Terciel and Elinor (9780063049345)

by Nix, Garth

  Elinor didn’t know how to stop them, so she simply let them dress her in soft, loose undergarments that she thought might actually be silk, so much more comfortable than the flannel she was used to, even if Mrs. Watkins had always said silk underwear was no better than it looked, which still made no sense to her. Following that, they had put her in a gorgeous wraparound dress of heavier silk in dark blue that tied at the side with silver ribbons and was fastened at the top with a beautiful silver-and-moonstone brooch.

  A suit of leather armor was laid out on the bed, a knee-length tunic of supple light leather reinforced with breast and back plates of thicker boiled leather and bands at the shoulders and elbows, and matching trousers with armored kneecaps and shin plates. Next to it was a neat pile of linen shirts, light undergarments, an oilskin cape, and a leather backpack that one of the Sendings was preparing to stuff with smaller leather bags and pouches containing useful items for travel, though it insisted on displaying the things inside before they were repacked. Elinor had tried out a clockwork firestarter at their insistence, and a compass-type instrument that was entirely magical and as far as she could tell did not point north. She wasn’t sure what it did point to, but supposed Mirelle could tell her in due course.

  Another Sending showed her a pair of heavy hobnailed boots, but was quickly shouldered aside by the one who seemed most superior, and this one offered fur-lined slippers of red-dyed doeskin and gestured for her to sit at the chair by the writing desk. As it put on the right slipper and tied its silver ribbons around her ankles, Elinor glanced over at the books lined up in the small bookcase at the rear of the writing desk. A Sending had brought them in a few minutes before, carefully lining them up in the case.

  It took Elinor a long moment to fully comprehend that the name in ornate type on every spine was “Breakespear,” and the titles all very familiar, save one. Realizing this, she shot out of the chair, making the Sending fall over backward with the left slipper in its glowing Charter-mark-woven hand.

  “The Wise Woman!” cried Elinor, snatching one slim, leather-bound volume out of the row. “The lost Breakespear play! Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll sit back down.”

  She started to read the play immediately. The Sending put on her left slipper and tied the ribbon, and silently moved away to stand by the door. Two others continued with their packing while a fourth stood patiently next to Elinor, holding a belt of gold plaques that supported a bone-handled narrow-bladed dagger in a scabbard of gold and ivory, waiting for an opportunity to put it on their guest.

  Elinor was so intent on the play she didn’t register the knock on the door at first, but the Sending there opened it. Mirelle came in, saw Elinor reading, and smiled.

  “You’ve found something interesting?” she asked.

  Elinor looked up and blinked, returning to the world.

  “Yes! A Breakespear play we don’t have in Ancelstierre!” she exclaimed. “I mean, it’s known to be missing, there are parts of it, but this is complete! It’s wonderful.”

  “Can you tear yourself away for a little while?” asked Mirelle. “To visit Terciel before we join Tizanael for supper?”

  “Um, I suppose, yes,” said Elinor, conflicting emotions at war inside her. She desperately wanted to keep reading, but she also wanted to see Terciel in circumstances different from their last meeting.

  She stood up, and the patient Sending immediately knelt and put the golden belt around her waist, snicked its buckle shut, and settled the scabbard on her hip.

  Elinor moved the scabbard back a little, drew the dagger and weighed it in her hand thoughtfully, before sliding it back home.

  “Do we need to go armed?” she asked, pointing to the poniard on Mirelle’s own far less ostentatious leather belt, which was studded with black iron pips. “Even here?”

  “It is a good habit in the Old Kingdom,” said Mirelle. “And like most such habits, is best remembered if it is always followed. We are in a safe haven, here, Elinor, but you need to understand there are not many such. The towns, guarded by walls as well as the swift water of aqueduct, river, or canal; the villages similarly, but less well defended. In between these places there is no safety; most of the Kingdom has long been in a perilous state.”

  Elinor nodded thoughtfully, her hand on the hilt of the dagger.

  “I fought the Dead at my home,” she said. “And the sorcerer Hedge at the school. I know something, at least, of the dangers here.”

  “You do,” agreed Mirelle.

  “The Sendings seem to think I will come to know more,” continued Elinor. “Judging from all the stuff they keep bringing me. Armor and weapons and useful things for long travels.”

  “The Sendings like to anticipate different possibilities,” said Mirelle easily. “And they tend to know things before they could possibly be told. Like your fondness for Breakespear. I think it may be because they are more deeply connected to the Charter than even we are. The Charter is in our blood and bone and flesh, but they are entirely part of it. At least, that is how I have heard their anticipations explained.”

  “When do we go on to the Glacier?” asked Elinor. “It looks like the storm is weakening.”

  “I am not sure,” said Mirelle. “There are some matters we must discuss with Tizanael, and others who are coming here. Shall we go visit Terciel? It isn’t far.”

  “You remind me of some friends of mine,” said Elinor, her eyes looking beyond Mirelle to her former life, which at that moment seemed so far behind her it might as well be a dream. “Who were very adept at avoiding answering questions. But yes, I would like to see Terciel.”

  Terciel’s bedroom was next to Elinor’s. Mirelle knocked on the door, and a Sending opened it. Terciel’s glad cry of “Welcome” stuttered out in surprise as the ranger and Elinor came through the doorway.

  “Oh,” continued Terciel, a frown of deep puzzlement on his forehead. “I . . . er . . . was expecting Filris. The Infirmarian. Certainly not you, Miss Hallett. What I mean is, welcome.”

  He was propped up in bed with several pillows, his arm splinted and bound but no longer in a sling. The bedspread in front of him was covered with sheets of paper bearing Charter-mark notations, evidently the workings of a very complex spell needing a great many marks. There was a high-necked green glass bottle of water and a silver cup on the side table next to him, and a polished wooden bowl of small, sweet apples, very wrinkled from having come out of some winter store.

  “Thank you,” said Elinor cheerfully. “I’m not surprised you’re surprised! I am, myself. Before I met you I had no idea I might come to the Old Kingdom. Or about the Charter mark on my forehead, or anything, really. And we only stopped here on the way to the Glacier because of the storm.”

  Terciel looked out the window. The snow had stopped falling a little while ago, and the cloud cover was rising. There were even a few errant rays of sun striking through.

  “It is definitely clearing,” agreed Mirelle. “So I expect we may see Filris and whoever will fly the paperwing by nightfall, or perhaps some time tomorrow.”

  “Filris? Who’s that?” asked Elinor.

  “She is the Infirmarian of the Clayr,” said Mirelle. “Our most capable healer. Speaking of this, may I inspect your wound, Terciel? I have some small skills in dealing with the hurts of Free Magic myself.”

  “Is it your arm?” asked Elinor. She was relieved to see that he looked perfectly fine, apart from the splint. More, she was surprised by her own sense of relief. She hardly knew him, after all. But perhaps it was because he’d made that first vital connection with the Charter for her, and ever since she’d crossed the Wall, albeit several hundred feet above it, Elinor had felt the immanence of the Charter, closer than it had ever been. And since arriving in the House, the Charter was explicitly all around her, she only had to touch a wall, or a book, or even taste the air to feel the Charter in its immensity, and her own connection to it, her own part in its completion.

  “My arm is doing very well,” said T
erciel. He tried to sound matter-of-fact and not show how frightened he was. “A bone broken, but it is mending. I haven’t exactly got a wound in my leg, either. There is some sort of insidious Free Magic poison. I already can’t feel my foot. It’s creeping up . . .”

  “Hmm,” said Mirelle. “I’m sure Filris will be able to do something. Poke your leg out.”

  Terciel grimaced and thrust his leg out from under the covers, pulling his nightshirt up. His leg looked normal enough, thought Elinor, save for a fading ring of bruising above the knee.

  “What did this?” asked Mirelle. She leaned in very close and turned his foot, examining the skin.

  “A serpent of glass,” said Terciel. “A Free Magic entity called a Kerraste. I looked it up, afterward.”

  “Yes, I thought so,” said Mirelle. She tapped the base of his big toe, but Terciel didn’t feel it. “There is a tiny pinprick here, where it punctured your flesh with its sting and the veriest point broke off. That fragment of crystal, infused with Free Magic, is working its way to your heart—no, it cannot have got very far, not yet! I am sure Filris will be able to remove it, and make all well.”

  “I never felt a sting,” said Terciel, after a few deep breaths to calm himself. “The thing wound itself around my leg and struck at my face. I blocked it with my arm and its jaws were strong enough to break it. You say there is a pinprick?”

  “It is minute, a dot,” said Mirelle. “I only saw it because I suspected it was there.”

  “I should have looked myself,” grumbled Terciel. “Tizanael told me she can’t see all that well any more. I should have—”

  “What is the spell you’re learning?” asked Elinor quickly, to change the subject.

  “It’s to augment my body against Free Magic, rather ironically,” replied Terciel. He gathered the papers together into a pile and put them on the side table. “I haven’t been able to focus on it, to tell you the truth.”

  He looked properly at Elinor for the first time and made a kind of bow, sitting up in bed.

  “But more important, what in the Charter’s name brings you here? Did your house completely burn down? I still feel bad about that, but at the time I couldn’t think of what else to do.”

  Elinor smiled a rueful smile, and started to tell him. Terciel interjected with a few questions, nodding and then shaking his head in shared sadness as Elinor talked about Ham’s death. But the laughter came soon enough as Elinor began to talk about her role at Wyverley and the rehearsals for The Court of the Sad Prince and she took four apples from the bowl and began to juggle with them.

  Neither of them noticed Mirelle slide out of the room, leaving them talking. In the hallway outside, she saw a white cat sitting near the top of the stairs, licking his paws. A white cat with a red collar, on which swung a miniature version of Saraneth.

  “You have assumed the cat form, Moregrim, Mogget, whatever your name,” said Mirelle. “It suits you better.”

  “I am hoping it will garner sufficient sympathy from you or the other visitor to fetch me a fish,” said Moregrim. “It doesn’t work on Tizanael or her idiot grand-nephew. She has forbidden me to enter her sight, and Terciel dislikes cats, apparently from having to fight over food with them in his early life.”

  “I feel no sympathy,” said Mirelle. “You are a Free Magic spirit, somehow bound imperfectly in servitude by Charter Magic, and I wonder at the ancestors who chose to do it, rather than destroying you or binding you far more rigorously.”

  “But will you fetch me a fish?” asked Moregrim. “You cannot remove my collar, so I won’t bother asking you to do that.”

  Mirelle’s eyes narrowed. “You already know Elinor also has the Abhorsen blood as well as the Clayr, do you? She will not remove your collar either, monster. She has been warned.”

  Or she will be warned as soon as I can do it, Mirelle thought to herself. She rested her hand on the hilt of her poniard, though it would not be of much use if this creature got free of its binding.

  “All I want from you is a fish,” said Moregrim plaintively. “In return, I can tell you things. Knowledge lost to the Clayr, lost to everyone. But I remember.”

  “I do not bargain with such as you,” said Mirelle.

  “One of the river trout, just one . . .” began Moregrim, but he stopped suddenly, arched his back, and hissed. He arched higher and higher, his cat body shifting and stretching as he turned back into the broad-shouldered dwarf with the white-furred skin. This time, his ears stayed very pointy, and twitched, and a remnant tail did likewise. He turned on the spot and raced down the stairs, only seconds ahead of Tizanael, who was coming down from higher up.

  She saw Mirelle, but didn’t notice the departed Moregrim, confirming to Mirelle that the old Abhorsen’s hearing and sight were indeed not what they had once been.

  “A message-hawk, just come, has preceded Filris by mere hours,” said Tizanael. “She is being flown down by Sazene. Doubtless she will wish to see Terciel at once, but after that, we should all gather in the hall for supper. There is other news. None of it good, and doubtless more to come.”

  “I will attend her,” said Mirelle. “I have, I think, identified the problem. The point of the Kerraste’s sting broke off in Terciel’s foot, and travels the bloodstream toward his heart.”

  “I see,” said Tizanael slowly. “Or rather, I should have seen it, or suspected as much. Do you think Filris will be able to take out the fragment?”

  “If it is not gone too far,” said Mirelle. “I would also have her look at the scars on Elinor’s wrists. There is some remnant Free Magic there as well.”

  Tizanael rubbed her watering eye in a gesture of exasperation.

  “I need them both,” she said. “Without further delay. I hope Filris is still the preeminent healer you Clayr claim.”

  “She is,” said Mirelle. “You should ask her to see to your hurts, too, Abhorsen.”

  Tizanael started to deny she needed any attention, but stopped herself.

  “Yes,” she said. “I need time, a little more time. Perhaps Filris can help me gain it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I don’t remember my parents at all,” said Terciel. “They drowned before I was two. My sister, Rahi, sometimes I think I can remember her, but I’m really not sure.”

  Elinor was sitting on the end of his bed now. Three of the four apples she’d been juggling had been eaten, two by Terciel and one by her. They’d been talking for hours, about all kinds of things, the topic now veering to families and relatives.

  “My father died when I was ten,” said Elinor. “But I hardly ever saw him, anyway. I didn’t realize until much later that he and Mother didn’t get along, and he spent a lot of time away. Well, no one got along with Mother. She was cold angry, and he was hot angry. All the time for her, and even when he wasn’t angry, she would fire him up and then he’d storm out.”

  “They did you a great disservice, telling you your mark was an ugly scar,” said Terciel. “I wish I had met you sooner, to wake the mark.”

  “I still would have been trapped there,” said Elinor. She tried to sound breezy, but it didn’t come out that way. “It doesn’t matter. That was my past life, the chrysalid stage. Now I am here in the Old Kingdom, with the Charter, and am going to be a beautiful butterfly.”

  She slipped off the end of the bed, took up the apple cores and the surviving complete apple, and juggled them, changing the order and reversing the direction. Terciel smiled, then blinked in amazement as Elinor drew a Charter mark while still juggling. It hung in the air as the apple and apple cores flew, was joined by another and then another, then the three Charter marks merged to become a golden ball that Elinor grabbed and added to the rotation. Finally she threw the golden ball straight up, almost to the ceiling, and caught the apple cores and apple, setting them down in a line on the side table before the golden ball fell. She caught that and it broke into a cloud of golden butterflies that fluttered up toward the ceiling and slowly dissipated.


  “It wasn’t supposed to do that,” said Elinor, staring.

  “Where did you learn that spell?” asked Terciel.

  “I, uh, made it myself,” said Elinor. “I thought how wonderful it would be to juggle balls of light. But I could barely get them to persist for a few seconds back at the school.”

  “That’s very good,” said Terciel. “Astonishing, even. Most Charter Mages cannot create new spells. You’ve learned a lot, very quickly.”

  “It feels right to me,” said Elinor. “Like this is what I was always supposed to be doing. Charter Magic. I’m looking forward to learning a lot more. Mirelle says there are thousands and thousands of books of Charter Magic in the Great Library of the Clayr, and of course, so many people to learn from.”

  “Yes,” said Terciel, a little glumly. “I forgot you were on your way to the Glacier. And the storm has passed now.”

  Elinor looked out the window, over the white lawn, the stark fruit trees in the orchard; the enormously tall, snow-covered fig tree with its protruding grey-green roots where no snow stuck; the whitewashed walls; the line of mist from the waterfall beyond. She had heard its deafening roar flying in, and Terciel had explained why she couldn’t anymore.

  “But the paperwings usually won’t fly at night,” continued Terciel. “So you’ll have to stay till tomorrow at least.”

  Elinor made a noncommittal noise. Snow melting off the roof was dribbling down the windows, lines of water streaking the Charter-spelled glass, merging at the sill to form larger pools. One drop in particular attracted her gaze, because it seemed to be full of light, a softer light than from the lanterns that shone with Charter Magic, not oil, inside the room, or the weak sunshine of the early spring that was making its faltering way down through the higher cloud.

  She stared at it, and the room fell away about her, or to be more accurate, reassembled itself in some slightly different guise. She felt her view shift as well, so she was somehow looking down from the ceiling and it was Terciel’s room, the same room, but there was a different bedspread and a bottle of wine on the side table, not water, and no bowl of apples, and . . . Terciel was naked, mostly out of the covers, and with him was a woman and they were together in the way she had only seen in the book that Kierce had confiscated.