by Garth Nix
‘I hope you’re wrong,’ said Clariel. ‘It seems to me there’s enough trouble with Kilp, let alone anything worse.’
‘True,’ said Bel. ‘But Kilp is a purely ordinary, mortal problem. At least he is now that his allied creature is safely imprisoned. He shouldn’t be too difficult to defeat. If the Abhorsen takes even a hundred Charter Mages north, and the Clayr come south in force – there’s thousands of Clayr – no ordinary army will be able to stand against them. Kilp doesn’t realise what a big group of really powerful Mages can do. He should have been shown, then he wouldn’t have dared to do anything.’
‘Maybe,’ said Clariel. ‘I doubt it will be that easy.’
‘It will,’ said Bel confidently. ‘Oh, thank the Charter! There’s the landing lawn, finally! I could sleep for a week.’
The lawn he was referring to was a long swathe of well-cut grass between the river and the road that ran along the ridge and up to Hillfair itself. There was a tall pole at one end, the flag on it spread by the westerly wind to show the silver keys of the Abhorsens on a blue field.
‘We’re going to land around the same time the hunt goes by on the road,’ said Clariel cautiously. ‘The Paperwing won’t scare the horses?’
‘No … I think … They should be used to Paperwings,’ said Bel. ‘Besides, I really have to get us down. I’m feeling very … very tired …’
His head slipped forward as the words drawled out of his mouth. Clariel felt her heart leap into her throat as she gripped his good shoulder and shook him, only to let go as a dry chuckle emerged and he sat up again.
‘Don’t worry, only jesting,’ he said. ‘I am tired. But I can stay awake long enough to set us down.’
He pursed his lips and blew a series of rising and then falling notes, pure and strong. Charter marks flew out with the music, and mingled with marks that shone from the Paperwing’s nose and wings, wreathing the aircraft in light. It slanted down towards the lawn, side-slipping a little across the wind as it descended.
They landed smoothly enough, but Bel was just plain wrong about the horses and dogs. As the Paperwing’s shadow passed low over the rear of the line, the dogs that had been loping next to the road in a semi-organised pack all began to bark and jump up, before falling down and over one another, and racing around all over the place, including in front of the horses. Many mounts spooked and shied, several riders falling off or being suddenly bolted with along the road, causing more problems. The orderly procession of a minute before became a riot of horses, dogs, fallen riders, hunters and dog handlers, with whistles and shouts and bellowed orders and screams of pain and whinnying horses and barking dogs.
The Paperwing came to a stop about a hundred yards ahead of the front of the returning hunt. Clariel looked back at the shambles their arrival had caused, noting that half a dozen riders from the vanguard of the hunt were now galloping down the lawn towards them, and not in a way that suggested a sudden happy desire to welcome the newcomers.
Bel didn’t even try to look around. He hunched down in the Paperwing and put his head in his hands. Clariel thought she heard him say something that might have been ‘oops’, but she was already climbing out. She presumed from the quality of the horses and richness of their attire that the silver-haired man who was charging down towards her on a surprisingly small chestnut horse was her grandfather, the Abhorsen Tyriel; and the tough-looking woman with the black hair who closely resembled her mother was almost certainly her aunt Yannael.
Clariel didn’t want to meet them sitting down. She didn’t want to meet them at all, and she wished Bel had not made what was already a difficult situation for her even worse.
For a moment, it looked like it might not be a meeting so much as a trampling, but Clariel was pleasantly relieved to see the riders expertly bring their mounts to a fast, wheeling halt right in front of her, incidentally cutting up the lawn something terrible.
‘Bel, you’re an idiot!’ called out Tyriel, the finely worked collar of silver keys on his chest confirming Clariel’s guess. She knew he was a similar age to King Orrikan, but he didn’t look it. His hair was silver, but cropped short, and his close-shaven face, though lined and weather-beaten, was not fallen or shiny, as the King’s had been. His hands were stained to the wrists with the blood of a stag, and he wore no sword, only a hunting dagger at his waist. ‘And you, I suppose, are my granddaughter Clariel?’
‘Yes, I am Clariel.’
‘Come here,’ said Tyriel. He bent down from his horse as Clariel approached and reached out with his hand towards her forehead. She stood still as he gently placed two fingers against the Charter mark on her forehead. He did not lean down so far that Clariel could return the gesture, as was polite. Consequently she felt only a faint, distant connection with the Charter from the brief contact. Evidently whatever Tyriel felt, he was satisfied that she was indeed his granddaughter.
‘What’s wrong with Bel?’
Bel remained hunched forward, and had not spoken. He had either really fallen unconscious from weariness or was pretending in order to avoid getting into trouble over disrupting the hunting party.
‘He was badly wounded a few days ago,’ said Clariel forcefully. ‘Fighting a Free Magic creature. He’s still recovering and he’s worn himself out flying here. He needs help.’
‘I had a message about his wounding,’ said Tyriel. He didn’t sound like he was particularly concerned. ‘One of many messages in the last few days. He can’t be too sorely hurt if he managed to get here. Siranael, go get some of your people, have them carry Bel up to the infirmary.’
One of the riders behind wheeled his horse about and rocketed back towards the main body of the hunt.
‘There is also a silver bottle,’ said Clariel. ‘Charter-spelled. It holds a Free Magic creature.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Tyriel. ‘Cursedly inconvenient. I suppose I’ll have to take it. Pass it up.’
‘I can’t touch it,’ said Clariel. ‘Magister Kargrin –’
‘That’s right, I forgot,’ said Tyriel impatiently. He swung his leg over and slowly lowered himself down from his horse, the smell of stale sweat preceding him. He went to the Paperwing, lifted Bel’s head and looked at him with what seemed casual indifference, then bent down and rummaged around. Finding the bottle, he picked it up as if it might be a flagon of ale, tucked it under his arm and remounted. His movements were quite stiff, but very practised.
‘Yannael,’ he said, to the hard-faced woman. ‘Take your niece up behind you. See that she gets properly dressed and so forth. Bring her to me when you’re done.’
Yannael didn’t speak, but merely nodded slowly. In any case, Tyriel hadn’t waited for an answer. He chirruped to his horse, gave it a touch of his heels, and was away again.
‘Come on, girl,’ said Yannael. She took her foot out of her stirrup so Clariel could use it as a step. Like her father, she stank of stale sweat, blood and horse. ‘Get up.’
Clariel reluctantly got up behind her. She did not feel welcome, but it was worse than that. She felt like she was about to enter another prison. There might not be endless walls like Belisaere, but it would be a prison, sure enough.
chapter twenty-two
the abhorsen decides
Yannael did not speak to Clariel on the short ride up to Hillfair. The place was like a small town, except that all the outer buildings appeared to be stables, kennels and barns. It also didn’t have a perimeter wall or even a palisade, which Clariel presumed was because all the other towns she’d seen were much older, and so possessed defences that had been built long ago in more troubled times.
The road followed the ridge line, with the buildings spread out on either side, most of them on the flat, but some on the terraced hillside above the river. Clariel kept expecting to stop outside one or other of the stables, where grooms aplenty were waiting to take the horses from the returning hunters. But they kept going along the road, till it ended in a grassy courtyard surrounded by buildings. The chief of t
hese was a great hall whose lower two storeys were stone, but with four or five levels above that of blue-painted timber. Unusually for Hillfair, at least what she’d seen so far, Clariel couldn’t see an obvious stable. But when Yannael pulled the horse up in front of the hall’s great arched doors, a groom emerged from somewhere off to the left and took the reins.
‘Get down,’ said Yannael, once again allowing Clariel her left stirrup. When the younger woman had alighted, she jumped down herself. ‘Follow me.’
Clariel opened her mouth to protest her aunt’s rudeness, but shut it again. There seemed little point, and there was always the slim possibility that Yannael was always like this, and it was not meant to be insulting.
A porter opened the front door, a tall gate of pale timber, which was adorned with hundreds of small keys of beaten silver or to Clariel’s trained eye more likely some cheaper, silverish alloy. It opened directly into a vast open space, a true great hall, though crowded with four lines of long tables already loaded with food, and servers scuttling about with even more, platters of meats and fish and bread, with the meat in preponderance. Though the benches next to the tables were empty for the moment, it looked like several hundred people would be served a meal there soon. There was a dais at the far end, with a high table draped in blue velvet, a thronelike chair of gilded wood in the centre and several smaller and somewhat less ornate chairs on either side.
There were tall windows behind the dais, but a great deal more light came from the thousands of Charter marks embedded in the hammerbeam roof high above, something that must have taken hundreds of Mages years to place, and would require constant effort to keep the spells at full strength. Just getting up there would be no small feat.
Yannael led Clariel along one side of the hall, the servers ducking out of her way, bobbing their heads as she passed. At the far end, near the dais, the older woman opened a door and they went through into a corridor that ran at right angles to the hall. There were numerous doors leading off the corridor, all painted blue with silver keys.
‘Private quarters for the main line of the family,’ said Yannael. Her face showed no friendliness or, indeed, any emotion. She might have been a superior kind of servant giving directions to a not particularly notable guest. ‘You will have your mother’s old room. Third along. Have a bath. I’ll send someone with clothes. Get dressed and wait for me.’
‘My mother’s old room,’ said Clariel. She felt the anger stir within her. ‘You know she’s just been killed, don’t you? Your sister?’
‘She’s been dead to us for a long time,’ said Yannael. Her eyes flickered with brief emotion, quickly quelled. ‘Just as my brother Teriel – who she slew – has been dead a long time. Third door along.’
She turned on her heel and strode away, the single spur she wore on her right boot-heel clinking. Clariel stared after her, feeling the rage deep inside her kindle and burn higher. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, and thought of her calm, willow-bordered refuge in the forest. The fury could not help her now. She had to keep it suppressed. Breathing in, breathing out … Slowly she felt the anger subside, till it slept again.
But it was not gone. It was always there, no matter how deep she pushed the feeling. Always there, a fiercely hot spark waiting for the slightest fuel.
Clariel took one last very deep breath and breathed it out very slowly while she walked along the corridor to the third door. As she passed the first two, she saw they had small bronze nameplates, clean and bright. She didn’t know who ‘Enriel’ or ‘Harmanael’ were, but the third door along …
She touched her finger to the small plate that had ‘Jaciel’ engraved upon it. Unlike the previous two doors, the plate was tarnished and dull, but the name was still clear. It was also slightly different in design, the letters were more finely cut. With a slight shock Clariel recognised that this was her mother’s own work, probably made when she was just a girl and beginning her training as a metalsmith. Now, it was a slight remnant of a whole former life that Clariel knew nothing about, and would never know, because she could not talk about it with her mother.
‘She is dead,’ whispered Clariel. She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest against the door. ‘My mother and father are dead.’
Saying it aloud didn’t make it feel any more real, though she knew it was, that no matter what lies Kilp was spreading, there was no chance of it being otherwise. But some part of her also simply couldn’t accept it, that her parents were dead, and she was in Hillfair, and the future looked grim and complicated.
But that future had to be faced, and the first step was to get cleaned up ready to talk to the Abhorsen. Clariel straightened up, turned the handle, and went into her mother’s childhood room.
If the room, in fact a whole suite of rooms, had once held personal things to identify it as Jaciel’s there were none there now. The first chamber was completely bare apart from a single chair that didn’t look like it belonged there anyway. The inner chamber had a bed with no linen, and a chest with a padded top that was empty. Beyond this room there was a kind of antechamber entered via a doorway with a curtain rod but no curtain, which contained only a bathtub and a chamber pot.
None of the rooms had windows, but they were quite light, again thanks to Charter marks in the plastered ceiling and stone walls.
Clariel had just finished reviewing this unpromising accommodation when there was knock at the door, followed a moment later by a whirlwind of people in blue aprons coming in with loads of sheets, blankets, towels, a more comfortable chair, a writing desk, a velvet lounge, a standing mirror, several baskets of clothes accompanied by a seamstress and a whole gang of young girls and boys equipped with steaming cans of hot water, which they proceeded to pour into the bath.
All of this happened under the direction of a middle-aged woman with a cheerful face and untidy hair, whose blue apron was trimmed with silver, setting her apart from the others. She nodded to Clariel and said, ‘I’m your cousin Else … Elseniel, that is, but no one calls me that. I’m the keeper of the house, so if you want anything within these walls, come to me. Salleniel here has some clothes that will probably fit with a bit of a tuck or adjustment, so take your pick. Yan said to have you ready within the hour, so pop in the bath right away. The water cools quickly anyhow, so get the best of it. Off you go now!’
‘Uh, yes,’ said Clariel. ‘Um, thank you, cousins.’
They might be cousins, but there were too many of them crowded around, in too small a room. Clariel fled into the antechamber, and drew the newly placed curtain shut. She could hear general milling around and bedmaking noises going on, but mercifully no one followed her in.
The bathwater was still very hot, but it was welcome. Clariel hadn’t realised quite how dirty she had become in the prison cell, a state that had not been helped by a night under a tree. There was new soap on the bath rim, good soap scented only slightly with lime. She used a lot of it, and turned the bathwater the colour of a mud puddle, before she climbed out feeling much cleaner and considerably more refreshed.
Salleniel the seamstress was the only person still in the other rooms. She hardly spoke, her mouth full of pins already, but she had a very good eye as proved by her choices of linen undergarments and a leather hunting tunic that turned out to be very near a perfect fit. The knee-length leggings of doeskin were slightly long, but still only needed a quick turn and a rapidly stitched hem.
‘Are hunting clothes suitable?’ asked Clariel. ‘I mean, I saw there is to be a feast in the hall …’
‘Hunting clothes are always suitable around here,’ mumbled Salleniel through her mouthful of pins. ‘Himself never wears anything else, and what he wears is what we all wear. You’ll need some boots made, cousin, but there’s soft slippers here, which I can pinch in at the toe if needed. Just slip your foot in, there … Hmmm … Not so bad. Stay still!’
Salleniel made no comment when Clariel, fully dressed and ready to go, put the short knife Kargrin had given her th
rough her belt. Almost as she did so, there was a perfunctory knock at the door and Yannael – or Yan, as it seemed most of the Abhorsens called her – came in. She was bathed too, but not so much changed as simply wearing clean versions of her previous hunting leathers.
‘He’s in the message-hawk mews,’ said Yan, without preamble. ‘Come on.’
‘Thank you, cousin,’ said Clariel to Salleniel, who smiled and waved.
Clariel followed Yan along the corridor, but instead of turning left to go back into the hall, she stopped at the end and stood in front of a large painting, a hunting scene, that had been done directly on the plastered wall. For a moment Clariel wondered why her aunt was just standing in front of it, before she saw her move a horse’s head in the painting, sliding away a cunningly matched lid of paint and plaster to reveal a tiny keyhole. Then she extended an equally tiny key from the ring on her finger and turned the lock. The whole wall, painting and all, pivoted inwards as she pushed against it, revealing a narrow stair. Not a dusty, unused stair, Clariel noted as she climbed up. It was lit by Charter marks, and was as clean as the rest of Hillfair, so it was perhaps not meant to be all that secret. At least not to whoever mopped the floors. Yan, as Clariel had come to expect, did not explain why they were taking this stair.
They climbed up past several other doors, two of which looked ordinary enough and one like the painted wall below, though on this side Clariel could see the faint outline in the stone wall and the grooved arc cut in the floor where the wall slid back. Then they went along another enclosed corridor, around a corner and up again, this time a larger, straight staircase of polished wood.
Finally, five or six levels up this stair, Yan opened a door onto a long veranda or wide balcony. Heads turned as they came out – the heads of half a dozen message-hawks, their fierce yellow eyes fixed on the arrivals for a moment before they lost interest and looked away. Message-hawks, bred and trained with the help of Charter Magic, were never hooded, and they stayed on their perches without the need to be tethered by jesses. These ones, on their perches out on the veranda, were ready to go at a moment’s notice, as soon as they had a message imprinted in their minds.