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In her study, the dog statuette sat benignly, surveying Lirael’s preparations from the top of her desk. Lirael spoke to it as she locked the door, with a spell since she wasn’t senior enough to rate a key or bar.
“This is it, little dog,” she said cheerfully, reaching over to stroke the dog’s stone snout with one finger. The sound of her own voice surprised her, not because of the huskiness that still remained from her damaged throat, but because it sounded strange and unfamiliar. She realized then that she hadn’t spoken for two days. The other librarians had long accepted her silence, and she had not recently been taxed with any conversation that required more than a nod, a shake of the head, or simply instant application to an ordered task.
The beginning of the dog-sending was under her desk, hidden by a draped cloth. Lirael reached in, removed the cloth, and gently slid out the framework she had built to start the spell. She ran her hands over it, feeling the warmth of the Charter marks that swam lazily up and down the twisted silver wires that formed the shape of a dog. It was a small dog, about a foot high, the size constrained by the amount of silver wire Lirael could easily obtain. Besides, she thought a small dog-sending would be more sensible than a big one. She wanted a comfortable friend, not a dog large enough to be a guard-sending.
Aside from the framework of silver wire, the dog shape had two eyes made from jet buttons and a nose of black felt, all of them already imbued with Charter marks. It also had a tail made from braided dog hair, clipped surreptitiously from several visiting dogs down in the Lower Refectory. That tail was already prepared with Charter marks, marks that defined something of what it was to be a dog.
The final part of the spell required Lirael to reach into the Charter and pluck forth several thousand Charter marks, letting them flow through her and into the silver-wire armature. Marks that fully described a dog, and marks that would give the semblance of life, though not the actuality.
When the spell was finished, the silver wire, jet buttons, and braided dog hair would be gone, replaced by a puppy-sized dog of spell-flesh. It would look like a dog till you got close enough to see the Charter marks that made it up, but she wouldn’t be able to touch it. Touching most sendings was like touching water: the skin would yield and then re-form around whatever touched it. All the toucher would feel was the buzz and warmth of the Charter marks.
Lirael sat down cross-legged next to the silver-wire model and started to empty her mind, taking slow breaths, forcing them down so far that her stomach pushed outwards as the air reached the very bottoms of her lungs.
She was just about to reach into the Charter and begin when her eye caught sight of the small stone dog, up on the desk. It somehow looked lonely up there, as if it felt left out. Impulsively, Lirael got up and set it in her lap when she sat back down. The small carving tilted slightly but stayed upright, looking at the silver-wire copy of itself.
Lirael took a few more breaths and began again. She had written out the marks she required, in the safe shorthand all Mages used to record Charter marks. But those papers stayed by her side, still in a neat pile. She found that the first marks came easily, and those after them seemed to almost choose themselves. Mark after mark leapt out of the flow of the Charter and into her mind, then as quickly out, crossing to the silver-wire dog in an arc of golden lightning.
As more and more marks rushed through her, Lirael slipped further into a trance state, barely aware of anything except the Charter and the marks that filled her. The golden lightning became a solid bridge of light from her outstretched hands to the silver wires, growing brighter by the second. Lirael closed her eyes against the glare, and she felt herself slip towards the edge of dream, her conscious mind barely awake. Images moved restlessly between the marks in her mind. Images of dogs, many dogs, of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Dogs barking. Dogs running after thrown sticks. Dogs refusing to run. Puppies waddling on uncertain paws. Old dogs shivering themselves upright. Happy dogs. Sad dogs. Hungry dogs. Fat, sleepy dogs.
More and more images flashed through, till Lirael felt she had seen glimpses of every dog that had ever lived. But still the Charter marks roared through her mind. She had long lost track of where she was up to, or which marks were next—and the golden light was too bright for her to see how much of the sending was done.
Yet the marks flowed on. Lirael realized that not only did she not know which mark she was up to—she didn’t even know the marks that were passing through her head! Strange, unknown marks were pouring out of her into the sending. Powerful marks that rocked her body as they left, forcing everything else out of her mind with the urgency of their passage.
Desperately, Lirael tried to open her eyes, to see what the marks were doing—but the glow was blinding now, and hot. She tried to stand up, to direct the flow of marks into the wall or ceiling. But her body seemed disconnected from her brain. She could feel everything, but her legs and arms wouldn’t move, just as if she were trying to wake herself from the end of a dream.
Still the marks came, and then Lirael’s nostrils caught the terrible, unmistakable reek of Free Magic, and she knew something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.
She tried to scream, but no sound came out, only Charter marks that leapt from her mouth towards the golden radiance. Charter marks continued to fly from her fingers, too, and swam in her eyes, spilling down inside her tears, which turned to steam as they fell.
More and more marks flew through Lirael, through her tears and her silent screaming. They swarmed through like an endless flight of bright butterflies forced through a garden gate. But even as the thousands and thousands of marks flung themselves into the brightness, the smell of Free Magic rose, and a crackling white light formed in the center of the golden glow, so bright it shone through Lirael’s shut eyelids, piercing her brimming eyes.
Held motionless by the torrent of Charter Magic, Lirael could do nothing as the white light grew stronger, subduing the rich golden glow of the swirling marks. It was the end, she knew. Whatever she’d done now, it was much, much worse than freeing a Stilken; so much worse that she couldn’t really comprehend it. All she knew was that the marks that passed through her now were more ancient and more powerful than anything she had ever seen. Even if the Free Magic that grew in front of her spared her life, the Charter marks would burn her to a husk.
Except, she realized, they didn’t hurt. Either she was in shock and already dying, or the marks weren’t harming her. Any one of them would have killed her if she’d tried to use them normally. But several hundred had already stormed through, and she was still breathing. Wasn’t she?
Frightened by the thought that she might not be breathing, Lirael focused all her remaining energy on inhaling—just as the tremendous flow of marks suddenly stopped. She felt her connection to the Charter sever as the last mark jumped across to the boiling mass of gold and white light that had been her silver-wire dog. Her breath came with sudden force, and she overbalanced, falling backwards. At the last moment, she caught the edge of the bookshelf, almost pulling that on top of her. But the shelf didn’t quite go over, and she pulled herself back up to a sitting position, ready to use her newly filled lungs to scream.
The scream stayed unborn. Where the Free Magic and Charter marks had fought in their sparking, swirling brilliance, there was now a globe of utter darkness that occupied the space where the wire dog and the desk had been. The awful tang of Free Magic was gone, too, replaced by a sort of damp animal odor that Lirael couldn’t quite identify.
A tiny pinprick star appeared on the black surface of the globe, and then another, and another, till it was no longer dark but as star-filled as a clear night sky. Lirael stared at it, mesmerized by the multitude of stars. They grew brighter and brighter, till she was forced to blink.
In the instant of that blink, the globe disappeared, leaving behind a dog. Not a cute, cuddly Charter sending of a puppy, but a waist-high black and tan mongrel that seemed to be entirely real, including its impressive teeth. It had no
ne of the characteristics of a sending. The only hint of its magical origin was a thick collar around its neck that swam with more Charter marks that Lirael had never seen before.
The dog looked exactly like a life-size, breathing version of the stone statuette. Lirael stared at the real thing, then down at her lap.
The statuette was gone.
She looked back up. The dog was still there, scratching its ear with a back foot, eyes half-closed with concentration. It was soaking wet, as if it had just been for a swim.
Suddenly, the dog stopped scratching, stood up, and shook itself, spraying droplets of dirty water all over Lirael and all over the study. Then it ambled across and licked the petrified girl on the face with a tongue that most definitely was all real dog and not some Charter-made imitation.
When that got no response, it grinned and announced, “I am the Disreputable Dog. Or Disreputable Bitch, if you want to get technical. When are we going for a walk?”
Chapter Eleven
Search for a Suitable Sword
The walk that Lirael and the Disreputable Dog took that day was the first of many, though Lirael never could remember exactly where they went, or what she said, or what the Dog answered. All she could recall was being in the same sort of daze she’d had when she’d hit her head—only this time she wasn’t hurt.
Not that it mattered, because the Disreputable Dog never really answered her questions. Later, Lirael would repeat the same questions and get different, still-evasive answers. The most important questions—“What are you? Where did you come from?”—had a whole range of answers, starting with “I’m the Disreputable Dog” and “from elsewhere” and occasionally becoming as eloquent as “I’m your Dog” and “You tell me—it was your spell.”
The Dog also refused, or was unable, to answer questions about her nature. She seemed in most respects to be exactly like a real dog, albeit a speaking one. At least at first.
For the first two weeks they were together, the Dog slept in Lirael’s study, under the replacement desk that Lirael had been forced to purloin from an empty study nearby. She had no idea what had happened to her own, as not a bit of it remained after the Dog’s sudden appearance.
The Dog ate the food Lirael stole for her from the Refectory or the kitchens. She went walking with Lirael four times a day in the most disused corridors and rooms Lirael could find, a nerve-wracking exercise, though somehow the Dog always managed to hide from approaching Clayr at the last second. She was discreet in other ways as well, always choosing dark and unused corners to use as a toilet—though she did like to alert Lirael to the fact that she had done so, even if her human friend declined to sniff at the result.
