The Dog flexed her paw and a single sharp claw popped out. She scratched seven letters in the sand, using the modern version of the alphabet favoured by Charter Mages for nonmagical communication about magical topics.

The letters she wrote spelled out a single word.

ORANNIS.

“Who... or what... is this thing?” asked Lirael when she’d silently read the name. She already had a feeling that it would be worse than she expected. There was a great but subtle tension in the way Mogget was crouched, his green eyes fixed on the letters, and the Dog wouldn’t meet her eyes.

The Dog didn’t answer at first but shuffled her paws and coughed.

“Please,” said Lirael gently. “We have to know.”

“It is the Ninth Bright Shiner, the most powerful Free Magic being of them all, the one who fought the Seven in the Beginning, when the Charter was made,” said the Dog. “It is the Destroyer of worlds, whose nature is to oppose creation with annihilation. Long ago, beyond counting in years, It was defeated. Broken in two, each half bound within a silver hemisphere, and those hemispheres secured with seven bonds and buried deep beneath the earth. Never to be released, or so it was thought.”

Lirael nervously tugged at her hair, wishing she could disappear behind it for ever. She felt a nervous desire to laugh or scream or fall to the ground weeping. She looked at Sam, who was biting his lip, unconscious of the fact that he had really bitten it and blood was trickling down his chin.

The Dog did not say anything more, and Mogget just kept staring at the letters.

ORANNIS.

“How can we defeat something like that?” burst out Lirael. “I’m not even a proper Abhorsen yet!”

Sam shook his head as she spoke, but whether it was in negation or agreement, Lirael couldn’t tell. He kept on shaking it, and she realised it was simply that he couldn’t fully grasp what the Dog had told them.

“It is still bound,” said the Dog gently, giving Lirael an encouraging lick to her hand. “While the hemispheres are separate, the Destroyer can use only a small portion of Its power, and none of Its most destructive attributes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before!”

“Because you were not strong enough in yourself,” explained the Dog. “You did not know who you are. Now you do and you are ready to know fully what we face. Besides, I was not sure myself until I saw the lightning storm.”

“I knew,” said Mogget. He stood up and stretched out to a surprising length before sitting back and inspecting his right paw. “Ages ago.”

The Dog wrinkled her nose in obvious disbelief and kept talking.

“The most disturbing aspect of this is that Hedge is taking the hemispheres to Ancelstierre. Once they are across the Wall, I do not know what is possible. Perhaps these massed lightning rods of Nick’s will enable the Destroyer to join the hemispheres and become whole. If It does, then everyone... and everything is doomed, on both sides of the Wall.”

“It was always the most powerful and cunning of the Nine,” mused Mogget. “It must have worked out that the only place It could come back together was somewhere It had never existed. And then somehow It must have learnt that we infringed upon a world beyond our own, for the Destroyer was bound long before the Wall was made. Clever, clever!”

“You sound like you admire It,” said Sam somewhat bitterly. “Which is not the right attitude for a servant of the Abhorsens, Mogget.”

“Oh, I do admire the Destroyer,” replied Mogget dreamily, his pink tongue licking the corners of his white-toothed mouth. “But only from a distance. It would have no qualms about annihilating me, you know – since I refused to ally with It against the Seven when It gathered Its host all those long-lost dreams ago.”

“Only sensible thing you ever did,” growled the Dog. “Though not as sensible as you could have been.”

“Neither for nor against,” said Mogget. “I would have lost myself either way. Not that it helped me any in the end, choosing the middle road, for I’ve lost most of myself anyway. Well, lackaday. Life goes on, there are fish in the river, and the Destroyer heads for Ancelstierre and freedom. I am curious to hear your next plan, Mistress Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”

“I’m not sure I have one,” replied Lirael. Her brain was saturated with danger. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend the threat the Destroyer posed. That left room for tiredness, hunger and a fierce loathing for her muddy, stinking body to become uppermost in her thoughts. “I think I have to get clean and eat something. Only I do have one question first. Or two questions, I guess.

“First of all, if the Destroyer does join Itself back together in Ancelstierre, can It do anything? I mean, both Charter and Free Magic don’t work on the other side of the Wall, do they?”

“Magic fades,” answered Sam. “I could do Charter Magic at school, thirty miles south of the Wall, but none at all in Corvere. It also depends on whether the wind blows from the north or not.”

“In any case, the Destroyer is a source of Free Magic in Itself,” said the Dog, her brow wrinkled in thought. “Should It become whole and free, It could range wherever It wills, though I do not know how It would manifest Itself beyond the Kingdom. The Wall alone could not stop It, for the stones carry the power of only two of the Seven, and it took all of them to bind the Destroyer in the long ago.”

“That leads to my next question,” said Lirael wearily. “Do either of you know – or remember – exactly how It was split in two by the Seven and bound into the hemispheres?”

“I was already bound, like so many others,” sniffed Mogget. “Besides, I am not really who I was even one millennium ago, let alone what I was in the Beginning.”

“In a way I was present,” said the Dog after a long pause. “But I too am only a shadow of what I once was and my clear memories all stem from a later time. I do not know the answer to your question.”

Lirael thought of a particular passage in The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting and sighed. She had heard the term “the Beginning” before but only now could place it as coming from that book.

“I think I know how to find out, though I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do it. But first of all I have to wash before this mud eats through my clothes!”

“And think of a plan?” Sam asked hopefully. “I guess we’ll have to try to stop the hemispheres crossing the Wall, won’t we?”

“Yes,” said Lirael. “Keep watch, will you?”

She walked carefully down to the stream proper, thankful that it was another unseasonably hot day. She had considered stripping off for a complete wash but decided against it. Whatever the scales of her armoured coat were called or made of, they weren’t metal, so there was no danger of rust. And she didn’t like the idea of being surprised by the Dead while seminaked. Besides, it was hot, the rain had long gone and she would dry off quickly.

She put her sword on the bank, close at hand, and the bell-bandoleer next to it. Both would need serious cleaning too, and the bandoleer rewaxing. Her surcoat almost had to be scraped off, there was so much mud in and under it. She rolled it up and carried it into a convenient pool, out of the main current.

A sound made her look around, but it was only the Disreputable Dog, carefully sliding down the bank with something bright and yellow in her mouth. She spat it out as she reached Lirael, followed by a mixture of dog spit and bubbles.

“Yeerch,” said the Dog. “Soap. See how much I love you?”

Lirael smiled and caught the soap, let the stream take the coating of dog saliva off, and started to lather herself and her clothes. Soon she was entirely covered in soapy foam but wasn’t much cleaner, since the mud and the red pollen were very resistant, even to soap and water. Her surcoat looked as if it would be permanently stained until she had the time and energy to do some laundry magic.