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Filris would have liked the Disreputable Dog, too, Lirael thought, glancing over to where the hound slept nearby. She was curled into a ball, her tail wrapped completely around her back legs, almost up to her snout. She was snoring slightly and twitching every now and then, as if she dreamed of chasing rabbits.
Lirael was about to wake up the Dog when she felt the book poking into her. In the light, she realized it wasn’t bound in fur or hide, but had some sort of closely knitted cover over heavy boards, which was very peculiar indeed.
She picked it up and flicked it open to the title page, but even before she read the first word, she knew it was a book of power. Every part of it was saturated with Charter Magic. There were marks in the paper, marks in the ink, marks in the stitching of the spine.
The title page said merely In the Skin of a Lyon. Lirael turned it over, hoping to see a list of contents, but it went straight into the first chapter. She started to read beyond the words “Chapter One,” but the type suddenly blurred and shimmered. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, but when she looked again the page had the heading “Preface,” though she was sure it could not have turned. She turned back, and there was the title page again.
Lirael frowned and flipped forward. It still said “Preface.” Before it could change, she started to read.
“The making of Charter-skins,” she read,
allows the Mage to take on more than the mere semblance or seeming of a beast or plant. A correctly woven Charter-skin, worn in the prescribed fashion, gives the Mage the actual desired shape, with all the peculiarities, perceptions, limitations, and advantages of that shape.
This book is a theoretical examination of the art of making Charter-skins; a practical primer for the beginning shapewearer; and a compendium of complete Charter-skins, including those for the lyon, the horse, the hopping toade, the grey dove, the silver ash, and divers other useful shapes.
The course of study contained herein, if followed with fortitude and discipline, will equip the conscientious Mage with the knowledge needed to make a first Charter-skin within three or four years.
“A useful book, that one,” said the newly awake Dog, interrupting Lirael’s reading by thrusting her snout across the pages, clearly demanding a morning scratch between the ears.
“Very,” agreed Lirael, trying to keep reading around the Dog, without success. “Apparently if I follow the course of study in it, I’ll be able to take on another shape in three or four years.”
“Eighteen months,” yawned the Dog sleepily. “Two years if you’re lazy. Though you wear a Charter-skin—you don’t change your own shape, as such. Make sure you start on a Charter-skin that’ll be useful for exploring. You know, good at getting through small holes and so on.”
“Why?” asked Lirael.
“Why?” repeated the Dog incredulously, pulling her head out from under Lirael’s hand. “There’s so much to see and smell here! Whole levels of the Library that no one has been into for a hundred, a thousand years! Locked rooms full of ancient secrets. Treasure! Knowledge! Fun! Do you want to be just a Third Assistant Librarian all your life?”
“Not exactly,” replied Lirael stiffly. “I want to be a proper Clayr. I want to have the Sight.”
“Well, maybe we’ll find something that can wake it in you,” declared the Dog. “I know you have to work, but there’s so much other time that shouldn’t go to waste. What could be better than walking where no others have walked for a thousand years?”
“I suppose I might as well,” Lirael agreed, her imagination taking fire from the Dog’s words. There were plenty of doors she wanted to open. There was that strange hole in the rock, for instance, down where the main spiral came to an abrupt end—
“Besides,” the Dog added, interrupting her thoughts, “there are forces at work here that want you to use the book. Something freed the Stilken, and the creature’s presence has woken other magics, too. That tree would not have given up the book if you weren’t meant to have it.”
“I suppose,” said Lirael. She didn’t like the idea that the Stilken had had help to break free from its prison. That implied that there was some greater force of evil down here in the Old Levels, or that some power could reach into the Clayr’s Glacier from afar, despite all their wards and defenses.
If there was something like the Stilken—some Free Magic entity of great power—in the Library, Lirael felt it was her duty to find it. She felt that by defeating the Stilken, she had unconsciously taken the first step towards assuming the responsibility for destroying anything else like the creature that might be a threat to the Clayr.
Exploring would also fill up the time and distract her. Lirael realized she hadn’t thought much at all about Awakenings, or the Sight, over these last few months. Creating the Dog and discovering how to defeat the Stilken had filled nearly all her waking thoughts.
“I will learn a useful Charter-skin,” she declared. “And we will explore, Dog!”
“Good!” said the Dog, and she gave a celeb
ratory bark that echoed around the cavern. “Now you’d better run and get washed and changed, before Imshi wonders where you are.”
“What time is it?” asked Lirael, startled. Away from the peremptory whistle-blasts of Kirrith in the Hall of Youth, or the chiming clock in the Reading Room, she had no idea what time of day it was. She had thought it roughly dawn, for she felt she hadn’t had much sleep.
“One half past the . . . sixth hour of the morning,” replied the Dog, after cocking her ear, as if to some distant chime. “Give or take . . .”
Her voice trailed off, because Lirael had already left, breaking into a somewhat limping run. The Dog sighed and launched herself into a body-extending lope, easily catching up with Lirael before she shut the door.
Part
Two
Ancelstierre
1928 a.w.
The Old Kingdom
Eighteenth Year of the Restoration of King Touchstone I
Chapter Fourteen
Prince Sameth Hits a Six
Seven hundred miles south of the Clayr’s Glacier, twenty-two boys were playing cricket. In the Old Kingdom, beyond the Wall that lay thirty miles to the north, it was late autumn. Here in Ancelstierre, the last days of summer were proving warm and clear, perfect for the concluding match in the fiercely contested Senior Schoolboys’ Shield series, the primary focus for the sporting sixth formers of eighteen schools.
It was the last over of the match, with only one ball left to bowl, and three runs needed to win the innings, the match, and the series.
The batsman who faced that last ball was a month short of his seventeenth birthday and half an inch over six feet tall. He had tightly curling dark brown hair and distinctive black eyebrows. He was not exactly handsome, but pleasing to the eye, a striking figure in his white cricket flannels. Not that they were as crisp and starched as they had been earlier, since they were now drenched with the sweat of making seventy-four runs in partnership, sixty of them his own.
