by Nix,Garth
“What in the Charter’s name is going on?” asked Bel. There was still smoke billowing up from the now-extinguished fruit trees in the orchard, a drift of it gathered about the House, pale under the moonlight. A line of sendings holding buckets, bowls, and even a firkin stretched from the orchard to the pump in the rose garden. “What’s this about Clariel and Mogget? Where are they?”
The guard sending gestured downward, and made several quick signs, Bel watching his flashing fingers.
“They went down and out through the waterfall?” asked Bel sharply. There was none of his amiable chatter now, no hint of any smile in his mouth or eyes. “Both of them?”
The sending held up four fingers, then slowly made four signs, one of them a claw.
“Two Free Magic creatures!” exclaimed Bel. He bit his lip and groaned. He guessed at once that one must be the creature in the bottle he had brought from Belisaere. Kargrin had warned him not to let Clariel touch the bottle, that her previous contact with the creature could have made her crave more. But another one as well? It had to be one of the chained, and that was beyond bad news.
“Clariel, what have you done?” he said, tears starting in his eyes. But he wiped them away immediately, for there was no time for tears. He had to do something, because surely Tyriel would not, or would take too long about it. But what was there he could do?
A sending tugged at his elbow. Charter marks from its fingers flowed through those in his armored coat, warming the skin beneath. Bel looked at the cowled figure, who inclined its head and offered him an ink-stained piece of paper. He took it, held it up to the moonlight and read it. For a moment he felt relieved that at least Clariel had written a note.
But something had happened below, for the sending reported two Free Magic creatures gone . . . and there was Mogget. Out of the House without permission, and unrestrained . . .
Bel took a deep breath, and stood as tall as he could.
“Ready a paperwing to launch as soon as possible from the platform,” he said, desperately hoping the sendings would obey. He was not the Abhorsen, nor the Abhorsen’s heir, but surely they would recognize that he was the only one who had the spirit of an Abhorsen?
“Bring me the sword Cleave and . . . and a set of bells.”
The guard sending knelt and bent its head, and the cowled one followed, and then the whole bucket line of sendings knelt as well. Belatiel felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck, and from somewhere deep beneath his feet he thought he heard the distant echo of a sorrowful bell.
Already some half-dozen leagues away on dragon-back, Mogget sat up in Clariel’s lap and turned his head to the south, ears pricking up.
“What is it?” asked Clariel. She could not sleep, for the wind sped past too briskly, it was cold, and the dragon did not fly as smoothly as a paperwing and she was afraid of falling out.
“A change,” said Mogget thoughtfully. “Not unexpected, but sooner than I thought. It is as well we left when we did.”
“What do you mean?” asked Clariel.
But Mogget was silent, and did not answer.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Chapter Thirty
AN ANCIENT TREASURE
Clariel came to the foothills of Mount Aunden in the early morning, well before noon. The mountain itself loomed up to their right, a great hulking mass of granite, its snow-capped peak gleaming in the sun. In winter, its upper slopes would all be under snow, but now bare rock shone there, above the conifer forests that thronged below the winter snowline.
The dragon tilted its wings and began a long glide down, aiming for a long flat shelf of grey-green rock, a little way above the treeline. Just before it seemed to Clariel that they would simply fly straight into it and all be killed, it beat its wings furiously, so that they almost stopped in midair. Then, with its rear legs running fast before they even made contact with the ground, the dragon landed in a lurching gallop that ended not, as Clariel feared, over the edge of the rocky ledge, but some twenty or thirty paces short. Whichever Free Magic creature was the guiding force behind the shape the two had assumed, it knew how to use it.
Clariel climbed stiffly off the chair, stood on the footrest, and leaped clear of the dragon, Mogget at her heels. Clapping her hands together, she jumped on the spot, for despite the hooded robe and mask over her hunting leathers, she was cold. They had flown high and fast and the chair definitely did not have the warming spells of a paperwing.
“We will divide,” said the dragon. “If you permit, Mistress.”
“Do so,” said Clariel. She pushed her hood back and continued to stomp and clap her hands as she walked around the ledge. She could smell the pine sap of the trees below, a clean, welcome scent that she drew into her lungs. Once she’d got warm in the sun Clariel thought she might walk down under those trees, since they were going to stay for some hours anyway to allow the Free Magic creatures to rest.
She looked up at the rocks above, more ledges interspersed between high crags, and wondered where the ancient cache of weapons Baazalanan had mentioned might be. There were no obvious caves, nor was this the kind of rock that lent itself to the formation of such things.
“I should have stayed in the House,” said Mogget sourly from behind her. “Not even a field mouse to eat up here.”
“It’s wonderful,” said Clariel, stretching out her arms. “No people, the forest just below, the sun on my face . . .”
She faltered and stopped, and lifted her hand to touch the mask. She’d forgotten she was wearing it, and for a moment could have sworn she had felt the sun on her face, without the barrier of the mask at all.
“Mistress, the cache is still here.”
Baazalanan’s whisper, close behind her, made Clariel turn swiftly on the spot. The creature was back in its regular form, looming above her, its blue skin bright in the sunlight, though its eyes remained pools of darkness. Aziminil squatted nearby, legs folded twice.
“Where?” asked Clariel.
Baazalanan stamped the ground with one of his clublike feet. An echo came back, indicating a hollow space beneath the apparently solid slab of stone.
“Under this ledge. There is a tunnel below.”
It walked along the ledge toward a large outcrop of granite and down a narrow gully between the two. Clariel followed, with Aziminil behind and Mogget bringing up the rear with an air of someone who wishes they had something better to do.
The gully led down to another ledge of folded stone below the one they’d landed on. Baazalanan walked to the interior edge of it, where it ran into the hillside. It looked no different than the stone anywhere else, but the creature reached out with one of its stick-thin fingers and traced a doorway in the stone, sharp nail screeching on the rock.
“You must make the door,” said Baazalanan. It gestured at the outline it had made. “Here.”
“How?” asked Clariel, even though she already knew. She touched the mask on her face as she spoke.
“Free Magic,” said Mogget. “Draw on your minion’s powers, cut through the stone. It will only take a moment and use only a fraction of the power you now have.”
“But I . . . I don’t want to use any more . . . I don’t want to make it more difficult to regain the Charter,” said Clariel.
Baazalanan and Aziminil squirmed as she mentioned the Charter, and she felt their unease, their mental shying away from the very notion.
“It won’t make it—” Mogget started to say, before the marks on his collar started to glow. “That is, it will make it only slightly worse, I’m sure. You will need all the help you can get if you still plan to go to Belisaere. It won’t be easy.”
“I suppose so,” said Clariel slowly. “I guess I’ve chosen my path, haven’t I? Now I need to speed along it.”
She looked at her two Free Magic creatures, and then at Mogget and his collar. The mar
ks were fading again, but she felt a longing to touch them, to regain some connection to the Charter.
“What if I touch your collar, Mogget?” asked Clariel. She took off her right gauntlet and bent down toward the cat, slim fingers reaching for the cat’s collar. “Will that help me?”
As she spoke, Baazalanan hissed and stood up to its full height as if ready to attack or run, and Aziminil skittered backward on her bladed feet. Mogget didn’t move, but Clariel stopped just short of touching his collar, her hand frozen in the air.
“It would help you regain something of your connection to the Charter,” said Mogget. “But it would . . . damage your servants, perhaps severely.”
“And you?”
“No,” said Mogget. “I have worn this collar a very long time. But its purpose is to restrain a Free Magic creature much greater than the two specimens you have bound, and you are connected to them.”
Clariel withdrew her hand, replaced her gauntlet, and looked at the cat with new respect and caution.
“And you desire me to help free you?”
“When I am able to think for myself I do,” said Mogget. “Anyone would. But as you know, that does not always apply.”
“I won’t, you know,” said Clariel. “You’re wasting your time. I’m going to use Baazalanan and Aziminil to help me rescue my aunt and kill Kilp and Aronzo, but that’s it. Tools for one particular job, that’s all.”
“I believe you,” said Mogget, with a yawn. “In any case, I find your company more interesting than the sendings back at the house, whatever may happen. Now, are you going to open a way through this rock?”
“I just want you to be clear on what I will or won’t do. I’m not releasing you and neither is anyone else,” said Clariel. She stood up straight and looked firmly at the two Free Magic creatures. “You have sworn to serve me, and so you will. Acknowledge that.”
“Yes, Mistress,” chorused the pair. She felt their acquiescence, but kept looking at them, willing them to show further obeisance, until they bowed low. Even then, she kept the mental pressure there until she was satisfied they were totally compliant.
“You may rise,” she said. “Aziminil, I will take some of your power, but again, do not touch me.”
Clariel stood before the outlined door in the rock face and stretched out one hand toward the stone and the other toward Aziminil. The Free Magic creature crept closer, her head still bowed. Clariel could feel the power within her servant, raw sorcery just waiting to be tapped, wanting to be used. She summoned it into herself, trying to hold back, to draw only just enough, but the thrill of it was so intense she found it hard to resist. With this power she could do anything, anything she could think of, and it was enormously difficult to bring her focus back, to refuse more power and direct what she had against the stone.
Intense white light burst from her outstretched hand, a spear of superheated air that she used to follow Baazalanan’s tracery, cutting through stone as easily as a hot wire through gold. Molten stone ran across the floor toward her, but Clariel made a brushing motion with her hand and the spear of white became a broom that swept the creeping lava aside. White smoke billowed out across the ledge, enough to choke any mortal, but again Clariel used the raw sorcery she held to wrap herself in a breeze that took the smoke away.
The stone door fell in with a crash, revealing a tunnel beyond. Clariel reluctantly lowered her hand, and let the power flow back into Aziminil. It ebbed slowly, not least because she had to make a determined effort to let it go. So much of her was screaming to take it all in, to make Aziminil a true servant, to subsume her into Clariel’s flesh.
The tunnel did not go far into the hillside. Clariel had to wait until the stone around the melted doorway cooled, but that did not take long. As she went into the darkness, Aziminil followed, her bloodred skin beginning to shine, till it grew bright and lit their way with a red light akin to a storm lantern or a pitch-soaked torch, shadows flickering across the wall.
There was a chamber at the end of the tunnel, a circular cave cut in the granite by sorcery. In the middle of this chamber there was a sarcophagus of bronze carved with symbols that twisted and squirmed, Free Magic parodies of Charter marks. Clariel stopped with a start as she felt the nature of these symbols, for they were the visible remnants of a Free Magic entity that had been stripped and broken apart, its power taken and infused into the metal. Yet something of its identity still lingered, a faint sense of something shadowed and brooding that liked the dark places of the earth, an ambusher and lurker. Even its name felt close, as if it were whispered in the bronze and could be heard if she pressed her ear up close.
But it was what lay on top of the sarcophagus that most attracted Clariel’s attention. There was a sword, ostensibly a plain weapon with a blackened steel hilt, the grip wrapped in wire, and an ugly roundel of bronze for a pommel. But it too had the shifting, ugly symbols in its metal, again the legacy of some entity that had been deconstructed and forced into the blade.
Next to the sword there was a bandolier, a broad strap of leather to wear across the chest, with seven leather pouches holding seven bells, their ebony handles projecting out.
Seven bells of increasing size, the smallest able to be cupped in Clariel’s hand, the largest bigger than two hands clasped.
“A necromancer’s bells,” said Mogget.
“Like the Abhorsens use?” asked Clariel. As with The Book of the Dead, she felt attracted to the bells, felt her fingers yearn to touch the ebony handles, unclasp their cases, hear their voices . . .
“Like and unlike,” said Mogget.
“You may need more servants, Mistress,” said Baazalanan. “And the Dead are many.”
“I don’t know how to use the bells,” said Clariel. She kept staring at them. Was it her imagination, or could she hear the instruments faintly humming in their leather shrouds? Calling to her? “I know no necromancy. I haven’t read The Book of the Dead.”
“You need nothing but your will and the instinct in your blood,” said Mogget. “These bells are Free Magic things, not wound about with Charter Magic. Take them up, speak to them. They will answer to you, teach you their use, their strengths and foibles.”
“I could go into Death?” asked Clariel.
“Anyone can go into Death,” said Mogget, with a smirk. “Coming back again is the difficult part.”
“There are always many Dead who wish to return to Life,” whispered Baazalanan. “An army of the Dead awaits you, Mistress. Take up the bells.”
“Take up the sword,” echoed Aziminil, her voice sweet and cajoling. “Take up the bells.”
Clariel took a step forward, and then another. She almost felt like she was out of her body, watching herself walk forward. The sword and the bells called out to her. It was inevitable that she should pick them up, and wield them. She should raise an army of the Dead and lead it against Kilp and Aronzo. She would take Belisaere by storm and put everyone there to the sword, to make more deaths, to raise more Dead, to build an army such as the world had never seen, an army to go forth and conquer till there were none who could gainsay her.
Clariel the Great, deathless and all-powerful, free to make her own path—
“No!” screamed Clariel. She snatched her hand away, inches from the bells, shocked to find that she had already taken the gauntlet off, that she would have touched these Free Magic things with her bare fingers. “No!”
Turning, she ran from the room, out through the tunnel, out into the sunshine. But it was stark and hot and hurt her eyes. Stumbling, she went to the gully and found a path down, down into the pine forest, down into the calm, cool world she loved.
Mogget found her there a few minutes later. Clariel was collapsed against the trunk of a great pine, one with a prickly skin. But she had her arms around it, nevertheless, and her head against it, and her legs were buried in the fallen needles as if they could provide a blanket to comfort her.
“If you show weakness, Aziminil and Baazalanan w
ill turn against you,” said Mogget conversationally.
Clariel let go of the tree and lifted her head with a jerk.
“What! You told me if I bound them they would serve forever! They promised!”
“They are things of elemental power,” said Mogget. “No promise means anything to them, save it be backed by force. They will serve only as long as you are stronger than them.”
“You lied to me,” whispered Clariel. She felt the rage rising inside her, the sudden fury of the betrayed.
“I am not your servant,” spat Mogget. “We are, if anything, companions in adversity. You wish your freedom, I wish mine. Running away and hugging trees will not help either of us!”
Clariel snarled and lunged at him, but Mogget danced away.
“That’s better!” he cried. “Let the fury come! Take the sword, take the —”
The cat’s words ended in a choking cry as his collar suddenly flared brighter than the sun, Charter marks in violent motion, circling his neck. The cat twisted in agony and flopped to the ground, while Clariel held her gauntleted hands to her face and recoiled back behind the tree.
The fury was gone, replaced by a cold determination.
“I’m not taking those bells!” called out Clariel. “But I will use Aziminil and Baazalanan as I see fit, and when I am done you will go back to the Abhorsen’s House!”
Mogget gave a pathetic, mewing cry, but it was not in answer to Clariel’s words. The blinding light of the Charter marks dimmed, and a woebegone cat crawled around the tree and looked up at Clariel.
“I may be gone sooner than you think,” he rasped. His head was bowed, and to Clariel he seemed totally abject, for she could not see the cunning glint in his green eyes, nor the curl in the corner of his mouth. “The Abhorsen has put on the ring, and soon will set out to pursue us. He will return me to the House, no doubt, but what of you? I do not think you will see your Great Forest ever again.”
