Water sloshed in like a tide, and for a brief moment, the boat seemed about to capsize. But the lakefolk had woven it too well, and it righted. Nick’s body, surprised by the violence of the roll, didn’t. He swayed one way, made a grab at the prow, swung back the other—and fell into the lake.
Instantly, Lirael took a breath. Her lungs stayed frozen for a moment, then inflated with a shudder she felt through her entire body. The spell had broken with Nick’s fall. Sobbing and panting, she thrust the bells back into their pouches and grabbed her sword, the Charter marks in the hilt pulsing with warmth and encouragement.
All the time, she was looking for the Nick creature. At first there was no sign of anything moving in the water. Then she saw a great steaming and bubbling a few yards away, as if the lake were boiling. A hand—Nick’s hand—reached up and gripped the side of the boat, tearing away a whole section of the woven reeds with impossible strength; his mouth cleared the water, and and a high-pitched scream of anger sent every marsh bird within a mile into panicked flight.
It sent Lirael, too. Instinctively, she jumped straight off the other side of the boat as far as she could, smashing into the reeds and water and starting off at a wading run. The terrible scream came again, followed by a violent splashing. For a moment Lirael thought that Nick was right behind her; but instead there was a violent explosion of water and broken reeds: Nick had picked up the entire boat and thrown it at her. If she had been a little slower, it would have been the boat that struck her back, rather than spray and some harmless bits of reed.
Before he could do anything else, Lirael redoubled her efforts to get away. The water wasn’t as deep as she expected—only up to her chest—but it slowed her down, so every second she thought the creature would catch her, or strike her with a spell. Desperately, she headed back towards shallower water, hacking at the reeds with Nehima to speed the way.
She didn’t look back, because she couldn’t face what she might see, and she didn’t stop, not even when she was lost in the rushes with no idea where she was going, and her lungs and muscles ached and burned with the effort of moving.
Finally, she was forced to a halt when the cramp in her side became impossible to ignore, and her legs were unable to hold her up out of the water. Fortunately, it was only knee-deep now, so Lirael sat down, crushing reeds into a wet and muddy seat.
All her senses were attuned to pursuit, but there didn’t seem to be anything behind her—at least nothing she could hear over the pounding of her heart echoing through every blood vessel in her entire body.
She rested there, in the muddy water, for what seemed like a long time. Finally, when she felt as if she could move without bursting into tears or vomiting, she got up and sloshed forward again.
As she waded, she thought about what she’d done—or hadn’t done. Over and over the scene played through her head. She should have been quicker with the bells, she thought, remembering her hesitation and clumsiness. Maybe she should have stabbed Nick—though that didn’t seem right, since he had no idea what lurked within him, awaiting the chance to manifest itself. It probably wouldn’t even have helped, since the fragment could probably inhabit a Dead Nick as easily as it did while he lived. Perhaps it could even have got inside her. . . .
The Clayr’s vision of a world destroyed was also prominent in her mind. Had she missed her chance to stop the Destroyer? Were those few minutes with Nick in the reed boat some great cusp of destiny? A vital chance that she could have grasped but failed to?
She was still thinking about that when the water she was racing through turned to actual mostly solid mud, instead of muddy water. The reed clumps started to thin out too, so clearly she was coming to the edge of the marsh. But as this particular marsh stretched in patches for a good twenty miles along the eastern shore of the Red Lake, Lirael still didn’t really know where she was.
She took a guess at south from the position of the sun and the length of a tall reed’s shadow, and started to head that way, keeping to the fringe of the marsh. It was harder going than dry ground, but safer if there were Dead about, forced out into the sun by Hedge.
Two hours later Lirael was wetter and more miserable than ever, thanks to an unexpectedly deep hole along the way. She was almost completely covered in a sticky and revolting mixture of red reed pollen and black mud. It stank, and she stank, and there seemed no end to the marsh, and no sign of her friends, either.
Doubts began to assail her even more strongly, and Lirael began to fear for her companions, particularly the Disreputable Dog. Perhaps she had been overcome by the sheer numbers of the Dead, or had been overmastered by Hedge, in the same way even the fragment in Nick had swatted her magic aside as if it didn’t exist.
Or perhaps they were wounded, or still fighting, she thought, forcing herself to greater speed. Without her and the bells, they would be much weaker against the Dead. Sam hadn’t even finished reading The Book of the Dead. He wasn’t an Abhorsen. What if there was a Mordicant pursuing them, or some other creature that was strong enough to endure the sun at noon?
Thinking about that made her leave the rushes and start alternately running and walking along firmer ground. Run a hundred paces, walk a hundred paces—all the while keeping an eye out for Gore Crows, other Dead, or the human servants of Hedge.
Once she saw—and felt—Dead nearby, but they were Dead Hands fleeing in the distance, seeking some refuge from the harsh sun that was eating into them, flesh and spirit, the sun that would send them back into Death if they could not find a cave or unoccupied grave.
Soon she felt like an animal that is both hunter and hunted—like a fox or a wolf. All she could concentrate on was getting to the stream as quickly as possible, to search along its length to find either her friends or—as she feared—some evidence of what had happened to them. At the same time, she had the unpleasant sensation that some enemy was about to appear from behind every slight rise or shrunken tree, or dive down from the sky.
At least it was much easier to see where she was going, Lirael thought, as she noted the line of trees and bushes that marked the stream. It was less than a half mile away, so she redoubled her running, doing two hundred paces at a stretch instead of one.
She was up to 173 running paces when something burst out of the line of trees, straight towards her.
Instinctively Lirael reached for her bow—which wasn’t there. She changed that movement to a swing across her body to draw her sword and kept on running.
She was just about to scream and turn the run into a charge when she recognized the Disreputable Dog and let out a glad cry instead, a cry that was met by the Dog’s happy yelp.
A few minutes later they met in a tangle of jumping, licking, and dancing around (on the Dog’s part) and hugging, kissing, and keeping her sword out of the way (on Lirael’s part).
“It’s you, it’s you, it’s you!” woofed the Dog, wiggling her hindquarters and squeaking.
Lirael didn’t say anything. She knelt and put her head against the Dog’s warm neck and sighed, a sigh that held all her troubles in it.
“You smell worse than I usually do,” observed the Dog, after the initial excitement had worn off and she had had a chance to sniff Lirael’s mud-covered body. “You’d better get up. We have to get back to the stream. There are still plenty of Dead about—Hedge seems to have abandoned them to do what they will. At least so we suppose, since the lightning storm—presumably following the hemispheres—has moved out over the lake.”
“Yes,” said Lirael, after they’d starting walking back. “Hedge is there. Nick . . . the thing inside . . . called out to him from the reeds. They have two barges, and they’re taking the hemispheres to Ancelstierre.”
“It rose again in Nick,” mused the Dog. “That didn’t take long. Even the fragment must be stronger than I would have thought.”
“It was a lot stronger than I ever imagined,” replied Lirael, shivering. They were almost at the stream, and there was Sam waiting in the shadow o
f the trees, with an arrow nocked ready to fire. How was she going to explain to him that she’d rescued Nicholas—and lost him again?
Suddenly, Sam moved, and Lirael stopped in surprise. It looked as if he was going to shoot her—or the Dog. She just had time to duck as his bow twanged, and an arrow leapt out—straight at her head.
Chapter Thirteen
Details from the
Disreputable Dog
AS SHE DUCKED, Lirael suddenly sensed a Gore Crow’s cold presence directly above her. An instant later its dive was arrested, and it smacked into the ground, transfixed by Sam’s arrow, the Charter Magic he’d set in the sharp point spark-ing as it ate into the splinter of Dead Spirit that was trying to crawl away.
Lirael found herself instinctively with a bell in hand, looking up for more Gore Crows. There was another, diving down, but an arrow lofted up and met it, too. This missile punched straight through the ball of feathers and dried bone and kept on going—but the Gore Crow didn’t, and another fragment of Dead Spirit writhed on the ground near the first, suffering in the sunshine.
Lirael looked at the bell in her hand, and the spirit fragments, pools of inky darkness that were already creeping together, seeking to join for greater strength. The bell was Kibeth, which was appropriate, so she rang it in a quick S shape, producing a clear and joyful tune that made her left foot break out into a little jig.
It had a more inimicable effect upon the remnant spirit fragments of the Gore Crows. The two blots reared up like salted leeches and almost somersaulted as they sought to evade the sound. But there was nowhere for them to go, nowhere they could escape Kibeth’s peremptory call. Except the one place the spirit never wished to see again. But it had no choice. Shrieking inside, the spirit obeyed the bell, and the two blots vanished into Death.
Lirael cast her eye around the sky again and smiled in satisfaction as three more distant black dots fell earthwards: Gore Crows destroyed when the first two banished fragments sucked the rest of the shared spirit back into Death. Then she put the bell away and walked forward to greet Sam, the Disreputable Dog taking a quick side trip to sniff at the crow feathers, to make absolutely sure the spirit was gone and there was nothing worth eating.
Sam, like the Dog, also seemed extremely happy to see Lirael, and was even about to give her a welcoming hug—till he smelled the mud. That made him change his open arms into an expansive welcoming gesture. Even so, Lirael noticed that he was looking behind her for someone else.
“Thanks for shooting the crows,” she said. Then she added, “I lost Nick, Sam.”
“Lost him!”
“There’s a fragment of the Destroyer inside him, and it took him over. I couldn’t stop it. It almost killed me when I tried.”
“What do you mean a fragment of the Destroyer? Inside him how?”
“I don’t know!” snapped Lirael. She took a deep breath before continuing. “Sorry. The Dog says that there’s a sliver of the metal from one of the hemispheres inside Nicholas. I don’t know any more than that, though it does explain why he’s working with Hedge.”
“So where is he?” asked Sam. “And what . . . what are we going to do now?”
“He’s almost certainly on the barges Hedge is using to transport the hemispheres,” replied Lirael. “To Ancelstierre.”
“Ancelstierre!” exclaimed Sam, his surprise echoed by Mogget, who emerged from Sam’s pack. The little cat took several steps towards Lirael; then his nose wrinkled and he backed away.
“Yes,” said Lirael heavily, ignoring Mogget’s reaction. “Apparently Hedge—or the Destroyer itself, I suppose—knows some way to get across the Wall. They’re taking the hemispheres by barge as close as they can. Then they’ll cross the Wall and go to a place called Forwin Mill, where Nick will use a thousand lightning rods to funnel the entire power of a storm into the hemispheres. This will somehow help them come together, and then, I imagine, whatever it is will be whole again, and unbound. Charter knows what will happen then.”
“Total destruction,” said the Dog bleakly. “The end of all Life.”
Silence greeted her words. The Dog looked up to see Sam and Lirael staring at her. Only Mogget was unmoved, choosing that moment to clean his paws.
“I suppose it is time to tell you exactly what we face,” said the Dog. “But we should find somewhere defensible first. All the Dead that Hedge used to dig the pit are still about, and those strong enough to face the day will be hungry for life.”
“There’s an island at the mouth of the stream,” said Sam slowly. “It’s not much, but it would be better than nothing.”
“Lead on,” said Lirael wearily. She wanted to collapse on the spot and block her ears from whatever the Dog was going to tell them. But this wouldn’t help. They had to know.
The island was a tumbled patch of rocks and stunted trees. It had once been a low hillock on the edge of the lake, with the stream on one side, but centuries ago the lake had risen or the streambed split. Now the island stood in the broad mouth of the stream, surrounded by swift water to the north, south, and east, and the deep waters of the lake to the west.
They waded across, Mogget clinging to Sam’s shoulder and the Dog swimming in the middle. Unlike most dogs, Lirael noticed, her friend actually stuck her whole head underwater, ears and all. And whatever power fast-moving water had over the Dead and some Free Magic creatures clearly didn’t apply to the Disreputable Dog.
“How come you like to swim but hate baths?” asked Lirael curiously as they reached dry ground and found a sandy patch between the rocks to set up a makeshift camp.
“Swimming is swimming, and the smells stay the same,” said the Dog. “Baths involve soap.”
“Soap! I would love some soap!” exclaimed Lirael. Some of the mud and reed pollen had come off in the stream, but not enough. She felt so filthy that she couldn’t think straight. But she knew from long experience that any delay would only encourage the Dog to avoid telling them anything. She sat down on her pack and looked expectantly at the Dog. Sam sat down, too, and Mogget leapt down and stretched for a moment before settling comfortably into the warm sand.
“Tell us,” ordered Lirael. “What is the thing bound in the hemispheres?”
“I suppose the sun is high enough,” said the Dog. “We will not be bothered for a few hours yet. Though it might perhaps—”
“Tell us!”
“I am telling you,” protested the Dog with great dignity. “It’s just finding the best words. The Destroyer was known by many names, but the most common is one that I will write here. Do not speak it unless you must, for even the name has power, now that the silver hemispheres have been brought out under the sky.”
The Dog flexed her paw, and a single sharp claw popped out. She scratched seven letters in the sand, using the modern version of the alphabet favored by Charter Mages for nonmagical communication about magical topics.
The letters she wrote spelled out a single word.
ORANNIS.
“Who . . . or what . . . is this thing?” asked Lirael when she’d silently read the name. She already had a feeling that it would be worse than she expected. There was a great but subtle tension in the way Mogget was crouched, his green eyes fixed on the letters, and the Dog wouldn’t meet her eyes.
The Dog didn’t answer at first but shuffled her paws and coughed.
“Please,” said Lirael gently. “We have to know.”
“It is the Ninth Bright Shiner, the most powerful Free Magic being of them all, the one who fought the Seven in the Beginning, when the Charter was made,” said the Dog. “It is the Destroyer of worlds, whose nature is to oppose creation with annihilation. Long ago, beyond counting in years, It was defeated. Broken in two, each half bound within a silver hemisphere, and those hemispheres secured with seven bonds and buried deep beneath the earth. Never to be released, or so it was thought.”
Lirael nervously tugged at her hair, wishing she could disappear behind it forever. She felt a nervous desire to la
ugh or scream or fall to the ground weeping. She looked at Sam, who was biting his lip, unconscious of the fact that he had really bitten it and blood was trickling down his chin.
The Dog did not say anything more, and Mogget just kept staring at the letters.
ORANNIS.
“How can we defeat something like that?” burst out Lirael. “I’m not even a proper Abhorsen yet!”
Sam shook his head as she spoke, but whether it was in negation or agreement, Lirael couldn’t tell. He kept on shaking it, and she realized it was simply that he couldn’t fully grasp what the Dog had told them.
“It is still bound,” said the Dog gently, giving Lirael an encouraging lick to her hand. “While the hemispheres are separate, the Destroyer can use only a small portion of Its power, and none of Its most destructive attributes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before!”
“Because you were not strong enough in yourself,” explained the Dog. “You did not know who you are. Now you do, and you are ready to know fully what we face. Besides, I was not sure myself until I saw the lightning storm.”
“I knew,” said Mogget. He stood up and stretched out to a surprising length before sitting back and inspecting his right paw. “Ages ago.”
The Dog wrinkled her nose in obvious disbelief and kept talking.
“The most disturbing aspect of this is that Hedge is taking the hemispheres to Ancelstierre. Once they are across the Wall, I do not know what is possible. Perhaps these massed lightning rods of Nick’s will enable the Destroyer to join the hemispheres and become whole. If It does, then everyone . . . and everything is doomed, on both sides of the Wall.”
“It was always the most powerful and cunning of the Nine,” mused Mogget. “It must have worked out that the only place It could come back together was somewhere It had never existed. And then somehow It must have learned that we infringed upon a world beyond our own, for the Destroyer was bound long before the Wall was made. Clever, clever!”