by Garth Nix
She hesitated to touch the bottle. The marks were so brilliant, so fierce, for the first time ever she felt some fear of the Charter. She had never understood Charter Magic, never wanted to understand it; it was just something that was there in her life. But here, even half-drowned, pummelled by the waterfall, and in a precarious position on a narrow tongue of stone, she felt the awful majesty of the Charter.
I need this bottle, I need the creature within, Clariel thought. I cannot save Aunt Lemmin with Charter Magic. I cannot save myself …
There was a pain in her forehead, as if the mask was pressing there too tightly. Clariel really did not want to touch those Charter marks. To delay doing so, she started to shuffle backwards, now holding the chain up above her head, so the bottle dangled safely a yard or so above the stone. She did not think it could be easily broken, but she didn’t want to put it to the test. If the creature within broke free before she was ready …
Halfway back to the cavern floor, Clariel realised the chain was long enough that she could bring the bottle all the way back, rest it near the lip, and then open it. Whatever challenge the spells on the bottle offered, she would not have to confront them out here, under the waterfall. She could do as she did before. Raise the fury and open the bottle as a berserk, protected by her rage.
If she could raise the fury.
Clariel felt tired already, not to mention bruised and battered by the waterfall. But she knew there was no choice. As with hunting a wounded deer, even at the end of the day, if it was not finished then you had to go on.
She took a few minutes to rest once she got back to the cavern, just sitting cross-legged on the edge of the cliff. The spray still buffeted her, but it was not too strong. Mogget sat on the table, watching Aziminil, who was watching the falling stones. But the cat did not say anything as Clariel got up and came over to the table. His eyes narrowed, and his tail twitched, but he said no word.
‘I forgot to ask,’ said Clariel, as she wearily put her protective garments back on, fastening hood, gauntlets and overboots. ‘Are you coming with me?’
‘I cannot leave the House without the permission of the Abhorsen or the Abhorsen-in-Waiting …’ said Mogget thoughtfully. ‘But then, no Abhorsen has forbidden me to leave for a very long time … I wonder if I can … Do you want me to come?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Clariel. ‘Maybe. Yes. I just don’t know if I can trust you.’
‘Our interests are aligned,’ said Mogget very carefully.
‘I wish I could ask Bel,’ said Clariel. ‘But I know he’d try to stop me.’
‘There you are then,’ said Mogget. ‘The point, in any case, is moot. Neither of us may be leaving, unless you get on with it.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Clariel. She looked down at the green glass bottle with its tarnished silver stopper wound with gold wire. ‘Do you know what … who is in this one?’
‘There are spells of enquiry,’ said Mogget. ‘But I fear you do not know them. It doesn’t matter. I am sure … I am confident … you will prove stronger than the entity within.’
Clariel looked over at Aziminil, who was watching the fallen stones around the former door like a cat before a mouse hole. Then she looked back at the bottle. Such a small thing to contain a creature of elemental power …
‘Hesitation oft incurs a price,’ said Mogget. ‘One you might not be willing to pay.’
‘I make my own decisions,’ said Clariel, and called up the fury.
Mogget backed away as she stood rigid above the bottle, her fists clenched within the gauntlets. Once again she relived the night of her parents’ death, the smirk of Aronzo, the crushing boot of the guard outside Kargrin’s door, the darkness of the prison hole …
But the fury would not rise. Clariel bit her lip again, but even the blood in her mouth would not kindle the fire within. She had damped it down too far, and the spark was cold.
Across the cavern, stones rumbled. The helmeted head and sword-wielding arm of a sending thrust out through a hole, to be met by a savage, leaping kick from Aziminil that sent her spiked foot right through the neck of the magical being. Sparks and Charter marks exploded in all directions, the sending crumbling into its component parts. But there were many more behind it, pulling at the edges of the hole, dragging rocks aside, making the way broader, no matter how many times Aziminil hopped and jumped and struck with her savage, sharp feet. There were too many sendings, scores and scores of sendings, more than Clariel had ever imagined could be within the House.
She took off her left gauntlet, fumbling with the knots that tied it to her robe, too conscious of how swiftly the sendings were breaking through. Her hand free, she took up her knife and sliced it across her palm, along the line of the barely healed wound from the Islet.
Pain blossomed, terrible pain that ran from her hand to her arm to the centre of her head. Clariel embraced it, drank it in, fed it to the rage.
But still it was not enough, not until she lifted her hand to her bronze-masked face, opened the lid over the mouth-hole and pressed her palm there, blood spilling through upon her tongue.
Then the rage came, so swiftly that Clariel barely managed to do as the book told her, to retreat her conscious mind to an island within. There she used the last of her calm self to slip the gauntlet back on and to force her attention not at the sendings who she ached to fight, but at the bottle in front of her.
Once again, stopper, gold wire and the sealing spells were no match for a berserk. Clariel felt the bone-snapping and the heart-stopping spells as a mere itch and a pang no worse than indigestion. Flinging the stopper to the ground, she held the bottle upside down and roared, ‘Come out! Come out, whatever you are!’
But the creature inside was already out, out in the instant Clariel broke the seal. It did not come out fighting, like Aziminil. It just stood there, a few paces from the shouting berserk, as still as if it had been carved from the rock of the cavern.
It was tall, nine feet or more. Its body was manlike, but thin as a spindle, with arms and legs jointed too many times, white bone protruding in lumps through flesh as blue as best azure ink. Its neck was no wider than Clariel’s wrist, its head more akin to a wolf than anything else. A wolf’s head stretched long and the mouth cut at the corners to fit in more teeth. Its eyes were like Aziminil’s face, dark voids of nothing, empty and drear.
Clariel lunged forward and gripped it by those impossibly thin wrists, to twist and bend it to the floor. Sparks and Charter marks flew in profusion, but the creature did not give way. It held fast as Clariel tried to twist its wrists, and she felt its cold thoughts invade her mind, exerting a terrible pressure that seemed to enter through the holes in her mask, as if unseen thumbs were pressing upon her eyes, rough fingers attacking her mouth.
‘I am Baazalanan,’ said a voice that filled the cavern and echoed deep inside Clariel’s head, making her cheekbones ache to the very marrow. ‘Bow down before your master!’
Clariel felt her knees begin to bend, her fingers begin to uncurl where they gripped those impossibly thin, impossibly strong wrists. Her hands were hot, almost burning, and there were fewer Charter marks falling from the gauntlets, the sparks subsiding, as if the protective cloth was already wearing thin.
‘Bow down,’ said Baazalanan. Its voice was soft and slippery, but strong, like a crawling snake that was winding through Clariel’s head, flexing and looping, readying itself to crush her and strangle her will. There was nothing she could do, even with the fury stretching every muscle and sinew, concentrating every thought. She could not move the creature, could not free its grip on her mind.
In her berserk state she could not believe this was happening. It was not possible for an enemy to resist her power. But in the small part of her mind that remained separate, she knew it was so, that she had gambled and lost. Mogget and Aziminil had led her on, and her own foolishness had put her feet willingly upon this path.
‘I will not give up,’ she whispered. Letting go of
the creature, she stepped back and shouted, ‘Aziminil! To me!’
As she shouted, she surrendered the small conscious part of her mind to the fury, to become truly berserk. Frothing at the mouth, she smashed her bronze-armoured forehead into Baazalanan’s middle, and once again grabbed and twisted its wrists. She felt Aziminil close behind her, and drew upon her power, as much as she could through the barrier of her protective garments.
‘Bow down,’ said Baazalanan, but both its audible voice and the mental one in Clariel’s head quavered, and there was finally a tremor in its wrists. Clariel laughed, a laugh that was twin to her mother’s in Kilp’s house, the laugh of someone who has totally surrendered to their rage.
The pressure in Clariel’s head began to ebb away, the sinuous grip of the Free Magic creature began to loosen. The narrow wrists were no longer as hard to move as stone, but shifted under her grasp. Clariel twisted harder and Baazalanan screamed, the scream further strengthening Clariel’s rage. She dragged the wrists down and the tall stick of a creature followed, its legs bending thrice, each joint making a noise like a snapped green branch as it folded.
‘I submit,’ squealed Baazalanan as it fell down, but Clariel did not answer. Instead she shifted her hands to grip one arm alone, and tried to tear it from its socket. She was lost now, lost in fury, and all talk of submission, of her plan to escape, all of it was gone. She would rend the creature limb from limb, and throw its torn carcass into the waterfall to be destroyed forever.
‘Clariel! Stop!’
Something was calling her name, something annoying. Clariel dropped Baazalanan’s arm and whirled around. A white shape rose up on its rear legs ahead of her. She roared and charged at it, hands grasping, but it jumped aside and shot under the table. Clariel sprang after it, and almost grabbed a tail, but it was too quick. It ran to its left, and Clariel sped around the table to her right, but when she got to the other side there was no sign of the impudent creature.
Then it called again.
‘Clariel, Clariel! Stop! Think!’
She whirled around. Where was it? She couldn’t see the pesky thing, and her original enemy was getting up. The tall creature. How dare it get up! She stalked back towards it, on tiptoe, body arched to spring, hands shaking, the froth dribbling down the chin of her bronze mask.
Baazalanan sank back down and bowed its wolf-head, mouth shut to hide its teeth. It laid its long arms out in front, taloned fingers flat on the stone.
‘Clariel! Take its submission! That’s what you want!’ called Mogget.
Clariel stood over the kneeling creature and raised her fist, ready to bring it down on the back of the creature’s head, just where it met that spindle of a neck. But as she did so, she felt some of her power ebb. Turning, she saw Aziminil back away, bowing as she did so.
‘Mistress, you wished to bind this one, not kill. Make it serve you and we shall all turn against your true enemies.’
True enemies. Bind to serve …
The thoughts penetrated Clariel’s enraged mind. The lessening of power from Aziminil took the edge off her rage. She faltered, suddenly unsure of what she was doing. The rage faded a little further, and some rationality returned.
Clariel turned back to the kneeling Baazalanan and laid just one finger on its head. This time, it was her turn to find a way into its strange, cool mind, to extend a mental grip upon its thoughts.
‘Swear to serve me forever, or be destroyed.’
‘I will serve, Mistress,’ said the creature.
Clariel lifted her finger, and stepped back, her mind withdrawing from the creature as she took the step. She took another, and swayed, and then fell to her knees. Aziminil and Baazalanan did not move, and she still could not see Mogget.
But she could hear the tumble of stones being pushed aside, and looking across, she saw a multitude of sendings gathered beyond the destroyed doorway, the half dozen at the front straining against one enormous boulder that still blocked their way.
‘Take me gently through the waterfall and safely to the western shore of the Ratterlin,’ she ordered. ‘Do not touch my skin. Be quick!’
The two Free Magic creatures bowed. Sparks of white light began to form upon their strange bodies, small flames flickered from blood-red and inky-blue flesh and then larger flames till with a whoosh both entities were columns of white fire, bright as the sun but completely without heat. The columns moved towards Clariel and began to change again, shaping themselves into two halves of a globe. Clariel staggered to her feet as they began to close around her and looked across to where she had left her sword on the floor. It was too late to fetch it now.
Too late to change her mind.
A white cat erupted out of the open chest that had held the robes and zoomed towards her, jumping at the last second through the gap between the closing hemispheres and into her arms. Clariel caught him by reflex, too weary even to be very much surprised.
‘You’re coming then?’
‘I believe I am,’ said Mogget. He sounded surprised himself. ‘Don’t touch my collar!’
‘Why not?’
‘It will break the globe, and we will be left here.’
Clariel nodded. She barely had the strength to do that, and certainly couldn’t keep talking. There was no fury left in her, and her legs felt like they might buckle at any moment. She shut her eyes as the white globe closed around her, and held Mogget close. He surprised her again by beginning to purr, though he stopped almost immediately, perhaps because he’d noticed he was purring.
She could sense the surface thoughts at least of Aziminil and Baazalanan. They were servile, wanting to obey her every command, intent on carrying her safely through the waterfall.
Her servants had done as she bid, and would continue to do so.
The globe rolled to the edge of the cavern, though inside Clariel felt no motion. On the edge it stopped for a second, then rolled again, entering the cascade with a great boom and an explosion of sparks that lit up the whole waterfall and the lowlands beneath for several leagues, as if a small sun had fallen with the river.
chapter twenty-nine
once were dragons
A league downstream from the waterfall the globe of white fire rolled ashore and split in half. Clariel staggered shakily out onto a beach of many tiny pebbles that offered uncertain footing, so she had to stoop and put one hand down to regain her balance. Mogget jumped out of her arms and sniffed the air. Whatever he smelt seemed to satisfy him, for he wandered over to the shallows and stared into the water, one paw raised.
Nearby, the fiery hemispheres dulled and shifted, Aziminil and Baazalanan resuming their more familiar shapes. As Clariel stood up, they bowed their heads, the picture of model servants.
Clariel looked at them, up at the moon high above, then back towards the waterfall, a streak of white against the darkness of the Long Cliffs. It was hard to believe she had escaped, that she had two Free Magic servants, not to mention the dubious assistance of Mogget. The way was now clear to go back to Belisaere and do what must be done, and then finally be released to start her proper life in the Forest.
Insects buzzed around her head, midges of some kind, reminding Clariel that her face was bloodied, and her hand. She walked back down to the water’s edge, knelt there, took off her gauntlets and undid the hood of her robe and the straps of her mask. But when she tried to take the mask off, it was stuck fast and wouldn’t move. Clariel shrugged and splashed water over it and through the mouth hole, thinking it must be dried blood that held it to her skin. But even then it still wouldn’t move, and she began to grow afraid. She plunged her head into the river, into the fast-running water. Holding her breath she worked at the mask, till at last it came free with a sickening pang in her forehead.
Trembling, Clariel touched her fingers to her baptismal Charter mark. It glowed softly as she touched it, but the light that reflected on the river was wrong, not the warm golden glow she was used to. This was whiter, brighter, though still tinged
with gold.
Clariel hesitated, then tried to reach for the Charter, to conjure a simple light. It was the first spell she’d learned, something she knew well and she could nearly always make it work. But the Charter wasn’t there, or she could no longer feel its presence. Yet she knew it was everywhere, the Charter made up all things, it described the world and everything in it …
Except Free Magic. That was outside the Charter.
‘But I wore the robe, the mask …’ whispered Clariel. She touched her forehead Charter mark again, and once more reached for the Charter. This time, she felt it, but far away. No great drift of marks fell upon her; they stayed as distant as the stars above, and just as out of reach. But even that far, momentary glimpse relieved Clariel. She had never really valued the Charter, neither understood it nor wanted to know more, but she felt its absence keenly.
It felt wrong, unnatural.
‘Mogget!’ she called.
The cat came back from the edge of the river, his paws and whiskers wet and a look of satisfaction on his face.
‘Mogget,’ said Clariel. ‘My Charter mark … something’s happened to it, and I can’t … I can’t reach the Charter. You told me the robes would protect me from the Free Magic.’
‘The Charter and Free Magic are antithetical,’ said Mogget. ‘When you use one, you cannot use the other. Binding Free Magic creatures, drawing on their power … it weakens the Charter within you.’
‘You didn’t tell me that,’ said Clariel.
‘I thought you knew,’ said Mogget. He examined his left paw, and licked off a tiny shred of fish. ‘Common knowledge among real Abhorsens.’
‘What will happen to me?’ asked Clariel, touching her forehead again.
‘The Clayr may See your future. I cannot make predictions.’
‘Mogget! Answer me properly, or I’ll … leave you behind.’
