He tried to sit up straight, and found that as he did so, he moved out of the freezing-cold wind into an area of still, warm air. His dulled mind processed that he was sitting behind someone; he was tied to some sort of hammock-like suspended chair, which was in . . . in the open cockpit of an aircraft.
Nicholas had flown before, several times, he had an interest in aviation and the physics of flight, and in consequence had gone for joyrides with the barnstormers from the flying circus who visited the ten-acre field near his family home on regular occasions. But this was no Heddon-Hare or Beskwith. It was completely silent, to begin with. There was also warm air in the cockpit, which was impossible, since there wasn’t even a windshield.
Looking around, the flimsy contraption seemed to be little more than a kind of canoe body, with long, hawklike wings that were far too frail to sustain flight. And as he examined the side closest to him, he saw the hull was made of something very insubstantial, some kind of thin laminated plywood or something even lighter.
Still dazed, feeling like his arm was much heavier than usual, he tapped the person in front of him on the shoulder. Whoever it was started and turned her head to look back. Even in his confused state, Nick recognized her.
“Lirael!”
As he spoke her name, memory came flowing back, like a river returning to its course after some temporary dam had burst. First came small trickles of thought, images and sounds, and then the whole lot swept into his mind. Dorrance Hall, the creature in the case, the pursuit north, making the monster drink his blood, and then . . . Lirael. She had finished off the creature . . . no, banished it for a while . . . with her thistle-tipped spear. But everything after that was lost. He had a dim recollection of golden light, light all around, like waking to sunshine through a bedroom window, so bright you can’t immediately open your eyes, not until you look away.
Now he had opened his eyes.
To find himself in a silent, far too fragile-looking aircraft that presumably worked by the magic he had for many years refused to recognize as being possible. Piloted by a young woman who he had dreamed about ever since meeting her, or even before meeting her, since he didn’t know that his encounter with Lirael near the Red Lake had actually happened.
“Are you all right?” asked Lirael. He could hear her easily; somehow the wind created by their speedy flight was diverted around the cockpit.
“I . . . I think so,” said Nick. “But I can’t remember what happened . . . after you got rid of that creature.”
“The Hrule,” said Lirael. “You’ve been in a healing sleep since then. We brought you through the Wall and then this morning loaded you aboard this paperwing.”
Nick put his hand against the thin material at his side. Small symbols of golden light emerged where his fingers touched, flashed brightly, and then receded again.
“This craft is made of paper?” he asked.
“Laminated paper,” said Lirael. “And a great deal of Charter Magic. Hold on a moment, I need to catch a higher wind.”
She looked to the front again, and whistled: pure, clear notes that seemed to echo inside Nick’s head, and out of the corner of his eye he saw more of the strange, shimmering gold symbols appear in her exhaled breath, apparently in answer to the whistling, only to whisk away out of sight as he peered forward to try to get a better look at them.
The paperwing tilted back and to the side as it began to spiral upward, passing through a wispy cloud that Nick observed parted in front of the paperwing’s long nose. He saw thousands of tiny droplets of moisture spatter the wings, but none came in the cockpit.
“How . . . how do we stay warm and keep the wind and moisture out?” Nick asked when Lirael stopped whistling, and the paperwing settled into level flight once more.
“Where we sit—Sabriel calls it the cockpit—is spelled for warmth and to divide the wind,” answered Lirael. “But it works only up to a point. If we go much faster you’ll feel the wind, and heavy rain comes through, after a fashion. I’m fairly new to this, so we’re flying lower and slower than Sabriel or Touchstone would.”
Nick looked over the side. He could see green fields below, sprinkled with small groups of trees, and a few buildings, probably farmhouses. Some distance to his left there was a broad river, the water bright under the sun. It was hard to tell how high they were, but it looked to be at least a few thousand feet.
“You haven’t been flying very long?” he asked.
“Not long,” said Lirael. Though he hadn’t sounded worried, she added, “But I do know what I’m doing, and to be honest, this paperwing could fly itself.”
“Oh,” said Nick. “It can fly by itself?”
“Yes,” said Lirael.
There was silence for a minute or so. Nick tried to gather his fragmented thoughts. He’d wanted to come to the Old Kingdom for many reasons, not least a desire to see Lirael again, though he had not fully recognized that himself. But he had not thought through what he would do once he got here, in part because it had seemed he would have time to write to Sam before he would be allowed to cross the Wall, and that everything would take a long time and allow careful thought and consideration.
Now here he was, feeling weak and stupid, tied to a kind of hammock chair in a silent flying vehicle that worked by magic. With Lirael, but not in circumstances where he felt he could easily talk to her, or impress her. In fact, he feared quite the reverse. He’d helped a Free Magic creature escape from its prison, inadvertently begun the process of making it even more powerful, and had only been saved by Lirael’s arrival, when she had immediately and competently taken care of matters.
Nick shut his eyes and groaned inwardly. She probably already thought of him as a dangerous fool for his prior involvement with Orannis, a reputation he’d now enhanced, or possibly dehanced or whatever the word might be, by his freeing and empowering the Hrule. Once again meddling in things he didn’t understand and endangering others.
“Um, I’m taking you to the Clayr’s Glacier,” said Lirael, after several more minutes of rather uncomfortable silence. “Do you . . . do you know about the Clayr?”
“Sam’s been writing to me,” said Nick. “About lots of things. I was . . . well, I was just ordinarily stupid before, when we were at school. I mean, I didn’t want to believe any of Sam’s stories. It didn’t fit with what I knew about science and everything. And then . . . then when I first came here . . . it’s all rather vague, my memory, but I seemed to get even worse, refusing to acknowledge what was in front of my face—”
“But that wasn’t your fault!” protested Lirael. “You had the shard of Orannis in your heart, controlling you.”
“It was in my heart!” exclaimed Nick. He couldn’t help but look down, almost feeling some phantom pain in his chest. “Sam didn’t tell me that! But surely it would have killed me when it came out?”
“No . . .” said Lirael. “It traveled through your bloodstream, reversing the course it must have taken to go in, and then burst from your finger, to rejoin the hemispheres.”
Nick lifted his hand and looked at his forefinger. There was a star-shaped scar there above the top joint, and it was always somewhat numb, though he could feel a pinprick or other sharp pain. He had wondered what caused that numbness, and the scar.
“Sam should have told me,” he said quietly. “I suppose he thought it would be too upsetting . . . um, the Clayr . . . the women who can See the future, in the ice. They live in an underground city, built around a glacier. Is that right?”
“Yes, for what it’s worth,” said Lirael. “It’s more complicated than that, of course.”
“But why are you taking me there?” asked Nick. “I mean, I’m grateful, very grateful, don’t get me wrong. Thank you for dealing with that thing, the Hrule. I wouldn’t want any more people to suffer from my stupidity, which seemed likely . . . there . . .”
His voice trailed off and he shook his head, wondering why he found it so difficult to talk intelligently to Lirael. He nev
er had any problems talking nonsense to the debs at the balls in Corvere, or pretending academic conversations with the bluestockings at Sunbere, or even taking part in intelligent discourse with the students who saw through his act. Everyone said he was charming. It couldn’t all be to do with his powerful and influential family, which meant nothing here. Could it?
“I’m curious how you ended up by the Wall with the Hrule,” said Lirael. She didn’t sound at ease, either, Nick thought miserably. He was probably just a task she had to take care of, part of her duty as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. Though he was very glad it was she who’d come along, not Sabriel. He was intimidated by Sabriel, though she had always been perfectly nice to him on the rare occasions she’d visited Sam at school.
“It all started with me visiting Dorrance Hall,” Nick began, continuing in a rather disjointed way to tell Lirael the story of how the Hrule had been brought there in the first place as a kind of museum exhibit and the mad Alastor Dorrance had tried to bring it back to life with Nick’s blood, all too successfully.*