Abhorsen

Lirael narrowly averted another, and hurried past. She felt a tiny muscle above her eye start to twitch uncontrollably, a symptom of nervous fear, as individual fires roared everywhere in sight, some moving fast, some slow. At the same time, she expected Hedge to suddenly come up from behind and attack.

The Dog barked next to her, and a huge thicket of fire swerved aside. She hadn’t even seen it beginning to flare, her mind so much occupied by the ones she could see and the threat of what might be coming from behind.

“Steady, Mistress,” said the Dog calmly. “We’ll be through this lot soon.”

“Hedge!” gulped Lirael, then immediately shouted two words to send a long snake of fire twirling into another, the two joining in a combustionary dance. They seemed almost alive, she thought, watching them twirl. More like creatures than burning patches of oily scum, which is what they looked like when they didn’t move. They also differed from normal fires in another way, Lirael realized, because there was no smoke.

“I saw Hedge,” she repeated once the immediate threat of immolation had passed. “Behind us.”

“I know,” said the Dog. “When we get to the Eighth Gate, I’ll stay here and stop him while you go on.”

“No!” exclaimed Lirael. “You have to come with me! I’m not afraid of him . . . it’s . . . it’s just so inconvenient!”

“Look out!” barked the Dog, and they both jumped aside as a great globe of fire swung past, close enough to choke Lirael with its sudden heat. Coughing, she bent over—and the river chose that moment to try to pull her legs out from under her.

It almost worked. The current’s sudden surge made Lirael slip, but she went down only as far as her waist, then used her sword like a crutch to lever herself up again with a single springing leap.

The Dog had already plunged under to haul her mistress out, and the hound looked very embarrassed when she emerged, soaking, to find Lirael not only still vertical but mostly dry.

“Thought you went in,” she mumbled, then barked at a fire, as much to move the conversation on as to divert the intruder.

“Come on!” said Lirael.

“I’m going to wait and ambush—” the Dog started to say, but Lirael turned on her and grabbed her by the collar. The mulish Dog set her haunches down at once, and Lirael tried to drag her.

“You’re coming with me!” ordered Lirael, her tone of command watered down by the quaver in her voice. “We’ll fight Hedge together—when we have to. For now, let’s hurry!”

“Oh, all right,” grumbled the Dog. She got up and shook herself, splashing copious amounts of the river onto Lirael.

“Whatever happens,” Lirael added quietly, “I want us to be together, Dog.”

The Disreputable Dog looked up at her with a troubled eye but didn’t speak. Lirael almost said something else, but it got choked up in her throat, and then she had to ward off another incursion by floating fires.

When that was done, they strode off side by side and, a few minutes later, stepped confidently into the wall of darkness that was the Eighth Gate. All light vanished, and Lirael could see nothing, hear nothing, and feel nothing, including her own body. She felt as if she had suddenly become a disembodied intelligence that was totally alone, cut off from all external stimuli.

But she had expected it, and though she couldn’t feel her own mouth and lips, and her ears could hear no sound, she spoke the spell that would take them through this ultimate darkness. Through to the Ninth and final Precinct of Death.

The Ninth Precinct was utterly different from all other parts of Death. Lirael blinked as she emerged from the darkness of the Eighth Gate, struck by sudden light. The familiar tug of the river at her knees disappeared as the current faded away. The river now only splashed gently round her ankles, and the water was warm, the terrible chill that prevailed in all other precincts of Death left behind.

Everywhere else in Death always had a closed-in feeling, due to the strange grey light that limited vision. Here it was the opposite. There was a sensation of immensity, and Lirael could see for miles and miles, across a great flat stretch of sparkling water.

For the first time, she could also look up and see more than a grey, depressing blur. Much more. There was a sky above her, a night sky so thick with stars that they overlapped and merged to form one unimaginably vast and luminous cloud. There were no distinguishable constellations, no patterns to pick out. Just a multitude of stars, casting a light as bright as but softer than the living world’s sun.

Lirael felt the stars call to her, and a yearning rose in her heart to answer. She sheathed bell and sword and stretched her arms out, up to the brilliant sky. She felt herself lifted up, and her feet came out of the river with a soft ripple and a sigh from the waters.

Dead rose, too, she saw. Dead of all shapes and sizes, all rising up to the sea of stars. Some went slowly, and some so fast they were just a blur.

Some small part of Lirael’s mind warned that she was answering the Ninth Gate’s call. The veil of stars was the final border, the final death from which there could be no return. That same small conscience shrieked about responsibility, and Orannis, and the Disreputable Dog, and Sam, and Nick, and the whole world of Life. It angrily kicked and screamed against the overwhelming feeling of peace and rest offered by the stars.

Not yet, it cried. Not yet.

That cry was answered, though not by any voice. The stars suddenly retreated, became immeasurably far away. Lirael blinked, shook her head, and fell several feet to splash down next to the Dog, who still gazed up at the luminous sky.

“Why didn’t you stop me?” Lirael asked, made cross by the scare she’d had. Another few seconds and she would have been unable to return, she knew. She would have gone beyond the Ninth Gate forever.

“It is something that all who walk here must face themselves,” whispered the Dog. She still stared up and did not look at Lirael. “For everyone, and everything, there is a time to die. Some do not know it, or would delay it, but its truth cannot be denied. Not when you look into the stars of the Ninth Gate. I’m glad you came back, Mistress.”

“So am I,” said Lirael nervously. She could see Dead emerging all along the dark mass of the Eighth Gate. Every time one came out, she tensed, thinking it must be Hedge. She could feel more Dead than she could see, but they were all simply coming through and immediately falling skywards, to disappear amongst the stars. But Hedge, who must have been only a few minutes behind Lirael and the Dog, did not come through the Eighth Gate.

Still the Dog looked up. Lirael finally noticed, and her heart nearly stopped. Surely the Dog wouldn’t answer the summons of the Ninth Gate?

Finally, the Dog looked down and made a slight woofing sound.

“Not yet my time, either,” she said, and Lirael let out her breath. “Shouldn’t you be doing what we came here for, Mistress?”

“I know,” said Lirael wretchedly, all too conscious of the time wasted. She touched the Dark Mirror in her pouch. “But what if Hedge comes while I’m looking?”

“If he hasn’t come through now, he probably won’t,” replied the Dog, sniffing the river. “Few necromancers risk seeing the Ninth Gate, for their very nature is to deny its call.”

“Oh,” said Lirael, much relieved by this advice.

“He will certainly be waiting for us somewhere on the way back, though,” continued the Dog, bursting that small bubble of relief. “But for now, I will guard you.”

Lirael smiled, a troubled smile that conveyed her love and gratitude. She was twice vulnerable, she thought, with her body out in Life guarded by Sam, and now her spirit here in Death, guarded by the Dog.

But she had to do what must be done, regardless of the risk.

First of all she pricked the point of her finger with Nehima before sheathing the sword again. Then she took out the Dark Mirror and opened it with a decisive snap.

Blood dripped down her finger, and a drop fell. But it flew up towards the sky instead of down to the river. Lirael didn’t notice. She was remembering pages from The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting, concentrating as she held her finger close to the Mirror and touched a single bright drop to its opaque surface. As the drop touched, it spread, to form a thin sheen across the dark surface of the glass.

Lirael lifted the Mirror and held it to her right eye, while still looking out on Death through her left eye. The blood gave the Mirror a faint red tinge, but that quickly faded as she focused, and the darkness began to clear. Once again, Lirael saw through the Mirror into some other place, but she could still also see the sparkling waters of the Ninth Precinct. The two visions merged, and Lirael saw the swirling lights and the sun fleeing backwards somehow through the waters of Death, and she felt herself falling faster and faster into some incredibly distant past.

Now Lirael began to think of what she wanted to see, and her left hand fell to unconsciously touch each of the bells in her bandolier in turn.

“By Right of Blood,” she said, her voice growing stronger and more confident with each word, “by Right of Heritage, by Right of the Charter, and by Right of the Seven who wove it, I would see through the veil of time, to the Beginning. I would witness the Binding and Breaking of Orannis and learn what was and what must become. So let it be!”

Long after she spoke, the suns still ran backwards, and Lirael fell farther and farther into them, till all the suns were one, blinding her with light. Then the light faded, and she gazed out to a dark void. There was a single point of light within the void, and she fell towards that, and soon it was not a light but a moon and then a huge planet that filled the horizon, and she was falling through its sky and gliding in the air above a desert that stretched from horizon to horizon, a desert that Lirael somehow knew encompassed this whole world. Nothing stirred upon the baked, parched earth. Nothing grew or lived.

The world spun beneath her, faster and faster, and Lirael saw it in earlier times, saw how all life had been extinguished. Then she fell through the suns again and saw another void, another single, struggling world that would become a desert.

Six times, Lirael saw a world destroyed. The seventh time, it was her own world she saw. She knew it, though there was no landmark or feature that told her so. She saw the Destroyer choose it, but this time others chose it too. This would be the battleground where they would confront the Destroyer; this was where sides must be chosen and loyalties decided for all time.

The vision Lirael saw then seemed to last for many days, and many horrors. But at the same time, through her other eye she saw the Dog pacing backwards and forwards, and Lirael knew that little time had passed in Death.

Finally, she saw enough, and could bear to see no more. She shut both eyes, snapped the mirror shut, and slowly sank to her knees, holding the small silver case between her clasped hands. Warm water lapped around her, but it offered no comfort.

When she opened her eyes a moment later, the Dog licked her on the mouth and looked at her with great concern.

“We have to hurry,” said Lirael, pushing herself upright. “I didn’t really understand before. . . . We have to hurry!”

She started back towards the Eighth Gate and drew both sword and bell with new decisiveness. She had seen what Orannis could do now, and it was far worse than she had ever imagined. Truly, It was aptly named the Destroyer. Orannis existed solely to destroy, and the Charter was the enemy that had stopped It doing so. It hated all living things and not only wanted to destroy them—It had the power to do so.

Only Lirael knew how Orannis could be bound anew. It would be difficult—perhaps even impossible. But it was their one chance, and she was full of single-minded determination to get back to Life. She had to make it happen. For herself, for the Dog, Sam, Nick, Major Greene and his men, for the people of Ancelstierre who would die without even knowing their danger, and for all those in the Old Kingdom. Her cousins of the Clayr. Even Aunt Kirrith . . .

Thoughts of them all, and her responsibility, filled her head as she approached the Eighth Gate, the words of the opening spell on her lips. But even as she opened her mouth to speak the words, there was a gout of flame from the darkness of the Gate, directly opposite Lirael and the Dog.

Wreathed in that flame, Hedge lunged through. His sword cut at Lirael’s left arm, and he struck so hard that she dropped Saraneth, its brief jangle quickly swallowed by the river. The clang of ensorcelled steel on gethre plates echoed across the water. The armor held, but even so Lirael’s arm beneath was badly bruised—for the second time in only a few days.

Lirael barely managed to parry the next cut for her head. She leapt back and got in the way of the Dog, who was about to leap forward. Pain coursed through Lirael’s left arm, shooting up through her shoulder and neck. Nevertheless, she reached for a bell.

Hedge was quicker. He had a bell in his hand already, and he rang it. Saraneth, Lirael recognized, and she steeled herself to resist its power. But nothing came with the peal of the bell. No compulsion, no test of wills.

“Sit!” commanded Hedge, and Lirael suddenly realized that Hedge had focused Saraneth’s power upon the Disreputable Dog.

Growling, the Dog froze, halfway back on her haunches, ready to spring. But Saraneth had her in its grip, and she was unable to move.

Lirael circled around the Dog, moving to try to cut at Hedge’s bell arm, as he had cut hers. But he moved, too, circling back the other way. There was something odd about his fighting stance, Lirael noted. She couldn’t think what it was for a moment. Then she realized that he kept his head angled down, and he never looked up. Clearly, Hedge was afraid to see the stars of the Ninth Gate.

He started to move towards her, but she circled back again, keeping the motionless Dog between them. As she passed in front, Lirael saw the hound wink.