As she spoke, the shadow of the clouds rolled over them, blotting out the sun, and the ridge was suddenly cool. Ferin stared down at the shaman below, who was still in sunshine for a few more seconds, and saw that he did indeed wear the seven bells of a necromancer in a bandolier across his chest, and his head was helmetless and freshly bandaged around the ear, testament to the closeness of the arrow she had shot from the fishing boat. In addition to his bells, the shaman had a strange tarred box upon his back, doubtless containing some adjunct to his dark art.
He did not wear traditional garb, and it took Ferin a moment to work out that the off-white coat he wore was a kind of armor, made from hundreds of small bones, linked with dark iron rings. It was almost certainly imbued with charms against ordinary arrows, and other mundane weapons too.
The keeper behind him was a woman. Ferin knew her sash colors, and observed that she kept a very tight hold of the silver chain, and in her gloved right hand she carried an unwrapped spirit-glass arrow, a thin coil of white smoke rising from its tip.
“He is a necromancer,” said Ferin. “The keeper is of the Ghost Horse clan; they are one of the three tribes that keep necromancers. He must be very powerful, she is so fearful of him she must carry a spirit-glass arrow at the ready, in addition to the neck-ring and chain. They will both have stronger charms against arrows.”
“Something to test, if the opportunity presents,” said Young Laska. “But for now, I suggest we open the range, rather than closing it.”
“Yes,” said Ferin. She looked at the necromancer again, then at Swinther. “Are there dead buried up here at all?”
Swinther thought for a moment, knowing all too well why Ferin was asking. A necromancer needed something to work with: bodies, a cemetery, a battlefield, a place of many deaths . . .
“Not on the ridge itself,” he said. “But below this hill, to the north, there were once a dozen farms in the valley, maybe more. One was bigger than the others, a place called Nangan Rest. There was a feast there; everyone for leagues around attended. No one knows what happened, but they fell to fighting each other, and nearly all were killed. Nangan Rest was burned to the ground, farmhouse, outbuildings, tower and all. Later, the bodies were put into the ground and a mound raised. This is fifty . . . fifty-four years gone, you understand. In the bad times, when there was no King.”
“How many farmers died?” asked Ferin. “And how close, exactly?”
“Hundreds, to hear the tale,” said Swinther. “Just below us, as I said. You can see the mound still, that small green hill, perhaps half a league beyond the last of the shale.”
He paused, then added, “And . . . there are also those who have died along the ridge. One every few years or so. The farm boys will do it as a sort of initiation, they always have, and sometimes ours will join in, as I did myself, long ago. The fallen will be under the shale; the bodies can never be recovered.”
“He will have plenty to call on, then,” said Young Laska. “And the closest swift water?”
“Where the others are, the tower built over the estuary to the south,” answered Swinther. He had not seemed overly frightened by the wood-weird, but he was pale now, and there was sweat on his forehead despite the sudden drop in temperature that had come with the disappearance of the sun.
The prospect of encountering the Dead had that effect upon the living.
“Can we get there?” asked Ferin. She had to work hard to keep her voice even. She had never seen a Dead creature, but she had heard tales. The Athask people did not approve of necromancers, and would not allow their kept sorcerers to dabble in necromancy. But every now and then someone would encounter a free-willed Dead thing in their mountains. Caves and narrow mountain ravines were good places for creatures that feared the sun.
“Can’t go back, of course,” said Swinther. “We might be able to get down from High Kemmy—that’s the third peak along—there’s a better path down from there at least, and then we could cut across the valley. If . . .”
His words trailed off. There was no need to speak the “ifs” aloud, for there were too many. Night was coming early, and soon the necromancer behind them would be summoning the Dead . . .
Chapter Twenty
OLD FURNITURE AND THE PROSPECT OF BATHS
Clayr’s Glacier, Old Kingdom
There was an easier but much slower way down from the paperwing hangar than the Starmount Stair. Called the Long Stretches, it was a series of switchbacked, gently inclined corridors that gained their name from the two and a half leagues they took to drop two thousand paces. It was a long way to walk after a day’s flying, much too far for Nick in his current state. He was once again put into a hammock-like stretcher, and carried by four rangers at a time, taking turns. There were eight rangers walking with them now, Mirelle having summoned more of an escort. The commander accompanied them, but stayed well ahead like a racehorse that can’t help but be in front.
Lirael trudged by Nick’s stretcher, sunk in weariness and deep in her own thoughts. No one talked, and they did not meet anyone, hardly a surprise this high up in the Clayr’s abode. Any sensible person with business in the paperwing hangar would take the stairs.
At least it was pleasantly warm in the Long Stretches. As in most of the Clayr’s vast subterranean habitat, the corridors were heated by steam pipes from the hot springs far below. Ancient clever engineering was aided by judicial use of Charter Magic and the constant labors of the usually rather grimy engineers from the Steamworks. Charter marks in the ceiling and walls, refreshed and recast every decade or so, also provided the soft, constant light.
Though she had rarely used the Long Stretches, walking in that particular Charter light and feeling the unique, humid warmth provided by the steam pipes stirred up Lirael’s confused feelings of both being home and not being at home. She had always felt something of an outsider here, but growing up had known nowhere else. Back then she had never considered the possibility of living away from the Glacier, or having a life that was not as one of the Clayr. This had lasted right up until the final revelation that she would never have the Sight, and instead had an entirely different destiny as an Abhorsen.
Now she was experiencing what it was to return to the place of her childhood, where she had always desperately hoped she would one day permanently and properly belong. With it came the clear understanding that though this was her heritage, it was only that: something of her past that would not come again. She had become someone and something else, whose life and future lay apart from being one of the Clayr.
Lirael was thinking about this, and how she now felt so different from her younger self, as if she was an entirely new person in a way. She was thinking so deeply about this she was slow to notice a party of librarians coming up the Long Stretches to meet her and the new addition to the library collection.
When she did see them, the sight made Lirael’s heart leap in a joyful recognition that had not come with her entrance into the halls of the Clayr. She smiled to see the familiar uniforms and faces, and most particularly at one of the junior librarians at the back who was trying to read and walk at the same time, thinking herself far enough behind to be hidden from view.
It was a formal procession. The party was led by the imposing figure of Vancelle the Chief Librarian herself, in a night-black waistcoat with the sword Binder at her side; followed by two deputies in white waistcoats, ceremonial axes on their shoulders—though these were only ceremonial in the sense of being gilded and adorned, they were still useful weapons; then four First Assistants, their waistcoats blue and their ceremonial weapons short-staved halberds with blue tassels; eight Second Assistants with curved scimitars, in red waistcoats like Lirael’s own, which was in a chest with camphor balls back in the palace in Belisaere; and a gaggle of Third Assistant Librarians in yellow waistcoats, bearing long spears, the heads bright with new-laid Charter marks placed there only on very special occasions.
All
of them, of course, bore dagger, whistle, and clockwork emergency mouse, the standard equipment of the Clayr’s librarians. They would not set foot outside the great Reading Room far below without these essential items.
Lirael had herself been a member of such ceremonial parties, as a Third and then Second Assistant Librarian, greeting notables such as the King himself, or Sabriel, or the Lord Mayor of Belisaere. But always far back in the throng, like the Third Assistant who was still reading her book. Lirael had never thought to be at the forefront, or to be greeted in such a way herself.
Both groups stopped a dozen paces short of each other, and Vancelle came forward and bowed to Lirael, who returned the greeting. But that done, the Librarian moved closer and embraced the younger woman, which was a surprise.
“You have done great things,” said Vancelle. “And all of us in the Library are very, very proud of you.”
“Thank you,” said Lirael. She fought back the tears in her eyes, because though she no longer felt she was one of the Clayr, she still felt she was a librarian and always would be, no matter what else she had become as well.
“We have some gifts, long prepared for your return,” said Vancelle, indicating two First Assistants who carried ornate boxes: one long and thin; the other almost a cube. Both were made of dark red cedar with elaborately cast hinges, edges, and lockplates of shining gold. One of the First Assistants was Lirael’s old friend Imshi, who had carried out Lirael’s induction to the Library almost six years before, assigning her dagger, whistle, and mouse. Imshi smiled and waggled her little finger in greeting, all she could move without dropping the box.
“But perhaps having waited these last months, they can wait a little longer, until you are settled,” said Vancelle, noting the weariness in Lirael’s eyes. She peered past the young Abhorsen-in-Waiting to where Nick was asleep in his hammock, looking very pale and sick. “That is Nicholas Sayre? The young man from Ancelstierre who was an unwitting servant of Orannis? And you bring him to us for examination?”