‘Under this ledge. There is a tunnel below.’
It walked along the ledge towards a large outcrop of granite and down a narrow gully between the two. Clariel followed, with Aziminil behind and Mogget bringing up the rear with an air of someone who wishes they had something better to do.
The gully led down to another ledge of folded stone below the one they’d landed on. Baazalanan walked to the interior edge of it, where it ran into the hillside. It looked no different than the stone anywhere else, but the creature reached out with one of its stick-thin fingers and traced a doorway in the stone, sharp nail screeching on the rock.
‘You must make the door,’ said Baazalanan. It gestured at the outline it had made. ‘Here.’
‘How?’ asked Clariel, even though she already knew. She touched the mask on her face as she spoke.
‘Free Magic,’ said Mogget. ‘Draw on your minion’s powers, cut through the stone. It will only take a moment and use only a fraction of the power you now have.’
‘But I … I don’t want to use any more … I don’t want to make it more difficult to regain the Charter,’ said Clariel.
Baazalanan and Aziminil squirmed as she mentioned the Charter, and she felt their unease, their mental shying away from the very notion.
‘It won’t make it –’ Mogget started to say, before the marks on his collar started to glow. ‘That is, it will make it only slightly worse, I’m sure. You will need all the help you can get if you still plan to go to Belisaere. It won’t be easy.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Clariel slowly. ‘I guess I’ve chosen my path, haven’t I? Now I need to speed along it.’
She looked at her two Free Magic creatures, and then at Mogget and his collar. The marks were fading again, but she felt a longing to touch them, to regain some connection to the Charter.
‘What if I touch your collar, Mogget?’ asked Clariel. She took off her right gauntlet and bent down towards the cat, slim fingers reaching for the cat’s collar. ‘Will that help me?’
As she spoke, Baazalanan hissed and stood up to its full height as if ready to attack or run, and Aziminil skittered backwards on her bladed feet. Mogget didn’t move, but Clariel stopped just short of touching his collar, her hand frozen in the air.
‘It would help you regain something of your connection to the Charter,’ said Mogget. ‘But it would … damage your servants, perhaps severely.’
‘And you?’
‘No,’ said Mogget. ‘I have worn this collar a very long time. But its purpose is to restrain a Free Magic creature much greater than the two specimens you have bound, and you are connected to them.’
Clariel withdrew her hand, replaced her gauntlet, and looked at the cat with new respect and caution.
‘And you desire me to help free you?’
‘When I am able to think for myself I do,’ said Mogget. ‘Anyone would. But as you know, that does not always apply.’
‘I won’t, you know,’ said Clariel. ‘You’re wasting your time. I’m going to use Baazalanan and Aziminil to help me rescue my aunt and kill Kilp and Aronzo, but that’s it. Tools for one particular job, that’s all.’
‘I believe you,’ said Mogget, with a yawn. ‘In any case, I find your company more interesting than the sendings back at the house, whatever may happen. Now, are you going to open a way through this rock?’
‘I just want you to be clear on what I will or won’t do. I’m not releasing you and neither is anyone else,’ said Clariel. She stood up straight and looked firmly at the two Free Magic creatures. ‘You have sworn to serve me, and so you will. Acknowledge that.’
‘Yes, Mistress,’ chorused the pair. She felt their acquiescence, but kept looking at them, willing them to show further obeisance, until they bowed low. Even then, she kept the mental pressure there until she was satisfied they were totally compliant.
‘You may rise,’ she said. ‘Aziminil, I will take some of your power, but again, do not touch me.’
Clariel stood before the outlined door in the rock face and stretched out one hand towards the stone and the other towards Aziminil. The Free Magic creature crept closer, her head still bowed. Clariel could feel the power within her servant, raw sorcery just waiting to be tapped, wanting to be used. She summoned it into herself, trying to hold back, to draw only just enough, but the thrill of it was so intense she found it hard to resist. With this power she could do anything, anything she could think of, and it was enormously difficult to bring her focus back, to refuse more power and direct what she had against the stone.
Intense white light burst from her outstretched hand, a spear of superheated air that she used to follow Baazalanan’s tracery, cutting through stone as easily as a hot wire through gold. Molten stone ran across the floor towards her, but Clariel made a brushing motion with her hand and the spear of white became a broom that swept the creeping lava aside. White smoke billowed out across the ledge, enough to choke any mortal, but again Clariel used the raw sorcery she held to wrap herself in a breeze that took the smoke away.
The stone door fell in with a crash, revealing a tunnel beyond. Clariel reluctantly lowered her hand, and let the power flow back into Aziminil. It ebbed slowly, not least because she had to make a determined effort to let it go. So much of her was screaming to take it all in, to make Aziminil a true servant, to subsume her into Clariel’s flesh.
The tunnel did not go far into the hillside. Clariel had to wait until the stone around the melted doorway cooled, but that did not take long. As she went into the darkness, Aziminil followed, her blood-red skin beginning to shine, till it grew bright and lit their way with a red light akin to a storm lantern or a pitch-soaked torch, shadows flickering across the wall.
There was a chamber at the end of the tunnel, a circular cave cut in the granite by sorcery. In the middle of this chamber there was a sarcophagus of bronze carved with symbols that twisted and squirmed, Free Magic parodies of Charter marks. Clariel stopped with a start as she felt the nature of these symbols, for they were the visible remnants of a Free Magic entity that had been stripped and broken apart, its power taken and infused into the metal. Yet something of its identity still lingered, a faint sense of something shadowed and brooding that liked the dark places of the earth … an ambusher and lurker. Even its name felt close, as if it were whispered in the bronze and could be heard if she pressed her ear up close.
But it was what lay on top of the sarcophagus that most attracted Clariel’s attention. There was a sword, ostensibly a plain weapon with a blackened steel hilt, the grip wrapped in wire, and an ugly roundel of bronze for a pommel. But it too had the shifting, ugly symbols in its metal, again the legacy of some entity that had been deconstructed and forced into the blade.
Next to the sword there was a bandolier, a broad strap of leather to wear across the chest, with seven leather pouches holding seven bells, their ebony handles projecting out.
Seven bells of increasing size, the smallest able to be cupped in Clariel’s hand, the largest bigger than two hands clasped.
‘A necromancer’s bells,’ said Mogget.
‘Like the Abhorsens use?’ asked Clariel. As with The Book of the Dead, she felt attracted to the bells, felt her fingers yearn to touch the ebony handles, unclasp their cases, hear their voices …
‘Like and unlike,’ said Mogget.
‘You may need more servants, Mistress,’ said Baazalanan. ‘And the Dead are many.’
‘I don’t know how to use the bells,’ said Clariel. She kept staring at them. Was it her imagination, or could she hear the instruments faintly humming in their leather shrouds? Calling to her? ‘I know no necromancy. I haven’t read The Book of the Dead.’
‘You need nothing but your will and the instinct in your blood,’ said Mogget. ‘These bells are Free Magic things, not wound about with Charter Magic. Take them up, speak to them. They will answer to you, teach you their use, their strengths and foibles.’
‘I could go into Death?’ asked Clariel.
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‘Anyone can go into Death,’ said Mogget, with a smirk. ‘Coming back again is the difficult part.’
‘There are always many Dead who wish to return to Life,’ whispered Baazalanan. ‘An army of the Dead awaits you, Mistress. Take up the bells.’
‘Take up the sword,’ echoed Aziminil, her voice sweet and cajoling. ‘Take up the bells.’
Clariel took a step forward, and then another. She almost felt like she was out of her body, watching herself walk forward. The sword and the bells called out to her. It was inevitable that she should pick them up, and wield them. She should raise an army of the Dead and lead it against Kilp and Aronzo. She would take Belisaere by storm and put everyone there to the sword, to make more deaths, to raise more Dead, to build an army such as the world had never seen, an army to go forth and conquer till there were none who could gainsay her.
Clariel the Great, deathless and all-powerful, free to make her own path –
‘No!’ screamed Clariel. She snatched her hand away, inches from the bells, shocked to find that she had already taken the gauntlet off, that she would have touched these Free Magic things with her bare fingers. ‘No!’
Turning, she ran from the room, out through the tunnel, out into the sunshine. But it was stark and hot and hurt her eyes. Stumbling, she went to the gully and found a path down, down into the pine forest, down into the calm, cool world she loved.
Mogget found her there a few minutes later. Clariel was collapsed against the trunk of a great pine, one with a prickly skin. But she had her arms around it, nevertheless, and her head against it, and her legs were buried in the fallen needles as if they could provide a blanket to comfort her.
‘If you show weakness, Aziminil and Baazalanan will turn against you,’ said Mogget conversationally.