“So now you know about my latest idiocy. . . . Why are you taking me to the Clayr’s Glacier?”

“I’m taking you there because . . .” Lirael continued, then stopped. She cleared her throat, seemingly uncertain about what she wanted to say. “I’m taking you to the Clayr because, as you probably know, there is still a remnant of Free Magic power within you, left over from the shard of Orannis. Which would normally be incredibly dangerous. You would be a Free Magic sorcerer for sure, unable to resist using that power. But in your case, the . . . my friend the Disreputable Dog . . . she baptized you with the Charter mark, and somehow it took, so you are a part of the Charter and you have Free Magic within you. Which is . . . unusual . . . and the best place to have such things, I mean situations . . . or . . . circumstances . . . looked into is at the Glacier, where there are many very learned Charter Mages of all kinds, and also the Great Library, where there might be books or other . . . sources . . . of knowledge that can help you. I mean us. All of us, that is. Not just the two of us . . . so that’s why we’re going to the Glacier. We should be there before nightfall.”

Nick could only see the back of Lirael’s neck, but he noticed a blush spread across her pale skin, above the high collar of her armored coat. He grimaced, thinking it was even worse than he thought. Not only had he caused trouble, he was trouble, and Lirael was embarrassed to have to tell him so.

Change the subject, he thought. Change the subject!

“Um, this kind of flying is much better than back home,” he said, grimacing again at how vacuous this sounded. But he pressed on. “I mean, in our airplanes, it’s very noisy. Last time I went up I was covered in oil from the engine, sprayed all over me. And it was freezing, even with a fur coat. This . . . ah . . . paperwing is a far superior way to fly.”

Lirael didn’t answer, but the paperwing responded to the compliment by suddenly dropping forty or fifty feet and wiggling its wings, both of which scared Nick quite a lot but did not upset Lirael in the least.

“I do like flying in paperwings,” she said affectionately, reaching out to pat the side of the fuselage. “It’s much more comfortable and far easier than flying in owl shape.”

“Owl shape?” repeated Nick quietly to himself, with an intense feeling of déjà vu. Lirael’s voice and the memory of an owl, the two together, resonated in his mind, though he couldn’t quite place the connection. An owl with golden eyes. And a dog with wings . . . was that something that had actually happened?

He was thinking about the owl and the dog with wings when he finally noticed Lirael’s golden hand again, still resting on the lip of the cockpit. It looked almost like normal flesh and blood, save for the faint golden tinge, until he stared at it, mesmerized by how it did look almost normal, and not quite, all at the same time. This was because every few seconds there would be a faint shimmer and Charter marks would move, revealing a glimpse of the metal structure underneath the illusion of flesh.

“Your new hand,” said Nick. “It’s . . . quite incredible. And to think Sam made it. He wasn’t that great at woodwork classes in school.”

“Yes,” replied Lirael, quickly drawing her hand into her lap so he couldn’t see it anymore. “Yes. It’s a marvel, really. I often forget it isn’t my . . . isn’t really part of me.”

Nick resisted a strong impulse to slap himself in the head. Sam had told him all about the events at Forwin Mill, and how Lirael had lost her hand in the final binding of Orannis. Of course the loss of her hand, and in fact all the events of that time, were incredibly traumatic, and no matter how good the replacement hand was, she wouldn’t want to be reminded of it.

It would be better to just keep his mouth shut before he stuck his foot in it yet again, Nick thought. Particularly since Lirael had lost her friend the Disreputable Dog at the same time as her hand. The Dog he had seen himself; she had brought him back from Death. Nick thought about that, his forehead crinkling with the effort. The dog with wings. He’d seen her with the owl who had Lirael’s voice. It was the same dog . . . maybe it was a memory, not some fragment of delusion . . .

They flew in silence for some time, until Nick became aware of the alarming reality that he had to go to the toilet. The sun was high above them, so it must be well after noon. They had flown closer to the river too, Lirael obviously following it north. Nick looked down at it, but was not helped by the view of all that water, rushing along . . .

Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. It would be extraordinarily embarrassing if he wet himself, rather than just mildly embarrassing to ask for a toilet stop.

“Excuse me,” he said, blushing himself now. He felt like he was six years old again, back at prep school, and almost raised his hand. “I’m afraid I need to . . . um . . . stop somewhere. Nature calls, don’t you know.”

“Nature calls?” replied Lirael, looking over her shoulder with a very puzzled expression on her face. Nick looked away, not wanting to meet her eyes. She evidently had never heard that particular turn of phrase.

“Uh, I mean I need to . . . ah . . . pass water.”

“Oh!” replied Lirael. She quickly peered over the side, and a moment later, Nick heard her whistle and once again saw Charter marks in the air around her head, forming and moving and spinning around to enter the paperwing. The craft immediately began to descend in a long, shallow dive toward one of the many sandy islands that dotted the river.

The paperwing landing was almost as much a surprise to Nick as its flight, for as they drew close, it simply turned into the wind and touched the ground as gently as a petal falling from a flower, quietly and easily sliding to a stop across the sand in less than ten yards. It was very different to the bucking, bouncing, and generally alarming landings Nick was used to in an Ancelstierran flying machine.

Lirael got out first, stretching before she turned to take out a sword from within the cockpit to buckle on her belt. Nick tried to look at her without being too obvious he was looking, which just made him appear very shifty. But in those few moments he saw both the Lirael who stood in front of him, but also, superimposed on the present, he saw her up to her waist in marsh water, wreathed by reeds. Both Liraels wore the same strange armored coat of small overlapping plates; the same surcoat of silver keys on blue quartered with golden stars on green; the leather bandolier holding the seven bells of different sizes, their mahogany handles hanging down.

But the swords were different. The Lirael in the reedy swamp bore a different, somehow more impressive blade, though it was no longer or heavier, and in fact it had only one small green stone in its pommel and quite a dull silver-wired hilt, compared with the newer sword Lirael now carried, which had a gold-chased hilt and a pommel cast in bronze to resemble a snarling lion.

Nick blinked, and the two Liraels became one. She bent behind him, and undid the buckle of the strap that kept him secured to the hammock-like seat.

“We had to strap you in,” she said. “I wasn’t sure when yo

u would wake, and I didn’t want you falling out, of course.”

“Thank you,” said Nick gravely. He rested his hands on either side of the cockpit and slowly stood up, fighting off the dizziness that came over him. Lirael was quick to hold his elbow. He didn’t really need it, but he didn’t shrug her off. Instead he turned to look at her, really look at her, his eyes meeting hers.

“Did you . . . when I first met you, were you an owl?” asked Nick slowly. “I know it sounds as if I might be insane, but perhaps here—”

“Yes,” said Lirael. “I was wearing the Charter skin of an owl. A barking owl, to be exact.”

Nick nodded. He could almost grasp the memory. It was like a shimmering oasis close by, where all else around was a bleak, featureless desert. Nearly all his time with Hedge, once he’d crossed the Wall to go to the great pit near Edge, was like that. A desolate emptiness in his mind.

“And the dog, the dog with wings,” Nick continued. “That was the same dog who . . . who brought me back from Death?”

Lirael’s eyes brimmed with quick tears. She blinked them away and said, “Yes. The Disreputable Dog. My greatest friend.”

“Thank you,” said Nick. “I thank you both.”

He looked down, gently moved his arm away from Lirael’s grasp, and stepped out of the paperwing. The island was mostly sand, but there was a higher part to the north, where low bushes grew. Nick mumbled something and began to walk over to it.

He hadn’t gotten very far when he realized his trousers were coming apart along the seams, and his shirt and the khaki officer’s coat he’d “borrowed” were tearing with every swing of his arms. He stopped and looked down. His shoes were fine, but every other part of his clothing was in danger of falling off, leaving him standing naked on the pebble-dotted sand.

“My clothes!” he exclaimed, turning back to Lirael. “They’re falling apart!”

Chapter Thirteen

CHARTER STONES AND FREE MAGIC TALISMANS

Tags: Garth Nix Abhorsen Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net