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The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting called it a Dark Mirror, and Lirael had read, at least in part, how it might be used. But the Dark Mirror would not work in this room, or in any part of the world of Life. It could be used only in Death, and Lirael had no intention of going there, even if the book professed to show her how to come back. Death was the province of the Abhorsen, not the Clayr, even though the peculiar use of the Dark Mirror could possibly be related to the Clayr’s gift of Sight.
Lirael snapped shut the Dark Mirror and laid it on the table. But her fingers still rested upon it. She stood there like that for a full minute, thinking. Then she picked it up and slipped it into her left waistcoat pocket, to join the company of a pen nib, a length of waxed string, and a seriously foreshortened pencil. After another moment of hesitation, she picked up the panpipes and put them in her right pocket with the clockwork mouse. Finally, she picked up The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting and tucked it into the front of her waistcoat.
She walked back to the Disreputable Dog. It was time for the two of them to have a very serious talk about what was going on. The Book, the Dark Mirror, and the panpipes had lain here for a thousand years or more, waiting in the dark for someone the Clayr of long ago had known would come.
Waiting in the dark for a woman named Lirael.
Waiting for her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A Troublesome Season
Prince Sameth stood shivering on the narrow sentry walk of the Palace’s second tallest tower. He was wearing his heaviest fur cloak, but the wind still cut through it, and he couldn’t be bothered to cast a Charter-spell for warmth. He half wanted to catch a cold, because it would mean escaping from the training schedule Ellimere had forced upon him.
He was standing on the sentry walk for two reasons. The first reason was that he wanted to look out in the hope that he would see either his father or his mother returning. The second was that he wanted to avoid Ellimere and everyone else who wanted to organize his life.
Sam missed his parents, not just because they might free him from Ellimere’s tyranny. But Sabriel was constantly in demand away from Belisaere, flying her red and gold Paperwing from one trouble spot to the next. It was a bad winter, people repeatedly said in Sam’s hearing, with so much activity from the Dead and from Free Magic creatures. Sam always shivered inside as they said it, knowing their eyes were on him and that he should be studying The Book of the Dead, preparing himself to help his mother.
He should be studying now, he thought glumly, but he continued to stare out over the frosted roofs of the city and through the rising smoke of thousands of cozy fires.
He hadn’t opened the book at all since Ellimere had given it to him. The green and silver volume remained safely locked in a cupboard in his workroom. He thought about it every day, and looked at it, but couldn’t bring himself to actually read it. In fact, he spent the hours he was supposed to be studying it trying to work out how he could tell his mother that he couldn’t. He couldn’t read the book, and he couldn’t face going into Death again.
Ellimere allowed him two hours a day for study of the book, or “Abhorsen prep” as she called it, but Sam did no reading. He wrote instead. Speech after speech in which he tried to explain his feelings and his fears. Letters to Sabriel. Letters to Touchstone. Letters to both parents. All of them ended up in the fire.
“I’ll just tell her,” announced Sam to the wind. He didn’t speak too loudly in case the sentry on the far side of the tower heard him. The guards already thought he was a miserable excuse for a Prince. He didn’t want them thinking he was a mad Prince as well.
“No, I’ll tell Dad, and then he can tell her,” he added after a moment’s thought. But Touchstone had barely returned from Estwael when he had had to ride south to the Guard Fort at Barhedrin Hill, just north of the Wall. There had been reports that the Ancelstierrans were allowing groups of Southerling refugees to cross the Wall and settle in the Old Kingdom—or in actuality, to be killed by the creatures or wild folk who roamed the Borderlands. Touchstone had gone to investigate these reports, to see what the Ancelstierrans were up to, and to save any of the Southerlings who might have survived.
“Stupid Ancelstierrans,” muttered Sam, kicking the wall. Unfortunately, his other foot slipped on the icy stone, and he skidded into the wall, smacking his funny bone.
“Ow!” he exclaimed, clutching his elbow. “Blast it!”
“You all right, sir?” asked the guard, who came at a run, his hob-nailed boots providing much better purchase than Sam’s rabbit-fur slippers. “You don’t want to break a leg.”
Sam scowled. He knew that the prospect of his dancing the Bird of Dawning provided no end of amusement for the guards. His sense of self-worth wasn’t helped by their badly disguised snickering or the ease with which Ellimere practiced her own future role, acting as co-regent with grace and authority—at least to everyone except Sam.
Sam’s stumbling rehearsals for the Bird of Dawning part in the Midwinter and Midsummer Festivals was only one of the many areas in which he displayed himself as poorer royal material than his sister. He couldn’t pretend enthusiasm for the dances, he often fell asleep in Petty Court, and while he knew he was a very competent swordsman, he somehow didn’t feel like stretching his ability at practice with the guards.
Nor did he show up well at Perspective. Ellimere always threw herself into the task at hand, working like fury. Sam did quite the reverse, staring into space and worrying about his clouded future, often becoming so engrossed that he stopped doing whatever he was supposed to be doing.
“Sir, are you all right?” the guard repeated.
Sam blinked. There, he was doing it again. Staring into space while he thought about staring into space.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, flexing his gloved fingers. “Slipped. Hit my funny bone.”
“See anything interesting out there?” asked the guard. His name was Brel, Sam remembered. Quite a friendly guard, not one who stifled a smile every time Sam walked past in his Bird of Dawning costume.
“No,” replied Sam, shaking his head. He looked out again, down into the interior of the city. The Midwinter Festival was to start in a few days. Construction of the Frost Fair was in full swing. A great, bustling tent town on the frozen surface of Lake Loesare, the Frost Fair had pageant wagons and players, jesters and jugglers, musicians and magicians, exhibitions and expositions, and all sorts of games, not to mention food from every corner of the Old Kingdom and beyond. Lake Loesare covered ninety acres of Belisaere’s central valley, but the Frost Fair overflowed it, extending into the public gardens that lined the lakeshore.
Sam had always liked the Frost Fair, but he looked down on it now without interest. All he could feel was a cold and black depression.
“All the fun of the fair,” said Brel, clapping his hands together. “It looks like it’ll be a good festival this year.”
“Does it?” asked Sam bleakly. He would have to dance on the final day of the Festival, as the Bird of Dawning. It was his job to carry the green sprig of Spring at the tail end of the Winter procession, behind Snow, Hail, Sleet, Fog, Storm, and Frost. They were all professional dancers on stilts, so they not only loomed threateningly over the Bird but also showed up Sam’s lack of expertise.
The Winter Dance was long and complicated, weaving through two miles of the Fair’s winding ways. But it was much longer than that, because there was lots of doubling back as the Six Spirits of Winter ducked around the Bird and tried to prolong their season by stealing the sprig of Spring from under Sam’s golden wing, or by tripping him up with their stilts.
There had been two full rehearsals so far. The Spirits of Winter were supposed to fail at tripping the Bird, but so far even the skill of the other dancers couldn’t prevent the Bird from tripping himself. By the end of the first rehearsal, the Bird had fallen three times and bent its beak twice, and certainly had extremely ruffled feathers. The second rehearsal had been even worse, when the
Bird crashed into Sleet and knocked her off her stilts. The new Sleet still wouldn’t talk to him.
“They say a hard practice means an easy dance,” said Brel.
Sam nodded and looked away from the guard. There was no sign of a Paperwing gliding in against the wind, or a troop of horsemen bearing the royal banner on the southern road. It was a waste of time looking for his parents.
Brel coughed into his glove. Sam glanced back as the guard inclined his head and resumed his slow march around the sentry walk, his trumpet bumping gently on its strap against his back.
