Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen (The Abhorsen Trilogy Book 4) by Garth Nix Read Free Book Online Page A

I’ll be away to my bed.”
    Roban quietly slipped away down the stairs, leaving Clariel to think about many things. She wanted to dismiss the suggestion she was a berserk. They were rare fighters, almost monstrous in their rage, which fueled them to great feats of arms, shrugging off blows and wounds, exhibiting the strength of several men and the like. And they were always men, as far as she could remember, from the tales she’d heard or read. Clariel had never seen an actual berserk.
    But she had experienced a similar feeling of uncontrollable anger years before, when she had been surprised and attacked by a wild sow. It had slashed her leg through her leathers and got her on the ground, which was the worst place to be. Clariel remembered the sudden onset of the fury, starting from a moment of intolerable exasperation at letting herself get in such a predicament. Then the anger blew up like a forest fire. The sow had swung around to come back and attack again, and the next thing Clariel knew she was standing over its dead body, gripping a trotter in each hand, having literally torn it apart. And she’d still been so angry she’d thrown the pieces down, ripped up a sapling, and whipped the remains until suddenly coming to her rather appalled senses, followed soon after by a great weakness, not to mention a feeling of revulsion.
    So she couldn’t dismiss the notion she was a berserk as easily as she wanted to . . .
    Roban’s other suggestion, that Kilp was sending a warning to thwart her mother’s ambition, was easier to disregard. Clariel very much doubted her mother could have changed so drastically without her noticing. Surely if Jaciel was plotting to become Guildmaster of the goldsmiths, and Governor, and then Queen, she would have stopped making things, or at least would be less fanatical about her art?
    “I suppose I had better try to talk to Father,” Clariel whispered to the sky. Unlike in the Great Forest, it was a vast and bare expanse of stars, lacking the comforting shadows cast by the mighty trees. It made her shudder to look upon the cold emptiness above, and shudder again as she dropped her gaze and looked out upon its opposite, the crowded, fettered houses jammed together, mimicking the night sky and its stars with lanterns and Charter lights in a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand windows . . .
    Clariel went down the stairs. Even the cool, dead wood of the stair rail gave some comfort under her hand. It was not a living branch, but it still had some connection with her true home, and it had been cut and shaped by a master. One day, Clariel told herself, she too would fell trees for a house, and take axe, adze, plane, and saw to timber, and fashion a dwelling in the greenwood that would enrich her spirit, not leech the life from it, like all the cold, dead stone around her now.
    Harven was in his study, his elbows planted amid a pile of papers, his hands close to his face, turning something in his fingers so it caught the light from another ancient Charter light on his desk, this one a cube of translucent stone with the marks set within a central hole inside it, so it gave a softer illumination.
    He turned as Clariel entered, smiled, and then looked back to the tiny golden object he was studying. His daughter came close, and gazed over his shoulder at the teardrop of gold he held. It was no longer than the nail on his little finger, though a third its width.
    “It is a perfect tear,” said Harven reverentially. “Burnished so cunningly it reflects light from all angles, and appears liquid, for all that it is solid metal. Even as I hold it, I fear it will run between my fingers, and splash away into nothing. And yet your mother made it quickly, and will make dozens more this night, and yet I . . . some other master goldsmith could never make such a thing, no matter how long they labored. She has the skill of the ancients in her hands and eyes, rival even to Dropstone or Kagello the