Just in case it was like the previous gate, Lirael clutched the Disreputable Dog’s collar again, though it meant sheathing Nehima. Then she recited the spell, wetting her lips between the phrases to try to ease the blistering heat of the Free Magic.

As the spell built, the water drained away in a circle about ten feet wide around and under Lirael and the Dog. When it was dry, the circle began to sink, the water rising around it on all sides. Faster and faster it sank, till they seemed to be at the base of a narrow cylinder of dry air bored into three hundred feet of water.

Then, with a great roar, the watery sides of the cylinder collapsed, pouring out in every direction. It took a few minutes for the waters to pass and the froth and spray to subside; then the river slowly ebbed back and wrapped around Lirael’s legs. The air cleared and she saw that they were standing in the river, the current once again trying to pull them under and away.

They had reached the Seventh Precinct and already Lirael could see the first of the Three Gates that marked the deep reaches of Death. The Seventh Gate – an endless line of red fire that burnt eerily upon the water, the light bright and disturbing after the uniform greyness of the earlier precincts.

“We’re getting closer,” said Lirael, in a voice that revealed a mixture of relief that they’d made it so far and apprehension at where they still had to go.

But the Dog wasn’t listening – she was looking back, her ears pricked and twitching. When she did look at Lirael, she simply said, “Our pursuer is gaining on us, Mistress. I think it is Hedge! We must go faster!”

chapter twenty - four

mogget’s inscrutable

initiative

Nick dragged himself up and leant against the door. He’d found a bent nail on the ground, and armed with that and a dim memory of how locks worked, he tried once more to get into the concrete blockhouse that housed one of the nine junction boxes that were vital to the operation of the Lightning Farm.

He could hear nothing but thunder now, and he couldn’t look up because the lightning was too close, too bright. The thing inside him wanted him to look, to make sure the hemispheres were being properly loaded into the bronze cradles. But even if he gave in to that compulsion, his body was too weak to obey.

Instead he slipped back down to the ground and dropped the nail. He started to search for it, even though he knew it was useless. He had to do something. However futile.

Then he felt something touch his cheek and he flinched. It touched it again – something wetter than the fog, and rasping. Gingerly, he opened his eyes to narrow slits, bracing himself for the white flash of lightning.

He got that, but there was another, softer whiteness as well. The fur of a small white cat who was delicately licking his face.

“Go away, cat!” mumbled Nick. His voice sounded small and pathetic under the thunder. He made a flapping motion with his hand and added, “You’ll get struck by lightning.”

“I doubt it,” replied Mogget, close to his ear. “Besides, I’ve decided to take you with me. Unfortunately. Can you walk?”

Nick shook his head and found, to his surprise, that he did have tears left after all. He wasn’t surprised by a talking cat. The world was crumbling around him and anything could happen.

“No,” he whispered. “There is something inside me, cat. It won’t let me leave.”

“The Destroyer is distracted,” said Mogget. He could see the second hemisphere being fitted into its cradle on the railway wagon, the burnt and broken Dead Hands labouring on with mindless devotion. Mogget’s green eyes reflected a tapestry of lightnings, but the cat didn’t blink.

“As is Hedge,” he added. Mogget had already done a careful reconnaissance and had seen the necromancer standing in the cemetery that had once served a thriving timber town. Hedge was covered in ice, obviously engaged in gathering reinforcements in Death and sending them back. With great success, Mogget knew, from the many rotten corpses and skeletons that were already digging themselves out of their graves.

Nick somehow knew that this was his last chance, that this talking animal was like the Dog of his dream, connected with Lirael and his friend Sam. Summoning his last reserves of strength, he pushed himself up to a sitting position – but that was all. He was too weak and too close to the hemispheres.

Mogget looked at him, his tail waving to and fro in annoyance.

“If that’s the best you can do, I suppose I’ll have to carry you,” said the cat.

“H... how?” mumbled Nick. He couldn’t even begin to wonder how the little cat intended to carry a grown man. Even one as reduced as he was.

Mogget didn’t answer. He just stood up on his back paws – and began to change.

Nick stared at the spot where the little white cat had been. His eyes watered from the glare of the constant lightning. He had seen the animal change, but even so he had trouble believing what he saw.

For instead of a small cat, there was now a very short, thin-waisted, broad-shouldered man. He wasn’t much taller than a ten-year-old child, and he had the white-blond hair and translucently pale skin of an albino, though his eyes weren’t red. They were bright green and almond shaped – exactly like the cat’s had been. And he had a bright red leather belt around his waist, from which hung a tiny silver bell. Then Nick noticed that the white robe this apparition wore had two wide bands around the cuffs, dusted with tiny silver keys – the same silver keys he’d seen on Lirael’s coat.

“Now,” said Mogget cautiously. He could sense the fragment of the Destroyer inside Nick, and even with the greater part intent on its joining, he knew he had to be careful. But trickery might serve where strength would not. “I’m going to pick you up, and we’re going to go and find a really good place where we can watch the hemispheres join.”

At the mention of the hemispheres, Nick felt a burning, white-hot pain through his chest. Yes, they were close, he could feel them...

“I must oversee the work,” he croaked. He shut his eyes again and the vision of the hemispheres burnt in his mind brighter than any lightning.

“The work is done,” soothed Mogget. He picked Nick up and held him in his unnaturally strong arms, though he was careful not to touch Nick’s chest. The albino looked somewhat like an ant, carrying a load larger than himself slightly away from his own body. “We’re only going somewhere to have a better view. A view of the hemispheres when they join.”

“A better view,” mumbled Nick. Somehow that quietened the ache in his breast, but it also let him think again with his own mind.

He opened his eyes and met the green ones of his bearer. He was unable to decipher the emotions there. Was it fear – or excited anticipation?

“We have to stop it!” he wheezed, and the pain came back with such force that he screamed, a scream drowned in thunder. Mogget bent his head down closer, as Nick continued in a whisper. “I can show you... ah... unscrew the junction boxes... disconnect the master cables...”

“It’s too late for that,” said Mogget. He began to head up between the lightning rods, ducking and weaving with a foresight that indicated he could predict where and when the lightning would strike.

Behind and below Mogget and his burden, one of the last of Hedge’s living workers connected the master cables into the cradles that held the hemispheres atop the railway trucks. The trucks were positioned fifty yards apart on the short stretch of railway line, and the hemispheres had been set up so their flat bottoms faced each other and projected out from the cradles. The cables fed into the bronze framework that held each hemisphere. There was no sign of anything that would drive the railway trucks – and the hemispheres – together, but clearly that was the intention.