He tried to sit up straight, and found that as he did so, he moved out of the freezing-cold wind into an area of still, warm air. His dulled mind processed that he was sitting behind someone; he was tied to some sort of hammock-like suspended chair, which was in . . . in the open cockpit of an aircraft.
Nicholas had flown before, several times, he had an interest in aviation and the physics of flight, and in consequence had gone for joyrides with the barnstormers from the flying circus who visited the ten-acre field near his family home on regular occasions. But this was no Heddon-Hare or Beskwith. It was completely silent, to begin with. There was also warm air in the cockpit, which was impossible, since there wasn’t even a windshield.
Looking around, the flimsy contraption seemed to be little more than a kind of canoe body, with long, hawklike wings that were far too frail to sustain flight. And as he examined the side closest to him, he saw the hull was made of something very insubstantial, some kind of thin laminated plywood or something even lighter.
Still dazed, feeling like his arm was much heavier than usual, he tapped the person in front of him on the shoulder. Whoever it was started and turned her head to look back. Even in his confused state, Nick recognized her.
“Lirael!”
As he spoke her name, memory came flowing back, like a river returning to its course after some temporary dam had burst. First came small trickles of thought, images and sounds, and then the whole lot swept into his mind. Dorrance Hall, the creature in the case, the pursuit north, making the monster drink his blood, and then . . . Lirael. She had finished off the creature . . . no, banished it for a while . . . with her thistle-tipped spear. But everything after that was lost. He had a dim recollection of golden light, light all around, like waking to sunshine through a bedroom window, so bright you can’t immediately open your eyes, not until you look away.
Now he had opened his eyes.
To find himself in a silent, far too fragile-looking aircraft that presumably worked by the magic he had for many years refused to recognize as being possible. Piloted by a young woman who he had dreamed about ever since meeting her, or even before meeting her, since he didn’t know that his encounter with Lirael near the Red Lake had actually happened.
“Are you all right?” asked Lirael. He could hear her easily; somehow the wind created by their speedy flight was diverted around the cockpit.
“I . . . I think so,” said Nick. “But I can’t remember what happened . . . after you got rid of that creature.”
“The Hrule,” said Lirael. “You’ve been in a healing sleep since then. We brought you through the Wall and then this morning loaded you aboard this paperwing.”
Nick put his hand against the thin material at his side. Small symbols of golden light emerged where his fingers touched, flashed brightly, and then receded again.
“This craft is made of paper?” he asked.
“Laminated paper,” said Lirael. “And a great deal of Charter Magic. Hold on a moment, I need to catch a higher wind.”
She looked to the front again, and whistled: pure, clear notes that seemed to echo inside Nick’s head, and out of the corner of his eye he saw more of the strange, shimmering gold symbols appear in her exhaled breath, apparently in answer to the whistling, only to whisk away out of sight as he peered forward to try to get a better look at them.
The paperwing tilted back and to the side as it began to spiral upward, passing through a wispy cloud that Nick observed parted in front of the paperwing’s long nose. He saw thousands of tiny droplets of moisture spatter the wings, but none came in the cockpit.
“How . . . how do we stay warm and keep the wind and moisture out?” Nick asked when Lirael stopped whistling, and the paperwing settled into level flight once more.
“Where we sit—Sabriel calls it the cockpit—is spelled for warmth and to divide the wind,” answered Lirael. “But it works only up to a point. If we go much faster you’ll feel the wind, and heavy rain comes through, after a fashion. I’m fairly new to this, so we’re flying lower and slower than Sabriel or Touchstone would.”
Nick looked over the side. He could see green fields below, sprinkled with small groups of trees, and a few buildings, probably farmhouses. Some distance to his left there was a broad river, the water bright under the sun. It was hard to tell how high they were, but it looked to be at least a few thousand feet.
“You haven’t been flying very long?” he asked.
“Not long,” said Lirael. Though he hadn’t sounded worried, she added, “But I do know what I’m doing, and to be honest, this paperwing could fly itself.”
“Oh,” said Nick. “It can fly by itself?”
“Yes,” said Lirael.
There was silence for a minute or so. Nick tried to gather his fragmented thoughts. He’d wanted to come to the Old Kingdom for many reasons, not least a desire to see Lirael again, though he had not fully recognized that himself. But he had not thought through what he would do once he got here, in part because it had seemed he would have time to write to Sam before he would be allowed to cross the Wall, and that everything would take a long time and allow careful thought and consideration.
Now here he was, feeling weak and stupid, tied to a kind of hammock chair in a silent flying vehicle that worked by magic. With Lirael, but not in circumstances where he felt he could easily talk to her, or impress her. In fact, he feared quite the reverse. He’d helped a Free Magic creature escape from its prison, inadvertently begun the process of making it even more powerful, and had only been saved by Lirael’s arrival, when she had immediately and competently taken care of matters.
Nick shut his eyes and groaned inwardly. She probably already thought of him as a dangerous fool for his prior involvement with Orannis, a reputation he’d now enhanced, or possibly dehanced or whatever the word might be, by his freeing and empowering the Hrule. Once again meddling in things he didn’t understand and endangering others.
“Um, I’m taking you to the Clayr’s Glacier,” said Lirael, after several more minutes of rather uncomfortable silence. “Do you . . . do you know about the Clayr?”
“Sam’s been writing to me,” said Nick. “About lots of things. I was . . . well, I was just ordinarily stupid before, when we were at school. I mean, I didn’t want to believe any of Sam’s stories. It didn’t fit with what I knew about science and everything. And then . . . then when I first came here . . . it’s all rather vague, my memory, but I seemed to get even worse, refusing to acknowledge what was in front of my face—”
“But that wasn’t your fault!” protested Lirael. “You had the shard of Orannis in your heart, controlling you.”
“It was in my heart!” exclaimed Nick. He couldn’t help but look down, almost feeling some phantom pain in his chest. “Sam didn’t tell me that! But surely it would have killed me when it came out?”
“No . . .” said Lirael. “It traveled through your bloodstream, reversing the course it must have taken to go in, and then burst from your finger, to rejoin the hemispheres.”
Nick lifted his hand and looked at his forefinger. There was a star-shaped scar there above the top joint, and it was always somewhat numb, though he could feel a pinprick or other sharp pain. He had wondered what caused that numbness, and the scar.
“Sam should have told me,” he said quietly. “I suppose he thought it would be too upsetting . . . um, the Clayr . . . the women who can See the future, in the ice. They live in an underground city, built around a glacier. Is that right?”
“Yes, for what it’s worth,” said Lirael. “It’s more complicated than that, of course.”
“But why are you taking me there?” asked Nick. “I mean, I’m grateful, very grateful, don’t get me wrong. Thank you for dealing with that thing, the Hrule. I wouldn’t want any more people to suffer from my stupidity, which seemed likely . . . there . . .”
His voice trailed off and he shook his head, wondering why he found it so difficult to talk intelligently to Lirael. He nev
er had any problems talking nonsense to the debs at the balls in Corvere, or pretending academic conversations with the bluestockings at Sunbere, or even taking part in intelligent discourse with the students who saw through his act. Everyone said he was charming. It couldn’t all be to do with his powerful and influential family, which meant nothing here. Could it?
“I’m curious how you ended up by the Wall with the Hrule,” said Lirael. She didn’t sound at ease, either, Nick thought miserably. He was probably just a task she had to take care of, part of her duty as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. Though he was very glad it was she who’d come along, not Sabriel. He was intimidated by Sabriel, though she had always been perfectly nice to him on the rare occasions she’d visited Sam at school.
“It all started with me visiting Dorrance Hall,” Nick began, continuing in a rather disjointed way to tell Lirael the story of how the Hrule had been brought there in the first place as a kind of museum exhibit and the mad Alastor Dorrance had tried to bring it back to life with Nick’s blood, all too successfully.*
“So now you know about my latest idiocy. . . . Why are you taking me to the Clayr’s Glacier?”
“I’m taking you there because . . .” Lirael continued, then stopped. She cleared her throat, seemingly uncertain about what she wanted to say. “I’m taking you to the Clayr because, as you probably know, there is still a remnant of Free Magic power within you, left over from the shard of Orannis. Which would normally be incredibly dangerous. You would be a Free Magic sorcerer for sure, unable to resist using that power. But in your case, the . . . my friend the Disreputable Dog . . . she baptized you with the Charter mark, and somehow it took, so you are a part of the Charter and you have Free Magic within you. Which is . . . unusual . . . and the best place to have such things, I mean situations . . . or . . . circumstances . . . looked into is at the Glacier, where there are many very learned Charter Mages of all kinds, and also the Great Library, where there might be books or other . . . sources . . . of knowledge that can help you. I mean us. All of us, that is. Not just the two of us . . . so that’s why we’re going to the Glacier. We should be there before nightfall.”
Nick could only see the back of Lirael’s neck, but he noticed a blush spread across her pale skin, above the high collar of her armored coat. He grimaced, thinking it was even worse than he thought. Not only had he caused trouble, he was trouble, and Lirael was embarrassed to have to tell him so.
Change the subject, he thought. Change the subject!
“Um, this kind of flying is much better than back home,” he said, grimacing again at how vacuous this sounded. But he pressed on. “I mean, in our airplanes, it’s very noisy. Last time I went up I was covered in oil from the engine, sprayed all over me. And it was freezing, even with a fur coat. This . . . ah . . . paperwing is a far superior way to fly.”
Lirael didn’t answer, but the paperwing responded to the compliment by suddenly dropping forty or fifty feet and wiggling its wings, both of which scared Nick quite a lot but did not upset Lirael in the least.
“I do like flying in paperwings,” she said affectionately, reaching out to pat the side of the fuselage. “It’s much more comfortable and far easier than flying in owl shape.”
“Owl shape?” repeated Nick quietly to himself, with an intense feeling of déjà vu. Lirael’s voice and the memory of an owl, the two together, resonated in his mind, though he couldn’t quite place the connection. An owl with golden eyes. And a dog with wings . . . was that something that had actually happened?
He was thinking about the owl and the dog with wings when he finally noticed Lirael’s golden hand again, still resting on the lip of the cockpit. It looked almost like normal flesh and blood, save for the faint golden tinge, until he stared at it, mesmerized by how it did look almost normal, and not quite, all at the same time. This was because every few seconds there would be a faint shimmer and Charter marks would move, revealing a glimpse of the metal structure underneath the illusion of flesh.
“Your new hand,” said Nick. “It’s . . . quite incredible. And to think Sam made it. He wasn’t that great at woodwork classes in school.”
“Yes,” replied Lirael, quickly drawing her hand into her lap so he couldn’t see it anymore. “Yes. It’s a marvel, really. I often forget it isn’t my . . . isn’t really part of me.”
Nick resisted a strong impulse to slap himself in the head. Sam had told him all about the events at Forwin Mill, and how Lirael had lost her hand in the final binding of Orannis. Of course the loss of her hand, and in fact all the events of that time, were incredibly traumatic, and no matter how good the replacement hand was, she wouldn’t want to be reminded of it.
It would be better to just keep his mouth shut before he stuck his foot in it yet again, Nick thought. Particularly since Lirael had lost her friend the Disreputable Dog at the same time as her hand. The Dog he had seen himself; she had brought him back from Death. Nick thought about that, his forehead crinkling with the effort. The dog with wings. He’d seen her with the owl who had Lirael’s voice. It was the same dog . . . maybe it was a memory, not some fragment of delusion . . .
They flew in silence for some time, until Nick became aware of the alarming reality that he had to go to the toilet. The sun was high above them, so it must be well after noon. They had flown closer to the river too, Lirael obviously following it north. Nick looked down at it, but was not helped by the view of all that water, rushing along . . .
Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. It would be extraordinarily embarrassing if he wet himself, rather than just mildly embarrassing to ask for a toilet stop.
“Excuse me,” he said, blushing himself now. He felt like he was six years old again, back at prep school, and almost raised his hand. “I’m afraid I need to . . . um . . . stop somewhere. Nature calls, don’t you know.”
“Nature calls?” replied Lirael, looking over her shoulder with a very puzzled expression on her face. Nick looked away, not wanting to meet her eyes. She evidently had never heard that particular turn of phrase.
“Uh, I mean I need to . . . ah . . . pass water.”
“Oh!” replied Lirael. She quickly peered over the side, and a moment later, Nick heard her whistle and once again saw Charter marks in the air around her head, forming and moving and spinning around to enter the paperwing. The craft immediately began to descend in a long, shallow dive toward one of the many sandy islands that dotted the river.
The paperwing landing was almost as much a surprise to Nick as its flight, for as they drew close, it simply turned into the wind and touched the ground as gently as a petal falling from a flower, quietly and easily sliding to a stop across the sand in less than ten yards. It was very different to the bucking, bouncing, and generally alarming landings Nick was used to in an Ancelstierran flying machine.
Lirael got out first, stretching before she turned to take out a sword from within the cockpit to buckle on her belt. Nick tried to look at her without being too obvious he was looking, which just made him appear very shifty. But in those few moments he saw both the Lirael who stood in front of him, but also, superimposed on the present, he saw her up to her waist in marsh water, wreathed by reeds. Both Liraels wore the same strange armored coat of small overlapping plates; the same surcoat of silver keys on blue quartered with golden stars on green; the leather bandolier holding the seven bells of different sizes, their mahogany handles hanging down.
But the swords were different. The Lirael in the reedy swamp bore a different, somehow more impressive blade, though it was no longer or heavier, and in fact it had only one small green stone in its pommel and quite a dull silver-wired hilt, compared with the newer sword Lirael now carried, which had a gold-chased hilt and a pommel cast in bronze to resemble a snarling lion.
Nick blinked, and the two Liraels became one. She bent behind him, and undid the buckle of the strap that kept him secured to the hammock-like seat.
“We had to strap you in,” she said. “I wasn’t sure when yo
u would wake, and I didn’t want you falling out, of course.”
“Thank you,” said Nick gravely. He rested his hands on either side of the cockpit and slowly stood up, fighting off the dizziness that came over him. Lirael was quick to hold his elbow. He didn’t really need it, but he didn’t shrug her off. Instead he turned to look at her, really look at her, his eyes meeting hers.
“Did you . . . when I first met you, were you an owl?” asked Nick slowly. “I know it sounds as if I might be insane, but perhaps here—”
“Yes,” said Lirael. “I was wearing the Charter skin of an owl. A barking owl, to be exact.”
Nick nodded. He could almost grasp the memory. It was like a shimmering oasis close by, where all else around was a bleak, featureless desert. Nearly all his time with Hedge, once he’d crossed the Wall to go to the great pit near Edge, was like that. A desolate emptiness in his mind.
“And the dog, the dog with wings,” Nick continued. “That was the same dog who . . . who brought me back from Death?”
Lirael’s eyes brimmed with quick tears. She blinked them away and said, “Yes. The Disreputable Dog. My greatest friend.”
“Thank you,” said Nick. “I thank you both.”
He looked down, gently moved his arm away from Lirael’s grasp, and stepped out of the paperwing. The island was mostly sand, but there was a higher part to the north, where low bushes grew. Nick mumbled something and began to walk over to it.
He hadn’t gotten very far when he realized his trousers were coming apart along the seams, and his shirt and the khaki officer’s coat he’d “borrowed” were tearing with every swing of his arms. He stopped and looked down. His shoes were fine, but every other part of his clothing was in danger of falling off, leaving him standing naked on the pebble-dotted sand.
“My clothes!” he exclaimed, turning back to Lirael. “They’re falling apart!”
Chapter Thirteen
CHARTER STONES AND FREE MAGIC TALISMANS