Clariel Read online

  ‘Use the Charter,’ cried Kargrin. ‘Defend yourself!’

  Rage filled Clariel. Her nostrils flared open as she exhaled and almost closed shut as she breathed in. She picked up one of the massive benches and threw it up at Kargrin, but he jumped away, across twelve feet or more to the next beam end, an impossible jump were he not aided by some magic. Clariel dropped her knife and ran towards him, raging. She swarmed up the wall, her fingers thrust into the tiniest cracks between stones, dislodging ancient mortar, but even so she could not find enough hand- and footholds. She fell back, immediately circling to find a weapon, something to throw at the enemy above her. But even as her hand closed upon a fallen piece of stone the size of an apple, a glowing net of Charter marks fell on her from above, wrapped itself around her three times and bound her as securely as a spider ever tied a fly.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Maps

  Prologue

  1. Welcome to the City

  2. Colourful Fish and Colourful Clothes

  3. Plots and Machinations

  4. Getting Ready for School

  5. Mistress Ader and the Academy

  6. Tea and Arguments

  7. The Education of a Charter Mage

  8. Complications and Opportunities

  9. Old Secrets, New Plans

  10. To the Islet

  11. Out of the Bottle

  12. The Education of a Berserk

  13. Off to the Palace

  14. King Orrikan Regrets

  15. Earning a Mother’s Favour

  16. The Governor’s Dinner

  17. Seeking Refuge

  18. Unwanted Climbing Practice

  19. A Mouthful of Earth

  20. You Don’t See That Every Day

  21. Hillfair, Horses and Dogs

  22. The Abhorsen Decides

  23. Across the Bridge, Into the House

  24. A Most Knowledgeable Cat

  25. Gone Fishing

  26. The Path Is Chosen

  27. Into the Waterfall

  28. Binding the Free

  29. Once Were Dragons

  30. An Ancient Treasure

  31. Return to Belisaere

  32. Revenge, Not So Sweet

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also by Garth Nix

  Copyright

  To Anna, Thomas and Edward,

  and all my family and friends

  and

  to the memory of poet, kind-hearted

  cynic and good friend

  Andrew Etheridge

  1963–2012

  This book is set approximately six hundred years before the birth of Sabriel.

  Five Great Charters knit the land

  Together linked, hand in hand

  One in the people who wear the crown

  Two in the folk who keep the Dead down

  Three and Five became stone and mortar

  Four sees all in frozen water.

  prologue

  Old Marral the fisherman lived in one of the oddest parts of Belisaere, the ancient capital of the Old Kingdom. A proud city with high walls to defend against living foes, and rushing aqueducts to keep out the Dead, one tiny corner of the great metropolis lay outside the protection of both wall and water.

  Known to all simply as the Islet, it was a rocky island just beyond the city’s southeast sea tower. Joined to the mainland by a rough stone causeway save at the highest tides, the island was inhabited by the poorest of the poor, the fisher-folk who had lost their boats, or drank too much, or had suffered some calamity that kept them from the city’s more prosperous fishing harbour further to the north.

  No one knew what had caused Old Marral to come to the Islet. He had been there as long as anyone could remember, living in a shack made of driftwood and torn sailcloth, distinguished from the dozen or so other hovels on the Islet only by its doorway, in which a heavy curtain made of hundreds of shark teeth knotted onto a discarded fishing net served as a door.

  Old Marral made his living, such as it was, as a beachcomber. He walked around the Islet every morning and, if the tide was out, also went out along the rocks that faced the eastern seawall of the city proper. This could be very dangerous, for the tides in the Sea of Saere came in fast and high. In the old days, when the city walls were kept in constant repair, Marral would have drowned many times. Now, with much of the smooth outer face of the wall eroded, there were hand- and footholds enough to climb up out of the rushing waters, even carrying a small sack of whatever flotsam the sea had carried in on its blue-green back.

  One particular morning, the sack held a real treasure.

  Marral had thought it was a fisherman’s glass float at first, lost from a net. The morning sun flashed off something bobbing in the water, sending back a greenish glint. But when a wave brought it close enough to snatch, he found it was a squarish bottle of thick green glass, not a float. It was empty, but neither the bottle nor the contents it once might have held were of interest to Marral. What caught his eye was the stopper. Though tarnished with age and immersion, he knew it for silver, and even better, the stopper was secured to the neck with bright wires still yellow and warm, gold resisting all tarnish.

  Marral almost cackled as he saw it, but stopped himself. The cackling was an act for the city folk, the few who thought he was some kind of small-time Free Magic sorcerer who could offer them an easier, and less equitable, path to whatever they wanted than the rigours of Charter Magic or non-magical hard work. The shark-tooth curtain was part of this act, but it was only an act, which delivered a few silver deniers every now and then, from those foolish enough to think a Free Magic sorcerer could set up so close to Belisaere, even if outside the city’s walls and wards.

  Hugging his find close, Marral retraced his steps along the wet rocks below the seawall, climbing up and around the deeper pools where the sea swirled dangerously, quick to whisk away and suck under anyone who fell in.

  Back in his hut, he thought about what to do with his find, as he cleaned the silver with spirits of hartshorn and turpentine. There were a number of junk merchants on Winter Street who Marral dealt with regularly, but the silver stopper was too good for them, he thought. They’d never give him a fair price, not for something so finely worked. There were delicate engravings in the metal, tiny symbols like the ones he’d seen in a book once, the one from the dead sailor’s pocket. Marral had got a good price for the book, despite it being so heavily water-stained and encrusted with salt.

  After a few seconds peering at the symbols on the silver, Marral looked away. They unnerved him, somehow, almost like they were moving. Twitching about. It was the cleaning fluid, no doubt. Fumes.

  Marral did not have a baptismal Charter mark, and thus had no connection to the Charter. He could not see the actual Charter marks twisting and moving around the engravings. He could not feel the binding spell that kept the bottle closed, and had done so for almost nine hundred years. Nor could he sense the entity trapped inside the bottle, though he did wonder a little why the glass continued to feel so cold, long after it had come out of the sea.

  After he had been cleaning it for some time Marral thought perhaps it would be better to simply remove the stopper, and take it in to a goldsmith in the city. There was no need to take the whole bottle. After all, he’d seen dozens of solid square bottles like this one, and none had been worth more than a copper squid.

  It felt like his own idea.

  Very carefully, he prised off the first gold wire. His hands hurt as he unwound the gold, burning pains shooting through his fingers. It was the ague of age, he knew, though he’d rarely had it so bad. Marral thought of the goose grease which sometimes helped, but he had none of it, and anyway the pains lessened as the wire ca
me off.

  A stabbing pain struck his chest as he pulled the stopper out of the bottle. But he had had such pains before, and simply coughed, knowing it would pass in a moment. And it did, just as the stopper came out with a loud pop, as if the bottle was not empty at all, but contained the finest of the light sparkling wines from Orestery.

  Marral held the heavy stopper in his hand, mentally calculating its worth as a lump of silver. It would pay for a new pot of goose grease, a keg of the dark ale he favoured and at least several chickens, a welcome change from a diet of fish and gathered crustaceans.

  He was thinking of the chickens when he noticed there was someone else in the hut, though he hadn’t heard the shark-tooth curtain rattle, or even a single footstep on the rocky floor.

  Marral’s hand instinctively darted for the gutting knife at his belt, but faltered even as his fingers gripped the worn bone hilt.

  The stranger who had appeared so silently, and now sat opposite on a wooden crate, looked strangely familiar, but it was a familiarity only slowly remembered from long ago.

  ‘Greten? But you … you drowned … nigh on thirty year ago …’

  The young woman smiled, a brilliant smile, her teeth white and bright even in the shadowed interior of the hovel. Marral couldn’t help but smile back, and stretch out his arms to hug his long-lost favourite sister, even as some part of his mind protested that even if she had somehow escaped the sea, Greten couldn’t possibly look exactly the same as she had three decades gone.

  Tears flowed down Marral’s cheeks as they embraced, cutting clear trails through the salt caked on his skin, trickling down to the corners of his mouth. He laughed in delight, at all the goodness in the world, which had brought him not only a valuable silver stopper but also his little sister back from the sea.

  The laughter ceased as Marral’s heart skipped a beat and then just … stopped.

  But he had only a moment of fear and puzzlement, as Greten somehow continued to move deeper into his embrace, disappearing into his flesh.

  The old man’s eyes closed, and he slumped on his stool, and would have fallen, save that something moved inside him and kept him upright. Then his heart stuttered into action again, and began to beat more strongly. Colour flooded into Marral’s skin, and his eyes cleared. The white flecks in his hair and the stubble on his chin retreated, giving way to a deep brown not seen for many a year.

  ‘I feel …’ muttered Marral. He stopped, his voice sounding odd to his own ears. It was stronger, and he could hear more clearly.

  ‘I feel young!’

  ‘Somewhat,’ muttered a voice inside his head. Greten’s voice. ‘I cannot do too much, for we must be careful. But I need you to be strong.’

  Marral laughed, a deep, bold laugh.

  ‘Dear Greten!’ he exclaimed. ‘I will be strong! Tell me what you need.’

  ‘First,’ whispered Greten, in a voice he alone could hear, ‘I need to know things. Who rules the Kingdom? How many years have passed since the second Dyran was on the throne? Do the Abhorsens still scour the land against the Dead and … others?’

  chapter one

  welcome to the city

  The house was one of the best in Belisaere, high on the eastern slope of Beshill. It boasted five floors, each with a broad balcony facing east, and on top there was a pleasant roof garden which delivered a view over the lesser houses on the slope below, and past them across the red roofs of the buildings that clustered closely on the valley floor on either side of the Winter Road. Beyond the houses was the seven-tiered Great Eastern Aqueduct and its lesser companion, the city wall. The eastern wall had its feet almost in the water; beyond it lay the glittering expanse of the Sea of Saere, now dotted with those slower, straggling fishing boats that were coming late to Fish Harbour, hours after the rest of the fleet had returned to unload their catch with the dawn.

  Clariel stood at the intricately carved marble railing on the edge of the roof garden, with the sun on her face and the cool sea breeze ruffling her shorn-at-the-neck jet-black hair, and wondered why she couldn’t like the view, the house, or, indeed, the whole city of Belisaere.

  She was seventeen years old, two months shy of being eighteen, and up until their arrival in the city three days before had lived her entire life in the much smaller town of Estwael in the far northwest of the Old Kingdom and, more importantly to her in recent years, in and about the Great Forest that surrounded Estwael.

  But Estwael and the Great Forest had been left behind, despite Clariel’s entreaties to her parents. She’d asked to remain, to become a Borderer, one of the wardens who patrolled the forests and woods of the Kingdom. But her parents refused, and anyway the Borderers did not recruit youths, as Sergeant Penreth in Estwael had told Clariel numerous times, though always with a matter-of-fact kindness, for they were long acquaintances, if not friends. Nor would her parents accept any of her various other reasons for being allowed to stay behind.

  Typically, Clariel’s mother, Jaciel, had simply ignored her daughter’s request, refusing to even discuss the matter. Jaciel’s mind was rarely focused on her family. A goldsmith of rare talent, all her attention was typically on whatever beautiful gold or silver object she was currently making, or on the one that was taking shape in her head.

  Harven, Clariel’s father and manager of all practical matters in their family life, had patiently explained to his daughter that besides being too young to join the Borderers it was very likely that in a year she would not want to anyway. He had then added insult to injury by telling Clariel the move to Belisaere was as much for her benefit as it was for her mother’s, who had been accorded the honour of being invited to join the High Guild of Goldsmiths in the capital.

  There would be many more opportunities for her in Belisaere, Clariel had been told repeatedly. She could be apprenticed herself, straight into a High Guild or one of the Great Companies. There might be a business the family could buy for her. Or she might make an advantageous marriage.

  But none of these ‘opportunities’ interested Clariel, and she knew they never would have left Estwael just for her benefit. Any advantage she might receive would be entirely incidental to her mother’s desire for a much larger workshop, a greater variety of better metals, gems and other materials to work with, and an increased labour force, doubtlessly including at least half a dozen more pimply apprentices who would try to look down the front of Clariel’s dress at dinner.

  A meaningful cough behind her made Clariel turn around. Her father smiled at her, the weak smile that she knew was a harbinger of bad news. It had made a frequent appearance in the last few months, the smile. When people first met Harven they would think him strong, until his mouth turned up. He had a weak, giving-in smile. He was a goldsmith too, but was not particularly gifted in the actual craft. He was much better at managing the business of his wife’s work.

  ‘Have you come to tell me that by some stroke of good fortune I am to be allowed to go home?’ asked Clariel.

  ‘This is our home now,’ said Harven.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like it,’ said Clariel. She looked over the railing again, across all the white stone buildings with their red-tiled roofs, and then back again at the ornamental shrubs in the terracotta boxes that made up their own roof garden, shrubs with pale bark and small, weak-looking yellow leaves. ‘There is nothing green here. I haven’t seen a single proper tree. Everything is ordered and tamed and put between walls. And there are too many people.’

  ‘There are lots of big trees in the gardens on Palace Hill,’ said Harven. ‘We just can’t see them from here.’

  Clariel nodded glumly. A few trees too distant to be seen, across miles and miles of houses and workshops and other buildings, and thousands and thousands of people, rather proved her point, she thought.

  ‘Did you come to tell me something?’ she asked, knowing that he had, and she wasn’t going to like whatever it was. His smile gave that away.

  ‘Ah, your mother had a meeting with Guildmas
ter Kilp yestereve, and he made her aware of an opportunity for you that she … we desire you to take up.’

  ‘An opportunity?’ asked Clariel, her heart sinking. ‘For me?’

  ‘Yes, an opportunity,’ continued her father, raising his hands and lifting his shoulders to emphasise what a good opportunity he was about to reveal. ‘The Goldsmiths, the Merchant Venturers, the Spicers, the Northwestern Trading Company … all the High Guilds and most of the Great Companies, they send their children to the Belisaere Select Academy –’

  ‘A school?’ interrupted Clariel. ‘I’ve been to school! And I’m not a child!’

  Clariel had indeed attended school in Estwael, from the age of eight to fourteen, and had been taught how to calculate using an abacus; keep accounts; write formal letters; supervise servants; ride in the great hunt with hounds and hawks; fight with dagger, sword and bow; and play the psalter, zittern and reed pipe.

  She had also been baptised with the forehead Charter mark shortly after her birth and taught the rudiments of Charter Magic, that highly organised and difficult sorcery that drew upon the endless array of symbols that collectively made up the magical Charter that described, contained and connected all things upon, below, above, within and beyond the world.

  Indeed, it would have been very surprising if she had not been taught Charter Magic, given she was a granddaughter of the Abhorsen. The Abhorsen, chief of the family of the same name, both an office and a bloodline, descended from the remnants of the ancient powers who had made the Charter, codifying and ordering the Free Magic that had once been such a threat to all living things in its arbitrary and selfish nature.

  The Abhorsens, like their cousins in the royal family and also the glacier-dwelling, future-gazing Clayr, were as deeply a part of the foundations and beginnings of the Charter as the more physical underpinnings: the Great Charter Stones beneath the royal Palace in Belisaere; the Wall that defined the borders of the Old Kingdom to the south; and the Great Rift to the north.

  In addition to the dame school in the town, Clariel had attended another, more informal educational institution, largely without her parents’ knowledge. Since she’d turned twelve Clariel visited her aunt Lemmin whenever she had a day free. Lemmin was a herbalist who lived on the fringe of the Forest, in a comfortable house surrounded by her enormous, high-walled garden. Her parents assumed that Clariel stayed within those walls. But her visits to her relative rarely encompassed more than a hug and a greeting, for with her aunt’s good-natured connivance, Clariel would go on out through the Forest door, out to follow the Borderers into the deeper woods, or to join the hunters from the lodge. From them all she had learned the habits of animals, the nature of trees, and how to track, and hunt, and snare, to forage, to gut and skin, and make and mend, and live in the wild.