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 na**d 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 being 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.
She’d gone completely the wrong way, Lirael realized. Somehow she must have turned west. Now she was on the shore of the lake, and the Gore Crows would soon find her. Unless, she thought, they couldn’t see her. She shifted Nick higher and bent over a little more to balance the load. He groaned in pain, but Lirael ignored him and pressed on into the reeds.
Soon the mud gave way to water, up to her shins. The reeds grew closer together, their flowery heads towering over her. But there was a narrow path where the reeds were beaten down, allowing passage through them. She took the path, winding deeper and deeper into the reedy marsh.
Sam drew another mark out of the endless flow of the Charter and forced it into the arrow he was holding across his knees, watching it spread like oil over the sharp steel of the head. It was the final mark for this arrow. He had already put marks of accuracy and strength into the shaft, marks for flight and luck into the fletching, and marks for unraveling and banishment into the head.
It was the last arrow of twenty, all now spelled to be weapons of great use against the Lesser Dead, at the least. It had taken Sam two hours to do all twenty, and he was a little weary. He was unaware that it would have taken most Charter Mages the better part of a day. Working magic on inanimate objects had always come easily to Sam.
He was doing his work while sitting on the dry end of a half-submerged log that stuck out of the stream. It was a good stream from Sam’s point of view, because it was at least fifteen yards wide, very deep, and fast. It could be crossed via the log and jumping across a couple of big stones, but Sam didn’t think the Dead would do that.
Sam put the finished arrow back into the quiver built into Lirael’s pack and slung that on his back. His own pack was pushed up against the stream bank, with Mogget asleep in the top of it. Though not anymore, Sam noticed, as he bent down to see it more clearly in the predawn light. The patch on the flap had gone completely, and there was no sign of the cat in the top pocket.
Sam looked around carefully, but he couldn’t see anything moving, and the light wasn’t good enough to see anything standing still or hiding. He couldn’t hear anything suspicious either—just the burble of the stream and the distant thunder from the lightning storm around the pit.
Mogget had never slipped off like this before, and Sam trusted the little white cat thing even less than he had before their experience in the strange tunnels under the House. Slowly he took Lirael’s bow from its cover and nocked an arrow. His sword was at his side, but with the dawn, it was just light enough to shoot a little way with accuracy. At least across the stream, which Sam had no intention of crossing.
Something moved on the other side. A small, white shape, slinking near the water. It was probably Mogget, Sam thought, peering into the gloom. Probably.
It came closer, and his fingers twitched on the string.
“Mogget?” he whispered, nerves strung as taut as the bow.
“Of course it is, stupid!” said the white shape, leaping nimbly from rock to rock and then to the log. “Save your arrows—you’ll need them. There’s about two hundred Dead Hands headed this way!”
“What!” exclaimed Sam. “What about Lirael and Nick? Are they all right?”
“No idea,” said Mogget calmly. “I went to see what was happening when our canine companion started to bark. She’s heading this way—hotly pursued—but I couldn’t see Lirael or your troublesome friend. Ah—I think that’s the Disgusting Dog now.”
Mogget’s words were followed by an enormous splash as the Dog suddenly appeared on the opposite bank and dived into the stream, sending a cascade of water in all directions, but mostly over Mogget.
Then the Dog was next to them, shaking herself so vigorously that Sam had to hold his bow out of the way.
“Quick,” she panted. “We need to get out of here! Stay on this side and head downstream!”
As soon as she’d spoken, the Dog was off again, loping easily along beside the stream. Sam leapt off the log, swooped upon his pack, picked it up, and stumbled after the Dog, questions falling out of his mouth as he ran. With Lirael’s pack on his back, the bow and an arrow in one hand, and his own pack in the other hand, it took most of his concentration not to fall over and into the stream.
“Lirael . . . and Nick? What . . . can’t we stop . . . got to rearrange all this . . .”
“Lirael went into the reeds, but the necromancer suddenly showed up so I couldn’t follow without leading him to her,” said the Dog, turning her head back as she ran. “That’s why we can’t wait!”
Sam looked back, too, and immediately fell over his pack and dropped both bow and arrow. As he stumbled to his feet, he saw a wall of Dead Hands lurch to a stop on the other side of the stream, back up near the sunken log. There were hundreds of them, a great dark mass of writhing figures that immediately started to parallel the dog’s course on the opposite bank.
In the midst of the Dead Hands, one figure stood out. A man cloaked in red flame, riding a horse that was mostly skeleton, though some flesh still hung on its neck and withers.
Hedge. Sam felt his presence like a shock of cold water, and a sharp pain in his wrists. Hedge was shouting something—perhaps a spell—but Sam didn’t hear it because he was scrabbling to pick up the bow and get another arrow. It was still quite dark, and a fair distance, he thought, but not too far for a lucky shot, in the stillness before the dawn.
As quick as that thought, he nocked an arrow and drew. For an instant, his whole concentration was on a line between himself and that shape of fire and darkness.
Then he loosed, and the spelled arrow flew like a blue spark from him. Sam watched it, filled with hope as it sped as true as he could wish, and arrow met necromancer with a blaze of white fire against the red. Hedge fell from his skeleton horse, which reared and then dived forward, smashing through several ranks of Dead Hands to plunge into the water in an explosion of white sparks and high-pitched screaming. Instinctively, it had known how to free itself and die the final death.
“That’ll annoy him,” said Mogget from somewhere near Sam’s feet.
Sam’s sudden hope died as he saw Hedge stand up, pluck the arrow from his throat, and throw it on the ground.
“Don’t waste another on him,” said the Dog. “He cannot be slain by any arrow, no matter the spells laid upon it.”
Sam nodded grimly, threw the bow aside, and drew his sword. Though the stream might hold the Dead Hands back, he knew that it would not stop Hedge.
Hedge drew his own sword and walked forward, his Dead Hands parting to make a corridor. At the edge of the stream the necromancer smiled an open smile, and red fire licked about his teeth. He put one boot in the stream—and smiled again as the water burst into steam.
“Go and help Lirael,” Sam ordered the Dog. “I’ll hold off Hedge as long as I can. Mogget—will you help me?”
Mogget didn’t answer, and he was nowhere to be seen.
“Good luck,” said the Dog. Then she was gone, racing along the bank to the west.
Sam took a deep breath and crouched into a defensive stance. This was his worst fear, come into terrible reality. Alone again, and facing Hedge.
Sam reached into the Charter, as much for comfort as to be ready to cast a spell. His breathing steadied as he felt its familiar flow all around him, and almost without thinking he began to draw out Charter marks, whispering their names quietly as they fell into his open hand.
Hedge took another step. He was wreathed in steam now and almost completely obscured, the stream bubbling and roiling both upstream and down. With a shrinking feeling, Sam saw that the necromancer was actually boiling the stream dry. There was already signifcantly less water below him, the streambed was becoming visible, and the Dead Hands were starting to move.
Hedge wouldn’t even have to fight him, Sam thought. All he had to do was stand in the stream, and his Dead Hands would cross and finish Sam off. Though he had the panpipes, Sam didn’t know how to use them properly, and there were simply too many Hands.
There was only one thing he could do. Sam would have to attack Hedge in the stream and kill him before the Hands could cross. If he could kill Hedge, a little nagging voice said from deep inside his mind. Wouldn’t it be better to run away? Run away before you are burnt again, and your spirit ripped out of your flesh and taken by the necromancer. . . .
Sam buried that thought away, sending the nagging voice so far into the recesses of his mind that it was just a meaningless squeak. Then he let the Charter marks he already held in his hand fall into nothingness, reached into the Charter again, and drew out a whole new string of marks. As he summoned them, Sam hurriedly traced the marks on his legs with a finger. Marks of protection, of reflection, of diversion. They joined and shimmered there, wrapping his legs in Charter Magic armor that would resist the steam and boiling water.
He looked down for only ten, or perhaps fifteen seconds. But when he looked back up, Hedge was gone. The steam was dissipating, and the water was flowing again. The Dead Hands were turning their backs to him and lumbering away, leaving the ground churned up and littered with pieces of rotting flesh and splintered bone.
“Either you were born to a different death, Prince,” remarked Mogget, who had appeared at Sam’s feet like a newly sprung plant, “or Hedge just found something more important to do.”
“Where were you?” asked Sam. He felt strangely deflated. He’d been all ready to plunge into the stream, to fight it out, and now all of a sudden it was just a quiet morning again. The sun was even up, and the birds had resumed their singing. Though only on his side of the stream, Sam noticed.