Terciel & Elinor – Garth Nix

I’m so happy for another Old Kingdom book, and this one is about Sabriel’s parents, and how they met.

At the very beginning, Terciel is a young boy in an orphanage, when his great-great-aunt, the current Abhorsen, comes to find him. You actually find out that his sister, who he barely remembers, had been the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, but she died in an ambush. His aunt is a pretty hard woman – she’s fairly old at this point, and has been battling the dead for a long time.

They end up being called south of the Wall to Elinor’s home. Elinor knows very little about the Old Kingdom. She has a Charter mark, but her mother has always told her it was a terrible scar. It was given to her by her grandmother, who her mother very promptly sent away. Her grandmother was called Myrien of the Clayr.

Now, Elinor’s mother lies as if dead, and the Ancelsterrian doctors can make nothing of it. One of the servants alerts the Abhorsens, and they find that a Dead spirit has inhabited Elinor’s mother. It’s a terrible fight to subdue it, and her home is destroyed in the meantime. Elinor and Terciel feel an instant connection, but he must go back to the Old Kingdom, and Elinor’s left to figure out what to do with her life. She’s heard she can learn magic at Wyverly College, so she finds a job there.

You of course know that Elinor’s going to end up back in the Old Kingdom, and if her grandmother is a Clayr, she probably has some level of power. So it’s fun to see how this happens. I’m guessing the author is planning on writing at least one more story – he’s put in enough foreshadowing for some other events that occur between this book and Sabriel that I hope he fills in some detail for those.