Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen (The Abhorsen Trilogy Book 4) (33 page)

“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.”

“I will,” said Clariel firmly. “Nothing will stop me, not now. I’ve let too many things get in my way. We will go to Belisaere, and kill the King’s enemies, and he will let me go, no matter what Tyriel might say or do.”

“As you say,” said Mogget.

“I will take the sword,” said Clariel suddenly. She got up and began to stalk back up the gully. “But not the bells.”

“Not yet,” whispered Mogget, so soft that it was barely more than a thought. “But I know a necromancer when I see one.”

He padded after her, his pink tongue out a fraction, listening in satisfaction as she called out forcefully to her servants.

“Aziminil! Baazalanan! Make the dragon again, at once!”

Chapter Thirty-One

RETURN TO BELISAERE

C
lariel saw the Sea of Saere first, darker and more lustrous than the sky, an expanse of different blue. Then the peninsula, with the great city at its end. From this distance and height it was merely a blob of off-white against the blue of the sea and the patchworked green of the farmlands beyond the walls. There was the Narrow Way stretching rule-straight toward the city . . . and there was something on it halfway to Belisaere, three or four leagues ahead, something that obscured the clean line of the road. Clariel couldn’t make it out, it was too far ahead and her eyes were slitted against the wind even with her mask.

“Mogget, what is that on the road? Can you see?”

“I see,” said Mogget. “An army on the march. A small army, perhaps five or six hundred all told. There are banners in the van . . . ah . . . there may still yet be time . . .”

“What? Whose banners?”

“Many, some unclear. But I can see the silver star of the Clayr, and the blazons of Navis and the Bridge Company,” said Mogget. “Many Charter Mages, some of the greatest power; I can feel the Captain of the Rangers, the Chief Librarian, three of the four Bridgemasters . . . another who I do not know, most powerful of all . . . they are marching fast, as if any delay could brook disaster . . .”

“The Clayr?” asked Clariel. She felt curiously relieved and deflated at the same time, and suddenly uncertain in her purpose. “They
have
come . . . so they will take care of Kilp, rescue Aunt Lemmin. I don’t need to do anything, we could turn away now, fly to Estwael . . .”

The cat stood up on his hind legs, one well-clawed paw hooking into Clariel’s leg. He had been sitting at her feet, because the sword with the Free Magic symbols lay across Clariel’s knees, the blade naked to the wind.

“I suppose they are hurrying because the Palace is on fire,” he said. “That is smoke, not cloud.”

“On fire!” exclaimed Clariel. “How . . . how much on fire?”

Mogget shrugged and sat back down.

“There is a lot of smoke. I would guess that Kilp, seeing the relieving army approach, has tried to take it by assault. Perhaps he hopes to face the Clayr with the King already dead, and the evidence of his own crimes wiped clear. Probably including your aunt Lemmin.”

“But the Clayr wouldn’t treat with him,” protested Clariel. “Would they?”

“More to the point, they won’t reach the city before nightfall,” said Mogget judiciously. He looked up at Clariel, his eyes slitted against the wind, giving no sign of the thoughts that lay behind them. “Even if the city walls aren’t held against them, they cannot come to the palace in time. The King’s guards may still be fighting, a last, desperate struggle, hoping for reinforcements . . . but who can help them?”

“We can,” said Clariel. “Why don’t they fly in? The Clayr have paperwings, but I can’t see any . . .”

“You told me yourself of bolt-throwers on Coiner’s Hill,” said Mogget.

“I wonder . . . if we should drop down and speak to the Clayr,” said Clariel. She was finding it difficult to think clearly. It was so cold, and her forehead hurt. She could sense an eagerness from the dragon beneath her: Aziminil and Baazalanan wanted to fly faster, to come to grips with the enemy. It was like the fury, but different. And it wasn’t just about fighting, they wanted something else, she could feel it . . .

“They will attack you on sight,” warned Mogget. “We ride a Free Magic creature, remember! If we do go to the Palace the same applies, we will need to be wary of both sides.”

“My robes have Charter marks,” said Clariel. She lifted her left sleeve to look at it, and was surprised to see so few marks there, and even these were fading, coming adrift from the cloth. “Well . . . once on the walls, the dragon can come apart, Az and Baaz can stay . . . stay behind me. I will speak to Gullaine, she will know me . . .”

Her voice trailed off. It was so difficult to think! But her path was still clear in her mind. Go to the Palace. Save the King. Kill Kilp and Aronzo, who were bound to be there. Aunt Lemmin . . . she might be anywhere, a prisoner in the same hole where Clariel had been herself, but she didn’t really know where that was . . . or in the Governor’s House.

No matter, Clariel thought. Kilp will tell me before he dies.

“Fly faster!” she instructed. The dragon answered, its leathery wings moving to a more rapid beat.

“You could call a wind,” suggested Mogget. “Take just a smidgeon of power from Aziminil, she has plenty to spare. This shape is easy for the two of them.”

Mogget did not tell her that he had an uneasy feeling all along his backbone and up his tail, a feeling compounded by a look around the back of the chair. There was a small speck high on the horizon behind them. It was a long way away, but it was a paperwing, flying as fast or faster than the dragon.

“No,” said Clariel. She touched the mask again with her left hand, sliding her gauntleted fingers up the cold metal to her forehead. She could feel nothing behind it, not the faintest glimmer of the Charter. But the baptismal mark must still be there, she told herself. It was just too difficult to feel through the woven stone of the gauntlets and the thick bronze of the mask. Kargrin, or Ader, they could help her, once her task was done. But she must not make it worse.

She had already forgotten the sword she held across her lap, her hand tight around its hilt. There were no Charter marks on that gauntlet now, and the material was becoming thin, her skin almost visible beneath.

“Fly to the west of the city, and approach the Palace from that direction. We must avoid Coiner’s Hill and there are . . . there were ships to the north of the Palace, they may also have bolt-throwers.”

“We shall go high, with your permission, Mistress,” whispered the dragon. It was Baazalanan speaking. “Then drop fast, too fast for bolt or spell to strike us.”

“Like a kite upon a vole,” said Mogget, licking his lips. “The osprey upon an unsuspecting fish.”

“Yes, let us do that,” said Clariel. “Look ahead, Mogget. What can you see of the Palace? Does the royal banner fly above the gatehouse?”

“The smoke is too thick,” said Mogget. “I cannot see.”

“Faster,” mumbled Clariel. She said it again, and wondered why her mouth was dry. Then she remembered that she had neither drunk nor eaten since dinner the night before, and now it was the fourth or fifth hour of the afternoon. But she was not hungry, or thirsty, and in a moment she forgot the dryness of her mouth and throat.

She also wasn’t tired despite her very short sleep of the night before. But as they flew faster and higher, and the cold gripped her more tightly, Clariel found herself drifting into a kind of fugue, where she was neither asleep nor awake. She knew where she was, in the iron chair on the back of a dragon. But at the same time she imagined herself to be in the Great Forest. In the wintertime, when the forest canopy above was sparse, snow covered the greensward, and ice glazed the edges of the stream where she liked to fish. It was too cold to tickle trout in winter, but there were rabbits to snare, and wild honey to be gathered from sleepy bees without competition from even sleepier bears. She would have a snug forester’s hut, with a stove bought from the town red-hot upon its rough-fired clay plinth; a stack of wood as high as the turf-covered roof outside, a larder full of autumn’s harvest; winter in the forest could be comfortable indeed . . .

“We are ready to descend, Mistress,” whispered the dragon. “On your command . . .”

Clariel awoke fully, the wintry forest landscape banished in an instant. They were in the high waft of the smoke, not so thick that it choked, but enough to cause half-waking dreams of comfortable stoves. As the smoke swirled beneath them, Clariel caught glimpes of the Palace far below, and the sea next to it. There were some people on the walls, but she could not make out whether they were fighting, or who they were.

“Brace yourself, Mogget,” she said. Crouching down herself, she set her shoulders against the back of the chair, and her feet hard on the footrest. She placed the sword between her knees and gripped it there, her hands tight on the metal arms of the chair, which for the first time she noticed were lightly rimed with ice.

“Take care not to harm me or throw me out,” she said sternly to the dragon. “But descend as fast as you can!”

The dragon pushed its head down, its body following, and folded its wings. Clariel slid down the chair a fraction and her stomach flipped up toward her throat in a moment of fear. She pressed herself even flatter into the iron seat and gripped harder. Mogget was somewhere under her legs. She felt his claws cutting through the overshoes around her ankles, but she couldn’t look. The dragon was nearly vertical now, and they were plummeting to the earth, the wind howling past so that their previous speed paled in comparison, as if they had been sauntering across the sky and now were sprinting.

A hundred paces above a broad stretch of the Palace wall they came suddenly out of the thickest smoke into afternoon sunshine. The dragon flung out its wings; there was an almighty crack like thunder, and had they been of normal flesh the wings would have been stripped from the dragon’s body by the sudden shock. But they were not normal flesh. The dragon slowed. It reared backward, wings beating, Clariel sliding up the chair back, so she had to arch and twist her legs to keep the sword safe between her knees. Then they were down, the dragon rampaging along the wall till it came crashing to a complete stop by colliding with the door of one of the seaward-looking towers.

Clariel took up the sword and jumped down, Mogget close behind her. With a flash of white light, a wave of heat, and the stench of burning metal, the dragon divided into its two components. The iron chair fell from the back of Baazalanan, hit a merlon with a resounding clang, and fell into the sea.

The door opened, and a frightened man in the livery of the Cobblers Guild looked out, a spear held unsteadily in his hand, unready for any foe. Clariel opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything Aziminil lunged past her, her taloned, three-fingered hand piercing almost all the way through the guard’s neck. Blood sprayed, Aziminil withdrew her hand. The guard fell choking to the ground, and died a few seconds later.

Clariel felt him die, felt his spirit enter Death. She knew she could catch that spirit, and her hand went to her chest as if to draw a bell. Then she remembered she had left the bells behind, that she was not a necromancer, and didn’t want to be one. Neither did she want to kill Guild guards who undoubtedly had no idea that Kilp was really a traitor to the King.

“Do not kill,” she croaked. She had to look away from Aziminil, who was licking her fingers clean, a tongue of red fire coming out of the featureless void that was her face. Clariel wished she hadn’t seen that.

“No killing, save on my order.”

Neither creature replied.

“It is their nature,” said Mogget. He jumped up on the battlements and looked back toward the south. The paperwing was close, perhaps minutes away, coming down in a long, fast glide. It couldn’t land on the wall like they had, but there was a terrace not far below, out of sight.

“I know,” said Clariel. She shut her eyes for a second, then hefted her sword and entered the tower. “But I want the next one alive. I need to ask questions.”

The “next one” was a woman as young or younger than Clariel, wearing the badge of the Fishmongers. She came up the stairs calling out to someone, her sword still sheathed. She saw Clariel first and stared, agape, before fumbling at the weapon on her side. When the two Free Magic creatures loomed up as well, she stopped and raised her shaking hands.

Clariel lowered her own sword. It was shifting in her hand, trying to move of its own accord, wanting to taste blood.

“What is happening?” she rasped. “Does Kilp control the Palace?”

“Almost, yes, I think so,” blurted out the young woman. “There is still fighting in the Great Hall, and the . . . the leopard-creatures . . . but this side is taken—”

“Does the King live?”

The woman looked confused.

“The King was killed by the rebels, a week since or more,” she said. “Least, that’s what we were told . . .”

“Where is Kilp? And his son Aronzo?”

“I don’t know,” sniffled the woman.

“Where!” snapped Clariel. She unconsciously drew on Aziminil’s power, her voice compelling an answer. White smoke billowed out of the mouth-hole of her mask as she spoke, though she did not notice it.

“Probably the Great Hall,” sobbed the woman. She sank to her knees on the steps, tears gushing down her stricken face. “The Goldsmiths Company, they were the only ones allowed to go there. The Great Hall!”

“Where is that?” asked Clariel, but the woman could only sob and shudder, her voice taken away by terror.

“I know,” said Mogget, causing another shriek. He jumped past the woman. After a moment, Clariel followed. She didn’t look back, and so did not see Baazalanan effortlessly twist the guard’s head off her shoulders as the creature passed by.

“Through here,” said Mogget, indicating a door on the next landing down. “Along the corridor beyond, that will come out in the musician’s gallery of the Great Hall.”