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“What!” screamed Lirael. Then she said more quietly, “What? You mean it’s escaping?”
“It will soon,” confirmed the Dog. “I thought you knew. Free Magic can corrode Charter marks as well as flesh. I suppose you could renew the spell.”
Lirael shook her head. Her throat still hadn’t recovered from the master mark she’d used last time. It would be too risky to chance speaking it again before she was completely better. Not without the added strength of a Charter-spelled sword—which brought her back to the original problem.
“You’ll have to borrow a sword, then,” declared the Dog, fixing Lirael with a serious eye. “I don’t suppose anyone will have the right sort of wand. Not really a Clayr thing, rowan.”
“I don’t think swords redolent with binding spells are, either,” protested Lirael, slumping into her chair. “Why couldn’t I just be an ordinary Clayr? If I’d got the Sight, I wouldn’t be wandering around the Library getting into trouble! If I ever do get the Sight, I swear by the Charter I am never going to go exploring, ever again!”
“Mmmm,” said the Dog, with an expression Lirael couldn’t fathom, though it seemed to be loaded with hidden meaning. “That’s as may be. On the matter of swords, you are in error. There are a number of swords of power within these halls. The Captain of the Rangers has one, the Observatory Guard have three—well, one is an axe, but it holds the same spells within its steel. Closer to home, the Chief Librarian has one, too. A very old and famous sword, in fact, most appropriately named Binder. It will do nicely.”
Lirael looked at the Dog with such a blank stare that the hound stopped pacing, cleared her throat, and said, “Pay attention, Lirael. I said that you were in error about—”
“I heard what you said,” snapped Lirael. “You must be absolutely mad! I can’t steal the Chief’s sword! She always has it with her! She probably sleeps with it!”
“She does,” replied the Dog smugly. “I checked.”
“Dog!” wailed Lirael, trying to keep her breathing down to less than one breath a second. “Please, please do not go looking in the Chief Librarian’s rooms! Or anywhere else! What would happen if someone saw you?”
“They didn’t,” replied the Dog happily. “Anyway, the Chief keeps the sword in her bedroom, but not actually in bed with her. She puts it on a stand next to her bed. So you can borrow it while she’s asleep.”
“No,” replied Lirael, shaking her head. “I’m not creeping into the Chief’s bedroom. I’d rather fight the Stilken without a sword.”
“Then you’ll die,” said the Disreputable Dog, suddenly very serious. “The Stilken will drink your blood and grow stronger from it. Then it will creep out into the lower reaches of the Library, emerging every now and then to capture librarians, to take them one by one, feasting on their flesh in some dark corner where the bones will never be found. It will find allies, creatures bound even deeper in the Library, and will open doors for the evil that lurks outside. You must bind it, but you cannot succeed without the sword.”
“What if you help me?” asked Lirael. There had to be some way of avoiding the Chief, some way that didn’t involve swords at all. Trying to get Mirelle’s sword, or the ones from the Observatory, would not be any easier than the Chief’s. She didn’t even know exactly where the Observatory was.
“I’d like to,” replied the Dog. “But it is your Stilken. You let it out. You must deal with the consequences.”
“So you won’t help,” said Lirael sadly. She had hoped, just for a moment, that the Disreputable Dog would step in and fix everything for her. She was a magical creature, after all, possibly of some power. But not enough to take on a Stilken, it seemed.
“I will advise,” said the Dog. “As is only proper. But you will have to borrow the sword yourself, and perform the binding. Tonight is probably as good a time as any.”
“Tonight?” asked Lirael, in a very small voice.
“Tonight,” confirmed the Dog. “At the stroke of midnight, when all such adventures should begin, you will enter the Chief Librarian’s room. The sword is on the left, past the wardrobe, which is strangely full of black waistcoats. If all goes well, you will be able to return it before the dawn.”
“If all goes well,” repeated Lirael somberly, remembering the silver fire in the Stilken’s eyes, and those terrible hooks. “Do you . . . do you think I should leave a note, in case . . . in case all does not go well?”
“Yes,” said the Dog, removing the last small shred of Lirael’s self-confidence. “Yes. That would be a very good idea.”
Chapter Twelve
Into the Lair of the Chief Librarian
When the great water-powered clock in the Middle Refectory showed fifteen minutes to midnight, Lirael left her hiding spot in the breakfast servery and climbed up through an air shaft to the Narrow Way, which would in turn take her to the Southscape and Chief Librarian Vancelle’s rooms.
Lirael had dressed in her librarian’s uniform in case she met anyone, and carried an envelope addressed to the Chief. A skeleton staff of librarians did work through the night, though they didn’t usually employ Third Assistants like Lirael. If she was stopped, Lirael would claim she was taking an urgent message. In fact, the envelope contained her “just in case” note, alerting the Chief to the presence of the Stilken.
But she didn’t meet anyone. No one came down the Narrow Way, which lived up to its name by being too narrow for two people to pass abreast. It was rarely used, because if you did meet someone going the other way, the more junior Clayr would have to backtrack—sometimes for its entire length, which was more than half a mile.
The Southscape was wider, and much more risky for Lirael because so many senior Clayr had rooms off its broad expanse. Fortunately, the marks that lit it so brightly during the day had faded to a glimmer at night, producing heavy shadows for her to hide in.
The door to the Chief’s rooms, however, was brightly lit by a ring of Charter marks around the book-and-sword emblem that was carved into the stone next to the doorway.
Lirael looked at the lights balefully. Not for the first time, she wondered what she was doing. It probably would have been better to confess months ago when she initially got into trouble. Then someone else could deal with the Stilken—
A touch at her leg made her jump and almost scream. She stifled the scream as she recognized the Disreputable Dog.
“I thought you weren’t going to help,” she whispered, as the Dog jumped up and attempted to lick her face. “Get down, you idiot!”
“I’m not helping,” said the Dog happily. “I’ve come to watch.”
“Great,” replied Lirael, trying to sound sarcastic. Secretly, she was pleased. Somehow, the lair of the Chief Librarian seemed less threatening with the Dog along.
“When is something going to happen?” the Dog asked a minute later, as Lirael still stood in the shadows, watching the door.
“Now,” said Lirael, hoping that saying the word would give her the courage to begin. “Now!”
She crossed the corridor in ten long strides, gripped the bronze doorknob, and pushed. No Clayr needed to lock her door, so Lirael wasn’t expecting any resistance. The door opened, and Lirael stepped in, the Dog whisking past her on the way.
She shut the door quietly behind her and turned to survey the room. It was mainly a living space, dominated by bookshelves on three walls, several comfortable chairs, and a tall, thin sculpture of a sort of squashed-in horse, carved out of translucent stone.
But it was the fourth wall that attracted Lirael’s attention. It was a single, vast window from floor to ceiling, made of the clearest, cleanest glass Lirael had ever seen.
Through the window, Lirael could see the entire Ratterlin valley stretching southward, the river a wide streak of silver far below, shining in the moonlight. It was snowing lightly outside, and snowflakes whirled about in wild dances as they fell down the mountainside. None stuck to the window, or left any mark upon it.
Lirael flinc
hed and stepped back as a dark shape swooped past, straight through the falling snow. Then she realized it was only an owl, heading down the valley for a midnight snack.
“There’s lots to do before dawn,” whispered the Dog conversationally, as Lirael kept staring out the window, transfixed by that ribbon of silver winding off to the far horizon and by the strange moonlit vista that stretched as far as she could see. Beyond the horizon lay the Kingdom proper: the great city of Belisaere, with all its marvels, open to the sky and surrounded by the sea. All the world—the world that the other Clayr Saw in the ice of the Observatory—was out there, but all she knew of it was from books or from travelers’ tales overheard in the Lower Refectory.
For the first time, Lirael wondered what the Clayr were trying to See out there with the greatly expanded Watches. Where was the place that resisted the Sight? What was the future that was beginning there, perhaps even as she looked out?
Something tickled at the back of her mind, a sense of déjà vu or a fleeting memory. But nothing came, and she remained entranced, staring at the outside world.
“A lot to do!” repeated the Dog, a little louder.
