Abhorsen (19 page)

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 laugh 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!”

“You sound like you admire It,” said Sam somewhat bitterly. “Which is not the right attitude for a servant of the Abhorsens, Mogget.”

“Oh, I do admire the Destroyer,” replied Mogget dreamily, his pink tongue licking the corners of his white-toothed mouth. “But only from a distance. It would have no qualms about annihilating me, you know—since I refused to ally with It against the Seven when It gathered Its host all those long-lost dreams ago.”

“Only sensible thing you ever did,” growled the Dog. “Though not as sensible as you could have been.”

“Neither for nor against,” said Mogget. “I would have lost myself either way. Not that it helped me any in the end, choosing the middle road, for I’ve lost most of myself anyway. Well, lackaday. Life goes on, there are fish in the river, and the Destroyer heads for Ancelstierre and freedom. I am curious to hear your next plan, Mistress Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”

“I’m not sure I have one,” replied Lirael. Her brain was saturated with danger. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend the threat the Destroyer posed. That left room for tiredness, hunger, and a fierce loathing for her muddy, stinking body to become uppermost in her thoughts. “I think I have to get clean and eat something. Only I do have one question first. Or two questions, I guess.

“First of all, if the Destroyer does join Itself back together in Ancelstierre, can It do anything? I mean, both Charter and Free Magic don’t work on the other side of the Wall, do they?”

“Magic fades,” answered Sam. “I could do Charter Magic at school, thirty miles south of the Wall, but none at all in Corvere. It also depends on whether the wind blows from the north or not.”

“In any case, the Destroyer is a source of Free Magic in Itself,” said the Dog, her brow wrinkled in thought. “Should It become whole and free, It could range wherever It wills, though I do not know how It would manifest Itself beyond the Kingdom. The Wall alone could not stop It, for the stones carry the power of only two of the Seven, and it took all of them to bind the Destroyer in the long ago.”

“That leads to my next question,” said Lirael wearily. “Do either of you know—or remember—exactly
how
It was split in two by the Seven and bound into the hemispheres?”

“I was already bound, like so many others,” sniffed Mogget. “Besides, I am not really who I was even one millennium ago, let alone what I was in the Beginning.”

“In a way I was present,” said the Dog after a long pause. “But I, too, am only a shadow of what I once was, and my clear memories all stem from a later time. I do not know the answer to your question.”

Lirael thought of a particular passage in
The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting
and sighed. She had heard the term “the Beginning” before but only now could place it as coming from that book.

“I think I know how to find out, though I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do it. But first of all I have to wash before this mud eats through my clothes!”

“And think of a plan?” Sam asked hopefully. “I guess we’ll have to try to stop the hemispheres crossing the Wall, won’t we?”

“Yes,” said Lirael. “Keep watch, will you?”

She walked carefully down to the stream proper, thankful that it was another unseasonably hot day. She had considered stripping off for a complete wash but decided against it. Whatever the scales of her armored coat were called or made of, they weren’t metal, so there was no danger of rust. And she didn’t like the idea of being surprised by the Dead while seminaked. Besides, it was hot, the rain had long gone, and she would dry off quickly.

She put her sword on the bank, close at hand, and the bell-bandolier next to it. Both would need serious cleaning, too, and the bandolier rewaxing. Her surcoat almost had to be scraped off, there was so much mud in and under it. She rolled it up and carried it into a convenient pool, out of the main current.

A sound made her look around, but it was only the Disreputable Dog, carefully sliding down the bank with something bright and yellow in her mouth. She spat it out as she reached Lirael, followed by a mixture of dog spit and bubbles.

“Yeerch,” said the Dog. “Soap. See how much I love you?”

Lirael smiled and caught the soap, let the stream take the coating of dog saliva off, and started to lather herself and her clothes. Soon she was entirely covered in soapy foam but wasn’t much cleaner, since the mud and the red pollen were very resistant, even to soap and water. Her surcoat looked as if it would be permanently stained until she had the time and energy to do some laundry magic.

Washing it without the help of magic gave her something to do while she thought about their next step. The more she considered it, the more it became clear that they couldn’t stop Hedge from transporting the hemispheres through the Old Kingdom. Their only real chance was to stop him and the hemispheres at the Wall. That meant going into Ancelstierre, to enlist whatever help they could get there.