Clariel

by Nix,Garth

“Good,” said Clariel. “I need my friends, few as they are.”

  “I’m glad to be one,” said Bel, with forced cheerfulness.

  Clariel wondered if she’d really made her point, or if Bel’s natural optimism would break out again in a few days. She really didn’t want to have to keep rebuffing him, because he was a friend. But she also didn’t want any further complications in her already troubled life.

  “You didn’t tell me we had that Free Magic creature aboard,” she said, going for a change of subject. Clariel had tried not to think about Aziminil, trapped in the silver bottle, but she had found it difficult. Even now, she thought she could almost hear a despairing cry for help, on the very edge of audibility.

  “Oh,” said Bel. “You saw the bottle . . . Kargrin told me not to tell anyone, including you. It’s spelled so only an Abhorsen can touch it.”

  “Hmm,” said Clariel noncommitally. She wondered if Kargrin had worked out that she had let the creature escape on the island. But that seemed unlikely. Maybe he was just being secretive in general. “What will happen to her . . . that is . . . it?”

  “It’ll go down to the Abhorsen’s House,” said Bel. “The original house, you can’t see it yet. It’s in the river, as running water defends against the Dead, and you don’t get much faster running water than in the middle of the biggest waterfall around. See that huge low cloud up ahead, past Hillfair?”

  Clariel did see the cloud. She had wondered why it sat so low and alone, with the rest of the sky so blue.

  “That’s from the waterfall? And the house is there? It must be damp.”

  Bel shook his head, a litte too vigorously, and winced at the pain.

  “Not at all,” he said. “The mist doesn’t fall back on the house. A spell, I suppose. The whole place is wreathed in spells. Even the river currents are ensorcelled, so you can get there by boat without being taken by the waterfall. Presuming you’ve been invited, of course.”

  “Why doesn’t the Abhorsen live there anymore?” asked Clariel. “I’ve only ever heard people talk about Hillfair.”

  “Take a look along the ridge road,” said Bel. “You’ll see.”

  Clariel frowned in puzzlement, but looked. There was a long line of people on horseback moving toward the closer buildings, but they were still quite distant so she couldn’t make out more than that.

  “Riders,” she said. “Might be a hundred of them, I suppose. What of that?”

  “The Grand Hunt, returning to Hillfair,” said Bel. “I hope they had a good day, it always puts Himself in a better mood.”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Clariel. She knew about Grand Hunts; there was one in Estwael three times a year, she’d even ridden in a few. But it was a ridiculously overdone show, in her opinion, with massed riders and packs of dogs all getting in one another’s way, and foolish rituals, and it depended on weeks of work beforehand from foresters and the Borderers, and beaters on the day. “I heard the Abhorsen likes to hunt . . .”

  “Loves to hunt,” said Bel. “Twice a week, if not more. And everything is about the hunt. Half the buildings in Hillfair are horse stables or dog kennels. That’s how it got started, in the first place, with the Abhorsen Kariniel . . . let’s see, she was Tyriel’s great-aunt, so your great-great-great-aunt . . . she was hunt mad and you can’t keep horses in the old house, and the island is inconvenient. So she built a lodge and stable and called it Hillfair.”

  “But, isn’t the Abhorsen meant to travel about the Kingdom making sure the Dead stay Dead, that Free Magic creatures like the one we faced don’t appear, and so on?” asked Clariel. “I know there hasn’t been trouble, but if he’s hunting all the time and not even looking . . .”

  “Exactly,” said Bel darkly. “That’s always been my point, that there might be all kinds of perils slowly brewing. But no one down there wants to know, they simply don’t believe that things could turn back to the bad old days. Like I said, I doubt if Yannael has even read The Book of the Dead. Maybe even Tyriel hasn’t himself. I can’t remember ever seeing him wear the bells. That’s why I’m getting ready, so at least someone is prepared.”

  “Prepared for what?” asked Clariel. As she spoke, she felt a shiver pass through her, and the paperwing’s shadow cut like a knife across the silver waters of the Ratterlin below.

  “Whatever happens,” said Bel. “Take that Free Magic creature in Belisaere, for example. The Abhorsen should have come to deal with it straight away, not left it to Kargrin and Mistress Ader. And why would something of that power be free now? I bet there’s more, or more coming. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Clayr have already warned Tyriel and he’s just ignored it, like the King ignores everything he doesn’t want to know about. Charter save us from old men!”

  “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 at least 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 realize 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 toward the lawn, sideslipping 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-organized 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 spooked and shied, with 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 toward 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 their horses and rich
ness of their attire that the silver-haired man who was charging down toward 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 toward 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 toward 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 practiced.

  “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 the slightest flick of reins and 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.

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  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 defenses 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 these was a great hall whose lower two stories 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 center 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 in place and 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 Periel—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 recognized 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.