‘I can’t … concentrate,’ whispered Bel. ‘Can you cast … healing marks … on my wound?’
‘I can’t remember the spell,’ said Clariel. She was desperately trying to work out what they should do. Where could Kargrin and the others have gone? What could have happened to them? She didn’t have time to try to cast a Charter spell that she only dimly remembered learning. ‘I’ve forgotten the marks. I’m sorry, I was taught them a long time ago.’
‘I’ll try in a minute,’ said Bel. He was even paler than he normally was, even a little blue around the lips, Clariel thought. He needed help quickly.
‘Kargrin! Roban! Captain Gullaine!’
She heard no shouts in answer, but a moment later a great column of fire erupted on the far side of the Islet, appearing so suddenly that Clariel didn’t know whether it had come down like lightning or had erupted upwards, exploding one of the huts into thousands of burning pieces, some of which started falling around them, though none were big enough to be dangerous.
There was no sound from the fire, though from her experience of forest fires Clariel knew something burning like that would be roaring, popping and crackling loud enough to be heard from a half a league away.
‘Kargrin,’ whispered Bel. ‘Casting a fire spell. Why can’t we hear them?’
‘Because I don’t choose to let you,’ said a soft voice behind them. A woman’s voice, but something about it did not sound entirely human. With the sound, so sudden, came a choking stench of hot metal that was both like and unlike the smell of Jaciel’s forges.
Clariel moved even as she heard the voice, springing up regardless of any chance of being shot by a crossbow, the falchion in her hand. But there was still no one visible. The shark-tooth curtain had not moved. As far as she could tell, there was just her and Bel on that particular hillock of stone.
‘Where are you?’ she said. ‘Face us!’
Bel tried to get up too, but he only managed to raise his head slightly before his eyes rolled back and he slid down. He was either unconscious again or close to it, and the dark, black stain of blood around his shoulder was spreading.
‘I am here,’ said the voice again, seemingly behind Clariel. She spun around, swinging her falchion, but it cleaved empty air. The smell grew stronger, more acrid, biting into Clariel’s mouth. She coughed and spat as if she could somehow rid herself of a taint that was slowly rolling down her throat.
‘Interesting,’ said the voice. ‘So you are … Clariel.’
Clariel spun around again, so fast she was dizzy. The voice was nowhere, everywhere … it was inside her head …
The Charter. Kargrin had told her to reach for the Charter, that simply by joining with it she would gain some protection, even if she couldn’t remember the marks for a particular spell. Just reach for it, fall into it, let it wash over you, Kargrin had said.
With her free hand, Clariel traced a Charter mark in the air. One of the first marks she’d learned, nothing by itself, but a mark that could be used to find a way into the flow. She tried to visualise it deep inside her mind as she drew it, thought of where it could go, the marks that it travelled with, and there they were, glowing inside her mind. She called them to her, and more, and found herself drawing them in the air with her left hand, and the point of her falchion. They weren’t marks that she knew how to join up to make a spell, but they surrounded her and caught her up in the eternal current of the Charter, blocking out that insidious voice, the woman she instinctively did not want to hear –
‘The Charter is a prison,’ said the voice, suddenly breaking through the golden glow and single-mindedness of the marks. ‘A maze to pen you in, to make you go certain ways. You do not need marks and spells, Clariel. There is a power within you. Direct it, by your will alone. I will show you, guide you, be your friend –’
‘No!’ screamed Clariel. ‘Kargrin! Roban!’
She staggered to the edge of the rock, swinging wildly with her falchion, but cut only air. Charter marks hovered around her like bees bewildered by smoke, without direction, and she did not have the skill or knowledge to make the marks into anything, to cast a spell that might reveal her enemy.
‘Lady Clariel!’
A human shout, followed by the rush of footsteps on stone. Roban came charging up the steps, sword in hand, silver fire leaping along the blade. At the same time something else rose up out of the very rock, almost under Clariel’s feet. At night, from a distance, it might be confused for a woman, for it was vaguely feminine in shape. But this close, it could be seen that the slender legs ended not in feet, but narrowed to become sharp, bony blades the colour of yellowed teeth; its arms had two elbows a handsbreadth apart; and its spadelike hands three fingers each ending in a curved-back claw. Its hair was not hair, but a mass of brilliant tendrils of white light that flowed around its head and cascaded down its shoulders and back, and its face, if it had one, was an absence of light in the middle, a dark, oval void without features of any kind.
Below its shining head, its skin was entirely the colour of old, dried blood.
Claws raked at Roban. He parried, Charter marks blazing on his sword, sparks flying. But the creature was far stronger. Roban was forced back and then flung down the steps. Swatted like a fly, he disappeared into the shadow as if he had never been.
As Roban fell, Clariel swung her falchion two-handed at the creature’s back. But the steel did not even break that strange, blood-red skin. It melted as it hit, the metal roiling away in molten drops, as if Clariel had cast a cup of quicksilver against the creature rather than struck it with a finely tempered blade.
The creature turned, and tilted its head quizzically.
‘Not even an ensorcelled sword? But true, you do not need such things. Let me show you how to find the power within yourself. I will guide you, but first let me dispose of this small Abhorsen …’
It strode over to where Bel lay half in the firepit, its blade-feet striking sparks from the stone as it trod. It raised one of those feet above Bel’s head, and was about to bring it down when Clariel screamed and dived forward, grabbing that unearthly, spiked foot with both hands to hold back the killing blow.
The moment she touched it, she felt a shock through her whole body. Her heart raced in panic as some unseen force flowed from the creature into her. It entered her mind, exerting a sudden mental pressure that made her want to let go, to open her hands and let the spike drive down, to help it strike –
‘No!’ shrieked Clariel. ‘No! I won’t let you!’
It took all her willpower to keep her hands closed, and all her strength to stop the spiked foot. Yet despite everything she could do, it kept pressing down, coming closer and closer to Bel’s forehead and the Charter mark there, as if that was the spot where the young man’s skull was thinnest.
‘You are strong,’ said the voice inside Clariel’s head. ‘But not strong enough.’
The thing leaned into its stomp, yet still Clariel managed to keep the spike a bare fingerbreadth above Bel’s forehead. Every muscle in her body was quivering, her head was burning with the effort of resisting the creature’s will. Blood began to trickle from her nose, and she knew the creature was too strong, the spike would smash into Bel’s head and kill him and then it would kill her. She just wasn’t strong enough …
Not by herself.
She needed the fury. Yet all her life Clariel had kept the anger in check, rather than trying to call it up. Now she was far more full of fear than anger and the berserk rage felt impossibly far away.
‘Not strong enough,’ mocked the voice in her head. ‘But good enough to keep as a slave.’
Clariel gripped even tighter, working her hands against the sharp edges of unnatural bone. The spike slipped down, so close that its very tip broke the skin on Bel’s forehead and brought a bead of blood to the surface. Just one drop, like some hideous sweat. But Clariel stopped the spike from spearing through more skin and the bone beneath, even though her palms were sliced open and pain
was shooting through her, and a terrible pressure in her head plucked at nerves, muscles all over her body twitching and rippling as the creature slowly gained control over Clariel’s arms and hands.
The pain helped combat that invader in her mind. Clariel welcomed the hurt, and bit her lip as well, hard as she could, so that the blood filled her mouth. With the salt tang of blood fresh on her tongue, she finally felt the fury. She could sense its source deep inside her, a banked fire that just needed fuel and air to rise up. Clariel welcomed it, summoned it, fed it with pain and fear and the necessity of action. It rose like a tide on the flood in answer.
She screamed again, but this time the scream was not one of fear, but of incandescent rage.