Disclaimer: All characters are property of Garth Nix. I'm just borrowing them for a bit.

Liraels pov.

As it always is with the Clayr, introductions were brief and then Sam and Nick were quickly swept away down the heated hallway in a swirl of white robes to do whatever it is the Clayr had seen them doing already and the guards went in search of their lodging in the Lower Refectory.

The prince was in no danger from the Clayr and wards as old as the Charter itself keep out any trouble.

No one seemed to notice but me that the wards briefly lit up over the doorway when Nick stepped over the threshold. A threat contained at the moment. Although the attention Mogget has been paying him for the past couple of weeks has me worried.

I had recognized a couple of the elders who led them away from when I was younger and still attending the awakening ceremonies but their names meant nothing to me. They had filled my head with empty promises while never actually noticing I was there. Never Seen.

I had gone from being an outsider among cousins to an outsider among what I've been told should be my friends. However, it is obvious to me it isn't any easier being an Abhorsen-in-Waiting among those with no great destiny than it is to be a pale skinned, dark haired Clayr.

A sly voice from my pack shocked me from my reminiscing.

"Are you going to stand here all day or are you going to go through that door?"

Immediately following that question I was almost pulled over backwards as a pure white cat, no longer forced to wear its red leather collar and binding bell, used my pack to spring board to the ground and twine around my ankles.

I should have probably felt irritated at the site of my uninvited guest, but to be perfectly honest I was relieved. Ever since Sam had released him from his servitude to the Abhorsen, Mogget had taken to being my traveling companion and occasional teacher. Much like the Dog had been although to mention that would probably cost me a large amount of fish in order to gain forgiveness from the vain creature.

Mogget's presence also reminded me of the reason I had quickly agreed to this visit in the first place; despite that the fact that this visit to the place I had been born and raised had the potential to be both awkward and sad for me.

The first night after the binding of Orannis Mogget had let some information slip that I had never known before:

"I suppose I should start from the beginning but I don't really want to. Half of the information that I would state as fact would be made up anyhow, my memory of the beginning is very selective at times. All you need to know is that Rembrancers are people who are both half Abhorsen and half Clayr. None of her children will have the ability as far as I know. Most likely the ability will die out for another thousand years before another one is born. I cannot even say for certain if there ever was one before her."

And there were still questions that this raised that she needed to find the answers to.

If there had never been a Rembrancer before her, then who had written the Book of Remembrance and Forgetting? Who had created and used the panpipes and how had the dark mirror come into existence or the creator had known that it had worked? Had the Clayr from the long distant past really just left everything to chance?

How could the Clayr of the past have seen me when the Clayr of the present never had? To the point that they would spend over a hundred years to build Liraels Path whose entrance required the knowledge of a book kept in a forbidden room with a dangerous creature?

It was at this moment that Mogget once again choose to speak.

"So are we going to go visit your friends and family like you were told to do?"

With steel in my spine, I was able to resolutely shake my head no.

"Mogget, we are going to the Library."

Please R&R

Part two should be posted by Friday.

~Ranna