Abhorsen

A river flowed around and in front of the shining woman. A cold river that Lirael knew at once. This was the river of Death, and this creature was bringing it to them. They would not cross into it but be swamped and taken away. Thrown down and taken up, carried in a rush to the First Gate and beyond.

They would never be able to make their way back.

Lirael had time to think only a few final, awful thoughts.

They had failed so soon.

So many depended on them.

All was lost.

Then the Disreputable Dog shouted, “Flee!” and barked.

The bark was infused with Free Magic. Without opening her eyes, without conscious thought, Lirael swung round and suddenly found herself ru

Through caverns and chambers and narrow ways she ran, not knowing whether Sam ran with her or whether she was pursued. It was not fear that drove her, for she didn’t feel afraid. She was somewhere else, locked away inside her own body, a machine that drove on and on without feeling, acting on directions that had not come from her.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the compulsion to run stopped. Lirael fell to the floor, shuddering, trying to draw breath into her starved lungs. Pain shot through every muscle and she curled into a ball of cramps, frantically massaging her calf muscles as she bit back cries of pain.

Someone was near her doing the same thing and, as reason returned, Lirael saw that it was Sam. There was a dim light falling from somewhere ahead, enough to make him out. A natural light, though much diffused.

Hesitantly Lirael touched the bell-bandoleer. It was still, the bells quiescent. Her hand fell to Nehima’s hilt and she was relieved to feel the solidity of the green stone in the pommel, and the silver wire no more than silver wire.

Sam groaned and stood up. He leant against the wall with his left hand and stowed the panpipes away with his right. Lirael watched that hand flicker in a careful movement, and a Charter light blossomed in his palm.

“It was gone, you know,” he said, sliding back down the wall to sit facing Lirael. He seemed calm but was obviously in shock. Lirael realised she was too when she tried to stand up and simply couldn’t.

“Yes,” she replied. “The Charter.”

“Wherever that was,” continued Sam, “the Charter wasn’t. And who was she?”

Lirael shook her head, as much to clear it as to indicate her inability to answer. She shook it again immediately, trying to force her thoughts back into action.

“We’d better... better go back,” she said, thinking of the Dog facing both Mogget and that shining woman alone in the darkness. “I can’t leave the Dog.”

“What about her?” asked Sam, and Lirael knew who he meant. “And Mogget?”

“You need not go back,” said a voice from the dark reaches of the passage. Lirael and Sam instantly leapt up, finding new strength and purpose. Their swords were out and Lirael found she had one hand on Saraneth, though she had no idea what she was going to do with the bell. No wisdom from The Book of the Dead or The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting came unbidden into her head.

“It’s me,” said the voice in an aggrieved tone, and the Disreputable Dog slowly walked into the light, her tail between her legs and her head bowed. Apart from this uncharacteristic pose, she seemed back to normal – or what was normal for her – with the deep, rich glow of many Charter marks once more around her neck, and her short hair dusty and golden save for her back, where it was black.

Lirael didn’t hesitate. She put Nehima down and flung herself on the Dog, burying her face in her friend’s neck. The Dog licked Lirael’s ear without her usual enthusiasm, and she didn’t try even one affectionate nip.

Sam hung back, his sword still in his hand.

“Where is Mogget?” he asked.

“She wished to speak to him,” replied the Dog, throwing herself sorrowfully across Lirael’s feet. “I was wrong. I put you in terrible danger, Mistress.”

“I don’t understand,” Lirael replied. She felt incredibly tired all of a sudden. “What happened? The Charter... the Charter seemed to suddenly... not be.”

“It was her coming,” said the Dog. “It is her fate, that her knowing self will be for ever outside what she chose to make, the Charter that her unknowing self is part of. Yet she stayed her hand when she could so easily have taken you to her embrace. I do not know why, or what it may mean. I believed her to be past any interest in the things of this world, and so I thought to pass here unscathed. Yet when ancient forces stir, many things are woken. I should have guessed it would be so. Forgive me.”

Lirael had never seen the Dog so humbled and it scared her more than anything that had happened. She scratched her around the ears and along the jaw, seeking to give as much comfort as she took. But her hands shook, and she felt that at any moment she would shudder into tears. To try to stop them, she took slow breaths, counting them in and counting them out.

“But... what will happen to Mogget?” asked Sam, his voice unsteady. “He was unbound! He’ll try to kill the Abhorsen... Mother... or Lirael! We haven’t got the ring to bind him again!”

“Mogget has long avoided her,” mumbled the Dog. She hesitated, then quietly said, “I don’t think we need to worry about Mogget any more.”

Lirael let out her breath and didn’t take another. How could Mogget not be coming back?

“What?” asked Sam. “But he’s... well, I don’t know, but powerful... a Free Magic spirit...”

“Who is she?” asked Lirael. She spoke very sternly as she took the Disreputable Dog by the jaw and stared into her deep, dark eyes. The Dog tried to turn away, but Lirael held her fast. The hound shut her eyes hopefully, only to be foiled as Lirael blew on her nose and they snapped open again.

“It won’t help you to know, because you can’t understand,” said the Dog, her voice filled with great weariness. “She doesn’t really exist any more, except every now and then and here and there, in small ways and small things. If we had not come this way, she would not have been, and now that we have passed, she will not be.”

“Tell me!”

“You know who she is, at least in some degree,” said the Dog. She tapped her nose against Lirael’s bell-bandoleer, leaving a wet mark on the leather of the seventh bell, and a single slow tear rolled down her snout to dampen Lirael’s hand.

“Astarael?” whispered Sam in disbelief. The most frightening bell of them all, the one he had never even touched in his brief time as custodian of that set of bells. “The Weeper?”

Lirael let the Dog go, and the hound promptly pushed her head further into Lirael’s lap and let out a long sigh.

Lirael scratched the Dog’s ears again, but even with the feel of warm dog skin under her hand, she could not help asking a question she had asked before.

“What are you, then? Why did Astarael let you go?”

The Dog looked up at her and said simply, “I am the Disreputable Dog. A true servant of the Charter and your friend. Always your friend.”

Lirael did weep then, but she wiped the tears away as she lifted the Dog by her collar and moved her away so she could stand up. Sam picked up Nehima and silently handed the sword to her. The Charter marks on the blade rippled as Lirael touched the hilt, but no inscription became visible.

“If you are sure Mogget will not be coming, bound or unbound, then we must go on,” said Lirael.

“I suppose so,” said Sam doubtfully. “Though I feel... feel sort of strange. I got kind of used to Mogget, and now he’s just... just gone? I mean, has she... has she killed him?”