Abhorsen by Garth Nix Read Free Book Online Page A

to sweep up the Mogget creature, the Dog, Lirael, and Sam.
    A river flowed around and in front of the shining woman. A cold river that Lirael knew at once. This was the river of Death, and this creature was bringing it to them. They would not cross into it but be swamped and taken away. Thrown down and taken up, carried in a rush to the First Gate and beyond. They would never be able to make their way back.
    Lirael had time to think only a few final, awful thoughts.
    They had failed so soon.
    So many depended on them.
    All was lost.
    Then the Disreputable Dog shouted, “Flee!” and barked.
    The bark was infused with Free Magic. Without opening her eyes, without conscious thought, Lirael swung around and suddenly found herself running, running headlong, running as she had never run before. She ran without care, into the unknown, away from the well and the House, her feet finding the twists and turns of the tunnel even though they left the white light behind and in the darkness Lirael couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open or not.
    Through caverns and chambers and narrow ways she ran, not knowing whether Sam ran with her or whether she was pursued. It was not fear that drove her, for she didn’t feel afraid. She was somewhere else, locked away inside her own body, a machine that drove on and on without feeling, acting on directions that had not come from her.
    Then, as suddenly as it began, the compulsion to run stopped. Lirael fell to the floor, shuddering, trying to draw breath into her starved lungs. Pain shot through every muscle, and she curled into a ball of cramps, frantically massaging her calf muscles as she bit back cries of pain.
    Someone was near her doing the same thing, and as reason returned, Lirael saw that it was Sam. There was a dim light falling from somewhere ahead, enough to make him out. A natural light, though much diffused.
    Hesitantly Lirael touched the bell-bandolier. It was still, the bells quiescent. Her hand fell to Nehima’s hilt, and she was relieved to feel the solidity of the green stone in the pommel, and the silver wire no more than silver wire.
    Sam groaned and stood up. He leaned against the wall with his left hand and stowed the panpipes away with his right. Lirael watched that hand flicker in a careful movement, and a Charter light blossomed in his palm.
    “It was gone, you know,” he said, sliding back down the wall to sit facing Lirael. He seemed calm but was obviously in shock. Lirael realized she was, too, when she tried to stand up and simply couldn’t.
    “Yes,” she replied. “The Charter.”
    “Wherever that was,” continued Sam, “the Charter wasn’t. And who was she ?”
    Lirael shook her head, as much to clear it as to indicate her inability to answer. She shook it again immediately, trying to force her thoughts back into action.
    “We’d better . . . better go back,” she said, thinking of the Dog facing both Mogget and that shining woman alone in the darkness. “I can’t leave the Dog.”
    “What about her ?” asked Sam, and Lirael knew who he meant. “And Mogget?”
    “You need not go back,” said a voice from the dark reaches of the passage. Lirael and Sam instantly leapt up, finding new strength and purpose. Their swords were out and Lirael found she had one hand on Saraneth, though she had no idea what she was going to do with the bell. No wisdom from The Book of the Dead or The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting came unbidden into her head.
    “It’s me,” said the voice in an aggrieved tone, and the Disreputable Dog slowly walked into the light, her tail between her legs and her head bowed. Apart from this uncharacteristic pose, she seemed back to normal—or what was normal for her—with the deep, rich glow of many Charter Marks once more around her neck, and her short hair dusty and golden save for her back, where it was black.
    Lirael didn’t hesitate. She put Nehima down and flung herself on the Dog, burying her face in her friend’s