Halfway back along the Rift towards the door where she’d come in, Lirael was surprised to see that a long bridge of ice had spanned the depths. The Clayr were walking back across it and then into a deep cave-mouth on the other side of the Rift. Ryelle saw her look and explained, “There are many ways to and from the Observatory, when we have need. This bridge will melt when we have all crossed.”
Lirael nodded dumbly. She’d always wondered where the Observatory actually was, and had tried to find it on more than one occasion. She’d had many daydreams of finding her way there, and finding her Sight within. But all those daydreams were destroyed now.
Across the bridge, the cave-mouth led into a rudely dug tunnel that sloped up quite steeply. It was hard going, and Lirael was hot and out of breath when the tunnel finally flattened out. Ryelle and Sanar stopped then, and Lirael wiped the sweat from her eyes before she looked around. They had left stone behind. Now there was nothing but ice all around, blue ice that reflected the Charter lights the Clayr carried. They had come to the heart of the Glacier.
A gate was carved in the ice, flanked by two guards in full mail, holding shields that bore the golden star of the Clayr. Their faces were stern under their open helms. One carried an axe that gleamed with Charter marks, the other a sword that shone brighter than the lights, casting a thousand tiny reflections in the ice. Lirael stared at the guards, for they were clearly Clayr, but no one she knew, which she had thought impossible. There were less than three thousand Clayr in the Glacier, and she had lived here all her life.
“I See you, Voice of the Nine Day Watch,” said the woman with the axe, speaking in a strange, formal tone. “You may pass. But the other with you has not Awoken. By the ancient laws, she must not be allowed to See the secret ways.”
“Don’t be silly, Erimael,” said Sanar. “What ancient laws? It’s Lirael, Arielle’s daughter.”
“Erimael?” whispered Lirael, peering at the severe face, sharply defined by the edges of her helm. Erimael had joined the Rangers six years ago and hadn’t been seen since. Lirael had thought Erimael must have been killed in an accident and that she’d missed her Farewell, as she had missed so many other events that required her to don the blue tunic.
“The laws are clear,” said Erimael, still in the same stern voice, though Lirael saw her gulp nervously. “I am the Axe-Guard. She must be blindfolded if you wish her to pass.”
Sanar snorted and turned to the other woman. “And what says the Sword-Guard? Don’t tell me you agree?”
“Yes, unfortunately,” said the other woman, who Lirael realized was much older. “The letter of the law is strict. Guests must be blindfolded. Anyone who is not an Awoken Clayr is a guest.”
Sanar sighed and turned to Lirael. But Lirael had already hung her head, to hide her humiliation. Slowly, she undid her head scarf, folded it into a narrow band, and bound it around her head, covering her eyes. Behind the soft darkness of the cloth, she wept silently, the blindfold soaking up her tears.
Sanar and Ryelle took her hands again, and Lirael felt the sympathy in their touch. But it did not matter. This was even worse than when she was fourteen, standing alone in her blue tunic, suffering the public shame of not being a Clayr. Now she was irrevocably marked as an outsider. Not a Clayr at all, of any kind. Only a guest.
She asked only two questions as Ryelle and Sanar led her through what felt like a complicated, maze-like passage.
“When will I have to go?”
“Today,” replied Ryelle, as she stopped Lirael and prepared her for another sharp turn by gently pushing her elbow till she was facing the right way. “That is to say, as soon as possible. A boat is being prepared for you. It will be spelled to take you down the Ratterlin to Qyrre. From there you should be able to get some constables or even some of the Guard to escort you to Edge, on the Red Lake itself. It should be a fast and uneventful journey, though we wish we could See some of it beforehand.”
“Am I to go alone?”
Lirael couldn’t see, but she sensed Sanar and Ryelle exchanging glances, silently working out who would speak. At last Sanar said, “That is how you have been Seen, so I’m afraid that is how you will have to go. I wish it were otherwise. We would fly you down by Paperwing, but all the Paperwings have been Seen elsewhere, so the river it must be.”
Alone. Without even her one friend, the Disreputable Dog. It didn’t really matter what happened to her now.
“There are some steps down here,” said Ryelle, stopping Lirael again. “About thirty, I think. Then we will be in the Observatory, and you can take the blindfold off.”
Lirael mechanically went with the twins down the steps. It was unsettling, not being able to see where her feet were going, and some of the steps seemed lower than the others. To make it worse, there was a weird rustling noise all around, and occasionally the hint of whispers or smothered conversations.
Finally, they arrived on level ground and took a half dozen steps forward. Sanar helped untie her blindfold.
Light was the first thing Lirael noticed, and space, and then the massed ranks of the Clayr, silently standing in their white, rustling robes. She stood in the center of a huge chamber carved entirely out of ice, a vast cave easily as large as the Great Hall she knew and hated so much. Charter Magic lights shone everywhere, reflecting from the many facets of the ice, so that there was not a hint of darkness anywhere.
Lirael instinctively looked down when she saw all the other Clayr, so she couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. But as she cautiously peered out from behind her protective fall of singed hair, she saw that they were not looking at her. They were all looking up. She followed their gaze and saw that the angled ceiling was perfectly smooth and flat, one single enormous sheet of clear ice, almost like an enormous, opaque window.
“Yes,” said Sanar, noting Lirael’s stare. “That is where we focus our Sight, so all the fragments of the vision can become one, and everyone can See.”
“I think we may begin,” announced Ryelle, looking around at the massed, silent ranks of the Clayr. Nearly every Awoken Clayr was there, to join a Watch of Fifteen Sixty-Eight. They stood in a series of ever-wider circles around the small central area where Lirael, Sanar, and Ryelle stood, like some strange concentric orchard of white trees that bore silver and moonstone fruit.
“Let us begin!” cried Sanar and Ryelle, and they lifted their wands and clashed them together like swords. Lirael jumped as all the gathered Clayr shouted back, a great bellow that she felt through her bones.
“Let us begin!”
As one, the Clayr in the closest circle joined hands, snapping together as in a military drill. Then the next circle joined hands, and the next, a wave of movement rippling from the center to the farthest circle in the Observatory, till all was still again.
“Let us See!” cried Sanar and Ryelle, clashing their wands again. This time, Lirael was prepared for the shout that came back, but not for the magic that followed. Charter marks seemed to well up out of the icy floor, flowing up through the Clayr of the first circle, till there were so many, they brimmed over and flowed into the next circle, and then the one after that. Charter marks that flowed like thick golden fog up the Clayr’s bodies and along their arms.
Lirael watched the magic grow as it passed each circle, saw it wrap itself around the bodies of her cousins. She could see the Charter marks, feel the magic in her pounding heart, hunger for it. But it remained alien, somehow beyond her, as no other Charter Magic had ever been.
Then the outermost circle of the Clayr broke their handclasps and held their arms up towards the distant, icy ceiling. Marks flowed from them into the air, falling upwards like golden dust caught in shafts of sunlight. When it hit the ice, it splashed there, as if it were glorious paint and the ice a blank canvas waiting to come alive.
Each circle followed in turn, till all the magic they’d summoned had risen to fill the whole huge ice ceiling with swirling Charter marks. They stared at it, entranced, and Lirael saw their eyes
move as if they all watched something there. But she saw nothing, nothing save the swirl of magic that she couldn’t understand.
“Look,” said Ryelle softly, and the wand she held suddenly became a bottle of bright green glass.
“Learn,” said Sanar, and she waved her wand in a pattern directly above Lirael’s head.
Then Ryelle threw the contents of the bottle, seemingly at Lirael. But as the liquid flew over her head, Sanar’s wand transformed it into ice. A pane of pure, translucent ice that hung horizontally in the air directly above Lirael’s head.
Sanar tapped this pane with her wand, and it began to glow a deep, comfortable blue. She tapped it again, and the blue fled to the edges. Lirael stared at it, and then through it, and as she stared, she realized that this strange, suspended pane was helping her See what the Clayr Saw. The meaningless patterns on the ice ceiling above were starting to become clear. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of tiny pictures were joining together to make up a larger picture, like the puzzle pictures she’d played with as a child.
It was a picture of a man standing with his foot on a rock, Lirael saw now. He was looking at something below him.
Curious, Lirael craned her head back for a better view. That made her dizzy for an instant, and then it seemed as if she were falling upwards, through the blue pane and all the way up into the ceiling, falling into the vision. There was a flash of blue and a touch of something that made her shiver—and she was there!
She was standing next to the man. She could hear his rasping, unhealthy-sounding breath, smell the faintest hint of sweat, feel the heat and humidity of a summer day.