paperwings, though that will take some hours yet; and several galleys of the Eastern Company are standing off the Palace sea gate. All very well organised, as you would expect from Kilp.

  ‘Of course, none of this would be possible if it weren’t for the King’s obstinance. If Orrikan would just show himself on the city side of the wall Kilp’s nonsense would be obvious to all, and I’m sure there are loyal Guildmembers who would turn on Kilp. But the King won’t do it. He keeps muttering about letting all the poison out, to only hasten Tathiel’s reappearance.’

  ‘But does anyone … Do the people believe that the King is dead?’

  ‘They don’t know he’s not,’ said Kargrin. ‘Which is probably more to the point. He has been so absent these last few years that most of the people accept that Kilp is the power in the land, whether they like it or –’

  Three quick knocks sounded on the door at the top of the steps, followed by two more.

  ‘Ah, all-clear. Let us go up. Follow me.’

  Clariel noted that despite the signal knocks, Kargrin went warily, and she saw the glimmer of Charter marks held in his right hand, some spell that was already partially formed, needing only a master mark to complete it. But the door opened easily, and the innkeeper on the other side led them along a corridor, through a clean and airy kitchen and into a common room that looked snug and prosperous, despite its currently empty benches and tables and dearth of customers.

  ‘Told the regulars my wife’s sick and I’m feeling ill myself,’ said the innkeeper. ‘She’s enjoying playing the part. Gone to bed. I’ll join her in a minute.’

  He indicated the bay window, which had heavy winter drapes of dark, coarse fabric drawn across it.

  ‘Just twitch the curtain aside, you’ll get a good view,’ he said. ‘And if you don’t mind, when you do go, take the side door I showed you, please, Magister.’

  ‘We will,’ said Kargrin. ‘Thank you, Jezep.’

  ‘Honour to serve,’ said Jezep. ‘May the Charter be with you.’

  He bowed, and left. Clariel heard his heavy footsteps going upstairs to join his wife. She hoped that he would be able to claim ignorance and innocence if … or when … Kilp’s people came looking for their escaped prisoner.

  Kargrin went to the window, knelt down and gently lifted a tiny corner of the curtain. Sunlight came through this spy hole, the soft light of early morning.

  ‘Street’s empty,’ reported Kargrin, blinking madly, his eyes tearing up from the sunlight after his sojourn as a giant mole. ‘Just one pie seller and her cart is set well back off the road. I hope I was right about those bolt-throwers on the hill being slow to set up. And Bel being fit enough …’

  ‘Where is Bel going to fly me to? Back to the Palace?’ asked Clariel. She thought about where she wanted to go, but there was no obvious answer. She still yearned for the Great Forest, but a part of her now felt that she hadn’t … earned … that. Her parents had been killed, and their murderers still lived. That needed to be rectified. The Great Forest would have to wait.

  Kargrin shook his massive head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We have to get you safe. If your mother really is dead, then Kilp will want to see you set up as Queen, married to Aronzo and safely under his control. Bel will fly you to the Abhorsens at Hillfair.’

  He rumbled up and gestured at the spy hole.

  ‘Have a look, get both eyes adjusted to daylight,’ he said. ‘If you see the Paperwing, tell me immediately. Do you want a glass of wine?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Clariel. She sat down by the window and looked out. Going to the Abhorsens at Hillfair. To her grandfather and aunt, and apparently a multiplicity of cousins. Who all thought her mother was a kinslayer … It was not an attractive proposition. Except that the Abhorsens would surely gather a force to combat Kilp, so she could at least join in that …

  Clariel sighed and blinked. Even though the morning light was diminished by a band of clouds, it was still harsh on her eyes. The street looked much like any other street in Belisaere, paved with grey stone and bordered by the deep but gently curved gutters built to cope with the torrential rain in spring. This road was wider than the streets on Beshill, but the houses opposite, though as always faced with white stone, were only two or three storeys high and in general looked less well-kept.

  There was no one on the street, which was very unusual in any part of the city. Clariel saw the pie seller diagonally opposite, leaning against her handcart, looking disgruntled. She wasn’t even bothering to keep the firebox going so the pies stayed hot, judging by the lack of smoke from the slim bronze chimney at the front of the cart. No point wasting money on fuel as well as a barrow-load of unsold pies that would have to be sold for animal fodder. Unless the citizens of Belisaere were less discerning than those in Estwael, who could detect a day-old pie at first glance, let alone first taste.

  Clariel was thinking about the pies in Estwael when a long shadow flitted along the street, raced up the walls of the house near the pie cart, then turned and went back along the street again. The shadow was followed a moment later by the Paperwing that had cast it, the aircraft banking and looping around to land into the wind, coming down to swoop along the road a mere fingerbreadth above the stone paving, before sliding to a very neat halt three or four houses to the right of the inn.

  ‘Paperwing’s landed!’ shouted Clariel, jumping to her feet.

  chapter twenty

  you don’t see that every day

  ‘He has flown swiftly!’ said Kargrin. He set his wine glass down on the closest table and took Clariel’s hand. ‘Come on!’

  They went out the side door of the inn into a narrow alley crowded with empty barrels stacked high against one wall. Clariel’s shoulder bumped against them as Kargrin dragged her along. He increased his pace to a full-out run as they reached the street, running to the Paperwing, the pie seller staring with her jaw open, her lack of sales now partially made up for by a story she could tell over many drinks.

  The Paperwing was smaller than Clariel had expected. She’d seen them flying before but in the far distance, which made it hard to gauge their size and shape. This one had a body rather like a slim boat, tapered at e
ach end, with a hole in the middle where the occupants sat. Its hawklike wings stretched out and back from the middle. They were partially folded for landing, but when fully extended would stretch for forty paces a side, or perhaps even more. The whole craft was made of paper, Clariel knew, layered and bonded together with secret glues and considerable Charter Magic. The outer layers were coloured in glorious reds and golds, in swirls, dots and circles, save for the front where dark, very lifelike eyes looked ahead on either side.

  Bel was standing up in the middle of the craft, slightly hunched and favouring his left side. He was wearing his gethre plate armour, one plate holed near the shoulder, over hunting leathers. He had a heavy wool cloak on as well, despite the warm and humid morning.

  ‘Clariel!’ he shouted out, combining a wave with sitting down in a clumsy motion that obviously hurt, for he gasped in pain before adding over his shoulder, ‘Quick!’

  Clariel tried to run faster, but she wasn’t used to wooden clogs, and almost fell over. Kargrin held her up as she kicked them off and he almost carried her as they ran on. He did pick her up as they reached the Paperwing, lifting her high but lowering her very slowly and carefully in behind Belatiel. As soon as he had done so, he turned back and reached up with both hands. Glowing Charter marks fell from his fingers like a sudden, fiery rain. He gripped apparently empty air and hauled on something invisible. A moment later a cool breeze slapped Clariel in the face and sent her hair flying back.

  Kargrin was calling up the wind.

  ‘Hang on!’ shouted Belatiel. He pursed his lips and whistled, a long, clear note, his exhaled breath full of Charter marks. Kargrin’s wind answered to it, swooping down under the Paperwing, which shivered as if in anticipation of sudden freedom from the earth.

  ‘Go!’ roared Kargrin. He swung both arms down and swept them at the Paperwing’s tail, a great gale bursting from his hands, picking the aircraft up so violently the craft rolled and pitched as it ascended, only kept true and level by Bel’s whistling and the lesser winds that answered him, pushing left and right and up and down as was required.

  Clariel was about to ask why there was such a hurry when she saw a crossbow bolt fly past. It was flying back to front, overturned by the wind, but it supplied the reason for Kargrin’s haste. Holding on tight to the rim of the central well where she sat, Clariel cautiously looked over the side of the Paperwing. They were already several hundred feet up, and for a moment she had the horribly dizzy sensation that she had become unfixed from the world and was falling upwards and would so do forever. But it passed as she focused on the world below. There was Kargrin, running up the street, close to the houses, and there were guards in pursuit of him, and others with their crossbows pointing up, but iron springs could not propel the quarrels fast enough to compete with the spelled wind that was rushing the Paperwing away.

  As Clariel watched, Kargrin turned to face his pursuers. Her heart leaped into her mouth, thinking she would see him killed. But instead there was a bright flash, and a sudden eruption of smoke or dust. A huge cloud filled the street and rose up to the rooftops before it too was caught by the wind. As it cleared, Clariel, now looking back over her shoulder, saw the pursuing guards all knocked down like bowling pins. A broad swathe of the street’s paving stones was broken to the bare earth, and there was no sign of Kargrin at all.

  Clariel turned back and settled down, noticing for the first time she was sitting in a kind of hammock or netting chair set into the central hole. Bel, still whistling steadily, was sitting in a similar one just ahead of her, and her knees were almost touching his back.

  There was a rolled-up cloak and a leather water bottle near Clariel’s left foot and what looked to be a loaf of bread or perhaps bread and meat wrapped in a muslin cloth by her right foot.

  She looked over the side again and was shocked to see how much higher they had flown in such a short time. She could see all of Belisaere below, the whole city sprawled on the tip of the peninsula, with the Sea of Saere all a-silver around it. They were so high she could only make out the larger buildings, the smaller houses blending into large masses of red-tiled roofs.

  Looking down on Belisaere, she felt a slight lift to her heavy heart. It was not the way she wanted it, but she had at last escaped the city. The walls no longer held her in, the masses of people no longer thronged around, the air was sweet, the sun unshadowed.

  But she knew she hadn’t really escaped. Not completely. There were unseen shackles of grief and duty that still tied her to Belisaere.

  The Paperwing, which had been sharply angled up towards the sky, started to level out, and a minute or two later Bel stopped whistling and slumped back in his hammock, colliding with Clariel’s knees. She drew them back as he lurched forward again and twisted around, gasping in pain and holding his left shoulder.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be,’ said Clariel. ‘Thank you for flying to my rescue.’

  ‘I was … happy to be able to do so …’ said Bel. He twisted back to the front. ‘Please forgive my rudeness … but I can’t really turn around at the moment.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Clariel, struck by the sudden anxiety that he might pass out from the pain of his past wounding, or that it might reopen. Then they would both be in dire peril, so high in the sky with Clariel having no idea how to control the Paperwing.

  ‘Yes,’ grunted Bel. ‘Stupid wound isn’t healed and the wind-working takes it out of me even when I’m fit. Not made any easier by that great gust Kargrin called up. Mind you, we wouldn’t have got away so quickly without it. Did you see what happened to him? I saw some guards –’

  ‘I think he got away,’ said Clariel. ‘He made the street rise up. All the guards chasing him were knocked down, and when the dust cleared I couldn’t see him.’

  ‘Trust Kargrin,’ laughed Bel. ‘I wonder what that spell was? Must ask him next time I see him.’

  ‘I hope you do get to see him again,’ said Clariel, all too conscious of those she would never see again.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bel, the laughter gone as he caught her mood. ‘I, um … Kargrin said he thought your parents … that they were … were killed … I don’t know …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clariel quietly, almost to herself. ‘They are dead. It was all so very quick. We were at this dreadful dinner, and I was thinking about how soon we could leave, and how soon I could leave … I mean leave the dinner and also leave Belisaere altogether. Aronzo was annoying and Kilp scared me, but I never thought … I never thought anything could happen, not like that …’

  ‘Then the world was changed, all in a few moments,’ said Bel. ‘I never thought Kilp would try to take the Palace either. If Gullaine wasn’t so suspicious, I’d be dead too.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘The Abhorsen’s rooms are in the lower west court,’ said Bel. ‘Much easier to attack, but almost completely separate from the rest of the Palace. They broke in there and I suppose they thought there’d be an easy way into the Palace proper. The first I knew about it was Gullaine shaking me awake just after midnight and rushing me along a maze of secret ways, with guard sendings popping out the walls and floors and growling off behind us, and then there was Anstyr’s horn echoing everywhere. There was no chance of them taking the Palace after that, though they did try an escalade on the lower wall by the gatehouse. Not one ladder reached the top. It was horrible, not least because so many of the guild people were clearly half-hearted, unsure what was really going on …’

  He fell uncharacteristically silent. Clariel didn’t think she’d ever heard Bel stop speaking without someone asking him to, or some other interruption.

  With Bel not talking, Clariel noticed it was much quieter than she had expected. They were borne up by the breeze and carried along by it at a pace far swifter than any horse could gallop, but she could only hear a dull humming sound, and that was almost more a vibration felt rather than heard.

  ‘Why is it so quiet?’ she asked.r />
  ‘What? Oh, we are inside the wind, carried with it, rather than having it pass across us,’ said Bel. ‘But the Paperwing is also imbued with charms to still the air here where we sit, and to make it warmer as well. Though if we go much higher, you’ll still need your cloak. It gets very cold, like being up a mountain.’

  ‘Kargrin said you are to take me to the Abhorsens,’ said Clariel.

  ‘He thinks that will be the safest place for you,’ said Bel. ‘Gullaine agreed. She let me take this Paperwing, it’s one of the royal ones, though I guess you knew that from the colour.’

  ‘What if I asked you to take me to Estwael?’ asked Clariel, suddenly struck with a guilty, but almost overwhelming desire to get to the Great Forest, to the only place she truly felt at home. If she could get there, then somehow everything that had happened could be dealt with, or the effects lessened. ‘We could fly there, couldn’t we?’

  Bel didn’t answer for a moment.

  ‘I suppose we could fly there,’ he said. ‘Though chances are we’d get lost. As it is, I can only find my way to Hillfair by flying west by the sun till we see the Ratterlin, and then follow that south. The flying part is relatively easy. The navigating is hard.’

  ‘We could follow the Yanyl from the Ratterlin,’ said Clariel. ‘It rises close to Estwael.’

  Bel shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m under orders from Kargrin and Gullaine. I have to take you to the Abhorsen. Besides, you probably wouldn’t be safe in Estwael. Kilp controls all the royal officials in the towns.’

  ‘I would be safe in the Great Forest,’ said Clariel. She hesitated for a moment, before adding, ‘I really don’t want to go to the Abhorsens.’

  ‘The Abhorsen is your grandfather,’ said Bel tentatively. ‘I guess … he would be your closest relative … uh … now –’

  ‘I have my aunt Lemmin in Estwael,’ snapped Clariel. ‘And I’m old enough to live on my own anyway.’