Goldenhand (32 page)

“So what . . . what do you need to do?” asked Nick.

“Go into Death,” said Lirael. “And send the spirit on.”

“How long will that take?” asked Nick anxiously. “Only . . . you know. The air . . .”

“Not long,” said Lirael. “I'd best be quick. As before, try not to touch me.”

She hesitated, then closed her right hand into a fist that left space to hold a bell if her golden fingers did not work in Death. But she did not take out a bell, instead drawing Raminah as awkwardly as expected with her left hand.

“I'll miss you,” said Nick. He leaned in and kissed her. A soft, gentle kiss. Both of them had very cracked lips. “Hurry back.”

“I will,” said Lirael.

She went into Death.

Greenwash Bridge, Old Kingdom/In Death

T
he full moon was so bright it was almost like daytime, so bright Sam could have read a book. The sky was completely clear, a multitude of stars making it brighter still.

Several silent, staring soldiers from the Bridge Company and the Trained Band of Orchyre who formed what was left of the mid-river garrison came up to the top of the tower to watch as the last three or four Spirit-Walkers waded in carrying their chain of dark metal, to disappear under the swift waters of the river. But soon Sameth ordered everyone but the sentries and himself back down, to stand ready in case the nomads somehow managed to bypass the North Castle and get onto the bridge proper. Ferin, naturally, refused to go.

Sam kept looking out, occasionally using his telescope, which he had to constantly take back from Ferin. He saw his parents enter the camp, and there was suddenly a lot of movement there, with different formations coming down from the palisade walls to form up for the short march to the riverbank half a league to the west. Troops were marching out of the South Castle too, moving fast. The faint sound of all this hubbub could just be heard over the roar of the river, which was punctuated every now and then by the boom of a large piece of ice hitting the cutwaters of the piers or the rock of the bastion.

“The spell on the river begins,” said Ferin. “Look at the northern side.”

Sam looked. The river shone with light, the reflection so huge in the water it was almost as if the moon had sunk there, dragging
the stars down with it. At any other time, it would be extraordinarily beautiful. The river . . .

“It's stopped moving!” cried Sam. He stared at one particular spot, willing the break of white foam there to move. But it stayed where it was, and then, even more to Sam's horror, it started swirling backward.

“The current is reversing?” asked Sam. “But what will that do?”

“No,” said Ferin, who had much greater firsthand experience of this river. “It is going back, true, but only a little way, and circling. It is as if a wall is rising where the Spirit-Walkers went in, a wall we cannot see. The water will not freeze, it will be held back, and then the Fazi, the Dnath, the Hrus, the Broal . . . all the horse-lovers, all the clans save my own, they will charge across the riverbed.”

Ferin was right, Sam could see. The river was swirling back from some invisible barrier, and it was growing shallower in front. A magical dam was rising all across the Greenwash.

“There must be something we can do,” he said desperately. “When the river is dry, we will be able to attack the Spirit-Walkers. If we can get down there and break some of them, break the chain—”

“We would drown when the river comes back,” said Ferin. She looked along the river. “Perhaps we will drown anyway. Surely, no spell can hold such a river forever. Once their army is across, where will all the held-back water go?”

Sam looked at the rising water, and then down below. Forty paces from the normal spring flood level to the deck of the bridge, a dozen paces up to the base of the rock where the tower was built, and the tower itself was eighty paces high and very solid. But water was extraordinarily powerful, and if all the spring flood of the Greenwash was backed up high and then let go . . .

He looked to the left and right. Both the North and South castles were a good hundred paces beyond the riverbank, and were built on
rocky outcrops, lifting them higher than the mid-river bastion, and their keeps rose higher and were massive. They might survive, but he was suddenly sure the tower where he stood would not.

“You think we have to get out anyway? North or south?”

“North,” said Ferin. “Closer to the enemy.”

“Until they charge across,” said Sam.

“The horse warriors will charge,” said Ferin. “But where are all their sorcerers and their keepers? And the Witch With No Face? We cannot kill
her
, but we can kill sorcerers and keepers. Let's go find some.”

“I don't know,” said Sam. “Father told me to hold here, but if the river is released upon us once they get across . . .”

He looked at the river again. It was rising fast behind that unseen wall of magic, a strange and terrifying sight, muddy water climbing into the air, roiling backward, spray flying as it met the barrier. The water was at least fifty paces higher than the normal waterline already, and in front the river was draining away, already low enough for him to see it had sunk fifteen paces or more below the western cutwaters of the bridge, which had been almost totally submerged only minutes before.

The thumping of many boots on the bridge decking below distracted him for a moment. Troops from the North Castle moving across, running as instructed. With the river already quieter, Sam could hear the bellowed commands, the shouts and catcalls, the clatter of arms and armor.

They were going to almost certain death, Sam knew. The small army on the southern bank, with Sabriel and Touchstone, and the Guard and the Rangers of the Clayr, could never hold against so many mounted warriors. Even the greatest Charter Mage could be killed by a lance through the throat, or an arrow in the eye.

And he and Ferin and his small garrison would certainly drown
when Chlorr released the river again, as she was bound to do once the bulk of her troops were across. Drown without having done anything useful at all.

Sam felt fear rising inside him, rising as fast as the river climbed high in the air upstream. But it was not a fear of drowning, or of being killed. It was the fear of doing the wrong thing.

He could send to Touchstone for orders, but at the rate the river was falling in front of the dam, the nomads would be charging across the dry bed very soon. New orders would never come back in time.

Better to die fighting than to simply drown.

But better to fight and not die, if it could be done.

“We'll go to the North Castle,” said Sam. “And then we'll see.”

But he spoke to empty air. Ferin was already hurtling down the steps, her crutches clattering like a drumbeat.

Lirael found the spirit without difficulty, almost as soon as she entered Death. Here, she appeared not as a dry and ancient corpse but a bright shape of spirit flesh, in the form of a young woman, only a few years older than Lirael herself. The spirit was suspended just below the surface of the river and her long black hair trailed about her shoulders, moving with the current of the river. She was dressed in what her physical body had been laid to rest in, a plain white robe, similar to the ones worn by the Clayr.

Her face was cruelly scarred. There was a misshapen, jagged X on her forehead where Lirael guessed there had once been a Charter mark, and raised welts on her cheeks. She would have been pretty once, or perhaps handsome would be a better word, for she had a strong, determined face. The scars were not good to look upon, but even so for a moment Lirael wondered why this woman had hidden behind a mask of bronze. A mask made by the Abhorsens for dealing with Free Magic things . . .

But there was no time for curiosity about such details, not when
Lirael knew she must quickly return to Life, and she and Nick retreat from the airless plain. She braced herself against the current, raised Raminah high, and brought the sword down straight into the scarred woman's chest.

But the blade met no resistance in the spirit flesh, and Lirael almost lost her balance. She recovered, balancing on the balls of her feet, and then when she was sure the river could not take her, withdrew the sword.

There was no sign of any wound on the woman below her in the water. Raminah had done nothing. This fragment of spirit was too insubstantial for any weapons to work upon it, Lirael supposed. Even a Charter-spelled blade, for now that they were in Death the Charter marks burned with new brilliance on Raminah, and Lirael's golden hand worked once again. Lirael could spare that no thought either, that the Charter should be here in Death, when it was not outside in Life.

She had more pressing problems. Lirael stared down at the suspended figure and tried to work out what to do. This relic of the original Chlorr
had
to be made to go beyond the Ninth Gate.

But how to do it?

Lirael ran her hand over her bells, wondering which to use.

Ranna she dismissed immediately. The woman was in the deepest possible sleep already. Mosrael needed slightly longer consideration, but that bell, too, she could not use. The Waker would send the woman out into Life, and Lirael farther into Death. That was no use.

Kibeth. Her favorite bell, because Kibeth was the Disreputable Dog, and the Dog was Kibeth. But could Kibeth make such a suspended, inactive spirit walk? She did not think so.

Dyrim? Speaker was no use either. This was no silenced creature that needed a voice, nor one to be stilled.

Belgaer . . . the Thinker. To restore the patterns of a living person, to give them back what they once were, return independent
thought . . . what would Belgaer do for this remnant spirit, something deliberately separated from the greater whole, to be planted in the river of Death for all eternity?

Saraneth, the deepest, lowest bell. Saraneth the strong, used to bind the Dead to the ringer's will. But again, what could Saraneth do against this suspended spirit?

Then there was Astarael. Lirael's fingers hovered above the handle of this bell, but did not touch it. Astarael the Sorrowful, whose melancholy cry would cast all who heard her deep into Death. Everyone, including the ringer. Astarael would work, but she was well nicknamed Weeper. A bell of last resort.

Lirael thought for a few moments longer, then sheathed Raminah and drew Belgaer left-handed, keeping a tight grip on the clapper. Belgaer was very slippery, and could erase a mind—her mind—as easily as it might restore the sleeping woman's.

Belgaer sounded very loud in Death. A bright, clear note that Lirael felt through the bones of her head, clear into her brain. She swung it exactly as described in
The Book of the Dead
, silenced it immediately afterward, and returned it to the bandolier.

Below her, the scarred woman's eyes opened. There was fear there, quickly overcome, and a moment later she burst from the water, coughing and spluttering, and grabbed at Lirael, who quickly stepped back. The river roared and coursed around the woman's legs, but somehow she held firm, still reaching out to Lirael.

“Go,” said the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. She drew Kibeth and rang it, and the woman spun around in answer to the bell's rising, exuberant call. She took two steps . . . three . . . but then stopped and turned around.

“I would if I could,” she said, her voice husky and weak. “I think. But I can't. She . . . I . . . have made sure of that.”

She lifted one foot out of the river, and Lirael saw her ankle was bound with a thick black rope that led back to the point where she
had been submerged. Not some slim thread designed to alert a necromancer to change, but a spell-rope of great power, used to fix the spirit in place.

“By ‘she' and ‘I' you mean Chlorr, don't you,” said Lirael. “You are Chlorr.”

“I am the part of her that would not become what she became, when I found Free Magic again and had to make my choice,” said the woman quietly. “Tell me: you are obviously an Abhorsen, but why do you also wear the blazon of the Clayr?”

“I am of both lineages,” said Lirael. She walked carefully over to where the binding cable was secured, setting her feet hard against the current, to inspect the strands of darkness. This was Free Magic of a high order. It could be undone with the bells, but first she had to find out how it had been made. Lirael cursed under her breath and knelt down, making sure she had a strong stance while also keeping an eye on the woman. She seemed unarmed and innocuous, but even a spirit fragment of Chlorr had to be dangerous.

Time passed differently in Death, but Lirael grudged every passing minute. She and Nick had to go soon, back to the second flag, back to where they could once again fill their lungs.

“Are you the Abhorsen yourself?” asked the woman.

“Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” said Lirael. She found another thread under the water, a trip wire, running off along the border of Life and Death. It was thrumming as if someone plucked at it far away, the vibrations traveling a great distance.

So now Chlorr knew that the anchor which kept her from the final Death had come adrift, for that black thread could lead nowhere else.

“Who is the Abhorsen now? Is it still Belatiel?”

“I know Belatiel only as a name on a list of past Abhorsens from long, long ago,” said Lirael. She felt the cable, trying to sense how it had been made, which bell had fixed it in place. It could be unmade
by the same bell, but Lirael needed to know something else as well.

“What is your name, by the way? Who were you before you became Chlorr of the Mask?”

“Belatiel an Abhorsen from long, long ago?”