Terciel and Elinor (9780063049345)

by Nix, Garth

  During this time, three message-hawks came to the mews in the tower. Two brought routine missives seeking the Abhorsen’s help for suspected depredations by the Dead but which might in fact be caused by mere mortal or animal activity. The third would not give its message to Terciel, or anyone save the Abhorsen herself, and sat hooded and grumpy on its perch, the sending hawk-mistress stroking its breast feathers in a failed attempt to soothe its impatience.

  A rider also came to the western shore, a woman in the red and black of the Regent’s service. She did not linger but carefully dropped a bronze scroll case on the shore stone where the “bridge” began. A Sending rose from within the stone, took the case, and leapt to the next stone, and the next, eventually bringing it to the dragon-footed desk in the Abhorsen’s study. The scroll case was sealed, with magic and black wax, so Terciel had to leave it unopened as well.

  For the first few days he rested, apart from searching for Tizanael, but after that he resumed his studies, spending hours in the library and the study, learning new marks and spells and practicing them over and over again. He climbed the great fig tree twice, as high as he dared, and stayed up there for hours, watching the river and the sky and, most particularly, the low hills to either side.

  Several times, at dusk, he saw stoat fingers slinking down to the riverbank, growing bolder as the sun faded. He thought about going out in the daytime to find their hidey-holes, but Tizanael had told him to stay in the House, and he was not overeager in any case. The stoat fingers had not been overseen by a necromancer before, but there might be one out there now.

  It was disturbing they were keeping a close watch on the House. He had not known any of the Dead to be so bold before. Seeing them also fed into his anxiety about eventually facing Kerrigor, and indeed, his future in general. He doubted he could ever be as competent an Abhorsen as his great-great-aunt, and he hoped it would be long before he had to take her place. He tried not to think of the alternative, that constant echo down the years of his sister Rahi’s fate.

  Tizanael returned on the evening of the twentieth day, as the sun set. Terciel had just sat down to dinner in the kitchen, which he preferred to the formal setting of the hall. Light snow was falling again, and it was warmer than it had been, though the day had begun with a cold frost. There were fewer lumps of ice coming down the river, a sign that spring was on its way.

  The Abhorsen looked her usual steely self. She sat down next to Terciel at the end of the table closest to the great kitchen fire, and gratefully took the cup of some hot spiced concoction immediately proffered by a Sending. As was usual, more of them appeared when the Abhorsen herself was about, ranging from faded, ancient apparitions who couldn’t do anything save linger in the corners, to the more robust, relatively newer servants who bustled about finding tasks, as if it was important to them to be seen doing work. There was only one Sending Terciel knew for sure Tizanael had created herself, a deeply hooded, slighter, and smaller figure more reminiscent of a child than the other Sendings. This one knelt and removed Tizanael’s boots.

  “Welcome back,” said Terciel. “Some messages came in your absence. A message-hawk from I know not where, and a rider brought a scroll case from the Regent. And a couple of other message-hawks with garden-variety ‘Old Krom has gone missing can you look into it’ sort of things. And there have been stoat fingers on the western shore, watching.”

  Tizanael nodded, her eyes hooded, and she continued to sip at her drink, steam from the cup wreathing her face.

  “There is soup,” said Terciel, indicating his bowl. “Split pea and ham speck. It’s good.”

  Tizanael nodded and pointed at the table in front of her. Her particular Sending rushed to the great iron stove and slipped in front of one of the hall Sendings to take the bowl of soup that had been immediately filled by the cook. Another Sending rushed over with a palm-sized oval loaf from the morning’s baking.

  When he had first arrived, all those years ago, Terciel had thought the food was conjured up, but he soon learned boats brought supplies down from Qyrre and Chasel and some of the villages on the banks of the Ratterlin. Admittedly, the boats had Sendings for crew and never missed the special channel that let them safely come to the island and leave again, even against the inexorable current. So magic was still heavily involved.

  It was possible to create food with Charter Magic, but as with warming spells, it often took more effort than it was worth, and so was a last resort.

  Tizanael ate mechanically, still not speaking. Terciel finished his own bowl but did not leave. He had got used to Tizanael’s silences and could discern the difference between “I have forgotten all about you” and “I am thinking and will shortly tell you to do something, probably difficult and/or unpleasant.”

  He was right. Immediately after Tizanael had placed her spoon carefully in the empty bowl and it had been whisked away by her Sending, she shifted on her chair to look at him.

  “I had hoped to be swifter, far swifter,” she said. “Time speeds away, when I feel we can least spare it. I have been looking for something. And studying the book that Clayr brought.”

  “On the Making of Necromantic Bells and Other Devices,” said Terciel.

  “Yes. It is the other devices I particularly wanted to know about. What have you learned about the casting of the bells?”

  “Uh, not very much,” said Terciel, flustered and defensive. “You haven’t taught me . . . you didn’t tell me to read—”

  Tizanael gestured for him to move on. Terciel took a breath, forcing down a strong feeling of ill use. It was typical of Tizanael to expect him to already know something she had never taught him or indicated he might need to know.

  “The bells are cast in Death. Neither you nor your predecessor felt it necessary to make any new bells, there being a store of them . . . here . . . somewhere. Underground, I presume, in the places I have not yet been allowed to see.”

  “Everything in its time. There is good reason to limit the knowledge of a young Abhorsen,” said Tizanael. “I should not want to drive you mad. Or did not. I think you are now past the point where that might occur.”

  “I am?” asked Terciel. Tizanael was usually very sparing in her compliments.

  “You apply yourself to the necessary studies,” said Tizanael. “You have done well against the Dead, in all our forays.”

  “Better than Rahiniel?” asked Terciel. He didn’t know why he asked that. He had no memory of Rahi at all anymore. But he still felt a slight stab of pain to say her name aloud.

  “She was not with me long enough to gauge her potential,” said Tizanael.

  “How did she die?” asked Terciel. He had never asked this before. It was that Clayr, he thought, Mirelle. Talking about families and children, and Abhorsens who’d managed to have both. That, and too much mulled wine.

  Tizanael frowned and looked at the glow of the fire through the bars in the door of the iron stove.

  “It was in the far north,” she said slowly. “A sorcerer came across the Greenwash, with some nomads for guards. He was looking for something, probably some dormant Free Magic entity he hoped to bind to his will. We came across their camp sooner than expected. Our guide was confused. A local woman, but there was a raised fog . . . and we were among them before we knew it. Rahi took an arrow under her arm in the first few seconds, straight to the heart. Her death was very swift.”

  Terciel nodded and drank the last of his mulled wine. He wished he hadn’t asked the question. Now he had quite a clear picture of his sister’s death, as opposed to some blurry notion of it. But in his mind’s eye, the Abhorsen-in-Waiting with the arrow in their chest had his face, not his sister’s.

  “Why did you ask that now?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Terciel.

  “Put it aside,” said Tizanael. “We have work to do. As I was saying, the reason I wanted the book was for a chapter on the making of chains.”

  Terciel raised his eyebrows querulously.

&nbs
p; “Chains,” repeated Tizanael. “I knew it was possible, but I did not know the detail. They are for use against the greatest of the Dead, those who have managed to anchor themselves in Life, so even when forced to the very precipice of the Ninth Gate, they will not pass it, and in time can sneak back. The Abhorsen Lerantiel fought one such, long ago. Lerantiel made a chain, akin to the bell Saraneth, infused with its power, and with it he succeeded in immuring the creature in the Eighth Precinct, beyond the Seventh Gate. Stuck there, whatever link it had to Life was eroded and its power was washed away by the cold river. Two hundred years later, it was made to die the final death by the Abhorsen Soraniel.”

  Terciel nodded. He could see where this was going.

  “So you’re going to make a chain? To imprison Kerrigor in Death?”

  “No,” replied Tizanael. “I doubt that I have the strength to forge such a chain. Not now. Fortunately, I don’t have to. I needed the book to learn how the chain is used, the spells required to wield it and make it fast. Soraniel brought back the chain Lerantiel made. It is somewhere in the House, in the lower levels. That’s what I have been looking for, without success. Until I finally realized I had neglected an obvious source of information regarding its location.”

  “Oh?” remarked Terciel. He lifted his cup again, but there was no wine left. “What source would that be?”

  “We will ask someone who was here at the time,” replied Tizanael. She raised her left hand, the silver ring with the small ruby sparkling in the warm light from the Charter marks that dotted the vaulted ceiling. “Moregrim! Attend upon me!”

  “The ring controls him?” asked Terciel.

  “After a fashion,” said Tizanael. “As with much other knowledge lost when Hillfair burned, complicated by the break in the succession of Abhorsens sixty years later, the exact nature of Moregrim is unknown. Even his name is uncertain. I believe he has also been called ‘Errale’ and ‘Greeneye’ and ‘Mogget,’ presuming there is not more than one of him. His ability to take various shapes confuses the matter, of course. There are a number of theories about him. He is certainly a Free Magic entity of great antiquity and has served us since the earliest times. This ring is one of three, related to the collar that binds him. It can be used to summon him, and inflict some slight punishment.”

  “That ring is a cruel and entirely unnecessary accessory to my already vile captivity,” said a voice from under the table. Moregrim’s voice. “The Abhorsen who made the rings was a greater monster than anything he ever sent back into Death.”

  “Who was it?” asked Terciel.

  “I can’t remember,” said Moregrim. He slid out from under the table on all fours and slowly stood upright. He was shorter than when Terciel had seen him up the tree, only coming up to his elbow, but more broad-shouldered, a disturbing reminder of his physical fluidity. His skin was like bleached sheepskin, strangely crumpled, and his hair and beard seemed to have a pale white light of their own.

  Moregrim faced Terciel and yawned, displaying all his small, sharp teeth. His emerald eyes glittered with disdain. “It is good two of the three are lost. Hopefully this one will go the same way soon. And the greater one, too, this accursed collar—”

  Terciel frowned. The dwarf did not wear a collar. Presumably he meant the belt around his waist.

  “Answer Terciel’s question,” said Tizanael, and touched the ring. Moregrim yelped and jumped back. Twisting around, he fell on the floor, landing on his hands and feet. Terciel frowned, for Moregrim moved very strangely for all his bulk, far more like some small animal than a man.

  “Torture me all you like,” he said. “It was a thousand years ago or more. How can I remember? You’re all the same anyway.”

  “You will need to wrack your memory further, Moregrim. I need to know where Lerantiel’s chain is,” said Tizanael. “I know it is stored somewhere beneath the House.”

  “Ask the Sendings,” replied Moregrim. “Some of them are old enough to know.”

  “Those old enough are no longer present enough. A lingering ghost I can barely see will not help,” replied Tizanael. She made a fist with her left hand and touched the ring with two fingers from her right. “And I am asking you. Tell me where I can find Lerantiel’s chain. I order it.”

  Moregrim did not answer immediately. He sat up on the floor and licked the palms of his hands, a very unsettling sight. His tongue was narrower than any normal man’s and a much brighter pink.

  “Tell me,” commanded Tizanael.

  “It’s hard to remember,” said Moregrim with a sigh. “Below. As you thought. In an ironwood chest with silver edges and a ruby set in the lockplate. Or maybe it was a garnet, an Abhorsen being cheap. On the sixth level. If I recall correctly, the second room on the left.”

  “Good enough,” said Tizanael.

  “You want to be careful with that chain,” said Moregrim, directly to Terciel. “I bet she’s going to make you carry it.”

  “Enough!” said Tizanael. “You may go, Moregrim.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s anything but soup?” asked the dwarf. “Fish, for instance?”

  “Go! Get out of my sight!”

  “I hear and obey,” said Moregrim silkily. He went down on all fours again and scuttled disturbingly away through the kitchen door.

  “It is dangerous,” said Tizanael, a moment after Moregrim’s departure. “The chain, I mean. It resonates with the bells, and so cannot be held by someone who carries them, and if the bells are used near it, it will wake and must be kept under control until it is used, no easy task. After Lerantiel made it, the chain was borne into battle by his Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”

  “What was their name?” asked Terciel.

  Tizanael didn’t answer, which was answer enough. With so many records lost, an Abhorsen-in-Waiting who never became the Abhorsen would not figure in any history that had come down to the present day.

  “Like the bells, the chain is also an artifact of Free Magic and the Charter,” continued Tizanael. “But unlike the bells, it is not in equilibrium. The Free Magic is more dominant. You will need to be warded against the effects of that, and there are gauntlets—”

  “So I am to carry it?” asked Terciel.

  “Yes,” replied Tizanael. “And use it. I will hold Kerrigor in whatever body he currently occupies, you will throw the chain over him. It is persistent in Life and Death, like our swords and bells. We must then drag his spirit form deep into Death, and at a suitable point we will fix him in place. Probably the Eighth Precinct, as that was what was chosen by Lerantiel.”

  “I have not been so far into Death,” said Terciel. He did not feel tipsy anymore, and his mouth was strangely dry. “Not past even the Sixth Gate.”

  “It is time you did, then,” said Tizanael. “You are ready.”

  Terciel nodded.

  “How will we even find Kerrigor in the first place?” he asked.

  “Given the stoat fingers watching us, and the attempted trap for you in Ancelstierre, it is possible Kerrigor plans to move against us, when he has gathered a sufficiently large army of the Dead,” she said. “But we will forestall him. Judging from those villages we know have been destroyed already, and the fact the villagers are missing entirely, not simply slain, he is mustering this army somewhere in the mountains north and west of the Red Lake. I have asked the Regent’s guards and borderers, and all the mayors of the western towns, to search for indications of such a muster. The Clayr, too, for all the good that will do.”

  She took a swig of her drink, set down her cup, and beckoned to the Sending to fill it again.

  “I expect the Regent’s message might already bear such news. Or the message-hawk.”

  “But if Kerrigor plans to attack us, he might already have a great force, and we would not be aided by the defenses here,” said Terciel uneasily. “Wouldn’t it be better to await such an attack? The House has held out before—”

  “No,” said Tizanael firmly. “He is an enemy we must face, and the so
oner the better. What, we should let him destroy more villages, break more Charter Stones, slay more people? We are here to protect them from the Dead, not skulk behind walls and water.”

  She took another long drink, a cinnamon and ginger tang in the air. Terciel watched her, wondering what else they could do, other than confront Kerrigor directly. Surely there had to be some cleverer course of action? Or was he simply more cowardly than Tizanael?

  “We will go and fetch the chain tomorrow morning. Meet me in the south cellar, armed and armored, at dawn. With bells, though we may have to set them aside if we do find the chain. The book says they cannot be closer than four paces to each other, lest the chain be awoken in an untimely fashion.”

  “The south cellar?” asked Terciel, surprised. “Not the trapdoor in the kitchen storeroom? Or the door in Yezael’s shed?”

  “There are a number of ways to enter the lower levels,” said Tizanael. “But I have been using the stair from the south cellar, so it will be easier to pass that way again. There are numerous warding spells and guard Sendings, as past Abhorsens had a tendency to put dangerous things below. There are Free Magic entities held in durance, and other dangers. They cannot escape, but going there is something of a risk.”

  “Much like the Library of the Clayr,” said Terciel.

  “Hardly the same,” said Tizanael dismissively. “The Clayr gather up everything without discernment. We have always been more focused. You will be ready at dawn?”

  “I will,” confirmed Terciel.

  “Good,” said Tizanael. “Once we have found and mastered the chain, we can prepare to go in search of Kerrigor.”