Abhorsen (6 page)

Lirael shut her eyes and sheathed the sword, ramming it hard into the scabbard before she let go with relief. Then she opened her eyes and looked around. Or tried to. All the golden Charter light was gone, and it was dark. The total darkness of the deep earth.

In the black void Lirael heard cloth tear and rip, and Sam cried out.

“Sam!” she cried. “Over here! Dog!”

There was no answer, but she heard the Dog growl, and then there was a soft, low laugh. A horrible, gloating chuckle that set the hair on the back of her neck on edge. It was made worse because there was something familiar in it. Mogget’s laugh, twisted and made more sinister.

Desperately Lirael tried to reach for the Charter, to summon a new light spell. But there was nothing there. Instead of the Charter she felt a terrible, cold presence that she knew at once. Death. That was all she could feel.

The Charter was gone, or she could not reach it.

Panic began to flower in her as the gloating chuckle deepened and the darkness pressed upon her. Then Lirael’s eyes registered a faint change. She became aware of subtle greys in the darkness, and she felt a momentary hope that there would be light. Then she saw the barest fingernail scraping of illumination spark and fizz and steadily grow till it became a pool of fierce, bright, white light. With the light came the hot metal stench of Free Magic, a smell that rolled across in waves, each one causing a reflex gag as the bile rose in Lirael’s throat.

Sam moved with the light, appearing at Lirael’s side as if he’d flown there. His backpack was open at the top, ragged edges showing where something had cut free. His sword was sheathed, and he was holding the panpipes with both hands, fingers jammed on the holes. The pipes were vibrating, sending out a low hum that Sam was desperately trying to stifle. Lirael had her own arm pressed along the bell-bandolier, to try to still the bells.

The Dog stood between the pool of white fire and Lirael, but it was not the Dog as Lirael knew her. She still had a dog shape, but the collar of Charter marks was gone, and she was once more a creature of intense darkness outlined with silver fire. The Dog looked back and opened her mouth.

“She is here!” boomed a voice that was the Dog’s and yet not the Dog’s, for it penetrated Lirael’s ears and sent sharp pains coursing through her jaw. “The Mogget is free! Run!”

Lirael and Sam stood frozen as the echoes of the Dog’s voice rolled past them. The pool of white fire was sparking and crackling, spinning counterclockwise as it rose up to form the shape of a spindly, too-thin humanoid.

But beyond the thing that was Mogget unbound, an even brighter light shone. Something so bright that Lirael realized she had shut her eyes and was seeing it through her eyelids, eyelids seared through with the image of a woman. An impossibly tall woman, her head bowed even in this high tunnel, reaching out her arms to sweep up the Mogget creature, the Dog, Lirael, and Sam.

A river flowed around and in front of the shining woman. A cold river that Lirael knew at once. This was the river of Death, and this creature was bringing it to them. They would not cross into it but be swamped and taken away. Thrown down and taken up, carried in a rush to the First Gate and beyond. They would never be able to make their way back.

Lirael had time to think only a few final, awful thoughts.

They had failed so soon.

So many depended on them.

All was lost.

Then the Disreputable Dog shouted, “Flee!” and barked.

The bark was infused with Free Magic. Without opening her eyes, without conscious thought, Lirael swung around and suddenly found herself running, running headlong, running as she had never run before. She ran without care, into the unknown, away from the well and the House, her feet finding the twists and turns of the tunnel even though they left the white light behind and in the darkness Lirael couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open or not.

Through caverns and chambers and narrow ways she ran, not knowing whether Sam ran with her or whether she was pursued. It was not fear that drove her, for she didn’t feel afraid. She was somewhere else, locked away inside her own body, a machine that drove on and on without feeling, acting on directions that had not come from her.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the compulsion to run stopped. Lirael fell to the floor, shuddering, trying to draw breath into her starved lungs. Pain shot through every muscle, and she curled into a ball of cramps, frantically massaging her calf muscles as she bit back cries of pain.

Someone was near her doing the same thing, and as reason returned, Lirael saw that it was Sam. There was a dim light falling from somewhere ahead, enough to make him out. A natural light, though much diffused.

Hesitantly Lirael touched the bell-bandolier. It was still, the bells quiescent. Her hand fell to Nehima’s hilt, and she was relieved to feel the solidity of the green stone in the pommel, and the silver wire no more than silver wire.

Sam groaned and stood up. He leaned against the wall with his left hand and stowed the panpipes away with his right. Lirael watched that hand flicker in a careful movement, and a Charter light blossomed in his palm.

“It was gone, you know,” he said, sliding back down the wall to sit facing Lirael. He seemed calm but was obviously in shock. Lirael realized she was, too, when she tried to stand up and simply couldn’t.

“Yes,” she replied. “The Charter.”

“Wherever that was,” continued Sam, “the Charter wasn’t. And who was
she
?”

Lirael shook her head, as much to clear it as to indicate her inability to answer. She shook it again immediately, trying to force her thoughts back into action.

“We’d better . . . better go back,” she said, thinking of the Dog facing both Mogget and that shining woman alone in the darkness. “I can’t leave the Dog.”

“What about
her
?” asked Sam, and Lirael knew who he meant. “And Mogget?”

“You need not go back,” said a voice from the dark reaches of the passage. Lirael and Sam instantly leapt up, finding new strength and purpose. Their swords were out and Lirael found she had one hand on Saraneth, though she had no idea what she was going to do with the bell. No wisdom from
The Book of the Dead
or
The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting
came unbidden into her head.

“It’s me,” said the voice in an aggrieved tone, and the Disreputable Dog slowly walked into the light, her tail between her legs and her head bowed. Apart from this uncharacteristic pose, she seemed back to normal—or what was normal for her—with the deep, rich glow of many Charter Marks once more around her neck, and her short hair dusty and golden save for her back, where it was black.

Lirael didn’t hesitate. She put Nehima down and flung herself on the Dog, burying her face in her friend’s neck. The Dog licked Lirael’s ear without her usual enthusiasm, and she didn’t try even one affectionate nip.

Sam hung back, his sword still in his hand.

“Where is Mogget?” he asked.

“She wished to speak to him,” replied the Dog, throwing herself sorrowfully across Lirael’s feet. “I was wrong. I put you in terrible danger, Mistress.”

“I don’t understand,” Lirael replied. She felt incredibly tired all of a sudden. “What happened? The Charter . . . the Charter seemed to suddenly . . . not be.”

“It was her coming,” said the Dog. “It is her fate, that her knowing self will be forever outside what she chose to make, the Charter that her unknowing self is part of. Yet she stayed her hand when she could so easily have taken you to her embrace. I do not know why, or what it may mean. I believed her to be past any interest in the things of this world, and so I thought to pass here unscathed. Yet when ancient forces stir, many things are woken. I should have guessed it would be so. Forgive me.”

Lirael had never seen the Dog so humbled, and it scared her more than anything that had happened. She scratched her around the ears and along the jaw, seeking to give as much comfort as she took. But her hands shook, and she felt that at any moment she would shudder into tears. To try to stop them, she took slow breaths, counting them in, and counting them out.

“But . . . what will happen to Mogget?” asked Sam, his voice unsteady. “He was unbound! He’ll try to kill the Abhorsen . . . Mother . . . or Lirael! We haven’t got the ring to bind him again!”

“Mogget has long avoided her,” mumbled the Dog. She hesitated, then quietly said, “I don’t think we need to worry about Mogget anymore.”

Lirael let out her breath and didn’t take another. How could Mogget not be coming back?

“What?” asked Sam. “But he’s . . . well, I don’t know, but powerful . . . a Free Magic spirit. . . .”

“Who is she?” asked Lirael. She spoke very sternly as she took the Disreputable Dog by the jaw and stared into her deep, dark eyes. The Dog tried to turn away, but Lirael held her fast. The hound shut her eyes hopefully, only to be foiled as Lirael blew on her nose and they snapped open again.

“It won’t help you to know, because you can’t understand,” said the Dog, her voice filled with great weariness. “She doesn’t really exist anymore, except every now and then and here and there, in small ways and small things. If we had not come this way, she would not have been, and now that we have passed, she will not be.”

“Tell me!”

“You know who she is, at least in some degree,” said the Dog. She tapped her nose against Lirael’s bell-bandolier, leaving a wet mark on the leather of the seventh bell, and a single slow tear rolled down her snout to dampen Lirael’s hand.

“Astarael?” whispered Sam in disbelief. The most frightening bell of them all, the one he had never even touched in his brief time as custodian of that set of bells. “The Weeper?”

Lirael let the Dog go, and the hound promptly pushed her head farther into Lirael’s lap and let out a long sigh.

Lirael scratched the Dog’s ears again, but even with the feel of warm dog skin under her hand, she could not help asking a question she had asked before.

“What are you, then? Why did Astarael let you go?”

The Dog looked up at her and said simply, “I am the Disreputable Dog. A true servant of the Charter, and your friend. Always your friend.”

Lirael did weep then, but she wiped the tears away as she lifted the Dog by her collar and moved her away so she could stand up. Sam picked up Nehima and silently handed the sword to her. The Charter marks on the blade rippled as Lirael touched the hilt, but no inscription became visible.

“If you are sure Mogget will not be coming, bound or unbound, then we must go on,” said Lirael.

“I suppose so,” said Sam doubtfully. “Though I feel . . . feel sort of strange. I got kind of used to Mogget, and now he’s just . . . just gone? I mean, has she . . . has she killed him?”

“No!” answered the Dog. She seemed surprised at the suggestion. “No.”

“What then?” asked Sam.

“It is not for us to know,” said the Disreputable Dog. “Our task lies ahead, and Mogget lies behind us now.”

“You’re absolutely sure he won’t come after Mother or Lirael?” asked Sam. He knew Mogget’s recent history well and had been warned since he was a toddler of the danger of removing Mogget’s collar.

“I am sure that your mother is safe from Mogget across the Wall,” replied the Dog, only half-answering Sam’s question.

Sam did not look entirely convinced, but he slowly nodded in reluctant acceptance of the Dog’s assurance.

“We haven’t got off to a good start,” muttered Sam. “I hope it gets better.”

“There is sunlight ahead, and a way out,” said the Dog. “You will be happier under the sun.”

“It should be dark by now,” said Sam. “How long have we been underground?”

“Four or five hours, at least,” replied Lirael with a frown. “Maybe more, so that can’t be sunshine.”

She led the way across the cavern, but as they drew closer to the entrance, it was clear that it
was
sunshine. Soon they could see a narrow cleft ahead, and through it a clear blue sky, misted with spray from the great waterfall.

Once through the cleft, they found themselves several hundred yards to the west of the waterfall, at the base of the Long Cliffs. The sun was halfway up the sky to the west, the sunshine making rainbows in the huge cloud of spray that hung above the falls.

“It’s afternoon,” said Sam, shielding his eyes to look near the sun. He looked along the line of the cliffs, then held up his hand to gauge how many fingers the sun was above the horizon. “Not past four o’clock.”

“We’ve lost practically a whole day!” exclaimed Lirael. Every delay meant a greater chance of failure, and her heart sank at this further setback. How could they have spent almost twenty-four hours underground?

“No,” said the Disreputable Dog, who was watching the sun and sniffing the air. “We have not lost a day.”

“Not more?” whispered Lirael. Surely not. If they had somehow spent weeks or more underground, it would be too late to do anything. . . .

“No,” continued the Dog. “It is the same day we left the House. Perhaps an hour since we climbed down the well. Maybe less.”

“But—” Sam started to say something, then stopped. He shook his head and looked back at the cleft in the cliff.

“Time and Death sleep side by side,” said the Dog. “Both are in Astarael’s domain. She has helped us, in her own way.”

Lirael nodded, though she didn’t feel as if she’d been helped. She felt shocked and tired, and her legs hurt. She wanted to curl up in the sun and wake up in the Great Library of the Clayr with a sore neck from sleeping at her desk and a vague memory of disturbing nightmares.

“I can’t sense any Dead down here,” she said, after dismissing her daydream. “Since we’ve been given the gift of an afternoon, I guess we’d better use it. How do we get back up the cliffs?”

“There is a path about a league and a half to the west,” said Sam. “It’s narrow and mostly steps, so it’s not often used. The top of that should be well clear of the fog and Chlorr’s minions. Beyond that, the Western Cut is at least twelve or so leagues farther on. That’s where the road goes through.”

“What is the stepped path called?” asked the Dog.