People she called the Clayr.
She’d written a message to be sent to them, in particular for her own daughter. She’d repeated that, over and over. Saying her daughter’s name as if it meant everything.
Lirael.
Lirael of the Clayr.
The elders had taken the message, but had not sent it. The foreign sorcerer had not always been accurate in her foretellings, and they thought there was a chance she was wrong.
But then the Witch With No Face was killed, and she came back from Death, and two moons past, the messengers had come with the new demands that were exactly what the foreign sorcerer had said would lead to the end of the Athask people.
So the elders had belatedly decided they must send the message to the Clayr. And who better to take it than the Offering, the best of her people, whose life was in any case forfeit?
Ferin had that message now, secure in her head and safely memorized, for anything written could be stolen or lost. She had to get across the river and go to the glacier, to deliver the message and save her people.
Without being killed by those who served the Witch With No Face, who almost from the moment she had left the mountains to cross the steppe had pursued her as if they knew what she was, and where, if not where she intended going.
But Ferin didn’t spare any thought for how her enemies were always close behind, or on anything else, like the fact that she had no idea where the Clayr’s Glacier was on the other side of the Greenwash. She lived in the moment, and was entirely focused on her immediate goal.
To get across the river.
She looked out over the water. The snow was still falling, but lightly, and the last sliver of the sun was disappearing in the west, so she couldn’t see very far, certainly not to the other side of the river. The Greenwash was at least three thousand paces wide here, and was roaring with snow-melt, its furious current made visible by the chunks of ice that whirled past, remnants of winter that had lingered in the more sheltered parts of the banks until the spring floods scoured them out.
There was no way Ferin could swim across, even if she were uninjured. The current was far too swift, and the water too cold. She would be drowned or frozen before she got even part of the way.
The bridge was now out of the question. The only way onto it was through the North Castle, and the shaman and his keeper would have been only the vanguard of other nomads who would be watching there, waiting for her to approach. If there were enough of them, they might even start searching along the riverbank and to the north, in case she’d doubled back. But it was more likely now they’d wait till morning, and light.
Which meant Ferin had to somehow get across this great, swollen, ferociously cold river in the darkness.
She tore off a strip of the alder bark—it was good for wounds—and chewed on it thoughtfully, looking along the riverbank in the fading light. There was a large clump of some kind of rushes nearby. Not the same as the ones that grew in the high alpine lakes of her home, but similar.
Ferin lifted her head and listened to the noises about her. The rushing waters of the river were so loud she had to focus deeply to hear anything else. But her hearing was acute, and well trained. She stood silently, behind the alder trunk, putting all the small sounds together. None of them suggested other people, particularly people sneaking up on her.
Ferin left the alders and crawled carefully along the bank, making her trail look like some small animal’s so she left no obviously human marks in the snow and mud. When she reached the reeds, she stopped and listened again, while watching for any signs of movement in the knee-high grass beyond the riverbank.
Again, there was nothing untoward. Ferin drew one of the tall reeds down and examined it as best she could in the fading light, and by touch. Its long stem was hollow, like the lake reeds she knew, but it had a large, flowery head instead of a closed, spearlike point.
Ferin cut it off close to the base with her knife and laid it down in front of her. Again, she waited and listened, then slowly cut another and put it down, before listening once more.
In this patient, laborious way, she spent the next several hours watchfully cutting reeds. It grew colder as the sun departed, but it was nothing like the piercing winter cold of the high mountains, at least not under the athask cloak, reversed so the white fur warmed her, and the goatskin lining, deeply oiled, shed the snow and did not give her away.
The snow eased off around this time, and the clouds began to move away, revealing a crescent moon and a bright swath of stars. Ferin scowled at the brightening sky, for she did not need the light, but those who hunted her might be encouraged to set out at night now, rather than wait for the dawn.
Ferin had spread the reeds into nine separate bunches. She quickly bound each of these bundles together individually, and then made a raft, using four bundles for the base and one on each side to make low gunwales. The ninth she only bound halfway and splayed the other end, for a makeshift paddle. All of this took every bit of her available cordage: the twine normally employed as the first stage of lofting a rope by arrow or grappling hook; six ells of the beautiful braided silk rope all the Athask people coveted; and three of her four spare bowstrings.
It did not look like much of a craft to tackle the Greenwash in full flood, but any doubts Ferin had about using it were dispelled when she heard sounds in the distance that were not part of the natural small noises of the night. Horses moving, the creak of saddles, the faint chink of armor, the whisper of commands given in low voices. Whoever it was, they weren’t even being careful, probably because there were lots of them and they felt secure in their numbers. They were not wrong. Ferin might shoot two or three before they got her, but she knew she probably wouldn’t even kill one, not if there were many more archers sending an arrow storm back toward her.
Quickly, Ferin made sure everything on her person was securely fastened. She put her pack and bow case on the raft and tied them to the loose ends of the reed bindings, drew her cloak tightly around herself, and pushed the raft into the shallows, diving on top of her pack as the river immediately snatched up this new gift and dragged it spinning into the heart of its turbulent waters.
Chapter Four
A MAN AND A CREATURE LIE AS IF DEAD
Ancelstierre, Near the Wall
You had better stay here,” said Lirael, “until I see what kind of creature lurks beyond.”
“We should come with you, milady,” countered Captain Anlow. The thirty guards she led were gathered behind her, in a single line stretching back along the tunnel through the Wall and out the northern side, into the Old Kingdom. They had come with Lirael from Barhedrin, where she had landed her paperwing. “There might be other dangers. The wind is from the south, their weapons are working, those sharp barks we heard earlier are called gunshots, and some guns are very deadly at a far distance. They are always fearful here, and shoot too readily; they often have accidents—”
“I have been in Ancelstierre before, and I know about their guns,” said Lirael firmly. “This is Abhorsen business. You stay here until I have dealt with the creature.”
They stood by the gate that Anlow had just opened. Behind them, on the northern side of the Wall, a meadow full of wildflowers proclaimed the beginning of spring and the sun was just beginning to set, a red light falling across the land.
On the southern side, the crisp chill of winter still prevailed, and it was the middle of the night. A waning moon and cloud-obscured stars did little to illuminate the broad no-man’s-land of bare earth ahead, crisscrossed with a veritable bramble forest of rusted, red-brown barbed wire, overlaying the craters and shell-holes, evidence of a continuing belief in the use of high explosive, despite the fact it did not stop many of the things that came across the Wall.
Among the hundreds of rusted, bent star pickets that supported the wire, there were wind-flutes. Lirael could hear them, and feel their power, even though she couldn’t see them in the darkness. Created by the Abhorsen, the wind-
flutes whispered a song redolent with the same power of her bells, helping to close the border between Life and Death. There had been many, many deaths here. Without the wind-flutes, the Crossing Point would not just be the place where travelers went from north to south or vice versa, but would also be a yawning, open door for the Dead to slither, crawl, or stride out into the world of the living.
Lirael could feel the closeness of Death, the chill of that inexorable river, the weight of so many dead in this blood-soaked ground. That was to be expected here. But she could also smell the corrosive, hot metal tang of Free Magic, and sense its presence, not least by the beginnings of an unpleasant shivering ache that was spreading through her bones and teeth.
Powerful Free Magic, something that should not be here. She had felt it as soon as they opened the southern gate in the Wall, making her stop in her tracks and order the guards to halt, and then to remain where they were.
“I really must insist that I, at least, come with—” Anlow started to say.
“Stay here,” interrupted Lirael. For a moment, she wondered at herself, ordering a captain of the Royal Guard around. Many things had happened in the last half a year. She was no longer a shy Second Assistant Librarian. She was the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. Sometimes that was hard for her to believe, but not when it mattered. Like now, when something awaited that was her responsibility.
Lirael drew her sword and the bell Saraneth. Commonly called the Binder, the sixth bell was a comforting, powerful presence in her hand. She paused for a second then, taking a moment to feel the Free Magic presence that lay somewhere in the night ahead, to feel Death so close, but not yet with any open breach to Life. Then she slowly walked out from the gateway, narrowing her eyes against the darkness ahead as she left the brilliant, constantly moving Charter marks in the stones of the Wall behind.
It got very dark very quickly as Lirael moved away. It was quiet now, too, a sharp contrast to when they’d first arrived at the Wall, hurrying because of the cracking sounds of gunshots and the deeper thud of artillery coming from the south, accompanied by the blossoming of star-shells, tiny suns in the sky. All things Lirael had experienced before in the desperate rush to Forwin Mill the previous summer.
Lirael trod carefully, sword and bell in hand, every sense attuned to the hunt. Many Free Magic creatures were expert ambushers. Some could lurk under the earth, or take the shape of a tree or boulder, or perhaps here in this wasteland a coil of rusted wire.
But this creature did not seem to be even trying to hide. The taint of Free Magic was like a visible trail to Lirael. She could feel where it came from, and though she did not speed up or spare her caution, she followed it to its expected source.
A Free Magic creature.
Lirael’s every muscle tensed. Saraneth moved slightly in her hand, wanting to speak, to bind the monster, and she had to grip it more tightly and will the bell to wait. The Charter marks on sword and bell shone with sudden light, and moved restlessly, reacting to what lay before them.
But Lirael didn’t ring Saraneth or swing her sword, because the creature was lying motionless on the ground. It wasn’t crouched to spring. It wasn’t lurking in ambush. It just lay there on the bare earth, with its long, long arms stretched out beside it and its barbed, clublike hands perfectly still.
Lirael studied it for several long seconds, taking in its wasplike waist; the violet, crosshatched crocodilian hide; the long neck on which balanced a vaguely human head, though it had hearing slits in place of ears; the pear-shaped eyes, now shut; and a mouth as wide as Lirael’s two extended hands, crammed with teeth as black as polished jet.
There was blood around that wide mouth, on the black teeth, trailing down its pointed chin.
“A Hrule,” whispered Lirael, remembering a book she had read long ago in the Great Library of the Clayr. Creatures by Nagy, a bestiary which described several hundred Free Magic entities. It was one of the better books of its type, though it was by no means comprehensive. There were a multitude of Free Magic creatures, ranging from mere nuisances to the very dangerous indeed.
The thing in front of her was in the very dangerous category.
She stepped closer very cautiously, wondering why it lay there so still, while trying to recall everything she had read in the bestiary. Hrule were very rare. Drinkers of blood, she remembered that, or was reminded of it by the stain about its mouth.
There was an oddity about this one, beyond its dormant state. It had a chain of daisies around its neck, signifying that someone else had already tried some magic against it. Certain flowers, herbs, spices, metals, and scents used in particular shapes or patterns could briefly compel Free Magic creatures into action or inaction. A chain of day’s eye flowers would make some creatures pause, if nothing more, and the more powerful and intelligent, like the Hrule, could sometimes be negotiated with in that state.
But a chain of daisies could not have rendered the creature unconscious, as this one seemed to be. Lirael frowned, thinking about possible ways the Hrule could have been stilled. There was something on the very edge of her memory, half-remembered from Creatures by Nagy, concerning how to imprison such a thing, also involving some flower or herb lore . . .
Lirael took another step, and over the sharp, almost painful ache of Free Magic, she felt the presence of life.
A life ebbing away.
Somewhere close, a man was dying.
She walked around the creature, quickening her steps, following that sensation of Life, even as it trickled away into Death.
There was the body of a young man a dozen paces from the creature. A young man in a khaki tunic, once-white shirt, and black trousers, sprawled upon the ground. A torn bandage on his hand was sodden with blood, and more had pooled under his wrist, spreading out across the broken ground.
Lirael knelt by his side and looked at his face under the light from the glowing marks on her sword and bell.
It was Nicholas Sayre.
She gasped, the sound loud in the silence. Lirael hadn’t expected to see Nick so soon, and not here. A wave of emotion struck her, feelings she found difficult to understand or even acknowledge. She had been eager to see him, because she had felt some sort of kinship or something, she wasn’t sure what, when she had met him before. Even when he was under the sway of Orannis. Though she had felt sorry for him then, and kind of maternal. Or sisterly. Or something. And after the breaking and binding of the Destroyer, they had lain side by side on stretchers, both deathly hurt, talking of her friend the Dog . . .
Now all those feelings came back, but were overlaid with a much stronger emotion.
Fear. Fear that he was about to die, before she even had a chance to . . . a chance to what?
Lirael took a deep breath and forced herself to attend to the situation rather than her emotions. Nick was wounded and close to death. She had to see exactly how, and take action. And also make sure the Hrule didn’t suddenly leap up and drink her blood, as well as . . .
Lirael looked from the creature to Nick’s wrist, suddenly realizing what must have happened. The Hrule had been drinking Nick’s blood. Blood tainted, or perhaps empowered in this context, with the power of Orannis. The Ninth Bright Shiner, one of the most powerful Free Magic creatures to have ever existed. It must have been too much for the Hrule. Though perhaps it was only a matter of digestion, and time. Like when a cave python got into the rabbit hutches back in the Clayr’s Glacier and ate so well it lay down in a torpor.
The only serious wound she could find on Nick was the deep cut on his wrist, though his feet were also bloody and scabbed. She was about to rip off the sleeves of his tunic to make bandages when she thought to look in the pockets, and found a tin marked with a red cross that held several very tightly wound dressings of some very thin cloth, and two glass vials she didn’t know were surettes of morphine.
With Nick’s wrist and feet swiftly bandaged, Lirael felt for his pulse. Nick had lost a lot of blood already, and his heartbeat felt weak and irregular when
she pushed her fingers against the big artery under his chin, against the neck. She used her right, magical hand without thinking, and was surprised that she could somehow feel his cool skin and the beat of his heart through her metal fingers, even though they were Charter-spelled. Sam had made her hand even better than she had thought, though she did check again with her left hand, repeating the process. Just in case.
The pulse confirmed what Lirael already sensed. Nick’s hold on life was anything but secure. It would be very easy for his spirit to slip away into Death. He had been brought back once by the Disreputable Dog, but that could not be done again, not to keep him as a living person. Indeed, Lirael didn’t know how the Dog had managed to do it the first time without making Nick some sort of Dead creature, rather than to be simply alive again.
Bandaging his wounds was not enough. She needed to use a healing spell, and quickly. Even as she thought this, she reached into the Charter, finding comfort as she let her mind move through the great flood of magical marks, focusing on the ones she needed, bringing them together by force of will, her fingers sketching the air to help her visualize each mark and how it would fit in the spell she was building.
But the first spell she tried didn’t work. It was a fairly simple one, often used. All it took was six marks, none of them very difficult. She had drawn them from the Charter with the ease of long practice, linked them together to form the spell, and tipped the glowing network of marks into Nick’s chest.
But the marks ran off into the earth on either side, like spilled water, and immediately dispersed.
Lirael frowned, and thought for a moment. Then she cautiously touched the baptismal Charter mark on Nick’s forehead, half-expecting to find it had become corrupted in some way. But she felt a true connection to the Charter. He was still very much a part of the constant, ever-changing flow, deeply joined to the Charter that defined and described everything upon, under, and above the earth.