Belgaer was the name of the fifth bell. The Thinker. Belgaer could mend the erosion of mind that often occurred in Death, restoring the thoughts and memory of the Dead. It could also erase those thoughts, in Life as well as in Death, and in necromancers’ hands had been used to splinter the minds of enemies. Sometimes it splintered the mind of the necromancer, for Belgaer liked the sound of its own voice and would try to steal the chance to sing of its own accord.

The sixth bell was Saraneth, also known as Binder. Saraneth was the favorite bell of all Abhorsens. Large and trustworthy, it was powerful and true. Saraneth was used to dominate and bind the Dead, to make them obey the wishes and directions of the wielder.

Lirael was reluctant to touch the seventh bell, but she felt it would not be diplomatic to ignore the most powerful of all the bells, though it was cold and frightening to her touch.

Astarael, the Sorrowful. The bell that sent all who heard it into Death.

Lirael withdrew her finger and methodically checked every pouch, making sure the leather tongues were in place and the straps tight but also able to be undone with one hand. Then she put the bandolier on. The bells were hers, and she had accepted the armament of the Abhorsens.

Sam was waiting for her outside the front door, sitting on the steps. He was similarly armored and equipped, though he did not have a bow or a bell-bandolier.

“I found this in the armory,” he said, holding up a sword and tilting the blade so that Lirael could see the Charter marks etched into the steel. “It isn’t one of the named swords, but it is spelled for the destruction of the Dead.”

“Better late than never,” remarked Mogget, who was sitting on the front step looking sour.

Sam ignored the cat, pulled out a sheet of paper from inside his sleeve, and handed it to Lirael.

“This is the message I’ve sent by message-hawk to Barhedrin. The Guard post there will send it on to the Wall, and it will be passed through to the Ancelstierrans, who will . . . um . . . send it by a device called a telegraph to my parents in Corvere. That’s why it’s written in telegraphese, which is pretty strange if you’re not used to it. There were four hawks in the mews—not counting the one from Ellimere, which won’t fly again for a week or two—so I’ve sent two to Belisaere for Ellimere and two to Barhedrin.”

Lirael looked down at the paper and the words printed in Sam’s neat hand.

TO   KING TOUCHSTONE AND ABHORSEN SABRIEL

OLD KINGDOM EMBASSY CORVERE ANCELSTIERRE

COPY   ELLIMERE VIA MESSAGEHAWK

HOUSE SURROUNDED DEAD PLUS CHLORR NOW GREATER DEAD STOP HEDGE IS NECROMANCER STOP NICK WITH HEDGE STOP THEY EVIL UPDUG NEAR EDGE STOP GOING EDGE SELF PLUS AUNT LIRAEL FORMER CLAYR NOW ABHORSENINWAITING STOP PLUS MOGGET PLUS LIRAEL APOSTROPHE ESS CHARTER DOG STOP WILL DO WHAT CAN STOP SEND HELP COME SELVES EXPRESS URGENT STOP SENT TWO WEEKS PRIOR MIDSUMMER DAY SAMETH END

The message was indeed written strangely, but it made sense, thought Lirael. Given the limitations of the message-hawks’ small minds, “telegraphese” was probably a good form of communication even when a telegraph was not involved.

“I hope the hawks make it,” she said as Sam took the paper back. Somewhere out in the fog lurked Gore Crows, a swarm of corpse birds animated by a single Dead spirit. The message-hawks would have to get past them, and perhaps other dangers as well, before they could speed on to Barhedrin and Belisaere.

“We cannot count on it,” said the Dog. “Are you ready to go down the well?”

Lirael walked down the steps and took a few paces along the redbrick path. She shrugged her pack higher up her back and tightened the straps. Then she looked up at the sunny sky, now only a very small patch of blue, the walls of fog hemming it in on three sides and the mist from the waterfall on the fourth.

“I guess I’m ready,” she said.

Sam picked up his pack, but before he could put it on, Mogget leaped onto it and slid under the top flap. All that could be seen of him were his green eyes and one white-furred ear.

“Remember I advised against this way,” he instructed. “Wake me when whatever terrible thing is about to happen happens, or if it appears I might get wet.”

Before anyone could answer, Mogget wriggled deeper into the pack, and even his eyes and that one ear disappeared.

“How come I get to carry him?” asked Sam aggrievedly. “He’s supposed to be the Abhorsen’s servant.”

A paw came back out of the pack, and a claw pricked into the back of Sam’s neck, though it didn’t break the skin. Sam flinched and swore.

The Dog jumped up at the pack and braced her forepaws on it. Sam staggered forward and swore again as the Dog said, “No one will carry you if you don’t behave, Mogget.”

“And you won’t get any fish, either,” muttered Sam as he rubbed his neck.

Either one or both of these threats worked, or else Mogget had subsided into sleep. In any case, there was no reappearance of the claw or the cat’s sarcastic voice. The Dog dropped down, Sam finished adjusting the straps on his pack, and they set off along the brick path.

As the front door shut behind them, Lirael turned back and saw that every window was crowded with sendings. Hundreds of them, pressed close together against the glass, so their hooded robes looked like the skin of some giant creature, their faintly glowing hands like many eyes. They did not wave or move at all, but Lirael had the uncomfortable feeling that they were saying goodbye. As if they did not expect to see this particular Abhorsen-in-Waiting return.

The well was only thirty yards from the front door, hidden beneath a tangled network of wild roses that Lirael and Sam had to tear away, pausing every few minutes to suck their thorn-pierced fingers. The thorns were unusually long and sharp, Lirael thought, but she had limited experience with flowers. The Clayr had underground gardens and vast greenhouses lit by Charter marks, but most were dedicated to vegetables and fruit, and there was only one rose garden.

Once the rose vines were cleared away, Lirael saw a circular wooden cover of thick oak planks, about eight feet in diameter, set securely inside a low ring of pale white stones. The cover was chained in four places with bronze chains, the links set directly into the stones and bolted to the wood, so there was no need for padlocks.

Charter marks of locking and closing drifted across both wood and bronze, gleaming marks only just visible in the sunlight, till Sam touched the cover and they flared into sudden brightness.

Sam laid his hand on one of the bronze chains, feeling the marks within it and studying the spell. Lirael looked over his shoulder. She didn’t know even half of the marks, but she could hear Sam muttering names to himself as if they were familiar to him.

“Can you open it?” asked Lirael. She knew scores of spells for opening doors and gates, and had practical experience of opening ways into many places she wasn’t supposed to have entered in the Great Library of the Clayr. But she instinctively knew none of them would work here.

“I think so,” Sam replied hesitantly. “It’s an unusual spell, and there are a lot of marks I don’t know. As far as I can work out, there are two ways it can be opened. One I don’t understand at all. But the other . . .”

His voice trailed off as he touched the chain again and Charter Marks left the bronze to drift across his skin and then flow into the wood.

“I think we’re supposed to breathe on the chains . . . or kiss them . . . only it has to be the right person. The spell says ‘my children’s breath.’ But I can’t work out whose children or what that means. Any Abhorsen’s children, I guess.”

“Try it,” suggested Lirael. “A breath first, just in case.”

Sam looked doubtful but bent his head, took a deep breath, and blew on the chain.

The bronze fogged from the breath and lost its shine. Charter marks glittered and moved. Lirael held her breath. Sam stood up and edged away, while the Disreputable Dog came closer and sniffed.

Suddenly the chain groaned aloud, and everyone jumped back. Then a new link came out of the seemingly solid stone, followed by another and another, the chain rattling as it coiled to the ground. In a few seconds there was an extra six or seven feet of chain piled up, enough to allow that corner of the well cover to be lifted free.

“Good,” said the Disreputable Dog. “You do the next one, Mistress.”

Lirael bent over the next chain and breathed lightly upon it. Nothing happened for a moment, and she felt a stab of uncertainty. Her identity as an Abhorsen was so new, and so precarious, that it could be easily doubted.

Then the chain frosted, the marks shone, and the links came pouring out of the stone with the sharp rattle of metal. The sound was echoed almost immediately from the other side, as Sam breathed on the third chain.

Lirael breathed on the last chain, touching it for a moment as she took in a breath. She felt the marks shiver under her fingers, the lively reaction of a Charter-spell that knew its time had come. Like a person tensing muscles in that frozen instant before the beginning of a race.

With the loosening of the chains, Lirael and Sam were able to lift one end of the cover and slide it away. It was very heavy, so they didn’t drag it completely off, just making an opening large enough for them to climb down with their packs on.

Lirael had expected a wet, dank smell to come up from the open well, even though the Dog had said it wasn’t full of water. There was a smell, strong enough to overcome the scent of the roses, but it wasn’t of old standing water. It was a pleasant herbal odor that Lirael couldn’t identify.

“What can I smell?” she asked the Dog, whose nose had often picked up scents and odors that Lirael could neither smell, spell, or imagine.

“Very little,” replied the Dog. “Unless you’ve improved recently.”

“No,” said Lirael patiently. “There’s a particular smell coming out of the well. A plant, or an herb. But I can’t place it.”

Sam sniffed the air and his forehead furrowed in thought.

“It’s something used in cooking,” he said. “Not that I’m much of a cook. But I’ve smelled this in the Palace kitchens, when they were roasting lamb, I think.”

“It’s rosemary,” said the Dog shortly. “And there is amaranth, too, though you probably cannot smell it.”

“Fidelity in love,” said a small voice from Sam’s backpack. “With the flower that never fades. And you still say she is not there?”

The Dog didn’t answer Mogget but stuck her snout down the well. She sniffed around for at least a minute, pushing her snout farther and farther down the well. When she pulled back, she sneezed twice and shook her head.

“Old smells, old spells,” she said. “The scent is already fading.”

Lirael sniffed experimentally, but the Dog was right. She could smell only the roses now.

“There is a ladder,” said Sam, who was also looking into the well, a Charter-conjured light bobbing above his head. “Bronze, like the chains. I wonder why. I can’t see the bottom, though—or any water.”

“I’ll go first,” said Lirael. Sam seemed about to protest but stepped away. Lirael didn’t know whether this was because he was afraid or because he was acquiescing—to the familial authority of Lirael as his newfound aunt or because she was now the Abhorsen-in-Waiting.

She looked into the well. The bronze ladder gleamed near the top, disappearing down into darkness. Lirael had climbed up, down, and through many dark and dangerous tunnels and passages in the Great Library of the Clayr. But that had been in more innocent times, even though she had experienced her share of danger. Now she felt a sense of great and evil powers at work in the world, of a terrible fate already in motion. The Dead surrounding the House were only a small and visible part of that. She remembered the vision the Clayr had shown her, of the pit near the Red Lake, and the terrible stench of Free Magic from whatever was being unearthed there.

Climbing down this dark hole was only the beginning, Lirael thought. Her first step onto the bronze ladder would be the first real step of her new identity, the first step of an Abhorsen.

She took one last look at the sun, ignoring the climbing walls of fog to either side. Then she knelt down and gingerly lowered herself into the well, her feet finding secure footholds on the ladder.

After her came the Disreputable Dog, her paws elongating to form stubby fingers that gripped the ladder better than any human fingers could. Her tail brushed in Lirael’s face every few rungs, sweeping across with greater enthusiasm than Lirael could have mustered if she’d had a tail of her own.

Sam came last, his Charter light still hovering above his head, Mogget securely fastened in his backpack.

As Sam’s hobnailed boots clanged on the rungs, there was an answering clatter above as the chains suddenly contracted. He barely had time to bring in his hands before the cover was dragged across and slammed into place with a rattle and a deafening crash.

“Well, we won’t be going back that way,” said Sam, with forced cheerfulness.

“If at all,” whispered Mogget, his voice so low that it was possible no one heard him. But Sam hesitated for a moment, and the Dog let out a low growl, while Lirael continued to climb down, cherishing that last memory of the sun as they descended farther into the dark recesses of the earth.

Chapter Three

Amaranth, Rosemary, and Tears

THE LADDER WENT down and down and down. At first Lirael counted the rungs, but when she got to 996, she gave up. Still they climbed down. Lirael had conjured a Charter light herself. It hovered about her feet, to complement the one Sam had dancing above his head. In the light of these two glowing balls, with the shadows of the rungs flickering on the wall of the well, Lirael found it easy to imagine that they were somehow stuck on the ladder, repeating the same section time after time.