The Clayr’s vision of a world destroyed was also prominent in her mind. Had she missed her chance to stop the Destroyer? Were those few minutes with Nick in the reed boat some great cusp of destiny? A vital chance that she could have grasped but failed to?
She was still thinking about that when the water she was racing through turned to actual mostly solid mud, instead of muddy water. The reed clumps started to thin out too, so clearly she was coming to the edge of the marsh. But as this particular marsh stretched in patches for a good twenty miles along the eastern shore of the Red Lake, Lirael still didn’t really know where she was.
She took a guess at south from the position of the sun and the length of a tall reed’s shadow, and started to head that way, keeping to the fringe of the marsh. It was harder going than dry ground, but safer if there were Dead about, forced out into the sun by Hedge.
Two hours later Lirael was wetter and more miserable than ever, thanks to an unexpectedly deep hole along the way. She was almost completely covered in a sticky and revolting mixture of red reed pollen and black mud. It stank, and she stank, and there seemed no end to the marsh, and no sign of her friends, either.
Doubts began to assail her even more strongly and Lirael began to fear for her companions, particularly the Disreputable Dog. Perhaps she had been overcome by the sheer numbers of the Dead, or had been overmastered by Hedge, in the same way even the fragment in Nick had swatted her magic aside as if it didn’t exist.
Or perhaps they were wounded or still fighting, she thought, forcing herself to greater speed. Without her and the bells, they would be much weaker against the Dead. Sam hadn’t even finished reading The Book of the Dead. He wasn’t an Abhorsen. What if there was a Mordicant pursuing them, or some other creature that was strong enough to endure the sun at noon?
Thinking about that made her leave the rushes and start alternately running and walking along firmer ground. Run a hundred paces, walk a hundred paces – all the while keeping an eye out for Gore Crows, other Dead, or the human servants of Hedge.
Once she saw – and felt – Dead nearby, but they were Dead Hands fleeing in the distance, seeking some refuge from the harsh sun that was eating into them, flesh and spirit, the sun that would send them back into Death if they could not find a cave or unoccupied grave.
Soon she felt like an animal that is both hunter and hunted – like a fox or a wolf. All she could concentrate on was getting to the stream as quickly as possible, to search along its length to find either her friends or – as she feared – some evidence of what had happened to them. At the same time, she had the unpleasant sensation that some enemy was about to appear from behind every slight rise or shrunken tree, or dive down from the sky.
At least it was much easier to see where she was going, Lirael thought, as she noted the line of trees and bushes that marked the stream. It was less than half a mile away, so she redoubled her running, doing two hundred paces at a stretch instead of one.
She was up to 173 running paces when something burst out of the line of trees, straight towards her.
Instinctively Lirael reached for her bow – which wasn’t there. She changed that movement to a swing across her body to draw her sword and kept on running.
She was just about to scream and turn the run into a charge when she recognised the Disreputable Dog and let out a glad cry instead, a cry that was met by the Dog’s happy yelp.
A few minutes later they met in a tangle of jumping, licking and dancing around (on the Dog’s part), and hugging, kissing and keeping her sword out of the way (on Lirael’s part).
“It’s you, it’s you, it’s you!” woofed the Dog, wiggling her hindquarters and squeaking.
Lirael didn’t say anything. She knelt and put her head against the Dog’s warm neck and sighed, a sigh that held all her troubles in it.
“You smell worse than I usually do,” observed the Dog, after the initial excitement had worn off and she had had a chance to sniff Lirael’s mud-covered body. “You’d better get up. We have to get back to the stream. There are still plenty of Dead about – Hedge seems to have abandoned them to do what they will. At least so we suppose, since the lightning storm – presumably following the hemispheres – has moved out over the lake.”
“Yes,” said Lirael, after they’d starting walking back. “Hedge is there. Nick... the thing inside... called out to him from the reeds. They have two barges, and they’re taking the hemispheres to Ancelstierre.”
“It rose again in Nick,” mused the Dog. “That didn’t take long. Even the fragment must be stronger than I would have thought.”
“It was a lot stronger than I ever imagined,” replied Lirael, shivering. They were almost at the stream, and there was Sam waiting in the shadow of the trees, with an arrow nocked ready to fire. How was she going to explain to him that she’d rescued Nicholas – and lost him again?
Suddenly, Sam moved, and Lirael stopped in surprise. It looked as if he was going to shoot her – or the Dog. She just had time to duck as his bow twanged and an arrow leapt out – straight at her head.
chapter thirteen
details from the disreputable dog
As she ducked, Lirael suddenly sensed a Gore Crow’s cold presence directly above her. An instant later its dive was arrested and it smacked into the ground, transfixed by Sam’s arrow, the Charter Magic he’d set in the sharp point sparking as it ate into the splinter of Dead Spirit that was trying to crawl away.
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 smelt 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.”