Abhorsen (Abhorsen 3)

“The bells!” she gasped. “They’re shaking. . . . I don’t know what . . .”

“The pipes!” cried Sam, and Lirael heard a brief cacophany as the panpipes sounded with the voices of all seven bells, before they were suddenly cut off.

“No!” shouted a voice that was not instantly recognizable as Mogget’s. “No!”

“Run!” roared the Dog.

Amidst the shouts and yells and roaring, the Charter light above Lirael’s head suddenly dimmed to little more than a faint glow.

Then it went out.

Lirael stopped. There was some light from the marks on Nehima’s blade, but these were fading too, and the sword was twisting strangely in her hand. Undulating in a way that no thing of steel could ever move, it had become alive, not so much a sword anymore as an eel-like creature, writhing and growing in her grasp. The green stone on the pommel had become a bright, lidless eye, and the silver wire on the hilt had become a row of shining teeth.

Lirael shut her eyes and sheathed the sword, ramming it hard into the scabbard before she let go with relief. Then she opened her eyes and looked around. Or tried to. All the golden Charter light was gone, and it was dark. The total darkness of the deep earth.

In the black void Lirael heard cloth tear and rip, and Sam cried out.

“Sam!” she cried. “Over here! Dog!”

There was no answer, but she heard the Dog growl, and then there was a soft, low laugh. A horrible, gloating chuckle that set the hair on the back of her neck on edge. It was made worse because there was something familiar in it. Mogget’s laugh, twisted and made more sinister.

Desperately Lirael tried to reach for the Charter, to summon a new light spell. But there was nothing there. Instead of the Charter she felt a terrible, cold presence that she knew at once. Death. That was all she could feel.

The Charter was gone, or she could not reach it.

Panic began to flower in her as the gloating chuckle deepened and the darkness pressed upon her. Then Lirael’s eyes registered a faint change. She became aware of subtle greys in the darkness, and she felt a momentary hope that there would be light. Then she saw the barest fingernail scraping of illumination spark and fizz and steadily grow till it became a pool of fierce, bright, white light. With the light came the hot metal stench of Free Magic, a smell that rolled across in waves, each one causing a reflex gag as the bile rose in Lirael’s throat.

Sam moved with the light, appearing at Lirael’s side as if he’d flown there. His backpack was open at the top, ragged edges showing where something had cut free. His sword was sheathed, and he was holding the panpipes with both hands, fingers jammed on the holes. The pipes were vibrating, sending out a low hum that Sam was desperately trying to stifle. Lirael had her own arm pressed along the bell-bandolier, to try to still the bells.

The Dog stood between the pool of white fire and Lirael, but it was not the Dog as Lirael knew her. She still had a dog shape, but the collar of Charter marks was gone, and she was once more a creature of intense darkness outlined with silver fire. The Dog looked back and opened her mouth.

“She is here!” boomed a voice that was the Dog’s and yet not the Dog’s, for it penetrated Lirael’s ears and sent sharp pains coursing through her jaw. “The Mogget is free! Run!”

Lirael and Sam stood frozen as the echoes of the Dog’s voice rolled past them. The pool of white fire was sparking and crackling, spinning counterclockwise as it rose up to form the shape of a spindly, too-thin humanoid.

But beyond the thing that was Mogget unbound, an even brighter light shone. Something so bright that Lirael realized she had shut her eyes and was seeing it through her eyelids, eyelids seared through with the image of a woman. An impossibly tall woman, her head bowed even in this high tunnel, reaching out her arms to sweep up the Mogget creature, the Dog, Lirael, and Sam.

A river flowed around and in front of the shining woman. A cold river that Lirael knew at once. This was the river of Death, and this creature was bringing it to them. They would not cross into it but be swamped and taken away. Thrown down and taken up, carried in a rush to the First Gate and beyond. They would never be able to make their way back.

Lirael had time to think only a few final, awful thoughts.

They had failed so soon.

So many depended on them.

All was lost.

Then the Disreputable Dog shouted, “Flee!” and barked.

The bark was infused with Free Magic. Without opening her eyes, without conscious thought, Lirael swung around and suddenly found herself running, running headlong, running as she had never run before. She ran without care, into the unknown, away from the well and the House, her feet finding the twists and turns of the tunnel even though they left the white light behind and in the darkness Lirael couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open or not.

Through caverns and chambers and narrow ways she ran, not knowing whether Sam ran with her or whether she was pursued. It was not fear that drove her, for she didn’t feel afraid. She was somewhere else, locked away inside her own body, a machine that drove on and on without feeling, acting on directions that had not come from her.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the compulsion to run stopped. Lirael fell to the floor, shuddering, trying to draw breath into her starved lungs. Pain shot through every muscle, and she curled into a ball of cramps, frantically massaging her calf muscles as she bit back cries of pain.

Someone was near her doing the same thing, and as reason returned, Lirael saw that it was Sam. There was a dim light falling from somewhere ahead, enough to make him out. A natural light, though much diffused.

Hesitantly Lirael touched the bell-bandolier. It was still, the bells quiescent. Her hand fell to Nehima’s hilt, and she was relieved to feel the solidity of the green stone in the pommel, and the silver wire no more than silver wire.

Sam groaned and stood up. He leaned against the wall with his left hand and stowed the panpipes away with his right. Lirael watched that hand flicker in a careful movement, and a Charter light blossomed in his palm.

“It was gone, you know,” he said, sliding back down the wall to sit facing Lirael. He seemed calm but was obviously in shock. Lirael realized she was, too, when she tried to stand up and simply couldn’t.

“Yes,” she replied. “The Charter.”

“Wherever that was,” continued Sam, “the Charter wasn’t. And who was she?”

Lirael shook her head, as much to clear it as to indicate her inability to answer. She shook it aga

in immediately, trying to force her thoughts back into action.

“We’d better . . . better go back,” she said, thinking of the Dog facing both Mogget and that shining woman alone in the darkness. “I can’t leave the Dog.”

“What about her?” asked Sam, and Lirael knew who he meant. “And Mogget?”

“You need not go back,” said a voice from the dark reaches of the passage. Lirael and Sam instantly leapt up, finding new strength and purpose. Their swords were out and Lirael found she had one hand on Saraneth, though she had no idea what she was going to do with the bell. No wisdom from The Book of the Dead or The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting came unbidden into her head.

“It’s me,” said the voice in an aggrieved tone, and the Disreputable Dog slowly walked into the light, her tail between her legs and her head bowed. Apart from this uncharacteristic pose, she seemed back to normal—or what was normal for her—with the deep, rich glow of many Charter Marks once more around her neck, and her short hair dusty and golden save for her back, where it was black.

Lirael didn’t hesitate. She put Nehima down and flung herself on the Dog, burying her face in her friend’s neck. The Dog licked Lirael’s ear without her usual enthusiasm, and she didn’t try even one affectionate nip.

Sam hung back, his sword still in his hand.

“Where is Mogget?” he asked.

“She wished to speak to him,” replied the Dog, throwing herself sorrowfully across Lirael’s feet. “I was wrong. I put you in terrible danger, Mistress.”

“I don’t understand,” Lirael replied. She felt incredibly tired all of a sudden. “What happened? The Charter . . . the Charter seemed to suddenly . . . not be.”

“It was her coming,” said the Dog. “It is her fate, that her knowing self will be forever outside what she chose to make, the Charter that her unknowing self is part of. Yet she stayed her hand when she could so easily have taken you to her embrace. I do not know why, or what it may mean. I believed her to be past any interest in the things of this world, and so I thought to pass here unscathed. Yet when ancient forces stir, many things are woken. I should have guessed it would be so. Forgive me.”