Текст книги "Abhorsen"

Автор книги: Garth Nix

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

chapter three

amaranth, rosemary

and tears

The ladder went down and down and down. At first Lirael counted the rungs, but when she got to 996 she gave up. Still they climbed down. Lirael had conjured a Charter light herself. It hovered about her feet, to complement the one Sam had dancing above his head. In the light of these two glowing balls, with the shadows of the rungs flickering on the wall of the well, Lirael found it easy to imagine that they were somehow stuck on the ladder, repeating the same section time after time.

A treadmill that they could never leave. This fancy grew on her and she started to think it real, when suddenly her foot met stone instead of bronze, and her Charter light rebounded as high as her knee.

They had reached the bottom of the well. Lirael pronounced a Charter mark and her light flew up to join the spoken word, circling her head. In its light she saw that they had come to a rectangular chamber, roughly hewn from the rich red rock. A passage led off from the chamber into darkness. There was an iron bucket next to the passage, filled with what looked like torches, simple lengths of wood topped with oil-soaked rags.

Lirael walked forward as the Disreputable Dog jumped down behind her, closely followed by Sam.

“I suppose this is the way,” Lirael whispered, indicating the passage. Somehow she felt that it was safer not to raise her voice.

The Dog sniffed at the air and nodded.

“I wonder if I should take—” Lirael said, reaching out for one of the torches. But even before her hand could close on it, the torch puffed into dust. Lirael flinched, almost falling over the Dog, who stepped back into Sam.

“Watch it!” Sam called out. His voice echoed in the well shaft and reverberated past Lirael down the corridor.

Lirael reached out again, more gingerly, but the other torches also simply fell into dust. When she touched the bucket, it collapsed in on itself, becoming a pile of rusted shards.

“Time never truly falters,” said the Dog enigmatically.

“I guess we have to go on,” said Lirael, but she was really only speaking to herself. They didn’t need the torches, but she would have felt better with one.

“The faster the better,” said the Dog. She was sniffing the air again. “We do not want to tarry anywhere under here.”

Lirael nodded. She took one step forward, then hesitated and drew her sword. Charter marks burnt brightly on the blade as it came free of the scabbard and the name of the sword rippled down the steel, briefly changing into the inscription Lirael had seen before. Or was it different? She couldn’t remember, and the words rippled away too quickly for her to be sure.

The Clayr Saw asword and so Iwas. Remember the Wallmakers. Remember Me.

Whatever it said, the extra light reassured Lirael, or perhaps it was just the feel of Nehima in her hand.

She heard Sam draw his sword behind her. He waited for a few seconds as she started on again. Obviously he did not want to trip and impale the Dog or Lirael from behind, a precaution Lirael thoroughly approved.

For the first hundred paces or so, the passageway was of worked stone. Then that suddenly ended and they came to a tunnel that was not the work of any tool. The red rock gave way to a pallid greenish-white stone that reflected the Charter lights, making Lirael hood her eyes. The tunnel seemed to have been eroded rather than worked, and there were the patterns of many swirls and eddies upon the ceiling, floor and walls. Yet even these seemed strange, contrary to what they ought to be, though Lirael didn’t know why. She just felt their strangeness.

“No water ever cut this way,” said Sam. He was whispering too, now. “Unless it flowed back and forth at the same time on different levels. And I have never seen this kind of stone.”

“We must hurry,” said the Dog. There was something in her voice that made Lirael move more quickly. An anxiety she had not heard before. Perhaps it was even fear.

They began to walk more swiftly, as fast as they could without risk of tripping over or falling into some unsuspected hole. The strange, glowing tunnel continued on for what felt like several miles, then opened into a cavern, again carved by unknown means out of the same reflective stone. There were three tunnels off this, and Lirael and Sam stopped while the Dog sniffed carefully at each entrance.

There was a pile of what Lirael thought was stone in one corner of the cavern, but when she looked at it more closely, she realised it was actually a mound of old, powdery bones mixed with pieces of metal. Touching the mound with the corner of her boot, she separated out several shards of tarnished silver and the fragment of a human jaw, still showing one unbroken tooth.

“Don’t touch it,” Sam warned in a hasty whisper, as Lirael bent to inspect the metal fragments.

Lirael stopped, her hand still outstretched.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” replied Sam, an unconscious shiver rippling across his neck. “But that’s bell metal, I think. Best to leave it alone.”

“Yes,” agreed Lirael. She stood up and couldn’t help shivering herself. Human bones and bell metal. They had found Kalliel. What was this place? And why was the Dog taking so long to decide which way to go?

When she voiced the question, the Disreputable Dog stopped her sniffing and pointed her right paw to the centre tunnel.

“This one,” she said, but Lirael noted a certain lack of enthusiasm in the Dog. The hound had not spoken with total confidence and even her pointing had wavered. If she had been in a pointing competition, she would have lost points.

The tunnel was significantly wider than the previous one, and the ceiling higher. It also felt different to Lirael, and not because there was more room to move. At first she couldn’t place what it was; then she realised the air around her was growing colder. And she had a strange sensation around her feet and ankles, almost as if there were something rushing around her heels. A current that swished one way and then the other, but there was no water there.

Or was there? When she looked directly in front or down, Lirael saw stone. But when she looked out of the corners of her eyes, she could see dark water flowing. Coming from behind them, pushing past and then curling back, like a wave falling upon the shore. A wave that was trying to knock them down and sweep them back the way they’d come.

In a very unsettling way, it reminded her of the river of Death. But she did not feel they were in Death, and apart from the growing cold and the peripheral view of the river, all her senses told her that she was firmly in Life, though in a very strange tunnel, far underground.

Then she smelled rosemary again, with something sweeter, and at that moment the bells in the bandoleer across her chest began to vibrate in their pouches. Their clappers stilled by leather tongues, they could not sound, but she could feel them moving and shaking, as if they were trying to break free.

“The bells!” she gasped. “They’re shaking... I don’t know what...”

“The pipes!” cried Sam, and Lirael heard a brief cacophany as the panpipes sounded with the voices of all seven bells, before they were suddenly cut off.

“No!” shouted a voice that was not instantly recognisable as Mogget’s. “No!”

“Run!” roared the Dog.

Amidst the shouts and yells and roaring, the Charter light above Lirael’s head suddenly dimmed to little more than a faint glow.

Then it went out.

Lirael stopped. There was some light from the marks on Nehima’s blade, but these were fading too, and the sword was twisting strangely in her hand. Undulating in a way that no thing of steel could ever move, it had become alive, not so much a sword any more as an eel-like creature, writhing and growing in her grasp. The green stone on the pommel had become a bright, lidless eye, and the silver wire on the hilt had become a row of shining teeth.

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-bandoleer, 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 anticlockwise 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 realised 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 round 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-bandoleer. 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 leant 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 realised 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 for ever 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 any more.”

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 any more, 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-bandoleer, 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 further 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 further on. That’s where the road goes through.”

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

“I don’t know. Mother just called it the Steps, I think. It’s quite strange really. The path is only wide enough for one, and the steps are low and deep.”

“I know it,” said the Dog. “Three thousand steps, and all for the sweet water at the foot.”

Sam nodded. “There is a spring there and the water is good. You mean someone built the whole path just to get a drink of good water?”

“Water, yes, but not to drink,” said the Dog. “I am glad the path is still there. Let us go to it.”

With that, the hound sprang forward, jumping over the sprawl of boulders that helped conceal the cleft and the caves beyond.

Lirael and Sam followed more sedately, clambering between the stones. Both were still sore and they had many things to think about. Lirael in particular was thinking of the Dog’s words: “When ancient forces stir, many things are woken.” She knew that whatever Nicholas was digging up was both powerful and evil, and it was clear that its emergence had set many things in motion, including a rising of the Dead across the whole Kingdom. But she had not considered that other powers might also be woken, and how that might affect their plans.

Not that they really had a plan, Lirael thought. They were simply rushing headlong to try to stop Hedge and save Nicholas and keep whatever it was safely buried in the ground.

“We should have a proper plan,” she whispered to herself. But no brilliant thoughts or strategies came to mind, and she had to concentrate on climbing between and over stones as she followed the Disreputable Dog along the base of the Long Cliffs, with Sam close behind.