The girl froze. She began to breathe heavily and clutched her chest.
"Tori?" Lirael asked, and reached out to touch her arm. Tori recoiled and threw her arms out. She tried to back up against the wall, her legs trying to propel her backwards into the wall.
"No, no no no no-"
The male Healer – his name was Tomer, Lirael had remembered – dropped down and grabbed her shoulders, but she pushed him away. She buried her head in her hands and started to sob, barely breathing normally, shaking her head. "No no no no no."
"What's going on?" demanded the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. She knelt down next down to Tori but didn't try to touch her again.
"I've seen this before," Nick said. "My sister gets like this, we call it-"
"Fear incidents?" interrupted Tomer.
"No, panic attacks." Nick glanced at the Clayr healer, and back at Tori. "The heart speeds up and the mind gets extremely scared for no reason. Perception is warped, and the subject can't think clearly. It can last from a few minutes to an hour."
Lirael reached out her hand to hover over Tori's forehead. "The heart, you said?"
"Yes, but you could probably just put her to sleep."
Lirael nodded and began to cast the spells. She reached into the Charter and found the marks that would relax the mind, and wove them together. They floated around Tori's head as she heaved, quickly coming inward and settling through her hair onto her skin. She moved her hand downward as the girl fell into unconsciousness, and wove another spell, made up of marks that would do the same but for her heart, that went into her chest. They all watched as the spells began their work, fading into Tori's hair and clothes.
The moment ended when she toppled to the floor, and Tomer had to catch her. Nick quickly replaced Lirael on the girl's other side to inspect her – without either one of them muttering a word, Lirael still hadn't figured out how they did that together – and Haretha and one of the elder Clayr of the Watch, also a Healer, joined him.
Lirael turned to Sanar and Ryelle. "We don't really need to whole Watch here, do we?"
The twins nodded and turned to the rest of the Watch, which had devolved from a circle into a sort of organized mass. They still had their collective thought process, though, because they quickly ambled out of the room and back into the Great Hall; Sanar and Ryelle stayed, and Teacher Adera.
Lirael turned her attention back to Tori. Nick was holding two fingers to her neck and watching the odd contraption that told time on his wrist. "Her heartbeat's normal," he finally said. He lifted her eyelids and peered into her eyes. "Pupils are normal." He raised his hand to her forehead.
"I'd really rather I look after her," the Healer protested.
"She's clammy, but that's better than a fever," finished Nick. He stood up and gestured to Tori. "All yours."
"Are you a Healer?" asked Tomer. He left Tori to the elder Healer and stood up with Haretha.
"No," Nick replied, "But medicine and regular science tend to overlap, so I've sat in on a few surgeries. Not many, but a few," he added.
Of course, nobody understood what he'd said; it had taken him nearly a week to explain properly what "science" was to Lirael, and she still thought it was a bit cockamamie.
"What he means is that if you do enough experiments on something, and observe what happens, you can figure out why it does that," explained Sam. "Why our hearts beat, why objects always fall towards the earth – things like that."
What Sam had just said was much simpler than anything Nick had ever said; Lirael wondered why she hadn't just asked her nephew for an explanation in the first place.
"The Charter can change these things," Haretha said.
"Well, you don't take it into account," Nick replied. "Er, I mean that, magic doesn't exist everywhere, the Charter doesn't, or at least in a way you can use it, but discovering why these things work, well, they work the same everywhere. Even if you can't use – use the Charter, you know what to do."
He looked down at Tori. "Not many Clayr are Mages, right? Well, if you're in a room while Tori's having another attack, and none of you know the right spells, then the data – er, the observations I and others have made with people having these attacks – will help tell you how to calm them down. Without using Charter magic."
The Healer looked up from Tori. "She'll be asleep for the next few hours. She can finish her story then."
"That – that might not work," said Nick. He looked to Tomer for support, and the other young man gave it.
"Fear incidents – panic attacks – they're caused by some specific thought, or action. Tori had experienced one before yesterday, but that one also had a specific cause."
The Voice chimed in: "What was it?"
"Uh, her Awakening. She had an attack a few hours before she Awoke. Anyway, it seems like her experience in the Library – she can't think about it without her mind – panicking, as Nick Sayre called it."
Nick picked up where Tomer ended. "Her mind can't work through what happened, at least not yet. And since she'd already had one attack, it's not surprising that the mind's first reaction to this horrible memory would be another panic attack. You can't keep asking her to recount her memory, because every time it'll probably end up creating another attack," he finished.
"That's not acceptable," Teacher Adera said. She hadn't been one of Lirael's teachers, but she did have a reputation for being rather strict; Lirael wasn't surprised she had gone along with Edishi's idiotic scheme. "We have to know what happened, this thing has killed three of our cousins already! The Abhorsen-in-Waiting can't deal with this creature if we don't-"
"There is another way," said Sam. He looked at Lirael. "I know you haven't done it much, but if you could See the original binding of Orranis then I think you can See what Tori did when the creature was released."
"What?" protested Adera. "Lirael doesn't have the Sight, she's an Abhorsen, not a-"
"Clear the room," Lirael told the twins, more roughly than she'd intended. "Take Tori to the Infirmary room and make arrangements for an escort to the Library. Please," she added, remembering who she was talking to.
The twins nodded and gestured for the remaining Clayr to leave.
After a minute only Sam, Nick and Lirael herself remained in the room.
"So, uh, how are you going to do this?" asked Nick. "Do you need a protective diamond, or anything special when you go?"
She looked at Sam with an obvious, silent question, and he thought for a long moment before nodding his head. When Lirael responded, he clapped Nick on the back and walked to the door.
"Good luck, mate. It's your lucky day."
"Wait, what?" Nick turned around and called after Sam, but he was already gone.
And then there were two, Lirael thought.
Nick turned back to her. "What am I doing? You do need a strong diamond, don't you."
She smiled. "No, our bodies will be perfectly safe."
Nick paled. "Death. I've only been there once, and that wasn't for two minutes-"
"I know," said Lirael, trying to ignore the pain that still ripped her heart a little whenever she thought of the Disreputable Dog. She had sent Nick back from Death, confirmed to him that Orannis had been bound and that she wasn't coming back – or so he had said afterwards, in a camp hospital. He didn't have any reason to lie, and she didn't have any reason to doubt him, but she still wasn't sure she believed him.
Maybe she couldn't believe him.
"I don't know how long I'll be in Death. You'll only be there to ensure nothing interrupts the memory I'll be watching."
Nick squared his jaw – that shouldn't have been as appealing as Lirael thought it to be – and nodded. "Okay then. How do we do this?"
Lirael sat down criss-cross. "I'll show you."
Death was unusually cold.
It was always cold, Death was, and the river always sent chills through Lirael's soul. That's what they travelled with in Death, Sabriel had explained: their souls. But something about the river was particularly ominous today; or perhaps it reflected the chill of the Glacier.
The last time Lirael had use her mirror to See into the past, as Sam said, had been to watch six worlds burn into destruction, and the seventh one almost burn. It had felt like days had passed while she watched, and while she knew that wasn't actually the case she didn't actually know how much time it would take.
Nick appeared a little downriver, and walked towards her; he was careful to keep his feet out of the river, but just barely.
"Just so we're clear," Lirael began, but didn't go on. Nick withdrew his sword from its scabbard and took up a relaxed watch position next to her, towards the First Gate.
He glanced back at Lirael and said, "Let's get this over with."
Lirael nodded and withdrew the Dark Mirror.
She thought of a light-wooded door in the depths of the Library. A small records room filled with crumbling scrolls, and a mural made of glass shards. A small Librarian, new to the Sight and too curious for her own good.
She focused one eye on the Dark Mirror and intoned, "As Abhorsen I bind the Dead and slay evil. A great evil has been released in the Clayr's Glacier and I shall look upon its release. So let it be."
The glass rippled and settled on the scene: Tori in her yellow waistcoat, walking down the twisting path of the Library. She turned down a hallway and walked its length, not noticing that it curved around as if a hook, till she walked towards the spiral path.
But there was one door in her path, the only unblocked door, and the girl opened it.
The vision sped up and settled on Tori again, holding a Charter-made light up, walking towards a wall. Lirael caught the beginning sparkle of the glass mural before the floor gave way and Tori fell.
The memory was being relayed in slower time, as if the mirror knew that Lirael needed to see all the details, but the fall still came as a shock. Tori, for her credit, picked herself up quickly again and looked around.
After a few minutes of attempting to climb her way back up – it was too high, almost twenty feet, and the walls were made of smooth rock – Tori had rested on the ground, and apparently decided to walk along the corridor she know lay in until she found the door out.
But she'd gone the wrong way; because of the hooked hallway, she thought that the way towards the main spiral was actually the path deeper into the hallway. She went the wrong way, walking for fifteen minutes before coming upon another door – the door she must have thought was the way out.
Tori opened it confidently, only to find another hallway running perpendicular to the one she'd walked. She recast the Charter light, chose the right path, and walked down it. She encountered two more doors before entering the final, small, chamber.
It had been simple after that: the door, opened too widely, had knocked over a shelf that lay high up on the wall. The books that rested on the shelf fell to the floor, and one book knocked over a corner block that formed a pentagon in the middle of the room. The pentagon caged an amorphous blob – there was no other way to say it – that fell from its suspended state off the ground as soon as the first block was knocked over. It quickly began to form into an animalistic shape, though its features were off and clearly monstrous.
Lirael had to give Tori credit: she was no idiot. She'd immediately turned back, slammed the door and yelled a sealing spell, and ran. But the creature broke through the spell in a matter of seconds, and ran after her.
Tori rounded the corner and into the first hallway, never stopping. But here the vision paused, so that Lirael could notice that the creature ran not after the young Librarian, but further down the second hallway. After a moment, the vision returned to Tori as she ran.
She passed the hole in the ceiling from which she'd fell, and finally the creature caught up with her. Its features were more defined, though still shifting somewhat, and it bounded after Tori on all four limbs. The girl quickly noticed, but she still didn't panic.
In the periphery of her other eye, Lirael noticed Nick shuffle his feet, and she heard him cough. A blobby hand rose from the water in front of Lirael, and Nick swung his sword at it; it retreated, and Nick returned to stand next to Lirael.
Tori encountered another door soon after passing under the hole. She shoved it open, threw it back to stop the creature and ran on; but the creature caught its limb – paw, whatever it was – in the door and forced it back open.
Tori passed through four more doors with much the same process. Finally she was forced to stop at a much larger door, but only long enough to discover that the jewels in her bracelet opened it.
The creature pounced on her while she was barely across the threshold and back, Lirael noted, in the main spiral. It had spun her around in mid-air and pinned her down on her back with its front claws.
Its movements were erratic, as if it couldn't quite keep its body under control, and Tori watched in transfixed horror as it morphed into a different shape – one Lirael knew. It growled, its eyes flashed, and it came in quickly to bare its teeth at Tori.
But something made it change its mind, and it quickly retreated and bounded up the spiral. Tori proceeded to have a minor panic attack, but something – Lirael could feel it even in the memory – something strong and ancient affected the girl, and the attack quickly subsided.
Tori picked herself up and began to walk up the spiral, staggering at first but soon breaking into a run.
Lirael broke off her gaze at the Dark Mirror and closed it.
"You're done?" Nick asked.
"Yes," she replied.
"Do you know what it is?"
"I have no idea."
They returned the Life quickly, and brushed off the icicles and frost that had formed on their bodies. Sameth had returned with warm drinks and food, somehow provided by the relocated Kitchens.
"So?" he asked. "Do you know what it is?"
"It looked vaguely animalistic," replied Lirael, "But many Free Magic creatures do. It will probably be in a bestiary of sorts."
"But – but the bestiaries are in the Library, right?" asked Nick, who clearly had no desire to deal with magical creatures again that day.
"Yes. But I need to know what it is to defeat it."
Sam sighed. "I'll tell the Guards ready the party," he said.
It took them three very stressful hours, but finally Lirael and her companions found an entry for the creature.
They'd marched out of the Great Hall to complete silence, an eerie calm that had carried through the whole of the Glacier and into the Library. Lirael had broken the seals of the Library doors – cast by the most skilled Mages and still in place – and entered with the escort and accompanied by Nick and Sam.
They had found the bestiaries easily, but they were so numerous that Lirael had tasked everyone, save two guards for the door, with skimming the volumes. She excluded the ones she knew by heart and the newer tomes, but it still took three hours to find the right entry.
Sam had found it, carefully turning pages in a book that looked too fragile to be still held together. He'd called Lirael over and pointed to the entry, and several drawings that lined the far edge of the page.
As she read the entry it became clearer to Lirael that this was the creature that Tori had unleashed; but her heart also sunk as she read it. They could bind the creature again, but it would be unbelievably hard and tricky to pull off.