Nick cried out in horror as they entered the tunnel. There was fire everywhere, strange golden fire that burnt without smoke. Though the Night Crew were being consumed by it, they did not attempt to flee, or cry out, or do anything to stop it. Even worse than that, Nick realised that as individuals were consumed by the fire, others would step into their places. Hundreds and hundreds of blue-clad men and women were pouring in from the far side, to maintain the lines.

Hedge was struggling ahead, Nick saw. But it was not exactly Hedge. It was more a Hedge-shaped thing of darkness, limned with red fire that fought against the gold. Every step he took was clearly an effort, and the gold flames seemed almost a physical force that was trying to prevent his crossing through the tunnel in the Wall.

Suddenly a whole group of the Night Crew ahead blazed, like candles collapsing into a final pool of wax, and disappeared completely. Before the people on either side could relink arms or new Night Crew rush in, the golden fire took advantage of the gap and roared out all the way across the tunnel. The stretcher bearers saw it, and they swore and screamed, but they kept on running. They hit the fire like swimmers running from the shore into surf, diving through it. But though the stretcher and its bearers made it through, Nick was plucked off the stretcher by the fire, wrapped in flame and tumbled down on to the stone floor of the tunnel.

With the golden fire came a piercing cold pain in his heart, as if an icicle had been thrust through his chest. But it also brought a sudden clarity to his mind, and sharper senses. He could see individual symbols in the flames and the stones, symbols that moved and changed and formed in new combinations. These were the Charter marks he’d heard about, Nick realised. The magic of Sameth... and Lirael.

Everything that had happened recently rushed back into his head. He remembered Lirael and the winged dog. The flight from his tent. Hiding in the reeds. His conversation with Lirael. He had promised her that he would do whatever he could to stop Hedge.

The flames beat at Nick’s chest but did not burn his skin. They tried to attack what was in him, to force the shard from his body. But it was a power beyond the magic of the Wall, and that power chose to reassert itself even as Nick tried to embrace the Charter fire, grabbing at flames and even attempting to swallow flickers of golden light.

White sparks spewed out of Nick’s mouth, nose and ears, and his body suddenly uncurled, went ramrod straight and flipped upright, elbows and knees vertically locked. Like some inflexible doll, Nick tottered forward, the golden flames raging at every step. Deep within his own mind he knew what was happening, but he was only an observer. He had no power over his own muscles. The shard had control, though it didn’t know how to make him walk properly.

Joints locked, Nick lumbered on, past countless ranks of burning Night Crew, as more and more of them poured into the tunnel from the far end. Many of them hardly looked like Night Crew at all but could almost be normal men and women, their skin and hair fresh and alive. Only their eyes proclaimed their difference, and somewhere deep inside Nick knew that they were dead, not just sick. Like their more putrescent brethren, these new arrivals also wore blue caps or scarves.

Ahead of him Hedge burst out of the tunnel and turned back to gesture at Nick. He felt the gesture like a physical grasp, dragging him forward even faster. The golden fire reached out to him everywhere it could, but there were too many Night Crew, too many burning bodies. The fire could not reach Nicholas and finally he staggered out of the tunnel, away from the golden flames.

He had crossed the Wall and was in Ancelstierre. Or rather, in the no-man’s-land between the Wall and the Perimeter. Normally this would be a quiet, empty place of raw earth and barbed wire, made somehow peaceful by the soft whisper of the wind flutes that Nick had always presumed to be some sort of weird decoration or memorial. Now it was wreathed in fog, fog eerily underlit by the low, red glow of the setting sun and flashes of lightning. The fog thinned in places as it rolled inexorably south, revealing scenes of awful carnage. The white mass was like the curtain of a horror show, briefly drawing back to show piles of corpses, bodies everywhere, bodies hanging on the wire and piled on the ground. They were all blue capped and blue scarved, and Nick finally recognised that they were slain Southerling refugees, and that in some horrible way, that was who Hedge’s Night Crew had also been.

Lightning crackled above him and thunder rumbled. Fog billowed apart and Nick caught a glimpse of the hemispheres a little way ahead, roped on to the huge sleds that Nick knew had been waiting for them when they off-loaded the barges at the Redmouth. But he couldn’t remember that happening, or anything between talking to Lirael in the reed boat and his awakening just before crossing the Wall. The hemispheres had been dragged here, obviously by the men who were dragging them now. Normal men, or at least not the Night Crew. Men dressed in strange, ragged combinations of Ancelstierran Army uniforms and Old Kingdom clothes, khaki tunics contrasting with hunting leathers, bright coloured breeches and rusty mail.

The force that had propelled him though the tunnel suddenly retreated and Nick fell at Hedge’s feet. The necromancer was at least seven feet tall now, and the red flames burning around his flesh and in his eye sockets were brighter and more intense. For the first time, Nick was frightened of him and he wondered why he hadn’t been all along. But he was too weak to do anything but crouch at Hedge’s feet and clutch at his chest, where the pain still throbbed.

“Soon,” said Hedge, his voice rumbling like the thunder. “Soon our master will be free.”

Nick found himself nodding enthusiastically and was as frightened by this as he was by Hedge. He was already drifting back into that dreamy state where all he could think about was the hemispheres and his Lightning Farm, and what had to be done—

“No,” whispered Nick. What must not be done. He didn’t know what was happening, and until he did know, he wasn’t going to do anything. “No!”

Hedge recognised that Nick spoke with an independent voice. He grinned, and fire flickered in his throat. He lifted Nick up like a baby and cradled him to his chest, against the bandoleer of bells.

“Your part is nearly done, Nicholas Sayre,” he said, and his breath was hot like steam and smelled of decay. “You were never more than an imperfect host, though your uncle and father have proved to be more helpful than even I could have hoped, albeit unwittingly.”

Nick could only stare up at the burning eyes. Already he had forgotten everything that had come back to him in the tunnel. In Hedge’s eyes he saw the silver hemispheres, the lightning, the joining that he knew once again was the single high purpose of his own short life.

“The hemispheres,” he whispered, almost ritually. “The hemispheres must be joined.”

“Soon, Master, soon,” crooned Hedge. He stalked over to the waiting bearers and laid Nicholas down on the stretcher, stroking his chest just above his heart with a blackened, still-burning hand. What little was left of Nick’s Ancelstierran shirt dissolved at Hedge’s touch, showing bare skin that was blue with deep bruising. “Soon!”

Nick watched dully as Hedge walked away. No independent thought was left to him. Only the burning vision of the hemispheres and their ultimate joining. He tried to sit up to look at them but didn’t have the strength, and in any case the fog was thickening once again. Wearied by the effort, Nick’s hands fell to the ground on either side of the stretcher and one finger touched a piece of debris that sent a strange feeling through his arm. A sharp pain and a gentle, healing warmth.