“Sorry,” said Sam. “Can’t stand other people being sick. Are you all right?”
“I knew him,” said Lirael, glancing back at the guardsman. Her voice trembled until she took a deep breath.
“I knew him. He came to the Glacier years ago, and he talked to me in the Lower Refectory. His hauberk didn’t fit him then.”
She took the bottle Sam offered her, poured some water into her hands, and rinsed out her mouth.
“His name was . . . I can’t quite remember. Larrow, or Harrow. Something like that. He asked me my name, and I never answered—”
She hesitated, about to say more, but stopped as Sam suddenly whipped around.
“What was that?”
“What?”
“A noise, somewhere over there,” replied Sam, pointing to a dead mule that was lying on the lip of a shallow erosion gully that led down to the cliffs. Its head hung over the gully and was out of sight.
As they watched, the mule shifted slightly; then with a jerk, it slid over the edge and into the gully. They could still see its hindquarters, but most of it was hidden. Then the mule’s rump and back legs began to shake and shiver.
“Something’s eating it!” exclaimed Lirael in disgust. She could see drag marks on the ground now, all leading to the gully. There had been more bodies of mules and men. Someone . . . or something had dragged them to the narrow ditch.
“I can’t sense anything Dead,” said Sam anxiously. “Can you?”
Lirael shook her head. She slipped off her pack and took up her bow, strung it, and nocked an arrow. Sam drew his sword again.
They advanced slowly on the gully while more and more of the mule disappeared from sight. Closer, they could hear a dry gulping noise, rather like the sound of someone shoveling sand. Every now and then it would be accompanied by a more liquid gurgle.
But they still couldn’t see anything. The gully was deep and only three or four feet wide, and whatever was in it lay directly under the mule. Lirael still couldn’t sense anything Dead, but there was a faint tang of something in the air.
Both of them recognized what it was at the same time. The acrid, metallic odor characteristic of Free Magic. But it was very faint, and it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. Perhaps the gully, or possibly blowing in on the faint breeze.
When they were only a few paces from the edge of the gully, the rear legs of the mule disappeared with a final shake, its hooves flying in a grim parody of life. The same liquid gurgle accompanied the disappearance.
Lirael stopped at the edge and looked down, her bow drawn, a Charter-spelled arrow ready to fly. But there was nothing to shoot. Just a long streak of dark mud at the bottom of the gully, with a single hoof sinking under the surface. The smell of Free Magic was stronger, but it was not the corrosive stench she had encountered from the Stilken or other lesser Free Magic elementals.
“What is it?” whispered Sam. His left hand was crooked in a spell-casting gesture, and a slim golden flame burned at the end of each finger, ready to be thrown.
“I don’t know,” said Lirael. “A Free Magic thing of some kind. Not anything I’ve ever read about. I wonder how—”
As she spoke, the mud bubbled and peeled back, to reveal a deep maw that was neither earth nor flesh but pure darkness, lit by a long, forked tongue of silver fire. With the open maw came a rolling stench of Free Magic and rotten meat, an almost physical assault that sent Lirael and Sam staggering back even as the tongue of silver fire rose into the air and struck down where Lirael had stood a moment before. Then a great snake head of mud followed the tongue, rearing out of the gully, looming high above them.
Lirael loosed her arrow as she stumbled back, and Sam thrust out his hand, shouting the activating marks that sent a roaring, crackling fountain of fire towards the thing of mud and blood and darkness that was rising up. Fire met silver tongue, and sparks exploded in all directions, setting the grass alight. Neither arrow nor Charter fire seemed to affect the creature, but it did recoil, and Lirael and Sam had no hesitation in running farther back.
“Who dares disturb my feasting!” roared a voice that was many voices and one, mixed with the braying of mules and the cries of dying men. “My feast so long since due!”
In answer Lirael dropped her bow and and drew Nehima. Sam muttered marks and drew them into the air with his sword and hand, knitting together many complex symbols. Lirael took a half step forward to guard Sam while he completed the spell.
Sam finished with a master mark that wreathed his hand in golden flames as he drew it in the air. It was a mark that Lirael knew could easily immolate an unready caster, and she flinched slightly as it appeared. But it left Sam’s hand easily, and the spell hung in the air, a glowing tracery of linked marks, rather like a belt of shining stars. He took one end gingerly, swung the whole thing round his head, and let it fly at the creature, simultaneously shouting out, “Look away!”
There was a blinding flash, a sound like a choir screaming, and silence. When they looked back, there was no sign of the creature. Just small fires burning in the grass, coils of smoke twining together to cast a pall across the field.
“What was that?” asked Lirael.
“A spell for binding something,” replied Sam. “I was never quite sure what, though. Do you think it worked?”
“No,” said the Dog, her sudden appearance making Lirael and Sam jump. “Though it was quite bright enough to let every Dead thing between here and the Red Lake know where we are.”
“If it didn’t work, then where is that thing?” asked Sam. He looked around nervously as he spoke. Lirael looked, too. She could still smell the Free Magic, though once more only faintly, and it was impossible to tell where it was coming from amidst the eddying smoke.
“It’s probably under our feet,” said the Dog. She suddenly thrust her nose into a small hole and snorted. The snort sent a gout of dirt flying into the air. Lirael and Sam jumped away, hesitated on the brink of flight, then slowly stood back-to-back, their weapons ready.
Chapter Five
Blow Wind, Come Rain!
“EXACTLY WHERE UNDER our feet!?” exclaimed Sam. He looked down anxiously, his sword and spell-casting hand ready.
“What can we do?” asked Lirael quickly. “Do you know what that was? How do we fight it?”
The Dog sniffed scornfully at the ground.
“We will not need to fight. That was a Ferenk, a scavenger. Ferenks are all show and bluster. This one lies under several ells of earth and stone now. It will not come out till dark, perhaps not even till dark tomorrow.”
Sam scanned the ground, not trusting the Dog’s opinion, while Lirael bent down to talk to the hound.
“I’ve never read anything about Free Magic creatures called Ferenks,” said Lirael. “Not in any of the books I went through to find out about the Stilken.”
“There should be no Ferenk here,” said the Dog. “They are elemental creatures, spirits of stone and mud. They became nothing more than stone and mud when the Charter was made. A few would have been missed, but not here . . . not in a place so traveled. . . .”
“If it was just a scavenger, what killed these poor people?” asked Lirael. She’d been wondering about the wounds she’d seen and not liking the direction her thoughts were going in. Most of the corpses had, like the guardsman, two holes bored right through them, holes where clothing and skin were scorched around the edges.
“Certainly a Free Magic creature, or creatures,” said the Dog. “But not a Ferenk. Something akin to a Stilken, I think. Perhaps a Jerreq or a Hish. There were many thousands of Free Magic creatures who evaded the making of the Charter, though most were later imprisoned or made to serve after a fashion. There were entire breeds, and others of a singular nature, so I cannot speak with absolute certainty. It is complicated by the fact that there was a forge here long ago, inside the ring of thorns. There was a creature bound inside the stone anvil of that forge, yet I can find neither anvil nor any other remnants. Possibly whatever was bound here killed these people, but I think not. . . .”
The Dog paused to sniff the ground again, wandered in a circle, absently snapped at her own tail, and then sat down to offer her conclusion.
“It might have been a twinned Jerreq, but I am inclined to think the killing here was done by two Hish. Whatever did the deed, it was done in the service of a necromancer.”
“How do you know that?” asked Sam. He’d stopped circling when the Dog started, though he still kept on looking at the ground. Now he was looking for signs of a stone anvil as well as an erupting Ferenk. Not that he’d ever seen an anvil here.
“Tracks and signs,” replied the Dog. “The wounds, the smells that remain, a three-toed impression in soft soil, the body hung in the tree, the thorns stripped from seven branches in celebration . . . all this tells me what walked here, up to a point. As to the necromancer, no Jerreq or Hish or any of the other truly dangerous creatures of Free Magic has woken in a thousand years save to the sound of Mosrael and Saraneth, or by a direct summons using their secret names.”
“Hedge was here,” whispered Lirael. Sam flinched at the name, and the burn scars on his wrists darkened. But he did not look at the scars or turn away.
“Perhaps,” said the Dog. “Not Chlorr, anyway. One of the Greater Dead would leave different signs.”
“They died eight days ago,” continued Lirael. She did not question how she knew this. Now that she had seen the corpses more closely, she just knew. It was part of her being an Abhorsen. “Their spirits were not taken. According to The Book of the Dead, they should not be past the Fourth Gate. I could go into Death and find one. . . .”
She stopped as both the Dog and Sam shook their heads.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Sam. “What could you learn? We know that there are bands of the Dead and necromancers and who knows what else roaming around.”
“Sam is right,” said the Dog. “There is nothing useful to learn from their deaths. And since Sam has already announced our presence with Charter Magic, let us give these poor people the cleansing fire, so that their bodies may not be used. But we should be quick.”
Lirael looked across the field, blinking as the sun cut across her eyes, over to where the young man who had once been Barra lay. The name came to her as she looked. She had thought of finding Barra in Death, and telling his spirit that the girl he had probably forgotten years ago had always wished she had talked to him, kissed him even, done anything other than hide behind her hair and weep. But even if she could find Barra in Death, she knew he would be long past any concerns of the living world. It would not be for him that she sought his spirit, but for herself, and she could not afford the luxury.
All three of them stood together over the closest body. Sam drew the Charter mark for fire, the Disreputable Dog barked one for cleansing, and Lirael drew those for peace and sleep and pulled all the marks together. The marks met and sparked on the man’s chest, became leaping golden flames, and a second later exploded to immolate the entire body. Then the fire died as quickly as it had come, leaving only ash and lumps of melted metal that had once been belt buckle and knife blade.
“Farewell,” said Sam.
“Go safely,” said Lirael.
“Do not come back,” said the Dog.
After that, they did the ritual individually, moving as quickly as they could among the bodies. Lirael noticed that Sam was at first surprised, then obviously relieved, that the Disreputable Dog could cast the Charter marks and perform a rite that no necromancer or pure Free Magic creature could do, because of the rite’s inherent opposition to the forces they wielded.
Even with the three of them performing the rite, the sun was high and the morning almost gone by the time they finished. Not counting the unknown number of people taken by the Ferenk to its muddy lair, thirty-eight men and women had died in the field of thorn trees. Now they were only piles of ash in a field of rotting mules and ravens, who had come back, croaking their dissatisfaction at the diminution of their feast.
It was Lirael who first noticed that one of the ravens was not actually alive. It sat on the head of a mule, pretending to pick at it, but its black eyes were firmly fixed on Lirael. She had sensed its presence before seeing it, but hadn’t been sure whether it was the deaths of eight days ago she felt, or the presence of the Dead. As soon as she met its gaze, she knew. The bird’s spirit was long gone, and something festering and evil lived inside the feathered body. Something once human, transformed by ages spent in Death, years misspent in an endless struggle to return to Life.
It was not a Gore Crow. Though it wore a raven’s body, this was a much stronger spirit than was ever used to animate a flock of just-killed crows. It was out in the glare of the full sun, and so must be a Fourth or Fifth Gate Rester at least. The raven body it used had to be fresh, for such a spirit would corrode the flesh of whatever it inhabited within a day.
Lirael’s hand flew to Saraneth, but even as she drew the bell, the Dead creature shot into the air and flew swiftly west, hugging the ground and twisting among the thorn trees. Feathers and bits of dead flesh dropped as it flew. It would be a skeleton before it went much farther, Lirael realized, but then it did not need feathers to fly. Free Magic propelled it, not living sinew.
“You should have got it,” criticized the Dog. “It could still hear the bell, even past those thorn trees. Let’s hope it was an independent spirit; otherwise we’ll have Gore Crows—at the least—all over us.”
Lirael returned Saraneth to its pouch, carefully holding the clapper till the leather tongue slipped into place to keep the bell still.