Clariel (Abhorsen 4)

Bel looked surprised. Before he could answer, Clariel waded ahead, catching up to the old woman, who had kept plodding on. She was so bent the water was almost up to her chest, but she paid it no attention, just cricking her head back whenever a wave threatened to reach her mouth.

Clariel glanced back to make sure Bel was following. Behind him, about a dozen paces further back, she saw three typical inhabitants of the Islet. But her eyes skittered away from them, and she felt dizzy again as her thinking mind knew they must be Kargrin and the two guardsmen, but some subconscious part insisted they were just beachcombers and not worth looking at.

Two-thirds of the way across, the causeway started to slope upwards, and soon the sea was merely knee-deep and then just a foamy wash around their ankles. The Islet seemed taller than it had from the beach. There were steps cut into the rock face immediately in front of them. The old woman began to climb these, pausing halfway up to beckon to Clariel and Bel.

‘This way, this way,’ she said. ‘Another squid when we get there, I think you said?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Clariel.

‘I might have forgotten which is Marral’s house,’ said the woman.

‘Then I’ll ask at every one,’ said Clariel. ‘Maybe I should do that anyway.’

‘Can’t blame a body for trying,’ grumbled their guide. ‘It’s easy enough to spot, anyway. Got a door made of shark teeth. Over there, take the second left.’

‘Second left what?’ asked Clariel, as she climbed to the top step, and then added, ‘Ah.’

The Islet had appeared to be one big rock from a distance, but now she saw that it was made up of about twenty stone hillocks thrusting up like pimples out of the huge plate of black stone below. There were channels between the hillocks, most of them high enough to be dry, but some cut deeper and so open to the sea. A broad channel lay straight ahead, almost cutting the island in two, with many lesser branches running off to either side.

All of the hovels and shelters were built upon the hillocks, some joined by bridges of driftwood across the channels. Others had steps cut into the stone to reach them, or ladders lashed together from whatever the sea had brought the builders.

‘Follow the second channel on the left, go as far as you can, there are steps up,’ said the woman. ‘I’m going back to the worms.’

Clariel nodded, and started down the steps on the other side, into the main channel. Bel followed her warily, looking around as he did so.

‘Easy place to be ambushed,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Clariel. She was also thinking that it would be a difficult place to leave quickly, if they had to get away.

There were no people moving around. A few of the huts had smoke coming out of them, usually through a hole in the roof rather than a proper chimney, but it was otherwise impossible to tell if they were inhabited. It was very quiet, save for the regular crash of the waves against the island, and the sound of their own footsteps on the rock.

The second left channel was narrow, not even wide enough to stretch out both arms, and the rock above rose higher, easily twice Clariel’s height. She kept glancing up as they moved cautiously along, thinking about some attack from above. But there was no sound of movement, and they passed two hillocks without event, before reaching the end of the channel and a series of steps cut into the mount ahead.

Clariel loosened the falchion at her side again. Bel did the same with his sword, and took out his pipes.

‘Do you feel anything?’ asked Clariel. ‘Smell anything?’

Bel shook his head. ‘I can smell only the salt from the sea, and the deaths are old and long-ago. Drowning, and murder from behind, but I can sense no Dead here. Too much swift water.’

Clariel started up the steps, comforted by the knowledge that Kargrin and the guards must be close behind. For the first time in any hunt, she felt less than confident. She didn’t like not knowing what to do, or what might happen.

On top of the rocky mount, there was a hut made of driftwood, canvas and odds and ends, a fish-drying rack with no fish hanging from it, and a firepit built into a natural depression that had been smoothed into a bowl shape. Wood was laid there, ready for a fire. The doorway of the hut was closed by a curtain made of hundreds and hundreds of shark teeth tied to a heavy, close-meshed fishing net, so it was impossible to see inside.

Out of the shadowed channel, the sun was now fully visible just above the horizon, and its warmth was welcome, particularly since they were both sodden from the waist down. Clariel thought of sitting down to empty her boots of seawater, but decided it would be too risky, and there was no point. They would be crossing back soon enough, or so she hoped.

‘I suppose we should call out to Marral,’ she whispered to Bel. But he was looking around them anxiously and didn’t immediately answer.

‘I can’t see the others,’ he whispered back after a long pause.

‘You’re not supposed to be able to see –’ Clariel started to say, then stopped. Of course, they should be able to see something, even if their minds wanted to accept it as part of the background. Kargrin and the others should look like beachcombers or fishermen or something …

‘Even if they are there, how can they surround the hut? There’s not enough space up here and there’s no point being down in the channels.’

Clariel drew her falchion. Bel drew his sword, and they instinctively stood back to back.

‘They were behind us on the causeway,’ said Bel.

‘Well, they’re not any more,’ answered Clariel.

chapter eleven

out of the bottle

‘Maybe we should shout out,’ said Bel nervously. ‘Call them.’

‘I can’t see anyone at all,’ said Clariel. She was slowly looking from left to right, watching for any movement outside the huts on their higher outcrops of stone, or perhaps the glimpse of a head in one of the channels. ‘Nothing, no … there!’

She pointed at a sudden movement as someone leaned around the corner of a hut some fifty paces away, there was a flash of sunlight on metal –

‘Down!’ shouted Clariel.

She grabbed Bel

as she threw herself into the firepit. But she was a moment too slow, and with a hideous thumping sound a quarrel suddenly flowered in Bel’s shoulder and he screamed in shock and surprise and then both of them were in the firepit, the prepared wood scattered everywhere.

‘Spelled quarrel,’ gasped Bel, as he rolled onto his back and gripped the shaft, which was wreathed in acrid white smoke. Aided by Free Magic, the quarrel had gone straight through his armoured coat, breaking the protective spells and boring a neat hole through one of the gethre plates. Clariel measured the distance from his shoulder with her fingers together.

‘Three fingers under your shoulder bone,’ she said. ‘Not fatal, unless the magic is … is like poison.’

‘N … no,’ said Bel, getting the word out through a grimace of pain. ‘I don’t think so, just some sort of power to cut through Charter-spelled armour … Can you break off the shaft, close as you can?’

‘Yes,’ said Clariel. She knew not to pull it out, because that would make the bleeding worse, but breaking off the shaft would make it easier for Bel to move around. If he could. Shock would be setting in soon. ‘I’ll do it in a minute.’

She said that, but broke it off immediately, holding it as tightly as she could against his chest so not to move the embedded point around. Bel screamed again, and fainted.

‘Roban! Kargrin!’ shouted Clariel. ‘Gullaine!’

She heard several shouts in reply, but couldn’t tell where they came from, or what they were saying. They sounded distant, as if the others were right over the far side of the Islet. Maybe down in one of the channels and not on a hillock. The sound was strangely faint, and difficult to locate.

Clariel risked propping up on her elbows to have a look, but there was still no sign of life around the other huts, and she couldn’t see anything where the sun had reflected off the quarrel before. It had been a murderer’s shot, a sudden attack from hiding. She’d been lucky to see the slight movement before the assassin fired.

‘See anything?’ croaked Bel muzzily. ‘Kargrin?’

‘No,’ said Clariel.