“They’re still dragging the hemispheres to the lake,” said Lirael. “They’ll take a while to get here. So I think you’d better do it.”
“I’m going back to bed,” declared Nick, holding his head in his hands. “And the sooner I get home to Ancelstierre, the better.”
“You’re not going back to bed,” growled the Dog, advancing upon him. “You’re coming for a walk!”
With that word, she barked, a bark so deep and loud that the tent shook, poles quivering in resonance. Lirael felt the force of it strike her, ruffling her feathers. It sent sparks flying off her, too, as the Free Magic fought the Charter marks of her altered shape.
“Follow me!” ordered the Dog as she turned and left the tent. Nick took three steps after her but paused at the entrance, clutching at a canvas flap.
“No, no, I can’t,” he muttered, his muscles moving in weird spasms under the skin of his neck and hands. “Hedge told me to stay. It’s best I stay.”
The Dog barked again, louder, the noise carrying even above the constant thunder. A corona of sparks flared about Lirael, and the discarded pajamas under her claws suddenly caught fire, forcing her to fly out of the tent.
Nick shuddered and twisted as the force of the bark hit him. He fell to his knees and began to crawl out of the tent, groaning and calling out to Hedge. Lirael circled above him, looking to the west.
“Stand,” commanded the Dog. “Walk. Follow me.”
Nick stood, took several steps, then froze in place. His eyes rolled back, and tendrils of white smoke began to drift out of his open mouth.
“Mistress!” shouted the Dog. “The fragment wakes within him! You must resume your form and quell it with the bells!”
Lirael dropped like a stone, instantly calling up the Charter marks to unravel the owl skin she wore. But not before her huge golden owl eyes had cut through the lightning-laced night to where the Dead toiled to move the silver hemispheres. Hundreds of Dead Hands were already throwing down their ropes and turning towards the tent. A moment later they began to run, the massed sound of hundreds of dried-out joints clicking in a ghastly undercurrent to the thunder. The Hands at the front fought one another to get past, as they were drawn by the lure of magic and the promise of a rich life for the taking. Life to assuage their eternal hunger.
The Dog barked again as the smoke rose from Nick’s nose, but it seemed to have little effect. Lirael could only watch the white smoke coil, as she was momentarily caught within a shining tornado of light, while the Charter-skin spun back into its component marks.
Then she was there in her own form, hands reaching for Saraneth and Nehima. But something else was there, too, some presence that burned inside Nick, filling him with an internal glow that set the raindrops sizzling as they touched his skin. The hot-metal stench of Free Magic rolled off him in a wave as a voice that was not Nicholas’s came out of his mouth, accompanied by puffs of white smoke.
“How dare— Ah . . . I should have expected you, meddler, and one of your sister’s get—”
“Quick, Lirael,” shouted the Dog. “Ranna and Saraneth together, with my bark!”
“To me, my servants!” shouted the voice from Nick, a voice far louder and more horrible than could come from any human throat. It carried even over the thunder, rolling out across the valley. All the Dead heard, even those who still labored stupidly on the ropes, and they all hurried, a tide of rotten flesh that flowed around both sides of the pit, rushing towards the beacon of the burning tent, where their ultimate Master called.
Others heard it too, though they were farther away than any sound could carry. Hedge cursed and turned aside to slay an unlucky horse, so that he could make a mount that would not shy to carry him. Many leagues to the east, Chlorr turned away from the riverbank near Abhorsen’s House and began to run, a great shape of fire and darkness that moved faster than any human legs could take her.
Lirael dropped her sword and drew Ranna, so hastily the bell tinkled briefly and a wave of tiredness washed across her. Her wrist still hurt from her encounter in Death, but neither pain nor Ranna’s protest were enough to stop her. The relevant pages from The Book of the Dead shone in her mind, showing her what to do. So she did it, joining Ranna’s gentle sound with Saraneth’s deep strength, and with them the imperative sharp bark of the Dog.
The sound wrapped around Nick, and the voice that spoke from him was dampened. But a raging will fought against the spell, a will that Lirael could feel pushing against her, fighting against the combined powers of bell and bark. Then suddenly that resistance snapped, and Nick fell to the ground, the white smoke retreating rapidly back into his nose and throat.
“Hurry! Hurry! Get him up!” urged the Dog. “Cut south and head for the rendezvous. I’ll hold them off here!”
“But—Ranna and Saraneth—he’ll be asleep,” protested Lirael as she put the bells away and hauled Nick upright. He was much lighter than she expected, even lighter than he looked. Obviously he was worn to the bone.
“No, only the shard within him sleeps,” said the Dog rapidly. She had absorbed her wings and was growing to her combat size. “Slap him—and run!”
Lirael obeyed, though she felt cruel. The slap stung her palm, but it certainly woke Nick up. He yelped, looked around wildly, and struggled against Lirael’s grip on his arm.
“Run!” she commanded, dragging him along, with a momentary pause to pick up Nehima. “Run—or I’ll stick you with this.”
Nick looked at her, the burning tent, the Dog, and the onrushing horde of what he thought of as diseased workers, his face blank with shock and amazement. Then he started running, obeying Lirael’s push on his arm to make him head south.
Behind them, the Dog stood in the light of the fire, a grim shadow now easily five feet tall at the shoulder. The Charter marks that ran in her collar glowed eerily with their own colors, stronger than the red and yellow blaze of the burning tent. Free Magic pulsed under the collar, and red flames dripped like saliva from her mouth.
The first mass of Dead Hands saw her and slowed, uncertain of what she was and how dangerous she might be.
Then the Disreputable Dog barked, and the Dead Hands shrieked and howled as a power they knew and feared gripped them, a Free Magic assault that made them shuck their putrescent bodies . . . and forced them to walk back into Death.
But for every one that fell, there were another dozen charging forward, their grasping, skeletal hands ready to grip and tear, their broken, grave-bleached teeth anxious to bite into any flesh, magical or not.
Chapter Ten
Prince Sameth and Hedge
LIRAEL WAS HALFWAY back to the rendezvous with Sam when Nick fell and could not get up. His face was blotched with fever and exertion, and he could not get his breath. He lay on the ground looking up at her dumbly, as if waiting for execution.
Which was probably what it looked like, she realized, since she was standing above him with a naked sword held high. Lirael sheathed Nehima and stopped frowning, but she saw that he was too ill and tired to understand that she was trying to reassure him.
“Looks like I’m going to have to carry you,” she said, her voice mixed with equal parts of exhaustion and desperation. He wasn’t at all heavy, but it was at least half a mile to the stream. And she didn’t know how long the shard of the Destroyer or whatever it was in him would stay subdued.
“Why . . . why are you doing this?” croaked Nick as she levered him across her shoulders. “The experiment will go on without me, you know.”
Lirael had been taught how to do a fireman’s carry back in the Great Library of the Clayr, though she hadn’t practiced it in several years. Not since Kemmeru’s illicit still had caught fire when Lirael was doing her turn on the librarians’ fire brigade. She was pleased she hadn’t forgotten the technique, and that Nick was a lot lighter than Kemmeru. Not that it was a fair comparison, as Kemmeru had insisted on b
eing carried out with her favorite books.
“Your friend Sam can explain,” puffed Lirael. She could still hear the Dog barking somewhere behind her, which was good, but it was hard to see where she was going, since there was only the soft predawn light, not even strong enough to cast a shadow. It had been much easier crossing this stretch of valley as an owl.
“Sam?” asked Nick. “What’s Sam got to do with this?”
“He’ll explain,” Lirael said shortly, saving her breath. She looked up, trying to fix her position by Uallus again. But they were still too close to the pit, and all she could see was thunderclouds and lightning. At least it had stopped raining, and the more natural clouds were slowly blowing away.
Lirael kept on going, but with a growing suspicion that she’d somehow veered off the track and was no longer heading in the right direction. She should have paid more attention when she was flying, Lirael thought, when everything had been laid out below her in a beautiful patchwork.
“Hedge will rescue me,” Nick whispered weakly, his voice hoarse and strange, particularly since it was coming from somewhere near her belt buckle, as he was draped over her back.
Lirael ignored him. She couldn’t hear the Dog anymore, and the ground was getting boggy under her feet, which couldn’t be right. But there was a dim mass of something ahead. Bushes perhaps. Maybe the ones that lined the stream where Sam was waiting.
Lirael pressed forward, Nick’s extra weight pushing her feet deep into the soggy ground. She could see what lay ahead, now she was close enough and more light trickled in from the rising sun. It was reeds, not bushes. Tall rushes with red flowering heads, the rushes that gave the Red Lake its name, from their pollen that colored the lakeshores with a brilliant scarlet wash.