Abhorsen

  “Yes, sir,” chorused the stretcher bearers.

  Nick wondered what Hedge was talking about. They were passing between two lines of his strange, afflicted laborers now. Nick tried not to look at them, at the decaying flesh held together by torn blue rags. Fortunately, he couldn’t see their ravaged faces. They were all facing away, like some sort of back-to-front honor guard, and they had linked their arms.

  “The hemispheres are across the Wall!”

  Nick didn’t know who spoke. The voice was strange and echoing, and it made him feel unclean. But the words had an immediate effect. The stretcher bearers began to run, bouncing Nick up and down. He gripped the sides and, on the peak of one of the bounces, used its extra momentum to sit up and look around.

  They were running into a tunnel through the Wall that separated the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre. A low, arched tunnel cut through the stone. It was packed with the Night Crew from beginning to end, great lines of them with their arms linked and only a very narrow passage in between the lines. Every man and woman was glowing with golden light, but as Nick got closer, he saw that the glow was from thousands of tiny golden flames, which were spreading and joining, and the people farther inside the wall were actually on fire.

  Nick cried out in horror as they entered the tunnel. There was fire everywhere, strange golden fire that burnt without smoke. Though the Night Crew were being consumed by it, they did not attempt to flee, or cry out, or do anything to stop it. Even worse than that, Nick realized that as individuals were consumed by the fire, others would step into their places. Hundreds and hundreds of blue-clad men and women were pouring in from the far side, to maintain the lines.

  Hedge was struggling ahead, Nick saw. But it was not exactly Hedge. It was more a Hedge-shaped thing of darkness, limned with red fire that fought against the gold. Every step he took was clearly an effort, and the gold flames seemed almost a physical force that was trying to prevent his crossing through the tunnel in the Wall.

  Suddenly a whole group of the Night Crew ahead blazed, like candles collapsing into a final pool of wax, and disappeared completely. Before the people on either side could relink arms or new Night Crew rush in, the golden fire took advantage of the gap and roared out all the way across the tunnel. The stretcher bearers saw it, and they swore and screamed, but they kept on running. They hit the fire like swimmers running from the shore into surf, diving through it. But though the stretcher and its bearers made it through, Nick was plucked off the stretcher by the fire, wrapped in flame, and tumbled down onto the stone floor of the tunnel.

  With the golden fire came a piercing cold pain in his heart, as if an icicle had been thrust through his chest. But it also brought a sudden clarity to his mind, and sharper senses. He could see individual symbols in the flames and the stones, symbols that moved and changed and formed in new combinations. These were the Charter marks he’d heard about, Nick realized. The magic of Sameth . . . and Lirael.

  Everything that had happened recently rushed back into his head. He remembered Lirael and the winged dog. The flight from his tent. Hiding in the reeds. His conversation with Lirael. He had promised her that he would do whatever he could to stop Hedge.

  The flames beat at Nick’s chest but did not burn his skin. They tried to attack what was in him, to force the shard from his body. But it was a power beyond the magic of the Wall, and that power chose to re-assert itself even as Nick tried to embrace the Charter fire, grabbing at flames and even attempting to swallow flickers of golden light.

  White sparks spewed out of Nick’s mouth, nose, and ears, and his body suddenly uncurled, went ramrod straight, and flipped upright, elbows and knees vertically locked. Like some inflexible doll, Nick tottered forward, the golden flames raging at every step. Deep within his own mind he knew what was happening, but he was only an observer. He had no power over his own muscles. The shard had control, though it didn’t know how to make him walk properly.

  Joints locked, Nick lumbered on, past countless ranks of burning Night Crew, as more and more of them poured into the tunnel from the far end. Many of them hardly looked like Night Crew at all but could almost be normal men and women, their skin and hair fresh and alive. Only their eyes proclaimed their difference, and somewhere deep inside, Nick knew that they were dead, not just sick. Like their more putrescent brethren, these new arrivals also wore blue caps or scarves.

  Ahead of him Hedge burst out of the tunnel and turned back to gesture at Nick. He felt the gesture like a physical grasp, dragging him forward even faster. The golden fire reached out to him everywhere it could, but there were too many Night Crew, too many burning bodies. The fire could not reach Nicholas, and finally he staggered out of the tunnel, away from the golden flames.

  He had crossed the Wall and was in Ancelstierre. Or rather in the No Man’s Land between the Wall and the Perimeter. Normally this would be a quiet, empty place of raw earth and barbed wire, made somehow peaceful by the soft whisper of the wind flutes that Nick had always presumed to be some sort of weird decoration or memorial. Now it was wreathed in fog, fog eerily underlit by the low, red glow of the setting sun and flashes of lightning. The fog thinned in places as it rolled inexorably south, revealing scenes of awful carnage. The white mass was like the curtain of a horror show, briefly drawing back to show piles of corpses, bodies everywhere, bodies hanging on the wire and piled on the ground. They were all blue capped and blue scarved, and Nick finally recognized that they were slain Southerling refugees, and that in some horrible way, that was who Hedge’s Night Crew had also been.

  Lightning crackled above him, and thunder rumbled. Fog billowed apart, and Nick caught a glimpse of the hemispheres a little way ahead, roped onto the huge sleds that Nick knew had been waiting for them when they off-loaded the barges at the Redmouth. But he couldn’t remember that happening, or anything between talking to Lirael in the reed boat and his awakening just before crossing the Wall. The hemispheres had been dragged here, obviously by the men who were dragging them now. Normal men, or at least not the Night Crew. Men dressed in strange, ragged combinations of Ancelstierran Army uniforms and Old Kingdom clothes, khaki tunics contrasting with hunting leathers, bright colored breeches, and rusty mail.

  The force that had propelled him though the tunnel suddenly retreated, and Nick fell at Hedge’s feet. The necromancer was at least seven feet tall now, and the red flames burning around his flesh and in his eye sockets were brighter and more intense. For the first time, Nick was frightened of him, and he wondered why he hadn’t been all along. But he was too weak to do anything but crouch at Hedge’s feet and clutch at his chest, where the pain still throbbed.

  “Soon,” said Hedge, his voice rumbling like the thunder. “Soon our master will be free.”

  Nick found himself nodding enthusiastically and was as frightened by this as he was by Hedge. He was already drifting back into that dreamy state where all he could think about was the hemispheres and his Lightning Farm, and what had to be done—

  “No,” whispered Nick. What must not be done. He didn’t know what was happening, and until he did know, he wasn’t going to do anything. “No!”

  Hedge recognized that Nick spoke with an independent voice. He grinned, and fire flickered in his throat. He lifted Nick up like a baby and cradled him to his chest, against the bandolier of bells.

  “Your part is nearly done, Nicholas Sayre,” he said, and his breath was hot like steam and smelled of decay. “You were never more than an imperfect host, though your uncle and father have proved to be more helpful than even I could have hoped, albeit unwittingly.”

  Nick could only stare up at the burning eyes. Already he had forgotten everything that had come back to him in the tunnel. In Hedge’s eyes he saw the silver hemispheres, the lightning, the joining that he knew once again was the single high purpose of his own short life.

  “The hemispheres,” he whispered, almost ritually. “The hemispheres must be joined.”

  “Soon, Master, soon,” croo
ned Hedge. He stalked over to the waiting bearers and laid Nicholas down on the stretcher, stroking his chest just above his heart with a blackened, still-burning hand. What little was left of Nick’s Ancelstierran shirt dissolved at Hedge’s touch, showing bare skin that was blue with deep bruising. “Soon!”

  Nick watched dully as Hedge walked away. No independent thought was left to him. Only the burning vision of the hemispheres and their ultimate joining. He tried to sit up to look at them but didn’t have the strength, and in any case the fog was thickening once again. Wearied by the effort, Nick’s hands fell to the ground on either side of the stretcher, and one finger touched a piece of debris that sent a strange feeling through his arm. A sharp pain and a gentle, healing warmth.

  He tried to close his hand on the object, but his fingers refused. With considerable effort Nick rolled over to see exactly what it was. He peered down from the stretcher and saw it was a piece of broken wood, a fragment of one of the smashed wind flutes, like the one whose stump he could see a few feet away. The fragment was still infused with Charter marks, which flowed over and through the wood. As Nick watched them, something stirred in the recesses of his mind. For a moment he remembered who he really was once more, and recalled the promise he had given to Lirael.

  His right hand would not obey him, so Nicholas leaned over even more and tried to pick up the wooden fragment with his left hand. He succeeded for a few seconds, but even his left hand was no longer his to command. His fingers opened, and the piece of the wind flute fell on the stretcher, between Nick’s left arm and his body, not quite touching on either side.

  Hedge did not walk far from Nicholas. He strode through the fog, which parted before him, straight to the largest pile of Southerling corpses. They had been killed by the Dead that Hedge had raised earlier that day from the temporary cemeteries around the camps. He was amused by the notion of using Southerling Dead to kill Southerlings. They had also killed the soldiers in the quaintly named Western Strongpoint, and the sailors in the lighthouse.

  Hedge had crossed the Wall three times that day. Once to set the initial attacks in motion in Ancelstierre, which was no great task; second to go back to prepare the crossing of the hemispheres, which was much more difficult; and the third time with the hemispheres and Nicholas. He would never need to cross again, he knew, for the Wall would be one of the first things his master would destroy, along with all other works of the despised Charter.

  All that remained to be done here was to go into Death and compel as many spirits as he could find to return and inhabit these bodies. Though Forwin Mill was less than twenty miles away and they should be able to reach it by morning, Hedge knew the Ancelstierran Army would attempt to prevent their breaking out of the Perimeter. He needed Dead Hands to fight the Army, and most of the ones he’d brought from the north and those created earlier that day in the Southerling camp cemeteries had been consumed in the crossing of the Wall, used up in order to get the hemispheres across.

  Hedge drew two bells from his bandolier. Saraneth, for compulsion. Mosrael, to wake the spirits who slumbered here in No Man’s Land, now freed from the chains of the hated Abhorsen’s wind toys. He would use Mosrael to rouse as many as possible, though use of that bell would send him far into Death himself. Then he would come back through the gates and precincts, using Saraneth to drive any other spirits he could find into Life.

  There would be plenty of bodies for all.

  But before he could begin, he sensed something coming through the darkness. Ever careful, Hedge put Mosrael away, lest it sound of its own accord, and drew his sword instead, whispering the words that set the dark flames running down the blade.

  He knew who it was, but he did not trust even the bounds and charms he had laid upon her. Chlorr was one of the Greater Dead now. In Life she had come under the sway of the Destroyer, but in Death she was somewhat beyond that control. Hedge had forced her obedience by other means, and as always with a necromancer’s control over such a spirit, this obedience could be tenuous.

  Chlorr appeared as a shape of darkness that was only vaguely human, with misshapen appendages upon a bulky torso that suggested two arms, two legs, and a head. Deep fires burned where eyes should be, though the fires were too large and too widely set apart. Chlorr had crossed the Wall with Hedge the first time and had led the surprise attack on the Ancelstierran Army garrison, in their Western Strongpoint. They had not expected an assault from the south. Chlorr had reaped many lives and was all the more powerful for it. Hedge watched her warily and kept a firm grip on Saraneth. The bells did not like to serve necromancers, and even a bell that an Abhorsen would find steady had to be shown who was master at all times.

  Chlorr bowed, somewhat ironically in Hedge’s estimation. Then she spoke, a misshapen mouth forming in the cloud of darkness. The words were a gibberish, slurred and broken. Hedge frowned and raised his sword. The mouth firmed up, and a tongue of blood-red fire flickered from side to side in the hideous maw.

  “Your pardon, Master,” said Chlorr. “Many soldiers are coming on a road from the south, riding horses. Some are Charter mages, though they are not adept. I slew those who came first, but there are many more behind, so I returned to warn my master.”

  “Good,” said Hedge. “I am about to prepare a new host of Dead, which I will send to you when they are ready. For now, gather here all the Hands that you can and attack these soldiers. The Charter Mages in particular must be slain. Nothing must delay our lord!”

  Chlorr bent her great, shapeless head. Then she reached back behind her and dragged forward a man who had been hidden by the fog and her dark bulk. He was a thin, little man, his coat ripped off his back to show a classic clerk’s white shirt, complete with sleeve protectors. She held him by the neck just with two huge fingers, and he was almost dead from terror and lack of air. He fell to his knees in front of Hedge, gasping for breath and sobbing.

  “This is yours, or so he says,” said Chlorr. Then she strode off, her hands reaching out to touch any Dead Hands that were close by. As she touched them, they shuddered and jerked, then slowly began to follow her. But there were surprisingly few Hands left, and none at all in the tunnel through the Wall. Chlorr was careful not to go near the brooding mass of stone that still shimmered every now and then with golden light. Even she did not take crossing the Wall lightly, and possibly could not have done it without Hedge’s help and the sacrifice of many lesser Dead.

  “Who?” demanded Hedge.

  “I’m . . . I’m Deputy Leader Geanner,” sobbed the man. He proffered an envelope. “Mister Corolini’s assistant. I’ve brought you the treaty letter . . . the permission to cross . . . to cross the Wall—”

  Hedge took the envelope, which burst into flame as he touched it and was consumed, grey flakes of ash falling from his blackened hand.

  “I do not need permission,” whispered Hedge. “From anyone.”

  “I’ve also come for the . . . the fourth payment, as agreed,” continued Geanner, staring up at Hedge. “We have done all you asked.”

  “All?” asked Hedge. “The King and the Abhorsen?”

  “D . . . d . . . dead,” gasped Geanner. “Bombed and burnt in Corvere. There was nothing left.”

  “The camps near Forwin Mill?”

  “Our people will open the gates at dawn, as instructed. The handbills have been printed, with translations in Azhdik and Chellanian. They will believe the promises, I’m sure.”

  “The coup?”

  “We are still fighting in Corvere and elsewhere, but . . . but I’m sure Our Country will prevail.”

  “Then everything I need has been done,” said Hedge. “All save one thing.”

  “What’s that?” asked Geanner. He looked up at Hedge but barely had begun to scream before the burning blade came down and took his head from his shoulders.

  “A waste,” croaked Chlorr, who was returning with a string of Hands shambling behind her. “The body is useless now.”

  “Go!” roared Hedge,
suddenly angry. He sheathed his sword all bloody and drew Mosrael again. “Lest I send you into Death and summon a more useful servant!”

  Chlorr chuckled, a sound like dry stones rattling in an iron bucket, and disappeared off into the night, a line of perhaps a hundred Dead Hands shambling after her. As the last one crossed into the forward trenches, Hedge rang Mosrael. A single note issued from the bell, starting low and gradually increasing in both volume and pitch. As the sound spread, the bodies of the Southerlings began to twitch and wriggle, and the mounds of corpses became alive with movement. At the same time, ice formed on Hedge. Still Mosrael sounded, though its wielder was already stalking through the cold river of Death.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chlorr of the Mask

  LIRAEL AWOKE WITH a start, her heart pounding and her hands scrabbling for bells and sword. It was dark, and she was trapped in some chamber . . . no, she realized, coming fully awake. She was sleeping in the back of one of the noisy conveyances—a truck, Sam called it. Only it wasn’t noisy now.

  “We’ve stopped,” said the Dog. She thrust her head out the canvas flap to look around, and her voice became rather muffled. “I think rather unexpectedly.”

  Lirael sat up and tried to banish the sensation of being recently clubbed on the head and made to drink vinegar. She still had her cold. At least it was no worse, though the Ancelstierran spring had yet to fully flower and winter had not given up its grip on nighttime temperatures.

  The stop certainly seemed unexpected, judging from the amount of swearing coming from the driver up front. Then Sam drew back the flap completely from the outside, narrowly escaping a welcoming full-face lick from the Disreputable Dog. He looked tired, and Lirael wondered if he’d been able to sleep after hearing the terrible news about his parents. She’d fallen asleep almost as soon as they’d got in the . . . truck . . . though she had no idea how long she’d been asleep. It didn’t feel long, and it was still very dark, the only light coming from the Dog’s collar.