“Arielle’s daughter,” said Sanar, as if she were identifying a flower or a plant, dredging it up from a list. “Lirael. Not on the roster of the Watch. Therefore, not yet with the Sight. Is that correct?”
“Y-yes,” stammered Lirael. No one had ever peered at her so intently before, and she generally avoided talking to other people, particularly fully fledged Clayr. Important Clayr made her nervous even when she was behaving herself. Now there were seven of them giving her their undivided attention. She wished she could somehow sink through the floor and reappear in her own room.
“Why were you hiding out there?” asked the old Clayr, who Lirael suddenly remembered was named Mirelle. “Why aren’t you at the Awakening?”
There was no warmth in her voice at all, just cold authority. Belatedly, Lirael remembered that this grey-haired, leather-faced old woman was also the commander of the Clayr’s Rangers, who hunted and patrolled across Starmount and Sunfall, the glacier, and the river valley. They dealt with everything from lost travelers to foolish bandits or marauding beasts, and were not to be trifled with.
Mirelle asked her question again, but Lirael couldn’t answer. Tears came into her eyes, though she managed to hold them back. Then, when it seemed Mirelle was about to shake both answer and tears out of her, she said the first thing that came into her head.
“It’s my birthday. I’m fourteen.”
For some reason, this seemed to be the right thing to say. All the Clayr relaxed, and Mirelle let go of her shoulders. Lirael winced. The woman had gripped her hard enough to leave bruises.
“So you’re fourteen,” said Sanar, much more kindly than Mirelle. “And you’re worried because the Sight hasn’t woken in you?”
Lirael nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“It comes late to some of us,” continued Sanar, her eyes warm and understanding. “But often the later it is, the more strongly it wakes. The Sight did not come to me and Ryelle till we were sixteen. Has no one told you that?”
Lirael looked up, fully meeting the Clayr’s gaze for the first time, her eyes wide with shock. Sixteen! That was impossible!
“No,” she said, the surprise and relief clear in her voice. “Not sixteen!”
“Yes,” said Ryelle, smiling, taking over where Sanar left off. “Sixteen and a half, in fact. We thought it would never come. But it did. I suppose you couldn’t bear another Awakening. Is that why you came up here?”
“Yes,” said Lirael, a small smile beginning to creep across her own face. Sixteen! That meant there was hope for her yet. She felt like jumping forward and hugging everybody, even Mirelle, and running down the Starmount Stair yelling for joy. All of a sudden, her plan to kill herself seemed incredibly stupid, and the hatching of it long ago and far away.
“Part of our problem back then was having too much time to think about our lack of the Sight,” said Sanar, who had not missed the signs of relief in Lirael’s face and posture, “since we weren’t part of the Watch and didn’t have the Sight training. Of course, we didn’t want to do extra shifts on the roster duties, either.”
“No,” agreed Lirael hurriedly. Who would want to clean toilets or wash dishes any more than she had to?
“It wasn’t usual for us to be assigned a post before we turned eighteen,” continued Ryelle. “But we asked, and the Watch agreed that we should be given proper work. So we joined the Paperwing Flight and learned to fly. That was in the time before the return of the King, when everything was much more dangerous and unsettled, so we flew far more patrols, and farther afield, than we do now.
“After only a year of flying, the Sight woke in us. It could have been an awful year, as was the one before it, waiting and hoping for the gift, but we were too busy to even think about it much. Do you think that proper work might help you, too?”
“Yes!” replied Lirael fervently. A post would free her from the child’s tunic, let her wear the clothes of a working Clayr. It would also give her somewhere to go, away from the younger children and Aunt Kirrith. She might even be able to stay away from Awakenings, depending on what the work was.
“The question is, what work would suit you best?” mused Sanar. “I do not think we have ever Seen you, so that’s no help. Is there any posting you would particularly like? The Rangers? Paperwing Flight? The Merchant Office? The Bank? Building and Construction? The Infirmary? The Steamworks?”
“I don’t know,” said Lirael, trying to think of all the many and various jobs the Clayr did, in addition to the rostered community duties.
“What are you good at?” asked Mirelle. She looked Lirael up and down, clearly measuring her up as a potential recruit for the Rangers. The slight lift of her nose showed that she didn’t seem to think much of Lirael’s potential. “How’s your swordcraft, and archery?”
“Not very good,” replied Lirael guiltily, thinking of all the practice sessions she’d missed lately, having chosen to mopein her room instead. “I’m best at Charter Magic, I think. And music.”
“Perhaps the Paperwings, then,” said Sanar. Then she frowned and looked at the others. “Though fourteen is perhaps a shade too young. They can be a bad influence.”
Lirael glanced at the Paperwings and couldn’t hold back a small shiver. She liked the idea of flying, but the Paperwings frightened her a bit. There was something creepy about their being alive and having their own personalities. What would happen if she had to talk to one of them all the time? She hated talking to people, let alone Paperwings.
“Please,” said Lirael, pursuing that thought to the logical place where she could avoid people the most. “I think I would like to work in the Library.”
“The Library,” repeated Sanar, looking troubled. “That can be dangerous to a girl of fourteen. Or a woman of forty, for that matter.”
“Only in parts,” said Ryelle. “The Old Levels.”
“You can’t work in the Library without going into the Old Levels,” said Mirelle somberly. “At least some of the time. I wouldn’t be keen on going to some parts of the Library, myself.”
Lirael listened, wondering what they were talking about. The Great Library of the Clayr was enormous, but she had never heard of the Old Levels.
She knew the general layout well. The Library was shaped like a nautilus shell, a continuous tunnel that wound down into the mountain in an ever-tightening spiral. This main spiral was an enormously long, twisting ramp that took you from the high reaches of the mountain down past the level of the valley floor, several thousand feet below.
Off the main spiral, there were countless other corridors, rooms, halls, and strange chambers. Many were full of the Clayr’s written records, mainly documenting the prophesies and visions of many generations of seers. But they also contained books and papers from all over the Kingdom. Books of magic and mystery, knowledge both ancient and new. Scrolls, maps, spells, recipes, inventories, stories, true tales, and Charter knew what else.
In addition to all these written works, the Great Library also housed other things. There were old armories within it, containing weapons and armor that had not been used for centuries but still stayed bright and new. There were rooms full of odd paraphernalia that no one now knew how to use. There were chambers where dressmakers’ dummies stood fully clothed, displaying the fashions of bygone Clayr or the wildly different costumes of the barbaric North. There were greenhouses tended by sendings, with Charter marks for light as bright as the sun. There were rooms of total darkness, swallowing up the light and anyone foolish enough to enter unprepared.
Lirael had seen some of the Library, on carefully escorted excursions with the rest of her year gathering. She had always hankered to enter the doors they passed, to step across the red rope barriers that marked corridors or tunnels where only authorized librarians might pass.
“Why do you want to work there?” asked Sanar.
“It—it’s interesting,” stammered Lirael, uncertain how she should reply. She didn’t want to admit that the Library would be the
best place to hide away from other Clayr. And in the back of her mind, she hadn’t forgotten that in the Library she might find a spell to painlessly end her life. Not now, of course, now she knew that the Sight might come. But later, if she grew older and older without the Sight and the black despair welled up again inside her, as it had done earlier today.
“It is interesting,” replied Sanar. “But there are dangerous things and dangerous knowledge in the Library, too. Does that bother you?”
“I don’t know,” said Lirael, honestly. “It would depend on what it was. But I really would like to work there.” She paused and then said in a very low voice, “I do want to be busy, as you said, and forget about not having the Sight.”
The Clayr turned away from Lirael then, and gathered together in a tight circle that excluded her, speaking in whispers. Lirael watched anxiously, aware that something momentous was going to happen to her life. The day had been horrible, but now she had hope again.
The Clayr stopped whispering. Lirael looked at them through the fall of her hair, glad that it hid her face. She didn’t want them to see how badly she wanted them to let her work.
“Since it is your birthday,” said Sanar, “and because we believe it will be best, we have decided that we will put you to work as you ask, in the Great Library. You should report there tomorrow morning, to Vancelle, the Chief Librarian. Unless she finds you unsuitable for some reason, you will become a Third Assistant Librarian.”