She had more pressing problems. Lirael stared down at the suspended figure and tried to work out what to do. This relic of the original Chlorr had to be made to go beyond the Ninth Gate.
But how to do it?
Lirael ran her hand over her bells, wondering which to use.
Ranna she dismissed immediately. The woman was in the deepest possible sleep already. Mosrael needed slightly longer consideration, but that bell, too, she could not use. The Waker would send the woman out into Life, and Lirael farther into Death. That was no use.
Kibeth. Her favorite bell, because Kibeth was the Disreputable Dog, and the Dog was Kibeth. But could Kibeth make such a suspended, inactive spirit walk? She did not think so.
Dyrim? Speaker was no use either. This was no silenced creature that needed a voice, nor one to be stilled.
Belgaer . . . the Thinker. To restore the patterns of a living person, to give them back what they once were, return independent thought . . . what would Belgaer do for this remnant spirit, something deliberately separated from the greater whole, to be planted in the river of Death for all eternity?
Saraneth, the deepest, lowest bell. Saraneth the strong, used to bind the Dead to the ringer’s will. But again, what could Saraneth do against this suspended spirit?
Then there was Astarael. Lirael’s fingers hovered above the handle of this bell, but did not touch it. Astarael the Sorrowful, whose melancholy cry would cast all who heard her deep into Death. Everyone, including the ringer. Astarael would work, but she was well nicknamed Weeper. A bell of last resort.
Lirael thought for a few moments longer, then sheathed Raminah and drew Belgaer left-handed, keeping a tight grip on the clapper. Belgaer was very slippery, and could erase a mind—her mind—as easily as it might restore the sleeping woman’s.
Belgaer sounded very loud in Death. A bright, clear note that Lirael felt through the bones of her head, clear into her brain. She swung it exactly as described in The Book of the Dead, silenced it immediately afterward, and returned it to the bandolier.
Below her, the scarred woman’s eyes opened. There was fear there, quickly overcome, and a moment later she burst from the water, coughing and spluttering, and grabbed at Lirael, who quickly stepped back. The river roared and coursed around the woman’s legs, but somehow she held firm, still reaching out to Lirael.
“Go,” said the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. She drew Kibeth and rang it, and the woman spun around in answer to the bell’s rising, exuberant call. She took two steps . . . three . . . but then stopped and turned around.
“I would if I could,” she said, her voice husky and weak. “I think. But I can’t. She . . . I . . . have made sure of that.”
She lifted one foot out of the river, and Lirael saw her ankle was bound with a thick black rope that led back to the point where she had been submerged. Not some slim thread designed to alert a necromancer to change, but a spell-rope of great power, used to fix the spirit in place.
“By ‘she’ and ‘I’ you mean Chlorr, don’t you,” said Lirael. “You are Chlorr.”
“I am the part of her that would not become what she became, when I found Free Magic again and had to make my choice,” said the woman quietly. “Tell me: you are obviously an Abhorsen, but why do you also wear the blazon of the Clayr?”
“I am of both lineages,” said Lirael. She walked carefully over to where the binding cable was secured, setting her feet hard against the current, to inspect the strands of darkness. This was Free Magic of a high order. It could be undone with the bells, but first she had to find out how it had been made. Lirael cursed under her breath and knelt down, making sure she had a strong stance while also keeping an eye on the woman. She seemed unarmed and innocuous, but even a spirit fragment of Chlorr had to be dangerous.
Time passed differently in Death, but Lirael grudged every passing minute. She and Nick had to go soon, back to the second flag, back to where they could once again fill their lungs.
“Are you the Abhorsen yourself?” asked the woman.
“Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” said Lirael. She found another thread under the water, a trip wire, running off along the border of Life and Death. It was thrumming as if someone plucked at it far away, the vibrations traveling a great distance.
So now Chlorr knew that the anchor which kept her from the final Death had come adrift, for that black thread could lead nowhere else.
“Who is the Abhorsen now? Is it still Belatiel?”
“I know Belatiel only as a name on a list of past Abhorsens from long, long ago,” said Lirael. She felt the cable, trying to sense how it had been made, which bell had fixed it in place. It could be unmade by the same bell, but Lirael needed to know something else as well.
“What is your name, by the way? Who were you before you became Chlorr of the Mask?”
“Belatiel an Abhorsen from long, long ago?”
The woman frowned and gazed out on the river, as if she could see something which Lirael could not.
“It seems only yesterday I . . . we . . . were exiled, and for years I resisted temptation, did not seek to find new powers. But then, by pure chance or so I must suppose, I found the bottle. . . .”
“What is your name?” asked Lirael.
“Azagrasir was within,” whispered the woman. “For a long time I did not open it, thinking myself strong. But I was not. I undid the stopper, and Azagrasir came forth. We fought, and though I compelled it to serve me, I was badly wounded and like to die. There was a woman, a young woman of the Dnath who served me. Azagrasir told me, told us I . . . we could take her body, to live on. I refused; despite everything else I would not do that. Yes, it is true I could not resist the lure of Free Magic . . . but I would not steal another’s body. Yet I must have done. I see we did. Though I am also here . . .”
“Tell me your name,” repeated Lirael. Names had power, particularly here in Death.
“My parents were goldsmiths in Belisaere. My mother the most famous of them all. Jaciel. But her father was the Abhorsen, and the King our cousin,” said the woman. She was still staring out across the river, seeing something else. “I am the granddaughter of the Abhorsen.”
“Tell me your name!” snapped Lirael. She looked nervously in the same direction as the scarred woman, wondering what she looked at. Lirael could see nothing unusual, just the featureless river, the melancholy grey light. “I need to know your name!”
“She comes,” said the woman. “Or I do. It is confusing. I am remembering things that have not yet happened. Or had not happened when I was put here. I . . . she . . . has used so many bodies, so many young women . . .”
Tears fell like bright crystals, following the scars along her cheeks
, only to instantly darken as they hit the river, to break and swirl away as if they were in fact drops of blood.
“And now she has no body at all?” whispered the woman. “She is a creature of Death? That is what I have become?”
Lirael drew Saraneth and was about to ring it, to command an answer to her question, when the woman looked directly at her, and their gazes met.
“My name is Clariel,” she said very clearly. “Abhorsen, please help me die the final death. We must hurry, before she comes.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
WASTED FISH UPON THE RIVERBED
In Death/Greenwash Bridge
She comes?” asked Lirael. “Chlorr?”
“Her, and many Dead servants,” said Clariel, almost dreamily. “She leaves a great battle, being fought by a mighty river . . . it is the Greenwash, I think, though strangely dry . . . I am . . . she is furious, enraged that I am awake, that I know myself again. It has come when she is most busy, the battle needing her direction . . . but now she must come here . . . to snap me up, make us whole again . . . No . . . no . . . You must help me go before she comes! I am the lesser part, I will not be able to resist should she draw close.”
“I’m trying,” said Lirael through gritted teeth. She had put Saraneth away and knelt back down into the icy water to lift a coil of the dark cable. But she still could not determine how the spell-rope had been made. Several bells had been used in its weaving, and she simply did not know how to unravel it. “Who comes with Chlorr? How many exactly?”
“Dozens,” said Clariel. “Shadow Hands. I am afraid of you, I mean she is, but not as much as if it were Sabriel.”
“How do you know about Sabriel—” Lirael started to say. Then a horrible thought crossed her mind. “You can see what Chlorr sees, you know her thoughts. Can she do the same with you?”
“Yes,” said Clariel. “Of course. We are one. Though I am slow, there is so much in my head, her head, so many things done. Terrible things . . . I am what she was, she is what I became. Hurry, there is little time. I do not know Death as she does. She comes swiftly and thinks she will soon slay you and take me back. Hurry!”