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 colours, 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 realised, since she was standing above him with a naked 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 practised 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 favourite 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 any more, 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 coloured the lakeshores with a brilliant scarlet wash.

She’d gone completely the wrong way, Lirael realised. 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 unravelling 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 any more, 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.”