If it still had human intelligence, the Hand would have been surprised, because no man ever fought like this one, with an arched back and a wild combination of hissing, biting and scratching.

Mogget bit through the Dead creature’s wrist, severing it completely. Instantly, he sprang back, picked up Nick, dodged around the Hand and sprinted off with a triumphant yowl.

The creature ignored its missing hand and tried to follow them. Only then did it discover that its strange opponent had clawed through its hamstrings as well. It took two uncertain steps and fell, the Dead spirit that inhabited it already looking desperately around for some other body to inhabit.

By then, Mogget was on the other side of the ridge. He held Nick’s arm out to one side as he ran, keeping it well away from his own body. That arm shook and shivered, muscles twitched under the skin, and dark bruises blossomed all around the elbow and forearm.

Behind Mogget, the lightning storm began to abate and the thunder to lessen. The fog was still lit with electric blue around the edges – but at the centre, both the fog and the storm clouds above it had become a bright, bright red.

chapter twenty - seven

when the lightning stops

Sam picked himself up. He felt very weak, washed out and confused. Slowly he turned to look down at the three Paperwings in the valley, several hundred yards away. They looked very small in front of the crowd of Southerlings. Magical flying craft made from laminated paper and Charter Magic, they were rather like large, brilliantly feathered birds.

The pilots and passengers from the three Paperwings were already climbing out of their craft. Sam stared at them, unable to believe who he was seeing.

“That’s the King and the Abhorsen, isn’t it, Prince Sameth?” asked Lieutenant Tindall. “I thought they were dead!”

Sam nodded and smiled and shook his head at the same time. He felt an irresistible spring of relief flow up through every part of his body. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or sing, and was unsurprised to find that tears were running down his cheeks, and laughter had come unbidden and was leaping out of his mouth. Because the people climbing out of the blue and silver Paperwing were indisputably Touchstone and Sabriel. Alive and well, all tales of their demise proven false in that single joyous sight.

But the surprises did not end there. Sam wiped the tears away, calmed his laughter before it became hysterical and caught his breath as he saw a young, raven-haired woman vault out of the red and gold craft and run to catch up with his parents, her sword already out and flashing. Behind her, two very blonde, brown-skinned and willowy women were leaving the green and silver Paperwing, a little more sedately but also in a hurry.

“Who’s that girl?” asked Lieutenant Tindall, with more than professional interest in their saviours. “I mean, who are those ladies?”

“That’s my sister, Ellimere!” exclaimed Sam. “And two of the Clayr, by the look of them!”

He started to run down to them but stopped after only two paces. They were all hurrying up and his place was here, by Lirael. She was still frozen in place, still somewhere in Death, facing who knew what dangers. That realisation brought Sam back to the current situation. The Dead had fled from Saraneth as wielded by the Abhorsen. But they were only lesser minions of the real Enemy.

“The lightning has stopped,” said Tim Wallach. “Listen – there’s no thunder now.”

Everyone turned back to the ridge. Sam’s feelings of relief vanished in an instant. The thunder and lightning had faded away to nothing, sure enough, but the fog was as thick as ever. It was no longer lit with blue flashes but by a steady, pulsing red that grew brighter as they watched – as if an enormous heart of fire grew in the valley beyond.

Something was coming down from the ridge, a shape that seemed to have too many arms, an awful silhouette backlit by the blood-red glow from behind the ridge.

Sam raised his sword and felt for the panpipes. Whatever this was didn’t seem to be Dead – or at least he couldn’t sense it. But it carried the hot stench of Free Magic with it – and it was coming straight towards him.

Then the thing shouted, with the voice of Mogget.

“It’s me – Mogget! I’ve got Nicholas!”

The fog eddied, and Sam saw that the voice came from the strange little man with the pale hair and skin who he had last seen on the hill above the Red Lake. He was carrying an emaciated body that just might be Nick. Whoever it was, Mogget held the man’s right arm out to the side, where it writhed and twitched with a life of its own, all too like a tentacle.

“What is that?” asked Major Greene quietly as he signalled his men to close up again around Lirael.

“It’s Mogget,” replied Sam with a frown. “He had that shape in my grandfather’s time. And that... that is my friend Nick.”

“Of course it is!” shouted Mogget, who hadn’t stopped walking down. “Where is the Abhorsen? And Lirael? We must hurry – the hemispheres have almost joined. If we can get Nicholas further away, the fragment will not be able to join and the hemispheres will be incomplete—”

He was interrupted by a terrible scream. Nick’s eyes flashed open and his whole body jerked into rigidity, one arm pointed back towards the loch valley like a gun. Something brighter than the sun flared at his fingertip for a moment, then it flashed over the ridge, too fast to follow.

“No!” Nick screamed. His mouth frothed with bloody foam and his fingers clutched uselessly at empty air. But his scream was lost in another sound, a sound that welled up from the red heart of the fog beyond the ridge. An indescribable shout of triumph, greed and fury. With that shout, a column of fire boiled up to the sky. It climbed up and up till it loomed high above the ridge. The fog swirled around it like a cloak and began to burn away.

“Free!” boomed the Destroyer. The word howled across the watchers like a hot wind, stripping the moisture from their eyes and mouths. On and on the sound carried, echoing from distant hills, screaming through far-off towns, striking fear into all who heard it, long after the word itself was lost.

“Too late,” said Mogget. He laid Nick carefully down on the rocky ground and crouched himself. His pale hair began to spread down his neck and face, and his bones contracted and tightened under the skin. Inside a minute, he was once again a little white cat, with Ranna tinkling on his collar.

Sam hardly noticed the transformation. He hurried up to Nick and bent over him, already reaching for the strongest Charter marks he knew for healing, assembling them in his mind. There was no question that his friend was dying. Sam could feel his spirit slipping through to Death, see the terrible pallor of Nick’s face, the blood on his mouth, and the deep bruises on his chest and arm.

Golden fire grew in Sam’s gesturing hands as he pulled marks from the Charter with ferocious haste. Then he gently laid his palms on Nick’s chest and sent the healing magic into his damaged body.

Only the spell wouldn’t take hold. The marks slid away and were lost, and blue sparks crackled under Sam’s palms. He cursed and tried again, but it was no use. There was still too strong a residue of Free Magic in Nick and it repulsed all Sam’s efforts.

All it did do was bring Nick back into consciousness – of a sort. He smiled as he saw Sam, thinking himself back at school again, struck down by a fastball. But Sam was in some weird armour, not in cricket whites. And there was thick fog behind him, not bright sunshine, and stones and stunted trees, not new-mown grass.

Nick remembered, and his smile disappeared. With memory came pain, everywhere in his body, but there was a welcome lightness as well. He felt clear and unrestricted, as if he were a prisoner freed from a lifetime locked in a single room.