by Nix,Garth
“What did you do back then?”
“Oh, the usual,” said Mogget slyly, his emerald eyes narrowing. “Sage advice, the wisdom of the ages, that sort of thing. Not that many of them listened. What are you doing here?”
“Being imprisoned,” said Clariel shortly. “Temporarily, if I have anything to do with it.”
“Tell me more,” said Mogget encouragingly. He tilted his head in interest, and Clariel had to stop herself from instinctively reaching down to scratch under his chin. As she half extended and then pulled back her hand, Mogget stood up on his hind paws, pink nose sniffing.
“Interesting . . .” he said.
“What?” asked Clariel.
“Oh, the scent of the outside world,” said Mogget. “So you’re a prisoner?”
“For my own protection, or so I am told,” said Clariel. She bent down to pick up the dropped book, keeping a careful eye on Mogget. She was trying to remember where she’d heard the name before, or some part of it . . . and then it came to her. Bel, talking about books in the Abhorsen’s House, and someone called “Mog,” his voice trailing off with the name incomplete . . .
“Do you know Belatiel?”
“Ah, the delightfully enthusiastic Bel,” said Mogget. He was looking at the book, whiskers twitching. “So keen, so unencumbered by experience. Yes. He is one of the few members of the extended family who come here, and even then I think he has to sneak away to do it. You are . . . familiar with Bel?”
“He’s a friend of mine, if that’s what you mean,” said Clariel. “From Belisaere.”
“So Belatiel has been in Belisaere,” said the cat. “How appropriate. It has been long since I visited the city. Long indeed. So you come from Belisaere.”
“Only most immediately, before that I was . . .” said Clariel. Her voice trailed off and she shook her head. “Why am I telling you anything? I can see you’re a Free Magic creature.”
“But not the first you’ve met,” said Mogget slyly. “Or held, by the faint trace I discern upon your hands. But have no fear! You’ve seen my collar, proving my . . . utter faithfulness to the Charter that binds me. I am but a slave of the Abhorsen, currently your grandfather, and thus by extension of you. You have but to command me and I will obey.”
“You will?”
“Possibly,” answered Mogget, yawning to show his very sharp white teeth. “It all depends. I do have to obey the Abhorsen and the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, but as neither has given me any orders for such a long time I fear I am out of practice. You could ask me nicely. Promise me a fish.”
“You can show me the rest of the house to begin with,” said Clariel. “Please.”
“If we converse along the way,” said Mogget. “That would be acceptable.”
He sidled out of the library, tail high.
“I suppose we could,” said Clariel cautiously.
As they wandered upstairs she found herself telling Mogget about her life in Estwael, the move to Belisaere and the events of the last week. But she gave a highly abridged version of her encounter with Aziminil, very light on details, specifically not mentioning her mental conversation with it or how she had let it go.
“I know of Kargrin,” said Mogget, as Clariel looked in the armory on the second floor. It was very well-stocked, and perfectly clean, but it had an air of disuse. Everything was just too perfectly put away. As with elsewhere in the House, a sending appeared as soon as Clariel entered, this one gesturing at the racks of swords and the stands of bows and spears with what might almost be construed as a beseeching gesture. Clariel shook her head, though she took note of several weapons of interest. If there was any chance of getting away, she would need to be better equipped. There were complete arrays of armor there too, on stands, including a short shirt of gethre plates that looked like it would fit her.
“What was that about Kargrin?” she asked Mogget as they left. She hadn’t beeen paying attention and he’d said something else about the magister.
“His teacher’s the one to watch for,” repeated Mogget. “The old witch.”
Clariel stopped. “Who?”
“Ader, she calls herself, or did,” said Mogget. “But she was Maderael when she was the Abhorsen.”
“What!”
“When she was the Abhorsen,” said Mogget innocently.
“But . . . she’s still alive,” said Clariel. “I thought you only got a new Abhorsen when the old one died . . .”
“Ah, the lack of education among you young ones,” sighed Mogget. “Abhorsens can abdicate their authority. The trick is fooling . . . convincing someone else to take over.”
“You mean she was the Abhorsen before Tyriel?”
Mogget shook his head and gave out a rather alarming caterwaul-like chuckle.
“Oh, no, she was one back again, the Abhorsen before Kariniel, almost a hundred years ago.”
Clariel shook her head. “She can’t be that old.”
“Can’t she?” asked Mogget. “Charter Magic can do many things. She was very young when she took the bells, and very young when she gave them back again.”
“Why?”
Mogget looked away from her and batted at the air with his paw, as if an errant fly was passing.
“How would I know? I’m just a slave, remember?”
“Look, I don’t even want to know this!” protested Clariel. “I don’t care who’s the Abhorsen now or then or whenever! I just want to go and live my life in the Great Forest and be left alone!”
“Well why don’t you?” asked Mogget reasonably.
“I just told you,” said Clariel crossly. “Governor Kilp wants me to be a puppet Queen. Gullaine wants me to be some kind of Regent. The Abhorsen wants to keep me out of the way while he dithers about actually doing something about anything. And I’m a prisoner here!”
Mogget’s ears went up, expressing an opinion Clariel interpreted as mild contempt, and padded out of the room. Clariel followed him, treading heavily, and wondered why she’d bothered to tell the creature anything. But he had made her think.
I won’t accept my imprisonment here, Clariel thought. I would have escaped the bottle cell in Belisaere even without Kargrin’s help, and that really was a prison. Surely I can get out of here as well. And once out, then I can decide what to do myself. Whatever I want to do. Whatever I think must be done.
From the open doorway of the room opposite, evidently another armory or a store of some kind, Mogget gestured with one paw. Clariel frowned, but bent down on one knee. Mogget gestured again, so she leaned forward, close enough for the cat to butt his head against her chin.
“You’re thinking of escaping, aren’t you?” whispered Mogget.
“No . . .” said Clariel unconvincingly.
“Yes you are,” said Mogget.
“If I was I wouldn’t tell you!”
“But you should,” purred Mogget. “I’m the only one here who might be able to help you.”
“Why would you do that?” Clariel whispered back. “Besides, aren’t you a slave who has to do what he’s told? The Abhorsen told the sending to tell everyone not to let me out.”
“I don’t take orders from the sendings, and the Abhorsen said nothing to me,” said Mogget, very quietly. “In fact, no Abhorsen has told me to do anything for a long time, the consequence being that I have . . . ahem . . . managed to get out of the habit of obeying some of the more general commands of yesteryear.”
“What do you get out of it?” asked Clariel again, who had dealt with many tricky merchants over the years in her father’s counting house. She had never known someone to offer something for nothing, even if it was something intangible or some future favor that was being stored up just in case and might never be used.
“Amusement,” breathed Mogget, his eyes wicked. “I told you it was dull here. Maybe more than that.”
Clariel stood up abruptly. Her heel-following sending had drifted closer, she saw, as if it had wanted to hear what Mogget said, and some others had litera
lly come out of the woodwork. One of them was the guard sending from the gate, she noticed, unless there was another one exactly the same with a two-handed sword.
“I’ll think about it,” she said to Mogget. “What’s upstairs?”
“Music room, practice room, Abhorsen’s bedroom, and in the tower the upper reading room, study, and observatory,” rattled off Mogget. “Roof gardens on either side of the tower. Downstairs is much more interesting. The lower levels. What?”
The last word was addressed to the guard sending with the two-handed sword, who had silently moved closer to the cat and was looking down at him, his face stern.
“Go on then,” said Mogget to the guard sending. “Report me. But who to, that’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Report what?” asked Clariel suspiciously.
“Nothing,” said Mogget. “Like I said. You going up?”
Mogget was silent as they took the stairs to the third floor, the two-handed sword sending now accompanying them along with the cowled attendant. Clariel barely glanced in on the third-floor rooms. The music room had a clavichord, zithern, and other instruments; the Abhorsen’s bedroom was much fancier than Clariel’s; and the bare chamber for weapons practice was only made distinctive by virtue of its floor being three inches deep in pure white sand that was so clean it squeaked when Clariel stood on it.
The tower room on this level was again completely lined with books, but there was also a narrow stair cutting through the shelves, going up higher. Clariel looked up and was about to ascend when she heard the sharp note of a gong being struck below. Mogget immediately whipped around and lit out for the main stairs, crying out, “Dinner!”
“What’s up there?” Clariel asked her attendant sending. It bowed, then bent to imitate sitting down, and made scribbbling motions with its hand across an imaginary page.
“An office . . . a study?”
The sending bowed, straightened up, and gestured urgently toward the main stairs as the gong rang again.
“I’m expected for dinner?” asked Clariel. The sending bowed and gestured again. Though there was no indication it would try to force her to go downstairs, Clariel still felt it was like a prison warder laying down the law. It was dinnertime, and she must follow the routine of her prison.
A comfortable, perhaps even fascinating prison, but a prison nonetheless.
For now, thought Clariel, and went down to dinner.
She was rather surprised to see that Mogget was seated with her at the table in the hall, the cat-creature sitting on a stool opposite her own place, a quarter of the way down from the thronelike chair at the head of the table, in what appeared to be a measure of Clariel’s standing in the family. Not one of the titled Abhorsens, but a close connection.
There was a great deal of food, all of it very good, but after assuaging her initial hunger, she paid it little attention. Unlike Mogget, who ate as if he really was a starved cat and not something else that probably didn’t need to eat at all. He certainly didn’t need duck in a wine sauce and poached salmon, the latter dish being greeted with yowls of almost unseemly enthusiasm, though Mogget then went on to eat it daintily. The cat-shape was clearly not just a mere outward shell, but extended to behavior as well.
Clariel pushed her plate away, deep in thought about how she could escape the House. Even if she managed this, she would then need to evade everyone searching for her, which would include not only Kilp’s people, which essentially meant all the organized forces of the Kingdom; but also the Abhorsen’s. And probably the Clayr as well, she thought, who might simply be able to look into the ice and see where she was going to be and tell the Abhorsen where to intercept her.
It seemed impossible, but she knew that part of her generally defeated feeling was simply tiredness and reaction to everything that had happened. Surely there would be ways to escape the House. The Abhorsen might even change his mind, or could be helped to change his mind.
There was also the Free Magic creature in the silver bottle. It was here somewhere, in the House. She had freed Aziminil once. Perhaps the creature could help return the favor . . .
She looked over to ask Mogget about where the bottle had been taken, only to see a completely bare salmon dish. The cat-thing, all the fish being eaten, had departed upon some silent mission of his own.
Clariel waited for him to come back, but eventually gave up and, after refusing more offers of various desserts, including one involving ice and apricots that looked delicious, started back upstairs. Halfway up, after briefly considering going farther to look at the study and the observatory in the tower, she instead decided that she really, really needed to go to bed.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Chapter Twenty-Five
GONE FISHING
Clariel slept for sixteen hours. When she woke up, sunshine was streaming through the windows, and her attendant sending—or at least one that looked exactly the same—was standing at the end of the bed holding a towel. There was an odd smell in the room, almost like rotten eggs, which surprised and alarmed Clariel until she realized it came from the steaming hot water that had just come out of the pipe into the basin. It was the same smell as the hot springs that could be found half a day’s ride from Estwael, a favored spot for the townfolk to ease aching limbs. Some Abhorsen had worked out how to pipe hot water from just such a spring below the House.
As soon as Clariel got up the sending with the towel ushered her over to the basin and, acting more like a nursemaid trying to bathe an infant than a lady’s maid, helped her wash and dress. New clothes had been laid out, new linen underclothes and a light woolen dress in blue, with the silver key motif very faintly woven into the cuffs. The improvised leather slippers from the day before were still there, but had been cleaned. Clariel’s knife was laid on top, with a knotted black cord provided as a belt to hang it from.
It was very peaceful, Clariel thought, as she tied the cord around her slim waist and checked the knife moved freely in its scabbard. The sun was shining, she’d had a wonderful sleep, and there were wonderful smells of fresh baked bread and cooked bacon coming up the stairs.
Mogget wasn’t at breakfast either, but even after only a short acquaintance Clariel presumed he’d simply had his earlier rather than skipping it. After Clariel had eaten she went out into the garden. It was warmer outside in the sun, but there was a cool northerly breeze blowing in off the river. She walked around the rose garden, marveling at all the different varieties, most of them in bloom. There were red, white, and yellow roses, and even one so dark purple it looked black from a distance. A black rose would be a suitable flower for the Abhorsens, she thought, a death-flower. Not for Tyriel and his hunters, who it appeared had mostly given up the old ways. A black rose for the old Abhorsens, the ones who often walked in Death.
Clariel thought about that as she walked across the lawn to the grove of oaks. She never really thought much about the sensation she felt when an animal died, it was something she had got used to in the forest. But in Kilp’s dining chamber, the deaths there . . . it was the same feeling, but magnified many times.
So she had the Abhorsen’s Death sense, inherited along with the berserk fury from the royal side. But all the Abhorsens and the Royal Family were great Charter Mages, and she wasn’t, as Kargrin had discovered. She couldn’t even begin to understand why Bel, for instance, was so interested in the Charter and felt so much a part of it. Perhaps it was because she was an outsider, and wanted to be an outsider.
Clariel put her hand on one of the oaks, feeling the strength of it under her hand. It was old, all the oaks here were old. Hundreds and hundreds of years, growing tall and strong. But like her, they were contained within the white walls . . .
“Heading for the fishing tower? Excellent idea.”
Clariel jumped at the sound of Mogget’s voice. The cat emerged from behind
one of the other oaks and sat near Clariel’s foot as if he had been waiting there all morning.
“I wasn’t,” said Clariel. “But I could. I want to ask you some questions, away from—”
“Away from the cruel cares of deciding what to have for breakfast,” interrupted Mogget.
“No, I meant away from the—”
“Repressive number of plates of dry crusty things those sendings put out,” interrupted Mogget again. “I trust they’re looking after you? That one there can be a bit pushy.”
“What?”
Clariel turned around. Her attendant sending, who had silently followed her from the house, was standing two paces behind her back. It bowed, the strange face inscrutable under the cowl.
“Oh, do go away,” said Clariel.
It didn’t move.
“It won’t,” said Mogget. “Ordered to watch you. Guard you too, I suppose.”
“Will it report what I say to the Abh . . . to my grandfather?”
“Yes,” said Mogget. He bent forward and suddenly scratched at the ground, clearing away some leaves and fallen acorns to the bare earth. Then, extending one claw, he scratched something in the dirt. It took Clariel a moment to understand that he was writing something. She knelt down to see it better, and briefly saw the words Sme cn’t read.
“Ah,” said Clariel. She arched her eyebrows and jerked her head back a couple of times, indicating the sending behind her.
“There’s a fungus on bread that will make you do that,” said Mogget. “I believe it is curable.”
Clariel sighed and, holding her hand close to her stomach, pointed with the tip of her forefinger at the sending.
“Oh, yes, I think that does apply to the one in question,” said Mogget, scrabbling for a moment in the earth as if he’d spotted a tasty-looking bug, but in fact writing another message in shorthand: I can shw yu how to gt rid of them.
“I think I’d like to look at the study in the tower,” said Clariel. “I have some letters to write.”
