Garth Nix - Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (Old Kingdom, #2)

Ginee Seo, my editor at HarperCollins, is owed many thanks for her editorial advice, particularly for encouraging me to go back and tell more of Liraels story.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

LIRAEL: DAUGHTER OF THE CLAYR. Copyright 2001 by Garth Nix. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ABHORSEN PREVIEW 2001 by Garth Nix

MS Reader edition v 1. May 2001 ISBN 0-06-000545-9

Print edition first published in 2001 HarperCollins Publishers

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Anna, my family and friends,
and to the memory of Bytenix (19861999),
the original Disreputable Dog

Contents

Prologue

It was a hot, steamy summer, and the mosquitoes swarmed everywhere, from their breeding grounds in the rotten, reedy shores of the Red Lake up to the foothills of Mount Abed. Small, bright-eyed birds swooped among the clouds of insects, eating their fill. Above them, birds of prey circled, to devour the smaller birds in turn.

But there was one place near the Red Lake where no mosquito or bird flew, and no grass or living thing would grow. A low hill, little more than two miles from the eastern shore. A mound of close-packed dirt and stones, stark and strange amidst the wild grassland that surrounded it, and the green forest that climbed the nearby hills.

The mound had no name. If one had ever appeared on a map of the Old Kingdom, the map was long lost. There had once been farms nearby, but never closer than a league. Even when people had lived there, they would neither look at the strange hill nor speak of it. The nearest town now was Edge, a precarious settlement that had never seen better days but had not yet given up hope of them. The townsfolk of Edge knew it was wise to avoid the eastern shore of the Red Lake. Even the animals of the forest and the meadow shunned the area around the mound, as they instinctively stayed away from anyone who seemed to be going there.

Such as the man who stood on the fringe of the forest, where the hills melted into the lakeshore plain. A thin, balding man who wore a suit of leather armor that covered him from ankle to wrist, reinforced with plates of red-enameled metal at his neck and every joint. He carried a naked sword in his left hand, the blade balanced across his shoulder. His right hand rested against a leather bandolier worn diagonally across his chest. Seven pouches hung from the bandolier, the smallest no larger than a pillbox, the largest as big as his clenched fist. Wooden handles hung downwards out of the pouches. Black ebony handles, which his fingers crawled across like a spider along a wall.

Anyone who had been there to see would have known that the ebony handles belonged to bells, and that in turn would identify the man by kind, if not by name. A necromancer, he carried the seven bells of his dark art.

The man looked down at the mound for some time, noting that he was not the first to come there that day. At least two people stood on the bare hill, and there was a shimmer of heat in the air that suggested that other, less visible beings stood there, too.

The man considered waiting till dusk, but he knew he didnt have that choice. This was not his first visit to the mound. Power lay far beneath it, imprisoned deep within the earth. It had called him across the Kingdom, summoning him to its presence on this Midsummers Day. It called him now, and he could not deny it.

Still, he retained enough pride and will to resist running the last half mile to the mound. It took all his strength, but when his boots touched the bare earth at the lip of the hill, it was with deliberation and no sign of haste.

One of the people there he knew, and expected. The old man, the last of the line that had served the thing that lay under the mound, acting as a channel for the power that kept it hidden from the gaze of the witches who saw everything in their cave of ice. The fact that the old man was the last, without some sniveling apprentice at his side, was reassuring. The time was coming when it need no longer hide beneath the earth.

The other person was unknown. A woman, or something that had once been a woman. She wore a mask of dull bronze, and the heavy furs of the Northern barbarians. Unnecessary, and uncomfortable, in this weather... unless her skin felt something other than the sun. She wore several rings of bone upon her silk-gloved fingers.

You are Hedge, the stranger declared.

The man was surprised by the crackle of power in her speech. She was a Free Magic sorcerer, as hed suspected, but a more powerful one than he could have guessed. She knew his name, or one of them--the least of his names, the one he had used most often in recent times. He, too, was a Free Magic sorcerer, as all necromancers had to be.

A Servant of Kerrigor, continued the woman. I see his brand upon your forehead, though your disguise is not without some skill.

Hedge shrugged, and touched what appeared to be a Charter mark on his forehead. It cracked in two and fell off like a broken scab, revealing an ugly scar that crawled and wriggled on his skin. I carry the brand of Kerrigor, he replied evenly. But Kerrigor is gone, bound by the Abhorsen and imprisoned these last fourteen years.

You will serve me now, said the woman, in tones that brooked no argument. Tell me how I may commune with the power that lies under this mound. It, too, will bend itself to my will.

Hedge bowed, hiding his grin. Was this not reminiscent of how he had come to the mound himself, in the days after Kerrigors fall?

There is a stone on the western side, he said, pointing with his sword. Swing it aside, and you will see a narrow tunnel, striking sharply down. Follow the tunnel till the way is blocked by a slab of stone. At the foot of the stone, you will see water seeping through. Taste of the water, and you will perceive the power of which you speak.

He did not mention that the tunnel was his, the product of five years toil, nor that the seeping water was the first visible sign of a struggle for freedom that had gone on for more than two thousand years.

The woman nodded, the thin line of pallid skin around the mask giving no hint of expression, as if the face behind it were as frozen as the metal. Then she turned aside and spoke a spell, white smoke gushing from the mouthpiece of the mask with every word. When she finished, two creatures rose up from where theyd lain at her feet, nearly invisible against the earth. Two impossibly thin, vaguely human things, with flesh of swiftly moving mist and bones of blue-white fire. Free Magic elementals, of the kind that humans called Hish.

Hedge watched them carefully and licked his lips. He could deal with one, but two might force him to reveal strengths best left veiled for the moment. The old man would be no help. Even now he just sat there, mumbling, a living conduit for some part of the power under the hill.

If I do not return by nightfall, the woman said, my servants will rend you asunder, flesh and spirit too, should you seek refuge in Death.