Nick watched as Lirael went over to the corner of the gate and opened a small sally port there, leaning close to use a key or perhaps a spell; he couldn’t see clearly as her back was to him. She vanished inside, and the sally port closed behind her.
He felt very alone all of a sudden, and damp and uncomfortable, and tired and weak, and wondered if he had done the right thing. But at the same time he was thinking about Lirael’s words.
“I wanted to.” Nick repeated her words to himself. She had wanted to come and get him. For her own sake? As a favor to Sam? Was she one of those people who just said nice things without meaning them? He didn’t think so, she seemed quite serious. He liked that, but it was hard to be sure of her true feelings on such a short acquaintance.
He must look a complete joke to her at the moment, he thought. A scrawny, pallid wreck in a borrowed cloak, shivering away with a red nose that was beginning to drip. A far cry from how he had imagined returning to the Old Kingdom.
Or how he had imagined it would be to meet Lirael again.
Nick wiped his nose with the edge of the cloak and looked back at the sally port. It remained stubbornly closed. The cloud was closing around the landing ledge again, reknitting itself into a solid expanse of white flecked with black streaks, and it was beginning to snow again. Wet, slushy snow.
After ten minutes, though it felt much longer to Nick, he grew tired of waiting. Clutching his cloak together at the front, he laboriously climbed out of the cockpit, gasping at the savage impact of the cold as he left the protective magic. His breath puffed out immediately like smoke, and the wetness on the end of his nose felt like it had been suddenly snap-frozen. His shoes, now bereft of laces, were loose on his feet and let in snow at the sides, which melted at once on what had been up until that moment his relatively warm feet.
Nick crept to the sally port, thinking to knock on it. But he had barely gone more than a few paces from the paperwing when there was a flash of light under the thin layer of snow ahead, as if hundreds of the magnesium flares photographers used had suddenly fired off, without the usual puffs of white smoke. Nick stopped and peered at the ground ahead. There were golden lights moving about under the snow there, tracing a picture, as if some huge unseen hand were painting in lines of sunshine.
He was still staring when the lines all came together at once, there was another even more blinding flash, and when his vision cleared save for several dancing black spots, there was a giant worm between him and the gate.
A worm easily seventy feet long and twelve feet in diameter, with a mouth of that same disturbingly wide diameter occupying all of the end closest to him, a mouth completely ringed with six serried layers of different-sized teeth, from enormous grinding molars at the back to tiny, delicate flesh-rending pointy ones at the front. Thousands of teeth, each the size and shape of a murderous small knife.
Nick gulped and stumbled back several steps to stand next to the paperwing, which he hoped might lend him some protection, as his mind furiously tried to come to terms with the sudden appearance of this vast monster.
The worm reared up at the front, its middle segments scrunching together, but it did not pursue him, nor make any move elsewhere. Its whole posture, if a giant worm could be said to have a posture, was that of a watchful sentry.
It was guarding the gate, Nick realized. He really hoped that also meant it would not attack him unless he tried to go closer.
He was feeling very slightly relieved about this when he heard the faintest sound behind him. Half turning, he found the very sharp point of a sword near his throat, and his cloak gaped open again from the speed of his spinning about. He started to pull it closed, but stopped as the sword touched his skin.
“Stay still!” commanded the woman who held the sword, which was glowing with Charter marks, warm and bright upon the cold steel blade. She was dressed entirely in white to match the snow, a thickly bundled figure with a hooded cloak showing a few errant strands of very pale blond hair, deep brown skin, and bright blue eyes under the green glass goggles which she had slid up on her forehead. Another brown-skinned, blue-eyed blond woman, also dressed in white furs over armor, stood nearby with an arrow nocked on a short bow. The point of the arrow was aimed at Nick’s head, though she had not actually drawn back the bowstring.
“I am a guest,” said Nick, trying very much to be the First Minister of Ancelstierre’s nephew, even standing bare naked under a rather gaping cloak. He remained very still. The sword point was just pricking the skin of his windpipe, and it was as sharp as any razor he had ever used. “Or so I have been assured.”
“Is that so—” the swordswoman started to say, but she was interrupted by the sudden return of Lirael, who was trying to come out of the sally port. Finding it would only open halfway because of the worm, she put her head out, looked at the huge creature that had taken up residence in front of the greater part of the gate, and stamped her foot much as Nick might do when one of the dogs at home tried to come in where it wasn’t allowed.
“Shoo!” said Lirael, waving her golden hand.
The worm flexed itself back far enough to allow her to open the lesser door and she came striding out toward the paperwing. “What is going on? Lower your sword at once!”
“Who are you?” asked the swordswoman. She did not lower her sword, and the archer with her transferred her aim to Lirael.
“The Abhorsen-in-Waiting! As you can see very well from my surcoat, bells, and the royal paperwing right in front of your eyes, Calleset!”
The sword did go down this time, rather waveringly, and the archer lowered her bow.
“Lirael?” asked Calleset. She stepped away from Nick, who took the opportunity to wrap his cloak back around himself and look nervously at the giant worm. It remained by the gate, which was only slightly comforting, as its rows of teeth were rotating, each layer moving in a contrary direction to the next.
“There is only one Abhorsen-in-Waiting, isn’t there?” commented Lirael testily. “Why isn’t the gate open? And I would have expected someone from the Watch up here to meet me!”
Calleset looked at her, openmouthed, then mumbled something about “having gotten taller.”
“Well, where is everybody?” asked Lirael. She gestured at the archer. “Lower your bow before you have an accident. Jelesray, isn’t it? I didn’t know you were in the Rangers.”
“I . . . I just joined three months ago,” said Jelesray haltingly. She was much younger than Calleset, perhaps seventeen to the latter’s early twenties.
“I’m sorry, Lirael,” said Calleset stiffly. “I was just surprised. I’ve never heard you talk so much. You never did before. We used to call you Chatterbox, remember?”
“No,” said Lirael. She was surprised to have had any nickname at all, particularly from someone older like Calleset. It all seemed so long ago, her life as a Clayr. Or as she had always thought, not really a Clayr, since she didn’t have the Sight. “Did you?”
“Um, well, some people did,” said Calleset, suddenly recalling that Lirael was no longer a very shy and retiring Second Assistant Librarian but the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, and not only that, but a great hero of the Kingdom.
“Why isn’t the gate open?” asked Lirael. “Has something happened? All the Watch busy, and only two rangers available to meet me and my guest?”
She indicated Nick, who was nervously watching the worm, still with a certain amount of disbelief and a great deal of caution. He was trying to work out where to run if it suddenly lunged forward with that vast mouth and all those teeth. Lirael was very trusting to turn her back to such a thing . . .
“Who I should say is Nicholas Sayre, a . . . a prince from Ancelstierre,” continued Lirael. “Or as good as, his uncle being their ruler—”
“That’s not quite right,” interrupted Nick. He still didn’t take his eyes off the worm. “Technically the Hereditary Arbiter is the head of state; he’s my cousin. Uncle Edward is the Chief Minister—”
“So
I would have thought someone from the Watch could be here to greet him at least, even if everyone just thinks I am still the same old Lirael!”
“I don’t think anyone thinks that,” blurted out Calleset. “It’s . . . it is just that we . . . they . . . the Nine Day Watch didn’t See you.”
“Oh,” replied Lirael.
The Clayr always Saw visitors, even if they missed other things. But set against that certainty there was also the case that she herself had never been Seen by the Watch when she was growing up, even when the normal Nine Day Watch of forty-nine Clayr was reinforced to the rare Fifteen Hundred and Sixty-Eight Clayr, all concentrating their power in an attempt to distill the myriad possible futures into a mere several that could be Seen clearly in the ice of the Observatory.
The Watch had in fact only Seen Lirael once, at the very last moment, when the action against Orannis was critical. Lirael had thought that from then on the Clayr would See her as much as they Saw everyone else. But perhaps not . . .
“There is also the . . . the Starmount Guardian,” added Calleset, indicating the giant worm arrayed in front of the gate. “We came from the next post up the mountainside when the alarm sounded, indicating the guardian was active. It only comes out when danger threatens, or enemies are without the gate.”