She stepped back again, and her foot met slight resistance and then went back a lot more than it should have, into an unexpected hole. Lirael lost her balance, tumbling over backwards as a sharp hook sliced the air in front of her throat.
Time seemed frozen as she fell. She saw her parry going wide as her arms windmilled in her attempt to regain her balance. She saw the hooks of the Stilken scything forward, towards her, almost certain to meet around her waist.
Lirael hit the ground hard, but she didn’t notice the pain. She was already rolling aside, dimly registering that it was a hollow between two roots that had tripped her, and tree roots were pummeling her body as she rolled over them.
Earth—flowers—the distant ceiling and its Charter lights like far-off stars—earth—flowers—the artificial sky—with every roll, Lirael expected to see the Stilken’s silver gaze and feel the searing pain of its hooks. But she didn’t see it, and no death blow came. On the sixth roll, she stopped and threw herself forward, stomach muscles stabbing in agony as she flipped back onto her feet.
Binder was still in her hand, and the Stilken was trying to extricate its left hook from where it was stuck, deep in one of the great taproots of the oak. Instantly, Lirael realized it must have missed her as she fell—and struck the root instead.
The Stilken looked at her, silver eyes blazing, and made an awful gobbling noise, deep in its throat. Its body started to shift, weight moving from the trapped left arm to the right side of its body. It grew squatter, and muscles moved under the seemingly human skin like slugs under a leaf, gathering in the caught arm. Before the process was finished, it heaved,
straining to free itself and come after Lirael.
This was her chance, Lirael knew—these scant few seconds. Charter marks flared on Binder’s blade as she reached out to them, joining them to others drawn out of the Charter. Four master marks she needed, but to use them she had first to protect herself with lesser marks.
Binder helped her, and the marks slowly formed a chain in her mind, all too slowly, as the Stilken gobbled and strained, pulling its hook out inch by inch. The oak itself seemed to be trying to keep the creature trapped, Lirael realized, with that small part of her mind not totally focused on the Charter-spell. She could hear the tree rustling and creaking, as if it fought to keep the cut in its taproot closed, the hook with it.
The last mark came, flowing into Lirael with easy grace.
She let the spell go, feeling its power rush through her blood and every bone, fortifying her against the four master marks she needed to call.
The first of these master marks blossomed in her mind as the Stilken finally pulled its hook free, with a great groan from the oak and a spray of white-green sap. Even with the protective spell upon her, Lirael didn’t let the master mark linger in her mind. She cast it forth, sending it down Binder’s blade, where it spread like shining oil, till it suddenly burst into fire, surrounding the blade with golden flames.
The Stilken, already leaping to attack, tried to twist away. But it was too late. Lirael stepped forward, and Binder leapt out in a perfect stop thrust, straight through the Stilken’s neck. Golden fire raged, white sparks plumed up like a skyrocket’s trail, and the creature froze a mere two paces from Lirael, its hooks almost touching her on either side.
Lirael called forth the second master mark, and it, too, ran down the blade. But when it reached the Stilken’s neck, it
disappeared. A moment later, the creature’s skin began to crack and shrivel, blazing white light shining through when the shriveled skin sloughed off onto the ground. Within a minute, the Stilken had lost its semi-human appearance. Now it was just a featureless column of fierce white light, transfixed by a sword. The third master mark left Binder and went into the column. Instantly, what was left of the Stilken began to shrink, dwindling away until it was a blob of light an inch in diameter, with Binder now resting point first upon it.
Lirael took the metal bottle out of her waistcoat pocket, put it on the ground, and used the sword to roll the shining remnant of the Stilken inside. Only then did she withdraw the blade, drop it, and thrust in the cork. A moment later, she sealed it with the fourth master mark, which wrapped itself around both cork and bottle in a flash of light.
For a moment the bottle jumped and wriggled in her hand, then it was still. Lirael put it back in her pocket, and sat down next to Binder, gasping. It was really over. She had bound the Stilken. All by herself.
She leaned back, wincing at the aches and pains that sprang up along her back and arms. A brief flash of light caught her eye, from somewhere over near the tree. Instantly, she was back on the alert again, her hand going to Binder, all her pains forgotten. Picking up the sword, she went to investigate. Surely there couldn’t be another Stilken? Or could it have got out at the last instant? She checked the bottle, which was definitely sealed. Might there have been the briefest instant when she blinked, just as the fourth mark came?
The light flashed again, soft and golden as Lirael approached, and she sighed with relief. That had to be Charter Magic, so she was safe after all. The glow came from the hole she had tripped over.
Warily, Lirael poked at the hole with Binder, clearing the soil away. She saw that the glow came from a book, bound in what looked like fur or some sort of hairy hide. Using the sword as a lever, she flipped the book out. She’d seen the tree trying to hang on to the Stilken—she didn’t want it getting a grip on her.
Once it was clear of the roots, she picked the book up. The Charter marks on its cover were familiar ones, a spell to keep the book clean and free of silverfish and moths. Lirael tucked the thick volume under her arm, suddenly conscious that she was drenched in sweat, caked in dirt and flower petals, and completely exhausted, not to mention bruised. But only her waistcoat had suffered permanent damage, drilled through by sparks in a hundred places, as if it had been attacked by incendiary moths.
The Dog rose up out of the flowers to meet her as she headed back to the exit. She had Binder’s scabbard in her mouth and didn’t let it go as Lirael slid the sword home. “I did it,” said Lirael. “I bound the Stilken.”
“Mmmpph, mmpph, mmph,” said the Dog, prancing on her back feet. Then she carefully laid the sword down and said, “Yes, Mistress. I knew you would. Reasonably certainly.”
“Did you?” Lirael looked at her hands, which were starting to shake. Then her whole body was shaking, and she had to sit down till it stopped. She hardly noticed the Dog’s warm bulk against her back, or the encouraging licks against her ear. “I’ll take the sword back,” offered the Dog, when Lirael finally stopped shaking. “You rest here till I return. I won’t be long. You will be safe.”
Lirael nodded, unable to speak. She patted the Dog on the head and lay back on the flowers, letting their scent waft over her, the petals soft against her cheek. Her breathing slowed and
became more regular, her eyes blinked slowly once, twice—and then they closed.
The Dog waited until she was sure Lirael was asleep. Then she let out a single short bark. A Charter mark came with it, expelled out of the Dog’s mouth to hover in the air over the sleeping girl. The Dog cocked her head and looked at it with an experienced eye. Satisfied, she picked up the sword in her powerful jaws and trotted off, out into the main spiral.
When Lirael awoke, it was morning, or at least the light was bright again in the cavern. For a second she had the impression that there was a Charter mark above her head, but clearly that was only a dream, for there was nothing there when she came fully awake and sat up.
She felt very stiff and sore, but no worse than she usually did after one of the annual sword-and-bow exams. The waistcoat was beyond repair, but she had spares, and there didn’t seem to be any other physical signs of her combat with the Stilken. Nothing that would require a trip to the Infirmary. The Infirmary . . . Filris. For a moment Lirael was sad she couldn’t tell her great-great-grandmother that she had defeated the Stilken after all.
Filris would have liked the Disreputable Dog, too, Lirael thought, glancing over to where the hound slept nearby. She was curled into a ball, her tail wrapped completely around her back legs, almost up to her snout. She was snoring slightly and twitching every now and then, as if she dreamed of chasing rabbits.
Lirael was about to wake up the Dog when she felt the book poking into her. In the light, she realized it wasn’t bound in fur or hide, but had some sort of closely knitted cover over heavy boards, which was very peculiar indeed.
She picked it up and flicked it open to the title page, but even before she read the first word, she knew it was a book of power. Every part of it was saturated with Charter Magic. There were marks in the paper, marks in the ink, marks in the stitching of the spine.
The title page said merely In the Skin of a Lyon. Lirael turned it over, hoping to see a list of contents, but it went straight into the first chapter. She started to read beyond the words “Chapter One,” but the type suddenly blurred and shimmered. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, but when she looked again the page had the heading “Preface,” though she was sure it could not have turned. She turned back, and there was the title page again.
Lirael frowned and flipped forward. It still said “Preface.” Before it could change, she started to read.
“The making of Charter-skins,” she read, allows the Mage to take on more than the mere semblance or seeming of a beast or plant. A correctly woven Charter-skin, worn in the prescribed fashion, gives the Mage the actual desired shape, with all the peculiarities, perceptions, limitations, and advantages of that shape.
This book is a theoretical examination of the art of making Charter-skins; a practical primer for the beginning shapewearer; and a compendium of complete Charter-skins, including those for the lyon, the horse, the hopping toade, the grey dove, the silver ash, and divers other useful shapes.
The course of study contained herein, if followed with fortitude and discipline, will equip the conscientious Mage with the knowledge needed to make a first Charter-skin within three or four years.
“A useful book, that one,” said the newly awake Dog, interrupting Lirael’s reading by thrusting her snout across the pages, clearly demanding a morning scratch between the ears.
“Very,” agreed Lirael, trying to keep reading around the Dog, without success. “Apparently if I follow the course of study in it, I’ll be able to take on another shape in three or four years.”
“Eighteen months,” yawned the Dog sleepily. “Two years if you’re lazy. Though you wear a Charter-skin—you don’t change your own shape, as such. Make sure you start on a Charter-skin that’ll be useful for exploring. You know, good at getting through small holes and so on.”
“Why?” asked Lirael.
“Why?” repeated the Dog incredulously, pulling her head out from under Lirael’s hand. “There’s so much to see and smell here! Whole levels of the Library that no one has been into for a hundred, a thousand years! Locked rooms full of ancient secrets. Treasure! Knowledge! Fun! Do you want to be just a Third Assistant Librarian all your life?”
“Not exactly,” replied Lirael stiffly. “I want to be a proper Clayr. I want to have the Sight.”
“Well, maybe we’ll find something that can wake it in you,” declared the Dog. “I know you have to work, but there’s so much other time that shouldn’t go to waste. What could be better than walking where no others have walked for a thousand years?”
“I suppose I might as well,” Lirael agreed, her imagination taking fire from the Dog’s words. There were plenty of doors she wanted to open. There was that strange hole in the rock, for instance, down where the main spiral came to an abrupt end—
“Besides,” the Dog added, interrupting her thoughts,
“there are forces at work here that want you to use the book. Something freed the Stilken, and the creature’s presence has woken other magics, too. That tree would not have given up the book if you weren’t meant to have it.”
“I suppose,” said Lirael. She didn’t like the idea that the Stilken had had help to break free from its prison. That implied that there was some greater force of evil down here in the Old Levels, or that some power could reach into the Clayr’s Glacier from afar, despite all their wards and defenses.
If there was something like the Stilken—some Free Magic entity of great power—in the Library, Lirael felt it was her duty to find it. She felt that by defeating the Stilken, she had unconsciously taken the first step towards assuming the responsibility for destroying anything else like the creature that might be a threat to the Clayr.
Exploring would also fill up the time and distract her.
Lirael realized she hadn’t thought much at all about Awakenings, or the Sight, over these last few months. Creating the Dog and discovering how to defeat the Stilken had filled nearly all her waking thoughts.
“I will learn a useful Charter-skin,” she declared. “And we will explore, Dog!”
“Good!” said the Dog, and she gave a celebratory bark that echoed around the cavern. “Now you’d better run and get washed and changed, before Imshi wonders where you are.”
“What time is it?” asked Lirael, startled. Away from the peremptory whistle-blasts of Kirrith in the Hall of Youth, or the chiming clock in the Reading Room, she had no idea what time of day it was. She had thought it roughly dawn, for she felt she hadn’t had much sleep.
“One half past the . . . sixth hour of the morning,” replied the Dog, after cocking her ear, as if to some distant chime. “Give or take . . .”
Her voice trailed off, because Lirael had already left, breaking into a somewhat limping run. The Dog sighed and launched herself into a body-extending lope, easily catching up with Lirael before she shut the door.