“I saw Hedge,” she repeated once the immediate threat of immolation had passed. “Behind us.”

“I know,” said the Dog. “When we get to the Eighth Gate, I’ll stay here and stop him while you go on.”

“No!” exclaimed Lirael. “You have to come with me! I’m not afraid of him... it’s... it’s just so inconvenient!”

“Look out!” barked the Dog, and they both jumped aside as a great globe of fire swung past, close enough to choke Lirael with its sudden heat. Coughing, she bent over – and the river chose that moment to try to pull her legs out from under her.

It almost worked. The current’s sudden surge made Lirael slip, but she went down only as far as her waist, then used her sword like a crutch to lever herself up again with a single springing leap.

The Dog had already plunged under to haul her mistress out and the hound looked very embarrassed when she emerged, soaking, to find Lirael not only still vertical but mostly dry.

“Thought you went in,” she mumbled, then barked at a fire, as much to move the conversation on as to divert the intruder.

“Come on!” said Lirael.

“I’m going to wait and ambush—” the Dog started to say, but Lirael turned on her and grabbed her by the collar. The mulish Dog set her haunches down at once and Lirael tried to drag her.

“You’re coming with me!” ordered Lirael, her tone of command watered down by the quaver in her voice. “We’ll fight Hedge together – when we have to. For now, let’s hurry!”

“Oh, all right,” grumbled the Dog. She got up and shook herself, splashing copious amounts of the river on to Lirael.

“Whatever happens,” Lirael added quietly, “I want us to be together, Dog.”

The Disreputable Dog looked up at her with a troubled eye but didn’t speak. Lirael almost said something else, but it got choked up in her throat and then she had to ward off another incursion by floating fires.

When that was done, they strode off side by side and, a few minutes later, stepped confidently into the wall of darkness that was the Eighth Gate. All light vanished, and Lirael could see nothing, hear nothing and feel nothing, including her own body. She felt as if she had suddenly become a disembodied intelligence that was totally alone, cut off from all external stimuli.

But she had expected it, and though she couldn’t feel her own mouth and lips, and her ears could hear no sound, she spoke the spell that would take them through this ultimate darkness. Through to the Ninth and final Precinct of Death.

The Ninth Precinct was utterly different from all other parts of Death. Lirael blinked as she emerged from the darkness of the Eighth Gate, struck by sudden light. The familiar tug of the river at her knees disappeared as the current faded away. The river now only splashed gently round her ankles and the water was warm, the terrible chill that prevailed in all other precincts of Death left behind.

Everywhere else in Death always had a closed-in feeling, due to the strange grey light that limited vision. Here it was the opposite. There was a sensation of immensity, and Lirael could see for miles and miles, across a great flat stretch of sparkling water.

For the first time, she could also look up and see more than a grey, depressing blur. Much more. There was a sky above her, a night sky so thick with stars that they overlapped and merged to form one unimaginably vast and luminous cloud. There were no distinguishable constellations, no patterns to pick out. Just a multitude of stars, casting a light as bright as but softer than the living world’s sun.

Lirael felt the stars call to her and a yearning rose in her heart to answer. She sheathed bell and sword and stretched her arms out, up to the brilliant sky. She felt herself lifted up, and her feet came out of the river with a soft ripple and a sigh from the waters.

Dead rose too, she saw. Dead of all shapes and sizes, all rising up to the sea of stars. Some went slowly, and some so fast they were just a blur.

Some small part of Lirael’s mind warned that she was answering the Ninth Gate’s call. The veil of stars was the final border, the final death from which there could be no return. That same small conscience shrieked about responsibility, and Orannis, and the Disreputable Dog, and Sam, and Nick, and the whole world of Life. It angrily kicked and screamed against the overwhelming feeling of peace and rest offered by the stars.

Not yet, it cried. Not yet.

That cry was answered, though not by any voice. The stars suddenly retreated, became immeasurably far away. Lirael blinked, shook her head and fell several feet to splash down next to the Dog, who still gazed up at the luminous sky.

“Why didn’t you stop me?” Lirael asked, made cross by the scare she’d had. Another few seconds and she would have been unable to return, she knew. She would have gone beyond the Ninth Gate for ever.

“It is something that all who walk here must face themselves,” whispered the Dog. She still stared up and did not look at Lirael. “For everyone and everything, there is a time to die. Some do not know it, or would delay it, but its truth cannot be denied. Not when you look into the stars of the Ninth Gate. I’m glad you came back, Mistress.”

“So am I,” said Lirael nervously. She could see Dead emerging all along the dark mass of the Eighth Gate. Every time one came out, she tensed, thinking it must be Hedge. She could feel more Dead than she could see, but they were all simply coming through and immediately falling skywards, to disappear amongst the stars. But Hedge, who must have been only a few minutes behind Lirael and the Dog, did not come through the Eighth Gate.

Still the Dog looked up. Lirael finally noticed and her heart nearly stopped. Surely the Dog wouldn’t answer the summons of the Ninth Gate?

Finally, the Dog looked down and made a slight woofing sound.

“Not yet my time, either,” she said, and Lirael let out her breath. “Shouldn’t you be doing what we came here for, Mistress?”

“I know,” said Lirael wretchedly, all too conscious of the time wasted. She touched the Dark Mirror in her pouch. “But what if Hedge comes while I’m looking?”

“If he hasn’t come through now, he probably won’t,” replied the Dog, sniffing the river. “Few necromancers risk seeing the Ninth Gate, for their very nature is to deny its call.”

“Oh,” said Lirael, much relieved by this advice.

“He will certainly be waiting for us somewhere on the way back, though,” continued the Dog, bursting that small bubble of relief. “But for now, I will guard you.”

Lirael smiled, a troubled smile that conveyed her love and gratitude. She was twice vulnerable, she thought, with her body out in Life guarded by Sam, and now her spirit here in Death, guarded by the Dog.

But she had to do what must be done, regardless of the risk.

First of all she pricked the point of her finger with Nehima before sheathing the sword again. Then she took out the Dark Mirror and opened it with a decisive snap.

Blood dripped down her finger and a drop fell. But it flew up towards the sky instead of down to the river. Lirael didn’t notice. She was remembering pages from The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting, concentrating as she held her finger close to the Mirror and touched a single bright drop to its opaque surface. As the drop touched, it spread to form a thin sheen across the dark surface of the glass.

Lirael lifted the Mirror and held it to her right eye, while still looking out on Death through her left eye. The blood gave the Mirror a faint red tinge, but that quickly faded as she focused and the darkness began to clear. Once again, Lirael saw through the Mirror into some other place, but she could still also see the sparkling waters of the Ninth Precinct. The two visions merged, and Lirael saw the swirling lights and the sun fleeing backwards somehow through the waters of Death, and she felt herself falling faster and faster into some incredibly distant past.