“There’s one other thing I guess I might have to do later,” Lirael said hesitantly. “Is it possible to enter Death on the other side of the Wall?”

“Sure, depending how far into Ancelstierre you go, just like with magic,” Sam replied, his voice suddenly very serious. “What... what is it you might have to do?”

“Use the Dark Mirror and look back into the past,” Lirael said, her voice unconsciously taking on some of the timbre of a Clayr’s prophecy. “Back to the Beginning, to see how the Seven defeated the Destroyer.”

chapter fourteen

flight to the wall

It was huge,” sobbed the man, panic in his eyes and voice. “Bigger than a horse, with wings... wings that blocked the sky. And it had a man in its claws, dangling... horrible... horrible! The screeching... you must have heard the screeching?”

The other members of the small band of Travellers nodded, many of them looking up into the fading light of the evening sky.

“And something else was flying with it,” whispered the man. “A dog. A dog with wings!”

His listeners exchanged glances of disbelief. A giant owl they could accept, after the screeching they’d heard. This was the Borderlands, after all, and in troubled times. Many things they had thought never to see had walked the earth in the last few days. But a winged dog?

“We’d best move along,” said the leader, a tough-looking woman who bore the Charter mark on her forehead. She sniffed the air and added, “There’s something odd about, all right. We’ll go on to the Hogrest, unless anyone has a better idea. Somebody help Elluf too. Give him some wine.”

Quickly, the Travellers broke their camp and unhobbled their horses. Soon, they were headed north, with the unfortunate Elluf swigging from a wineskin as if it were water.

South of the Travellers, Lirael flew with gradually slowing wing beats. It was much, much harder to fly as a twenty-times-sized barking owl than as a normal one, particularly carrying Sam, Mogget and both packs. Sam had helped along the way by casting Charter marks of strength and endurance into her, but a large part of the sustaining magic had been absorbed by the Charter-skin itself.

“I have to set down,” she called to the Disreputable Dog, who was flying behind her, as pain coursed through her wings again. She picked a clear glade amongst the mass of trees and started to glide in for a landing.

Then she suddenly saw their destination. There, beyond the forest – a long grey line snaking along the crest of a low hill, going from east to west as far as she could see. The Wall that separated the Old Kingdom from Ancelstierre.

And on the far side of the Wall, darkness. The full dark, near midnight of an Ancelstierran early spring, spreading up to the Wall, where it suddenly met the warmth of an Old Kingdom summer evening. It gave Lirael an instant headache, her owl eyes unable to adjust to the contradiction – sunset here and night over there.

But there was the Wall, and buoyed up by this sighting, she forgot her pain and the intended landing site. With a push of her wings she lofted up again, heading straight for the Wall, a triumphant screech splitting the night.

“Don’t try to cross!” Sam called urgently from below, as he swung in the makeshift harness of sword baldrics and pack straps that was held tight by her claws. “We have to land on this side, remember!”

Lirael heard him, recalled his warnings about the Perimeter on the Ancelstierran side, and dropped one wing. Immediately this became a diving turn, followed by frenzied flapping as Lirael realised she’d misjudged their airspeed and was about to plough Sam, Mogget and herself into the ground at a painful velocity.

The flapping worked, after a fashion. Sam picked himself off the ground, checked that his bruised knees still functioned, and went over to the enormous owl who lay next to him, apparently stunned.

“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously, uncertain how he could check. How did you feel an owl’s pulse, particularly an owl that was twenty feet long?

Lirael didn’t answer, but faint lines of golden light began to run in hairline cracks through the giant owl shape. The lines ran together till Sam could see individual Charter marks; then the whole thing began to blaze so brightly that Sam had to back off, shielding his eyes against the brilliance.

Then there was only soft twilight in his eyes, as the sun slowly set on the Old Kingdom side. And there was Lirael, lying spread-eagled on her stomach, groaning.

“Ow! Every muscle in my entire body hurts,” she muttered, slowly pushing herself up with her hands. “And I feel absolutely disgusting! Worse than the mud, that Charter-skin. Where’s the Dog?”

“Here, Mistress,” answered the Disreputable Dog, rushing over to surprise Lirael with a lick to her open mouth. “That was fun. Particularly flying over that man.”

“That wasn’t intentional,” said Lirael, using the Dog as a crutch to help herself up. “I was just as surprised as he was. Let’s just hope that we’ve saved enough time to make it worthwhile.”

“If we can get across the Wall – and the Perimeter – tonight, we have to be ahead of Hedge,” said Sam. “How fast can a barge go, after all?”

It was a rhetorical question, but it was answered.

“With a spelled wind, they could sail more than sixty leagues in a day and night,” said Mogget, a hidden voice of authority from inside Sam’s pack. “I would presume they reached the Redmouth around noon today. From there, who knows? It depends how quickly they can move the hemispheres. They may even have crossed, and time is disjointed between the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre. Hedge – aided by the Destroyer – may even be able to manipulate that difference to gain a day... or more.”

“Ever cheerful, aren’t you, Mogget?” said Lirael. She actually felt surprisingly cheerful herself, and not as tired as she’d thought she was. She felt quietly proud that the giant owl Charter-skin had worked, and she was sure that they had got ahead of Hedge and his barges.

“I suppose we should push on,” she said. Better not to count her apples before the tree grew. “Sam, I hadn’t actually thought of this, but how will we get into Ancelstierre? How do we get across the Wall?”

“The Wall is the easy part,” replied Sam. “There are lots of old gates. They’ll be locked and warded, except for the one at the current Crossing Point, but I think I can open them.”

“I’m sure you can,” said Lirael encouragingly.

“The Perimeter is more difficult in some ways. They shoot on sight over there, though most of the troops are around the Crossing Point, so there will only be a chance of a patrol this far west. To be on the safe side, I was thinking we might take on the semblance of an officer and a sergeant from the Crossing Point Scouts. You can be the sergeant, with a head wound – so you can’t talk and get us into trouble. They might believe that – enough not to shoot us straightaway.”

“What about the Dog and Mogget?” asked Lirael.

“Mogget can stay in my pack,” said Sam. With a backwards glance towards the cat, he added, “But you have to promise to be quiet, Mogget. A talking pack will get us killed for sure.”

Mogget didn’t answer. Sam and Lirael took this to be a surly agreement, since he didn’t protest.

“We can disguise the Dog with a glamour as well,” continued Sam. “To make her look like she’s got a collar and breastplate like the Army sniffer dogs.”

“What do they sniff?” asked the Disreputable Dog with interest.

“Oh, bombs and other... um... exploding devices – like the blasting marks we use, only made from chemicals, not magic,” explained Sam. “Down south, that is. But they have special dogs on the Perimeter that sniff out the Dead or Free Magic. The dogs are much better than ordinary Ancelstierrans at detecting such things.”

“Naturally,” said the Disreputable Dog. “I take it I’m not allowed to talk, either?”