Abhorsen by Garth Nix Read Free Book Online Page B

neck. The Dog licked Lirael’s ear without her usual enthusiasm, and she didn’t try even one affectionate nip.
    Sam hung back, his sword still in his hand.
    “Where is Mogget?” he asked.
    “She wished to speak to him,” replied the Dog, throwing herself sorrowfully across Lirael’s feet. “I was wrong. I put you in terrible danger, Mistress.”
    “I don’t understand,” Lirael replied. She felt incredibly tired all of a sudden. “What happened? The Charter . . . the Charter seemed to suddenly . . . not be.”
    “It was her coming,” said the Dog. “It is her fate, that her knowing self will be forever outside what she chose to make, the Charter that her unknowing self is part of. Yet she stayed her hand when she could so easily have taken you to her embrace. I do not know why, or what it may mean. I believed her to be past any interest in the things of this world, and so I thought to pass here unscathed. Yet when ancient forces stir, many things are woken. I should have guessed it would be so. Forgive me.”
    Lirael had never seen the Dog so humbled, and it scared her more than anything that had happened. She scratched her around the ears and along the jaw, seeking to give as much comfort as she took. But her hands shook, and she felt that at any moment she would shudder into tears. To try to stop them, she took slow breaths, counting them in, and counting them out.
    “But . . . what will happen to Mogget?” asked Sam, his voice unsteady. “He was unbound! He’ll try to kill the Abhorsen . . . Mother . . . or Lirael! We haven’t got the ring to bind him again!”
    “Mogget has long avoided her,” mumbled the Dog. She hesitated, then quietly said, “I don’t think we need to worry about Mogget anymore.”
    Lirael let out her breath and didn’t take another. How could Mogget not be coming back?
    “What?” asked Sam. “But he’s . . . well, I don’t know, but powerful . . . a Free Magic spirit. . . .”
    “Who is she?” asked Lirael. She spoke very sternly as she took the Disreputable Dog by the jaw and stared into her deep, dark eyes. The Dog tried to turn away, but Lirael held her fast. The hound shut her eyes hopefully, only to be foiled as Lirael blew on her nose and they snapped open again.
    “It won’t help you to know, because you can’t understand,” said the Dog, her voice filled with great weariness. “She doesn’t really exist anymore, except every now and then and here and there, in small ways and small things. If we had not come this way, she would not have been, and now that we have passed, she will not be.”
    “Tell me!”
    “You know who she is, at least in some degree,” said the Dog. She tapped her nose against Lirael’s bell-bandolier, leaving a wet mark on the leather of the seventh bell, and a single slow tear rolled down her snout to dampen Lirael’s hand.
    “Astarael?” whispered Sam in disbelief. The most frightening bell of them all, the one he had never even touched in his brief time as custodian of that set of bells. “The Weeper?”
    Lirael let the Dog go, and the hound promptly pushed her head farther into Lirael’s lap and let out a long sigh.
    Lirael scratched the Dog’s ears again, but even with the feel of warm dog skin under her hand, she could not help asking a question she had asked before.
    “What are you, then? Why did Astarael let you go?”
    The Dog looked up at her and said simply, “I am the Disreputable Dog. A true servant of the Charter, and your friend. Always your friend.”
    Lirael did weep then, but she wiped the tears away as she lifted the Dog by her collar and moved her away so she could stand up. Sam picked up Nehima and silently handed the sword to her. The Charter marks on the blade rippled as Lirael touched the hilt, but no inscription became visible.
    “If you are sure Mogget will not be coming, bound or unbound, then we must go on,” said Lirael.
    “I suppose so,” said Sam doubtfully. “Though I