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“Hold still,” Prince Sameth said absently, peering closely at his handiwork. The injunction was an unnecessary one, as his aunt was already standing perfectly still, one hand extended so Sam could examine it. Lirael didn’t mind; she expected nothing less from Sam when one of his creations was in question.
After several minutes of intense scrutiny, Sam sat back with a sigh. “I don’t know,” he said, releasing Lirael’s hand. “It seems like the marks I used should be sufficient, but they’re obviously not working. Why don’t you take it off, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Lirael nodded, quickly sketching the marks that released the golden hand and giving it to Sam. She smiled at the familiar frown on his face.
In the weeks after her defeat of the Destroyer, Lirael had sometimes felt overwhelmed by the number of things that had changed in her life. Alongside the new family, new home, and new position, the loss of a hand seemed a relatively minor adjustment. She’d expected to die when she’d thrust the sword that had been Nehima into Orannis; loosing her hand was a small price to pay. She was just developing a mastery of one-handed daily living when Sam had come to her with the offer to make a new one out of gold and magic. She might have shied away from accepting such an offer for her own sake, but she’d had time enough time to start wondering about the difficulties of functioning as a one-handed Abhorsen, and was able to accept for the sake of her new position.
The resulting project took longer than Sam had expected, for the hand he had envisioned was far more complex than the tinkerings he’d done in the stolen moments of his childhood. Lirael had enjoyed the hours of theoretical discussion, proposing and evaluating marks and design concepts. In the library she she’d honed her ability to avoid others and work independently, and she was surprised to learn she enjoyed collaboration.
The resulting hand was a thing of beauty, a marvel for its magical complexity as much as its aesthetic appeal. Lirael was surprised to realize how much she loved it - loved Sam - for what it meant. Even more than grasping a sword or swinging a bell, Lirael treasured the constant reminder that she had a family who loved her, not for some distant, far-off possibility of what she might one day become, but for who she already was.
Only the hand would not travel into Death with her.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she told her nephew, whose frown had deepened as he probed the hand. “I don’t see how you could have known. It wouldn’t even be a problem for anyone else.”
“But you’re the Abhorsen-in-Waiting!” he responded. “You need your hands in Death even more than you need them here. You could have died if Mother hadn’t been with you!”
Lirael shrugged calmly, uninterested in morbid could-have-beens. She was certainly glad that Sabriel had been with her. Though Lirael was perfectly capable of wielding a single bell one-handed, she doubted the Mordicant she’d been facing would have responded to Saraneth alone. As tightly as Lirael had bound it, it had taken Sabriel’s addition of Kibeth to make the creature walk beyond the ninth gate. Still, it seemed likely that she would have a rather large number of close brushes with Death as Abhorsen-in-Waiting. It simply wouldn’t do to get worked up every time it happened.
“Well, she was with me,” she told Sam. “And I’m sure you’ll find a way to fix it.”
“I don’t know how you can you be so confident,” he said, though she saw he was smiling.
“Because you’re a Wallmaker, Sam,” she said, with quiet conviction.
Sam’s grin faded as he looked thoughtfully around his workroom. “I know I am. But some days I’m not really even sure what that means, you know?”
Lirael knew. After all, she too had spent her entire life shaped by the expectation that she would follow another path entirely. They’d both had to shoulder the responsibilities of their new identities before they’d had the chance to fully learn what they were. Even Lirael, with a sister and a lifetime of tales to guide her, sometimes wondered about the nature of the path that had chosen her.
"Does the walker choose the path or the path the walker?" Sam asked, echoing her thoughts. Lirael saw the last page of The Book of the Dead shining in her mind, and wondered if Sam did as well. Like her, he was the product of more than one bloodline.
“Just because our paths chose us doesn’t mean we can’t shape them,” Lirael said. “What do you want being a Wallmaker to mean?”
Sam looked at her pensively for a moment. Suddenly his entire face changed.
“Saraneth!” he said excitedly, pulling the golden hand closer once more.
“The bell?”
“No, a mark that corresponds to it.”
Lirael wasn’t fazed by the sudden change in topic. Sam was like that; whenever he was working on a project, everything else was secondary. It was one of the reasons she could say with such confidence that he had found the right path.
“It would obviously be a mark for binding,” Sam was saying, “and it should be strong enough to work in Death.”
“That’s an interesting theory. I think I remember reading a book in the Clayr’s library that suggested that most Charter Magic won’t work in Death. I guess it’s outside of its bounds, in a way. That’s why the spells the Abhorsens use to still the gates are all Free Magic. There are some simple Charter spells that work, but I wonder if Free Magic would be more effective.”
“You want me to use Free Magic on your hand?” Sam said. He sounded doubtful.
“Why not?” she said, remembering something the Dog had once told her. “Free Magic isn’t inherently dangerous, just magic that has remained unconstrained. The Free Magic that helped to make the Charter – the magic in the bells – probably has the ability to cross the boundaries of Life and Death more easily.”
“Interesting,” Sam said, his face alight with interest. He pulled a scrap of paper towards him and started scribbling furiously. Lirael watched him, amused. She loved how engaged Sam could become with a project. All of her new-found family shared that intensity, in fact. She wondered if they had to take turns reminding one another to eat.
As if on cue, the dinner bell rang. Sam didn’t so much as look up.
“Sam?” she said, after a moment.
“Mmm.”
“It’s dinner.”
“You go,” he said without looking up. “I want to get this right for you.”
Lirael looked at her nephew fondly. “That’s alright,” she told him. “I’ll stay.”
***
There was very little about her life as Abhorsen-in-Waiting that reminded Lirael of her life as a Second Assistant Librarian of the Clayr. Life on the Glacier was always calm and quiet, the expectant hush of those awaiting the foreknown. Even Lirael had been future-oriented, yearning for the day when she would gain the Sight and her earn her true place among the Clayr.
As an Abhorsen, Lirael rarely had the time to sit at home, longing for gifts she’d never have. Though she had been inclined to fade into the background after defeating the Destroyer, Sabriel had insisted that Lirael accompany her on her trips as Abhoresn. Their life of desperate calls and frantic rides had very little time for the bouts of despondence and self-pity that gripped her so often among the Clayr. It was a far more active life than she’d ever imagined for herself, and Lirael was surprised to find that she liked it.
She also enjoyed the rare moments of quiet she and Sabriel occasionally had together on their trips. They often stopped at at Abhorsen house on their way back to Belisaere, and Lirael enjoyed exploring with Sabriel as her guide. Sabriel would tell her stories of the odd things Mogget or the sendings had done over the years. Lirael thought the quirky house was wonderful, though she often thought it must have been an odd place for Sabriel to grow up.
“I didn’t, really,” Sabriel pointed out, when Lirael voiced the thought to her. “I was always away at school.”
“Oh, of course,” Lirael said, feeling stupid, because everyone in the kingdom knew that Sabriel had gone to school in Ancelstierre. She found it hard, sometimes, to recall that the far-off stories about the royal family she’d heard on the Glacier now belonged to the people she saw every day.
“It would have been lonely here, with no one but Mogget and the sendings to talk to when Father was off as Abhorsen. I think that’s part of the reason Father joined a band of Travelers when I was born, and sent me away to school once I was old enough. He didn’t want me to grow up alone.”
Like I did, Lirael thought, but she kept it to herself. It sounded too much like self-pity, and it was unfair to her mother. For all Arielle had been Sighted, there had been no way for her to know how lonely her daughter would be, surrounded by countless cousins and aunts who didn’t understand her.
“I’m sorry you never knew him,” Sabriel said. It took Lirael a moment to remember that the man Sabirel was talking about was her own father, as well.
“What was he like?”
Sabriel thought, for a moment. “It’s strange. Sometimes I think I know him better now than I did when he was alive. He was always Abhorsen, before anything else. It was so much a part of his identity, and yet I knew so little about it. Do you know, I was eighteen before I even learned that Abhorsen was a title, rather than his name!” Sabriel laughed, and Lirael smiled as well. It was hard to imagine Sabriel as an Ancelstierrian schoolgirl, largely ignorant of the Old Kingdom and the ways of the Dead. Yet Sabriel had been unfamiliar with the responsibilities of the Abhorsen when she first took them on. The idea was strangely comforting.
“He was a good father, though,” Sabriel continued. “It’s hard to balance the two roles. He told me once that none of us is as good a parent as we wish, and it’s certainly true. But he always made time to visit, using a sending when he couldn’t come himself. I got to talk to him so often, I didn’t usually mind that his in-person visits were so rare.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Anything, really. My life, mostly; he never talked much about his work. He liked to hear about my studies.”
“I’d have liked that,” Lirael said. “I never really talked to any of the Clayr about what I was learning. It would have been nice to have someone be interested.”
“It must have been so lonely,” Sabriel said.
“It was lonely,” Lirael agreed.
The truth was, though, that she missed the library. She missed the late-night adventures with the Dog. She missed the fun of pocketing rather than shelving an intriguing book. She missed the feeling of being surrounded by knowledge, of centuries worth of questions and answers available, if only she knew where to look. She even missed the smell of books.
“You miss it,” Sabriel said. Lireal was starting recognize combination of intuition and candor that led her sister to make such statements, and she was getting better at the openness required to answer them.
“I do,” she admitted. “I guess I really liked being useful, finally, after so many years. I was actually good at being a librarian. I don’t suppose I’ll ever need those skills again, though.” She refrained from mentioning the smell of books. She wasn’t sure that Sabriel, who had grown up with the typical flesh-and-blood human friends, would entirely understand.
Sabriel looked thoughtful. “Maybe you could still use them.”
“How? There isn’t a lot of call for sorting and organizing as an Abhorsen.”
“No, it’s the royal library. It was left in shambles during the regency, nobody looked at it for over a century. Touchstone and I appointed a few new librarians, but they could use a little supervision and we never have the time. But maybe you could have a look.”
“I’d love to,” Lirael said, “if you think it would be helpful.”
“Absolutely!” Sabriel assured her. “Touchstone will be thrilled. They’re always after him to glance over some old document, or asking me to check some possibly dangerous relic. Neither of us is interested, or remotely good at that sort of thing. But it sounds like you might be.”
Lirael hadn’t imagined that there might be a way to be both a librarian and an Abhorsen. She rather liked the thought.
Once again, Sabriel seemed to know what Lirael was thinking. “Just because you’re an Abhorsen doesn’t mean you can’t still be Lirael.”
“I suppose you may be right,” Lirael said, with a smile.
“I’m your big sister,” Sabriel replied. “I’m always right.”
***
Lirael could hear the chanting as she walked down the corridor, childish voices reciting a familiar rhyme.
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.
Lirael glanced into the classroom, and smiled at the sight. Twelve new students were being instructed in the basics of Charter Magic. Eleven were between the ages of seven and ten, the customary age to learn such matters. The twelfth was a tall, blond-haired man who towered above his classmates as he obediently recited the words to the rhyme.
As if he’d felt her eyes on him, Nicholas Sayer looked around. His face lit up as he caught sight of Lirael standing in the doorway. Embarrassed, Lirael ducked back into the hallway. She hadn’t even realized where her feet had taken her before she heard the familiar chanting. Her solitary walks had been ending in that part of the castle rather frequently as of late, though she couldn’t say why.
This was the first time Nick had noticed her, as far as she knew. If she left quickly, though, she could be away before the class let out. But no sooner had the thought occurred to her than a line of children filed out the door, and Nick was by her side.
“Hello,” he said, smiling down at her.
“I happened to be walking by and heard your voice – I mean, voices,” Lirael said, looking intently at the floor.
“We’re learning the rhyme about the Great Charters,” he said. “Of course, most of the children already know it, but it’s all new for me.” He looked unconcerned by the age difference between him and his classmates. Lirael, thinking of her years of unhappiness in the Hall of Youth, wondered if this had more to do with Nick’s personality, or the expectations of those around him.
“How’s the class going?” she asked him.
“Really well!” he said. “I’d always thought that magic was inherently unorganized, the absolute opposite of science. But magic here is ordered by its very nature! It has structure, follows rules, uses symbols – just like science back home. Of course, I’ve barely started learning the basics, but I can’t wait to learn more. I think it would be fascinating to take the perspective of Ancelstierrian science and do a broad survey of the Old Kingdom’s magic.”
Lirael wasn’t entirely sure she recognized the Charter in Nick’s description of structure and rules. The Charter was bound, certainly, but it had a fluidity and willingness to be shaped that seemed essential to its very nature. Still, maybe Nick’s perspective could offer a valuable contribution to current understanding. There was certainly plenty left to be learned about the Charter and Charter Magic.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” she said, glancing at the floor again. She wondered, perhaps for the hundredth time, how other people could feel so comfortable talking and forming friendships. She was fine around Sabriel and Sam, and even starting to feel comfortable with Ellimere and Touchestone, but other people still felt like a significant effort.
“I should go,” Lirael said, cutting off whatever polite conversation Nick was going to offer. She wasn’t sure how to read the expression on his face, but she assumed it was relief.
“Oh, okay,” he said, after a moment.
“See you later,” she said, turning and heading down the corridor. She really needed to stick to the family, she decided as she walked. She just wasn’t good at getting other people to like her.
“Lirael – wait!”
She turned back. Nick was walking swiftly to catch up, looking unhappy. She looked at him curiously.
“Do you – do you maybe not like me, very much?” he asked, in a rush. “I’m only asking because it seems like – I mean, I don’t want to be a bother.”
Lirael stared at him. “I thought you didn’t like me! I’ve never been very good at making friends, so I thought...”
Nick laughed, a light, merry sound that made Lirael smile involuntarily. “Like you? Lirael, you are the only thing that kept me from being consumed by the Destroyer. I literally tried to save the world from destruction just because you asked me to!”
“That was because I’m the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. I was just doing my job.”
“I didn’t resist the Destroyer because you were the Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” Nick told her. “I did it because it was you.”
Lirael knew he was being absurd – Nick had been nearly delirious when she’d met him, and would have responded to any kind voice – but she couldn’t help being pleased. If this is what having friends was like, she thought to herself, she might be able to get behind it.
“I was planning to finish my walk,” she offered, “if you’d like to join me.”
“I’d love to,” he replied.
Lirael led the way down the corridor, and out towards her favorite courtyard.
“So I heard you were off again with Sabriel,” Nick said, and she nodded. “How long were you gone for?”
“A few weeks. Sometimes it feels like we’re away more than we’re here.”
“It must be nice to be home.”
“It is,” she responded, almost surprised to hear herself say it. “It’s even nicer to have a place you like to come home to, you know?”
Nick was silent for a moment, contemplating what she had said. “I do know, actually,” he said at last. “My family is very well established at home – not quite the equivalent of royalty, but very influential. Things always came easily to me, and I knew how to fit in without even trying. But after … everything here … I didn’t fit in anymore. I went home because I thought that it would be easiest to go back to what I’d always known, but once I got there I realized that I didn’t belong there anymore. We have an expression, back in Ancelstierre: trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I didn’t even realize how bad it was until I got here and realized there was a whole world of square holes out there!” He laughed, ruefully. “You must think I’m crazy.”
“No,” Lirael said softly. “I’ve been a square peg too. I spent my whole life longing to fit in before I realized that I was trying in the wrong place.”
“It’s nice when you find your place,” he said, and there was something in his gaze that seemed to suggest he meant more than the Old Kingdom.
“Yes,” Lirael told him. “It is.”