Abhorsen

“Dog,” whispered Lirael. She drew the Dog closer and hugged her about the neck. “Dog. What if we’re too late to destroy the Lightning Farm? What if the hemispheres join?”

The Dog didn’t say anything. She snuffled at Lirael’s ear instead and thumped her tail on the truck floor.

“I have to go into Death, don’t I?” whispered Lirael. “To use the Dark Mirror and find out how It was bound in the Beginning.”

Still the Dog didn’t speak.

“Will you come with me?” asked Lirael, her whisper so low no human could have heard it.

“Yes,” said the Dog. “Wherever you walk, I will be there.”

“When should we go?” asked Lirael.

“Not yet,” muttered the Dog. “Not until there is no other choice. Perhaps we will still reach the Lightning Farm before Hedge.”

“I hope so,” said Lirael. She hugged the Dog again, then let her go and settled back onto her own pack. Sam was already asleep on the opposite side of the truck, with Mogget curled up against him, the empty sardine tin sliding about on the wooden floor of the truck. Lirael picked it up, wrinkled her nose, and wedged it into a corner where it wouldn’t rattle.

“I will keep watch,” said the Disreputable Dog. “You should sleep, Mistress. There are still several hours before the dawn, and you will need all your strength.”

“I don’t think I can sleep,” said Lirael quietly. But she leaned back on her pack and closed her eyes. Her whole body felt edgy, and if she had been able to, she would have got up and practiced with her sword, or done something to try to drain the feeling off with exercise. But there was nothing she could do in the back of a moving vehicle. Except lie there and worry about what lay ahead. So she did that, and surprisingly soon crossed the line between wakeful worrying and troubled sleep.

The Dog lay with her head on her paws and watched Lirael toss and turn, and mumble in her sleep. Beneath them, the truck rattled and vibrated, the roar of the engine going up and down as the vehicle negotiated bends and rises and falls in the road.

After an hour or so, Mogget opened one eye. He saw the Dog watching and quickly shut it again. The Dog quietly got up and stalked over, pushing her snout down right against Mogget’s little pink nose.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t take you by the scruff of your neck and throw you off right now,” whispered the Dog.

Mogget opened one untroubled eye again.

“I’d only run behind,” he whispered back. “Besides, She gave me the benefit of the doubt. Can you do anything less?”

“I am not so charitable,” said the Dog, showing her teeth. “Let me remind you that should you turn, I will make it my business to see that you are ended for it.”

“Will you?” purred Mogget, opening his other eye. “What if you can’t?”

The Dog growled, low and menacing. It was enough to wake Sam, who blinked and reached for his sword.

“What is it?” he asked sleepily.

“Nothing,” said the Dog. She turned back to Lirael and plonked herself down with a frustrated sigh. “Nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep.”

Mogget smiled and shook his head, the miniature Ranna tinkling. Sam yawned mightily at the sound and slipped back against his pack, asleep again in an instant.

Nicholas Sayre swam into wakefulness like a fish rising to a fly. A slow ascent that left him gasping and confused, flopping about like that same fish fresh caught on the shores of a loch—which was where he was. He sat up and looked around. Some part of his mind was comforted by the fact that he was in a twilight world made by the storm clouds above him and that lightning was crackling down less than fifty yards away. He was less interested in the pallid half sun in the east, just rising above the ridge.

Nicholas was lying on a pile of straw next to a hut, off to one side of what had once been an active wharf. Twenty yards away Hedge’s men swore and cursed as they wrestled with sheerlegs, ropes, and pulleys to swing one of the silver hemispheres ashore from a small coastal trader. Another coaster stood off the wharf, several hundred yards into the loch, carefully positioned not to get close enough for the hemispheres to work their violent repulsion on each other.

Nicholas smiled. They were at Forwin Mill. He couldn’t remember how they had done it, but they had got the hemispheres across the Wall. The Lightning Farm was ready, and all they had to do was join the hemispheres and everything would fall into place.

Thunder cracked, and someone screamed. A man fell away from the boat, his skin blackened and hair on fire. He lay on the dock, writhing and groaning till one of the other men stepped down and quickly cut his throat. Nick watched it all happen quite calmly. It was just the price of dealing with the hemispheres, and they were all that mattered.

Slowly, Nick got up, first to all fours, and then fully upright. It was hard work, and he had to clutch at the broken drainpipe of the hut for a while, till the dizziness passed. But slowly he grew steadier. Another man died as he stood there, but Nick didn’t even notice. He had eyes only for the sheen of the hemispheres and the progression of the work. Soon the first hemisphere would be ready to be shifted into the ruined shell of the timber mill. It would be loaded into a special cradle mounted on a waiting railway wagon, one of two on the same short stretch of track.

At least that was what Nicholas had ordered. It occurred to him that he hadn’t actually inspected the Lightning Farm. He had drawn the plans and paid for its construction before leaving for the Old Kingdom. That seemed like a very long time ago. He had never seen the Lightning Farm in actuality. Only in paper plans, and in his troubled dreams.

He was still weak from the illness he’d picked up across the Wall, too weak to easily walk around. He needed a stick or a crutch. There was a stretcher nearby, a simple thing of canvas and wood. Perhaps he could pull out one of the poles and use that as a staff, Nick thought. Very slowly and with infinite care, he walked over to the stretcher, cursing his weakness as he nearly fell. He knelt down and removed the pole, dragging it out of the canvas loops. It was easily eight feet long, and a bit heavy, but it would be better than nothing.

He was about to use it to stand up when he saw something glowing on the stretcher. A piece of splintered wood, painted with strange luminous symbols. Puzzled, he reached out to pick it up.

As he touched it, his body convulsed and he was violently sick. But even as he vomited, he kept one finger on what he now knew was a fragment of a wind flute. He couldn’t pick it up, for his hand refused to obey him and close, but he could touch it. As long as he touched it, memory came rushing back. As long as he touched it, he was really Nicholas Sayre and not some puppet of the shining hemispheres so close by.

“Word of a Sayre,” he whispered, remembering Lirael again. “I must stop this.”

He stayed crouched over the pole, over his own vomit, just touching the fragment, while his mind worked fiercely at his predicament. As soon as he let the charm go, he would regress, go back to being a mindless servant. He could not pick it up or carry it in his hands. Yet there had to be some way he could keep it close enough to work its magic, to remind him who he was.

Nick inspected himself. He was both shocked and scared by how thin he had become, and by the blue and purple bruising that extended all down the left side of his chest. His shirt was merely threads and tatters, and his trousers were not much better, secured at his skinny waist not by a belt but by a piece of tarred rope. The pockets were gone, as were his underclothes.

But the cuffs on his trousers were still turned up. Nick felt in them with his right hand, making sure they would hold. The fine woolen cloth was thinner than it had been only weeks before, but it would not easily tear.

Panting with the effort, he maneuvered his ankle as close to the wind flute fragment as he could, pulled the cuff open, and used his other hand to sweep the chunk of wood toward it. It took a couple of attempts, but finally he got it in. As he did, he forgot what he was doing, till a few seconds later the trouser cuff hit against his skin. Pain shot through his ankle, but it was bearable.

He didn’t want to look at the hemispheres, but he found himself doing so anyway. The first one was on the wharf. Many people were swarming about it, tying new ropes for dragging and untying the ones used to swing it ashore. Nick saw that many of the workers grabbing the landward ropes were Night Crew again. Somewhat better-looking ones, though still rotting under their blue hats and scarves.

No, Nick thought, as the wooden charm slapped against his ankle. They were not diseased humans but Dead creatures, corpses brought into a semblance of life by Hedge. Unlike the normal men, they did not seem troubled by close proximity to the hemispheres, or by the constant lightning.

As if even thinking his name summoned Hedge, in the after-flash of the most recent lightning strike, the necromancer suddenly appeared at the side of the hemisphere. Once again Nick was surprised by how monstrous Hedge had become. Shadows crawled across his skull, twining into the fire deep in his eyes, and his fingers dripped with red, viscous flames.

The necromancer walked to the bow of the coaster and shouted something. Men moved quickly to obey, though it was clear they were nearly all wounded in some way, or sick. They cast off and raised sail, and the boat slid away from the wharf. The other, loaded coaster immediately began to make its approach.

Hedge watched it come in and raised his hands above his head. Then he spoke, harsh words that made the air ripple around him and the ground shiver. He stretched out one hand towards the waters of the loch and called again, making gestures that left after-trails of red fire in the air.

Fog began to rise out of the loch. Thin white tendrils spiraled up and up, dragging thicker trails of mist behind them. Hedge gestured to the right and left, and the tendrils spread sideways, dragging more fog up out of the water to form a wall that slowly extended down the full length of the loch. As it spread sideways, it also rolled forward, towards the wharf, the timber mill, the loch valley, and the hills beyond.

Hedge clapped his hands and turned back. His eyes fell on Nick, who instantly looked down and clutched at his chest. He heard the necromancer approach, his heels loud on the wooden planks.

“Hemispheres,” mumbled Nick quickly as the footsteps stopped in front of him. “The hemispheres must . . . we must . . .”

“All progresses well,” said Hedge. “I have raised a sea fog that will resist any attempts to move it, should there be any amongst our enemies skilled enough to try. Do you wish to instruct me further, Master?”

Nick felt something move in his chest. Like a panicked heartbeat, only stronger and much more frightening and repulsive. He gasped at the pain of it and fell forward, his hands scrabbling at the planks, fingernails breaking as he tore at the wood.

Hedge waited till the spasm subsided. Nick lay there panting, unable to speak, waiting for unconsciousness and the thing within him to take over. But it did not rise, and after several minutes Hedge walked away.

Nick rolled onto his back and watched the fog roll across the sky, blanketing out the storm clouds, though not the lightning. Fog lit by lightning was not a sight he had ever expected to see, he thought, some part of him making notes at the strange effects.

But the greater part of his mind was given over to something much more important. He had to stop Hedge from using the Lightning Farm.

Chapter Twenty

The Beginning of the End

DAWN WAS BREAKING as the truck engines began to cough and splutter once again, then ground to a halt. Lieutenant Tindall swore as his red Chinagraph pencil slipped, and the dot he was making on the map became a line, which he turned into a cross. The cross was marked on the thickly clustered contour lines that marked the descent into Forvale, a broad valley that was separated from Forwin Loch and the mill by a long, low ridge.

Lirael had fallen asleep again as the trucks had driven through the night. So she had missed the small dramas that filled the hours as the trucks sped on, not stopping for anything, the drivers pushing much faster than common sense allowed. But they had good luck, or made their own, and there had been no major accidents. Plenty of minor collisions, scrapes, and scares, but no major accidents.

Lirael was also unaware of the desertions during the night. Every time the trucks had slowed to negotiate a sharp bend, or had been forced to stop before crawling across a washed-out section of what was a very secondary road, soldiers who could not face the prospect of further encounters with the Dead leapt from the trucks and disappeared into the darkness. The company had more than a hundred men when it left the Perimeter. By the time they came to Forvale, there were only seventy-three left.

“Debus! On the double!”

The Company Sergeant-Major’s shouts woke Lirael. She jerked up, one hand already scrabbling at a bell, the other on Nehima. Sam reacted in a very similar way. Disoriented and scared, he stumbled towards the tailgate, right behind the Disreputable Dog, who jumped out a moment later.

“Five-minute rest! Five minutes! Do your business and be quick about it! No brew-ups!”

Lirael climbed out of the truck, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. It was still half dark, the eastern sky light beyond the ridge but without any sign of the actual sun. Most of the sky was beginning to turn blue, save for a patch not far away that was dark and threatening. Lirael saw it out if the corner of her eye, turned swiftly, and had her worst fears realized. Lightning flashed in the cloud. Lots of lightning, more than ever before, and it was striking down across a wider area. All beyond the ridge.

“Forwin Loch, and the mill,” said Major Greene. “They lie beyond that ridge. What the—”

They had all been looking across to the ridge. Now Greene pointed down into the valley that lay between them. It was lush green farmland, divided into regular five-acre fields by wire fences. Sheep occupied some of the fields. But on the southern end of the valley there was a moving mass of blue. Thousands of people, a great crowd of blue-scarved and blue-hatted Southerlings, a huge migration all across the valley.