Abhorsen (10 page)

Lirael and Sam looked at each other and then at the lightning storm.

“I wish she wouldn’t do that,” complained Lirael, who had opened her mouth to ask another question. Then she went down after the Dog, at a considerably slower pace. Magical dogs might not tire, but Lirael was already very weary. It would be a long and exhausting afternoon, if no worse, for there was always the chance the Gore Crows would find them.

“What have you done, Nick?” whispered Sam. Then he followed Lirael, already pursing his lips and thinking about the Charter marks that would be needed to shunt a rain cloud two hundred miles across the sky.

They walked steadily all afternoon, with only short breaks, following a stream that flowed through a shallow valley between two roughly parallel lines of hills. The valley was lightly wooded, the shade saving them from the sun, which Lirael was finding particularly troubling. She was already sunburnt a little on the nose and cheekbones, and had neither the time nor the energy to soothe her skin with a spell. This was also a niggling reminder of the differences that had plagued her all her life. Proper Clayr were brown skinned, and they never burnt—exposure to sun simply made them darker.

By the time the sun had begun its slow fall behind the western mountains, only the Dog was still moving with any grace. Lirael and Sam had been awake for nearly eighteen hours, most of it climbing up the Long Cliffs or walking. They were stumbling, and falling asleep on their feet, no matter how they tried to stay alert. Finally Lirael decided that they had to rest, and they would stop as soon as they saw somewhere defensible, preferably with running water on at least one side.

Half an hour later, as they kept stumbling on and the valley began to narrow and the ground to rise, Lirael was prepared to settle for anywhere they could simply fall down, with or without running water to help defend against the Dead. The trees were also thinning out, giving way to low shrubs and weedy grass as they climbed. Another field that was returning to the wild, and totally indefensible.

Just when Lirael and Sam could hardly take another step, they found the perfect place. The soft gurgle of a waterfall announced it, and there was a shepherd’s hut, built on stilts across the swift water at the foot of a long but not very high waterfall. The hut was both shelter and bridge, so solidly built of ironwood that it showed little sign of decay, save for some of the shingles missing from the roof.

The Dog sniffed around outside the river hut, pronounced it dirty but habitable, and got in the way as Lirael and Sam tried to climb the steps and enter.

It was filthy inside, having at some time been subject to a flood that had deposited a great deal of dirt on the floor. But Lirael and Sam were past caring about that. Whether they slept on dirt outdoors or in, it was all one.

“Dog, can you take the first watch?” asked Lirael, as she gratefully shrugged off her pack and settled it in one corner.

“I can watch,” protested Sam, belying his words with a mighty yawn.

“I will watch,” said the Disreputable Dog. “Though there may be rabbits. . . .”

“Don’t chase them out of sight,” warned Lirael. She drew Nehima and laid the sword across her pack, ready for quick use, then did the same with the bell-bandolier. She kept her boots on, choosing not to speculate on the state of her feet after two days’ hard traveling.

“Wake us in four hours, please,” Lirael added as she slumped down and leant back against the wall. “We have to call the rain clouds down.”

“Yes, Mistress,” replied the Dog. She had not come in but sat near the rushing water, her ears pricked to catch some distant sound. Rabbits, perhaps. “Do you want me to bring you a boiled egg and toast as well?”

There was no answer. When the Dog looked in a moment later, both Lirael and Sam were sound asleep, slumped against their packs. The Dog let out a long sigh and slumped down herself, but her ears stayed upright and her eyes were keen, gazing out long after the summer twilight faded into the night.

Near midnight, the Dog shook herself and woke Lirael with a lick on her face and Sam with paw pressed heavily on his chest. Each woke with a start, and both reached for their swords before their eyes adjusted to the dim light from the glow of the Charter marks in the Dog’s collar.

Cold water from the stream woke them a little more, followed by necessary ablutions slightly farther afield. When they came back, a quick meal of dried meat, compressed dry biscuits, and dried fruit was eaten heartily by all three, though the Dog regretted the absence of rabbit or even a nice bit of lizard.

They couldn’t see the rain clouds in the night, even with a star-filled sky and the moon beginning its rise. But they knew the clouds were there, far to the north.

“We will have to go as soon as the spell is done,” warned the Dog, as Lirael and Sam stood under the stars quietly discussing how they would call the clouds and rain. “Such Charter Magic will call anything Dead within miles, or any Free Magic creatures.”

“We should press on anyway,” said Lirael. The sleep had revived her to some degree, but she still wished for the comfort of the sleeping chair in her little room in the Great Library of the Clayr. “Are you ready, Sam?”

Sam stopped humming and said, “Yes. Um, I was wondering whether you might consider a slight variation on the usual spell? I think that we will need a stronger casting to bring the clouds so far.”

“Sure,” said Lirael. “What do you want to do?”

Sam explained quickly, then went through it again slowly as Lirael made certain she knew what he planned to do. Usually both of them would whistle the same marks at the same time. What Sam wanted to do was whistle different but complementary marks, in effect weaving together two different weather-working spells. They would end and activate the spell by speaking two master marks at the same time, when one was normally all that would be used.

“Will this work?” asked Lirael anxiously. She had no experience of working with another Charter Mage on such a complex spell.

“It will be much stronger,” said Sam confidently.

Lirael looked at the Dog for confirmation, but the hound wasn’t paying attention. She was staring back towards the south, intent on something Lirael and Sam couldn’t see or sense.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” replied the Dog, turning her head to the side, her pricked ears quivering as she listened to the night. “I think something is following us, but it is still distant. . . .”

She looked back at Lirael and Sam.

“Do your weather magic and let us be gone!”

A league or more downstream of the shepherd’s hut, a very short man—almost a dwarf—was paddling in the shallows. His skin was as white as bone, and the hair on his head and beard was whiter still, so white it shone in the darkness, even under the shadow of the trees where they overhung the water.

“I’ll show her,” muttered the albino, though no one was there to hear his angry speech. “Two thousand years of servitude already, and then to—”

He stopped mid word and swooped into the stream, one knobby-fingered hand plunging into the water. It emerged a moment later holding a struggling fish, which he immediately bit behind its eyes, severing the spinal cord. His teeth, bright in the starlight, were sharper by far than any human’s.

The dwarf tore at the fish again, blood dribbling down his beard. In a few minutes he’d eaten the whole thing, spitting out the bones with curses and grumbling between bites over the fact that he’d wanted a trout and had got a redjack.

When he finished, he carefully cleaned his face and beard and dried his feet, though he left the bloodstains on the simple robe he wore. But as he walked along the bank of the stream, the stains faded and the cloth was once again clean and white and new.

The robe was fastened around the little man’s waist with a red leather belt, and where the buckle should have been there was a tiny bell. All this time the albino had held it, using only one hand to catch the fish and clean himself. But his caution failed when he stumbled on a slippery patch of grass. The bell sang out as he fell to one knee, a bright sound that paradoxically made the man yawn. For a moment it seemed he might lie down there and then, but with an obvious effort he shook his head and stood up.

“No, no, sister,” he muttered, clutching the bell even more fiercely. “I have work to do, you see. I cannot sleep, not now. There are miles to go, and I must make the most of two legs and two hands while I still have them.”

A night bird called nearby and the man’s head flashed around, instantly spotting it. Still holding the bell, he licked his lips and, taking one slow step after the other, began to stalk it. But the bird was wary, and before the albino could pounce, it flew away, calling plaintively into the night.

“I never get dessert,” complained the man. He turned back to the stream and began to follow it westwards once again, still holding the bell and muttering complaints.

Chapter Six

The Silver Hemispheres

ONE HUNDRED AND
twenty miles to the northwest of Abhorsen’s House, the eastern shores of the Red Lake lay in darkness, even though a new day had dawned. For it was not the dark of night but of storm, the sky heavy with black clouds, that stretched for several leagues in all directions. The darkness had already lasted for more than a week. What little sunlight came through the cloud was weak and pale, and the days were lit by a strange twilight that did no favor to any living thing. Only at the epicenter of this immovable cluster of storm clouds was there any other light, and that was sudden, harsh and white, from the constant assault of lightning.

Nicholas Sayre had grown used to the twilight, as he had grown used to many other things, and he no longer thought it strange. But his body still rebelled, even when his mind did not. He coughed and held his handkerchief against his nose and mouth. Hedge’s Night Crew were sterling workers, but they did smell awful, as if the flesh were rotting on their bones. Generally he didn’t like to get too close—in case whatever they had was contagious—but he’d had to this time, to check out what was happening.

“You see, Master,” Hedge explained, “we cannot move the two hemispheres any closer together. There is a force that keeps them apart, no matter what methods we employ. Almost as if they are identical poles of a magnet.”

Nick nodded, absorbing this information. As he’d dreamt, there had been two silver hemispheres hidden deep underground, and his excavation had found them. But his sense of triumph at their discovery was soon dispelled by the logistical problems of getting them out. Each hemisphere was seven feet in diameter, and the strange metal it was made of was much heavier than it should be, weighing even more than gold.

The hemispheres had been buried some twenty feet apart, separated by a strange barrier made of seven different materials, including bone. Now that they were being raised, it was clear that this barrier had helped negate the repulsive force, for the hemispheres simply could not be brought within fifty feet of each other.

Using rollers, ropes, and over two hundred of the Night Crew, one of the hemispheres had been dragged up the spiral ramp and over the lip of the pit. The other lay abandoned a good distance down the ramp. The last time they had tried to drag and push up the lower hemisphere, the repulsive force had been so great it was hurled back down, crushing many of the workers beneath it.

In addition to this strange repulsive force, Nick noted, there were other effects around the hemispheres. They seemed to generate an acrid, hot-metal smell that cut through even the fetid, rotting odor of the Night Crew. The smell made him sick, though it did not seem to affect either Hedge or his peculiar laborers.

Then there was the lightning. Nick flinched as yet another bolt struck down, momentarily blinding him, deafening thunder coming an instant later. The lightning was striking even more frequently than before, and now both hemispheres were exposed, Nick could see a pattern. Each hemisphere was struck eight times in a row, but the ninth bolt would invariably miss, often striking one of the workers.