Abhorsen

Ignoring sun and light breezes, the fog spread from the hill and rolled south and east, thin tendrils creeping out in advance of the main body. Half a league on from the hill, one of these tendrils separated into a cloud that rose high in the air and crossed the mighty river Ratterlin. Once across, it sank to sit like a toad on the eastern bank, and new fog begun to puff out of it.

Soon the two arms of fog shrouded both western and eastern shores of the Ratterlin, though the sun still shone on the river in between.

Both river and fog sped at their very different paces towards the Long Cliffs. The river dashed along, getting faster and faster as it headed to the great waterfall, where it would plunge down more than a thousand feet. The fog was slow and threatening. It thickened and rose higher as it rolled on.

A few yards before it reached the Long Cliffs, the fog stopped, though it still grew thicker and rose higher, threatening the island that sat in the middle of the river and on the edge of the waterfall. An island with high white walls that enclosed a house and gardens.

The fog did not spread across the river, nor lean in too far as it rose. There were unseen defenses that held it back, that kept the sun shining on the white walls, the gardens, and the red-tiled house. The fog was a weapon, but it was only the first move in a battle, only the beginning of a siege. The battle lines were drawn and the House invested.

For the whole river-circled isle was Abhorsen’s House. Home to the Abhorsen, whose birthright and charge was to maintain the borders of Life and Death. The Abhorsen, who used necromantic bells and Free Magic, but who was neither necromancer nor Free Magic sorcerer. The Abhorsen, who sent any Dead who trespassed in Life back to whence they came.

The creator of the fog knew that the Abhorsen was not actually in the House. The Abhorsen and her husband, the King, had been lured across the Wall and would presumably be dealt with there. That was part of her Master’s plan, long since laid but only recently begun in earnest.

The plan had many parts, in many countries, though the very heart and reason for it lay in the Old Kingdom. War, assassination, and refugees were elements of the plan, all manipulated by a scheming, subtle mind that had waited generations for everything to come to fruition.

But as with any plan, there had already been complications and problems. Two of them were in the House. One was a young woman, who had been sent south by the witches who lived in the glacier-clad mountain at the Ratterlin’s source. The Clayr, who Saw many futures in the ice, and who would certainly try to twist the present to their own ends. The woman was one of their elite mages, easily identified by the colored waistcoat she wore. A red waistcoat, marking her as a Second Assistant Librarian.

The maker of the fog had seen her, black haired and pale skinned, surely no older than twenty, a mere fingernail sliver of an age. She had heard the young woman’s name, called out in desperate battle.

Lirael.

The other complication was better known, and possibly more trouble, though the evidence was conflicting. A young man, hardly more than a boy, curly haired from his father, black eyebrowed from his mother, and tall from both. His name was Sameth, the royal son of King Touchstone and the Abhorsen Sabriel.

Prince Sameth was meant to be the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, heir to the powers of The Book of the Dead and the seven bells. But the maker of the fog doubted that now. She was very old, and once she had known a great deal about the strange family and their House in the river. She had fought Sameth barely a night past, and he had not fought like an Abhorsen; even the way he cast his Charter Magic was strange, reminiscent of neither the royal line nor the Abhorsens.

Sameth and Lirael were not alone. They were supported by two creatures who appeared to be no more than a small bad-tempered white cat and a large black and tan dog of friendly disposition. Yet both were much more than they seemed, though exactly what they were was another slippery piece of information. Most likely they were Free Magic spirits of some kind, bound in service to the Abhorsen and the Clayr. The cat was known to some degree. His name was Mogget, and there was speculation about him in certain books of lore. The Dog was a different matter. She was new, or so old that any book that told of her was long since dust. The creature in the fog thought the latter. Both the young woman and her hound had come from the Great Library of the Clayr. It was likely both of them, like the Library, had hidden depths and contained unknown powers.

Together, these four could be formidable opponents, and they represented a serious threat. But the maker of the fog did not have to fight them directly, nor could she, for the House was too well guarded by both spell and swift water. Her orders were to make sure that they were trapped in the House. The House was to be besieged while matters progressed elsewhere—until it was too late for Lirael, Sam, and their companions to do anything at all.

Chlorr of the Mask hissed as she thought of those orders, and fog billowed around what passed for her head. She had once been a living necromancer, and she took orders from no one. She had made a mistake, a mistake that had led to her servitude and death. But her Master had not let her go to the Ninth Gate and beyond. She had been returned to Life, though not in any living form. She was a Dead creature now, caught by the power of bells, bound by her secret name. She did not like her orders yet had no choice but to obey.

Chlorr lowered her arms. A few feathery tendrils of fog issued from her fingers. There were Dead Hands all around her, hundreds and hundreds of swaying, suppurating corpses. Chlorr had not brought the spirits that inhabited these rotten, half-skeletal bodies out of Death, but she had been given command of them by the one who had. She raised one thin, long arm of shadow and pointed. With sighs and groans and gurgles and the clicking of frozen joints and broken bones, the Dead Hands marched forward, sending the fog swirling all around them.

“There are at least two hundred Dead Hands on the western bank, and fourscore or more to the east,” reported Sameth. He straightened up from behind the bronze telescope and swung it down out of the way. “I couldn’t see Chlorr, but she must be there somewhere, I guess.”

He shivered as he thought of the last time he’d seen Chlorr, a thing of malignant darkness looming above him, her flaming sword about to fall. That had been only the night before, though it already felt much longer ago.

“It’s possible some other Free Magic sorcerer could have raised this mist,” said Lirael. But she didn’t believe it. She could sense the same brooding power out there that she’d felt last night.

“Fog,” said the Disreputable Dog, who was delicately balanced on the observer’s stool. Apart from the fact that she could talk, and the bright collar made of Charter marks around her neck, she looked just like any other large black and tan mongrel dog. The kind that smiled and wagged their tails more than they barked and growled. “I think it has thickened sufficiently to be called fog.”

The Dog; her mistress, Lirael; Prince Sameth; and the Abhorsen’s cat-shaped servant, Mogget, were all in the observatory that occupied the topmost floor of the tower on the northern side of Abhorsen’s House.

The observatory’s walls were entirely transparent, and Lirael found herself taking nervous glances at the ceiling, because it was hard to see if anything was holding it up. The walls were not glass either, or any material she knew, which somehow made it even worse.

But she didn’t want her nervousness to show, so Lirael turned her most recent twitch into a nod of agreement as the Dog spoke. Only her hand betrayed her feelings, as she kept it resting on the Dog’s neck, for the comfort of warm dog skin and the Charter Magic in the Dog’s collar.

Though it was only early afternoon, and the sun still shone directly down on the House, the island, and the river, there was a solid mass of fog on either bank, billowing up in sheer walls that kept on climbing and climbing, though they were already several hundred feet high.

The fog was clearly sorcerous in origin. It had not risen from the river as a normal fog would, or come with lowering cloud. This fog had flowed in from the east and west at the same time, moving swiftly regardless of the wind. Thin at first, it had grown thicker with every passing minute.

A further indication of the fog’s strangeness lay directly to the south, where it stopped sharply just before it might mix with the natural mist thrown up by the great waterfall where the river flung itself over the Long Cliffs.

The Dead had come soon after the fog. Lumbering corpses who climbed clumsily along the riverbanks, though they feared the swift-flowing water. Something was driving them on, something hidden farther back in the fog. Almost certainly that something was Chlorr of the Mask, once a necromancer, now herself one of the Greater Dead. A very dangerous combination, Lirael knew, for Chlorr had probably retained much of her old sorcerous knowledge of Free Magic, combined with whatever powers she had gained in Death. Powers that were likely to be dark and strange. Lirael and the Dog had briefly driven Chlorr away in the last night’s battle on the riverbank, but it had not been a victory.

Lirael could feel the presence of the Dead and the sorcerous nature of the fog. Though Abhorsen’s House was defended by deep running water and many magical wards and guards, she still shivered, as if a cold hand had trailed fingers across her skin.

No one commented on the shiver, though Lirael felt embarrassed at how obvious it had been. No one said anything, but they were all looking at her. Sam, the Dog, and Mogget, all waiting as if she were going to pronounce some great wisdom or insight. For a moment Lirael felt a surge of panic. She wasn’t used to taking the lead in conversation, or in anything else. But she was the Abhorsen-in-Waiting now. While Sabriel was across the Wall in Ancelstierre, she was the only Abhorsen. The Dead, the fog, and Chlorr were her problems. And they were only minor problems, compared to the real threat—whatever Hedge and Nicholas were digging up near the Red Lake.

I’ll have to pretend, thought Lirael. I’ll have to act like an Abhorsen. Maybe if I act well enough, I’ll come to believe it myself.

“Apart from the stepping-stones, is there any other way out?” she asked suddenly, turning south to look at the stones that were just visible under the water, leading out to both eastern and western banks. Stepping-stones was not quite the right name, Lirael thought. Jumping-stones would be more appropriate, as they were set at least six feet apart and were very close to the edge of the waterfall. If you missed a jump, the river would snatch you up and the waterfall would throw you down. Down a very long way, under a great weight of crushing water.

“Sam?”

Sam shook his head.

“Mogget?”

The little white cat was curled up on the blue and gold cushion that had briefly been on the observer’s stool, before it was knocked off by a paw and put to better use on the floor. Mogget was not actually a cat, though he had the shape of one. The collar of Charter marks with its miniature bell—Ranna, the Sleepbringer—showed that he was much more than any simple talking cat.

Mogget opened one bright-green eye and yawned widely. Ranna tinkled on his collar, and Lirael and Sam found themselves yawning as well.

“Sabriel took the Paperwing, so we cannot fly out,” he said. “Even if we could fly, we’d have to get past the Gore Crows. I suppose we could call a boat, but the Dead would follow us along the banks.”

Lirael looked out at the walls of fog. She had been the Abhorsen-in-Waiting for only two hours, and already she didn’t know what to do. Except that she had an absolute conviction that they must leave the House and hurry to the Red Lake. They had to find Sam’s friend Nicholas and stop him from digging up whatever it was that was imprisoned deep beneath the earth.

“There might be another way,” said the Dog. She jumped down from the stool and began to tread a circle near Mogget as she spoke, high-stepping as if she were pressing down grass beneath her paws rather than cool stone. On “way” she suddenly collapsed onto the floor near the cat and slapped a heavy paw near the cat’s head. “Though Mogget won’t like it.”

“What way?” Mogget hissed, arching his back. “I know of no way out but the stepping-stones, or the air above, or the river—and I have been here since the House was built.”

“But not when the river was split and the island made,” said the Dog calmly. “Before the Wallmakers raised the walls, when the first Abhorsen’s tent was pitched where the great fig grows now.”

“True,” conceded Mogget. “But neither were you.”

There was the hint of a question, or doubt, in Mogget’s last words, thought Lirael. She watched the Disreputable Dog carefully, but all the hound did was scratch her nose with both forepaws before continuing.

“In any case, there was once another way. If it still exists, it is deep, and it could be dangerous in more ways than one. Some might say it would be safer to cross the stones and fight our way through the Dead.”

“But not you?” asked Lirael. “You think there is an alternative?”

Lirael was afraid of the Dead, but not so much that she could not face them if she had to. She was just not entirely confident in her newfound identity. Perhaps an Abhorsen like Sabriel, in the full flower of her years and power, could simply leap across the stepping-stones and put Chlorr, the Shadow Hands, and all the other Dead to rout. Lirael thought if she tried that herself, she would end up retreating back across the stones and quite likely fall into the river and be smashed to pieces in the waterfall.

“I think we should investigate it,” pronounced the Dog. She stretched out, almost hitting Mogget again with her paws, then slowly stood up and yawned, revealing many extremely large, very white teeth. All of this, Lirael was sure, was to annoy Mogget.

Mogget looked at the Dog through narrowed eyes.

“Deep?” mewed the cat. “Does that mean what I think it does? We cannot go there!”