The door moved slowly inwards, resisting her push, with a long-drawn-out screech of stone on stone. Colder air flowed from the other side, ruffling Lirael’s hair, making the Charter

lights dance. There was a damp smell, too, and the strange, oppressive feeling Lirael had encountered on the stairs grew stronger, like the beginning buzz of a toothache that heralds future pain.

A vast chamber lay beyond the door, space stretching up and out, seemingly endless, beyond the pool of light around her. A cavern, measureless in the dark, perhaps going on forever. Lirael stepped in and looked up, up into darkness, till her neck ached, and her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the gloom. Strange luminescence, not from Charter Magic lights, shone in patches here and there, rising up so high that the farthest glow was like a distant swathe of stars in the night. Still looking up, Lirael realized that she stood at the bottom of a deep rift that stretched up almost to the very pinnacle of Starmount itself. She looked across and saw that she stood on a broad ledge, and the rift continued past it, down into still deeper darkness, perhaps even to the root of the world itself. With that sight came recognition, for she knew only one chasm so narrow and so deep. Much higher up, it was spanned by closed bridges. Lirael had crossed it almost unknowingly many times, but had never seen its terrifying depth.

“I know this place,” said Lirael, her voice small and echoing. “We’re in the bottom of the Rift, aren’t we?”

She hesitated, then added, “The burial place of the Clayr.” The Disreputable Dog nodded but didn’t say anything.

“You knew, didn’t you?” continued Lirael, still looking up. She couldn’t see them, but she knew the higher reaches of the Rift were pockmarked with small caves, each one holding the mortal remains of a past Clayr. Generations of dead, carefully tucked away in this vertical cemetery. In a weird way, she could feel the presence of the graves, or the dead inside them . . . or something.

Her mother was not there, for she had died alone in some foreign land, far from the Clayr, too far for the body to be returned. But Filris rested here, as did others whom Lirael had known.

“It is a crypt,” she said, looking sternly at the Dog. “I knew it.”

“Actually it’s more of an ossuary,” the Dog began. “I

understand that when a Clayr Sees her death, she is lowered down by rope to a suitable ledge, where she digs her own—”

“They do not!” interrupted Lirael, shocked. “They only know when, to some degree. And Pallimor and the gardeners usually prepare the caves. Aunt Kirrith says it’s very ill-bred to want to dig your own cave—”

She stopped suddenly and whispered, “Dog? Am I here because they’ve Seen me die and I have to dig my own cave because I’m ill-bred?”

“I’m going to have to bite you properly if you keep up that nonsense,” growled the Dog. “Why this sudden preoccupation with dying, anyway?”

“Because I can feel it, feel it all around me,” muttered Lirael. “Particularly here.”

“That’s because the doorways to Death are ajar where many people have died, or where many lie buried,” said the Dog absently. “The Blood mixes a little, so there are always Clayr who are sensitive to Death. That’s what you feel. You shouldn’t be afraid of it.”

“I’m not, really,” replied Lirael, puzzled. “It’s like an ache or an itch. It makes me want to do something. Scratch it. Make it go away.”

“You don’t know any necromancy, do you?”

“Of course not! That’s Free Magic. It’s forbidden.”

“Not necessarily. Clayr have dabbled in Free Magic before,

and some still do,” said the Dog in a distracted manner. She’d caught the scent of something and was snuffling vigorously around Lirael’s feet.

“Who dabbles in Free Magic?” asked Lirael. The Dog didn’t answer but continued to sniff around Lirael’s feet. “What can you smell?”

“Magic,” said the Dog, looking up for a second before resuming her snuffle, roaming out in an ever-increasing circle. “Old, old magic. Hidden here, in the depths of the world. How very, very . . . yow!”

Her last words ended in a yelp as a sudden sheet of flame sprang up across the rift, heat and light exploding everywhere. Lirael, totally unprepared, staggered back, falling across the open doorway. An instant later, the Dog collided with her, smelling distinctly singed.

Inside the fiery wall, forms began to take shape, humanoid figures that flexed arms and legs within the flame. Charter marks roared and swam in the yellow-blue-red inferno, flowing too fast for Lirael to see what they were.

Then the figures stepped out of the flames, warriors composed entirely of fire, their swords white-hot and brilliant.

“Do something!” barked the Dog.

But Lirael just kept staring at the advancing warriors, mesmerized by the flames that flickered through their bodies. They were all part of one great Charter-spell, she saw, one enormously powerful sending made up of many parts. A guardiansending, like the one on the red wood door . . .

Lirael stood up, patted the Dog once on the head, and walked out, straight towards the ferocious heat and the guardians with their swords of flame.

“I am Lirael,” she said, investing her speech with the Charter marks of truth and clarity. “A Daughter of the Clayr.”

Her words hung in the air for a moment, cutting through the buzz and crackle of the fiery sendings. Then the guardians raised their swords as if in salute—and a wave of even more intense heat rolled forward, robbing Lirael’s lungs of air. She choked, coughed, took one step back . . . and fainted.

When she came to, the Disreputable Dog’s tongue was just about to lick her face. For about the tenth time, judging from the thick film of dog saliva on her cheek.

“What happened?” she asked, quickly looking around.

There were no fires now, no burning guardians, but small Charter marks for light twinkled all around her like tiny stars. “They burnt up your air when they saluted. I think that whoever created those sendings expected people to identify themselves from the door,” said the Dog, attempting another lick, only to be fended off. “Or else they were particularly stupid sendings. Still, at least one of them had the good grace to throw out a handful of these little lights. Some of your hair has been burnt off, by the way.”

“Curse it!” exclaimed Lirael, examining the singed ends of her hair, where they stuck out from under her scarf. “Aunt Kirrith will notice that for sure! I’ll have to tell her I leant over a candle or something. Speaking of Kirrith, we’d better start back.”

“Not yet!” protested the Dog. “Not after all this effort. Besides, the lights mark a path. Look! That must be it. Lirael’s Path!”

Lirael sat up and looked where the Dog was pointing—

in the classic pose, one foreleg up and snout eagerly forward. Sure enough, there was a path of tiny, twinkling Charter lights, leading farther along the ledge, to where the Rift narrowed

into an even more ominous darkness.

“We really should go back,” she said, half-heartedly. The path of lights was there, beckoning. The sendings had let her past. There must be something at the other end worth getting to. Maybe even something that would help her gain the gift of Sight, she thought, helpless against that longing, the tiny hope that still lived inside her heart. All her years of searching in the Library had not helped her. Perhaps it would be otherwise, here in the ancient heart of the Clayr’s realm.

“Come on, then,” she said, pushing herself up with a groan. Burnt hair and bruises—that was all she’d found so far. “What are you waiting for?”

“You go first,” retorted the Dog. “My nose still hurts from your stupid relatives’ blazing doormen.”

The path of lights led farther along the ledge, and the Rift narrowed, the rock walls closing in, till Lirael could reach out and run her fingers along the cold, wet stone on either side of her. She stopped doing that when she discovered that the luminescence came from a damp fungus that made her fingertips glow and smell like rotten cabbage.

As the way grew narrower, it also descended farther into the mountain, and a chill dankness banished the last remnants of heat from Lirael’s scorched face. There was also a sound, a deep rumbling that vibrated up through her feet, getting louder as they walked on. At first, Lirael thought she was imagining it, that perhaps it was part of what the Dog called her sense of Death. Then she realized what it was: the full-throated roar of rushing water.

“We must be near an underground river or something,” she said, nervously raising her voice to counter the rising roar of the water. Like most of the Clayr, she could barely swim, and her experience of rivers was confined to the awesome ice-melt

torrents that raged from the glacier every Spring.

“We are almost upon it,” replied the Dog, who could see farther in the glow of the star-lined path. “As the poet had it: “Swift river born in deepest night,

Rushing forth to catch the light.

Deep ice and dark its swaddling cloth,

The Kingdom’s foes will feel its wroth.

Till mighty Ratterlin spends its strength,

In the Delta at full length.

“Hmmm . . . I may have forgotten a line there. Let’s see, ‘Swift river—’”

“The Ratterlin’s source is here?” interrupted Lirael, pointing ahead. “I thought it was just meltwater. I didn’t know it had a source.”

“There is a spring,” replied the Dog, after a pause. “A very old spring. In the heart of the mountain, in the deepest dark. Stop!”

Lirael obeyed, one hand instinctively clutching at the loose fold of skin on the Dog’s neck, just behind her collar.

At first she didn’t understand why the Dog had stopped her, till the hound led her on, a few more cautious steps. With those steps, the sound of the river suddenly became a thundering roar, and cold spray slapped her in the face.

They had come to the river. The path ahead was a slender, slippery bridge of wet stone that stretched out twenty paces or more, to end in yet another door. The bridge had no rails, and was less than two feet wide. Its narrowness, and the rushing water below, were a clear indication that it was designed to be a barrier to the Dead. Nothing of that kind could cross here. Lirael looked at the bridge, the door, then down at the dark, rushing water, feeling both fear and a terrible fascination. The constant motion of the water and the incessant roar were mesmerizing, but finally she managed to tear her gaze away. She looked at the Dog, and though her words were halfdrowned by the crash of the river, exclaimed, “I am not going to cross that!”

The Dog ignored her, and Lirael started to repeat herself. But the words stayed on her tongue as Lirael saw that the Dog’s paws had grown twice as large as usual, and flattened out. She also looked quite smug.

“I bet you’ve even grown suckers,” shouted Lirael, shuddering with distaste at the thought. “Like an octopus.”

“Of course I have,” the Dog shouted back, lifting one paw with a squelching pop that Lirael could hear even over the river’s roar. “This looks like a very treacherous bridge.”

“Yes, it does,” bawled Lirael, looking at the bridge again. Clearly the Dog intended to cross, and with her sucker-footed help, Lirael guessed, crossing would go from impossible to merely dangerous. Sighing, she bent down and took off her shoes, eyes blinking against the constant spray. After tying the laces of her soft leather ankle-boots through her belt, she wriggled her toes on the stone. It was very cold, but Lirael was relieved to feel faint cross-hatching that she hadn’t seen in the dim light. That would give her some grip.

“I wonder what this bridge was designed to keep out,” she said, carefully slipping her fingers under the Dog’s collar, feeling the comforting buzz of the Charter Magic there and the even more comforting bulk of a well-balanced dog.

They had only taken the first step when Lirael voiced her second thought, her words inaudible with the river’s bellow all around them.

“Or what it was designed to keep in.”
Chapter Twenty-Two. Power of Three

The door at the far end of the bridge opened as soon as Lirael touched it. Once again, she felt Charter Magic flow into her, but it was not the friendly touch of the upper door, or the quiet recognition of the stone portal at the entrance to the Rift. This one was more like a wary examination, followed by immediate, but not necessarily friendly, recognition.

Under her hand, the Dog shivered as the door swung open.

Lirael felt the tremor and wondered why, till she caught the distinctive, corrosive scent of Free Magic. It was coming from somewhere ahead, strangely overlaid with Charter Magic that bound and contained it.

“Free Magic,” whispered Lirael, hesitating. But the Dog continued to move forward, dragging her along. Reluctantly, Lirael followed her through the doorway.

As soon as Lirael passed the threshold, the door slammed shut behind her. In an instant, the roar of the river was cut off. So was the light from the Charter-marked trail. It was dark, darker than any darkness Lirael had ever known, a true dark in which it was suddenly difficult to even imagine light. The darkness pressed upon Lirael, making her doubt her own senses. Only the Dog’s warm skin under her hand told her that

she was still standing, that the room had not changed, and the floor had not tilted.

“Don’t move,” whispered the Dog, and Lirael felt a canine snout briefly press against her leg, as if the spoken warning weren’t enough.

The smell of Free Magic grew stronger. Lirael pinched her nose with one hand, trying not to breathe anything in, while her other hand went to the clockwork emergency mouse in her waistcoat pocket. Not that it was likely that even this clever device could find its way from here to the Library.