Abhorsen (32 page)

Lirael only had an instant to thrust her sword forward as it attacked, the point piercing one blobby cheek, bursting out the back of its neck. But it still pushed on, despite the blaze of white sparks that fountained everywhere as Charter Magic ate into its spirit-flesh. It thrust itself almost up to the hilt, red-fire eyes focused on Lirael, its too-wide mouth drooling spit and hissing.

Lirael kicked at it to try to get it off her sword, and rang Saraneth at the same time. But she was unbalanced, and the bell didn’t ring true. A discordant note echoed out into Death, and instead of feeling her will concentrated on the Dead thing, and the beginnings of domination, Lirael felt distracted. Her mind wandered, and for an instant she forgot what she was doing.

A second or a minute later she realized it, and a shock ran through her, fear electrifying every nerve in her body. She looked, and the Dead creature was almost off her sword, ready to attack again.

“Still the bell!” barked the Dog, as she made herself smaller and tried to get between Lirael’s legs to attack the creature. “Still the bell!”

“What?” exclaimed Lirael; then the shock and the fear ran through her again as she felt her hand still ringing Saraneth, without her being aware of it. Panicked, she forced it to be still. The bell sounded once more and then was silent as she fumbled it back into its pouch.

But once again she was distracted—and in that moment the creature attacked. This time it leapt at her, planning to crush her completely beneath its ghastly, pallid bulk. But the Dog saw the monster tense, and she guessed its intention. Instead of slipping between Lirael’s legs, she threw herself forward and planted two heavy forepaws on Lirael’s back.

The next thing Lirael knew, she was on her knees, and the creature was flying over her. One barbed finger grasped a lock of her hair as it passed, tearing it out by the roots. Lirael hardly noticed, as she frantically turned herself around on the narrow path and stood up. All her confidence was gone, and she didn’t trust her balance, so it wasn’t a fast maneuver.

But when she turned, the creature was gone. Only the Dog remained. A huge Dog, the hair on her back up like a boar-bristle hairbrush, red fire dripping from teeth the size of Lirael’s fingers. There was a madness in her eyes as she looked back at her mistress.

“Dog?” whispered Lirael. She’d never feared her friend before, but then she’d never walked this far into Death, either. Anything could happen here, she felt. Anyone and . . . anything could change.

The Dog shook herself and grew smaller, and the madness in her eyes subsided. Her tail began to wag, and she worried the base of it for a second before walking up to lick Lirael’s open hand.

“Sorry,” she said. “I got angry.”

“Where did it go?” asked Lirael, looking around. There was nothing on the path as far as she could see, and nothing in the river below them. She didn’t think she’d heard a splash. Had she? Her mind was addled, still resonating with the discord of Saraneth.

“Down,” replied the Dog, gesturing with her head. “We’d best hurry. You should draw a bell, too. Perhaps Ranna. She is more forgiving here.”

Lirael knelt and touched noses with the Dog.

“I couldn’t do this without you,” she said, kissing her on the snout.

“I know, I know,” replied the Dog distractedly, her ears twitching around in a semicircular motion. “Can you hear something?”

“No,” replied Lirael. She stood up to listen, and her hand automatically freed Ranna from the bandolier. “Can you?”

“I thought someone . . . something was following before,” said the Dog. “Now I’m certain. Something is coming up behind us. Something powerful, moving fast.”

“Hedge!” exclaimed Lirael, forgetting about the crisis of confidence in her balance as she turned and hurried along the path. “Or could it be Mogget again?”

“I do not think it is Mogget,” said the Dog with a frown. She stopped to look back for a moment, her ears pricked forward. Then she shook her head. “Whoever it is . . . or whatever . . . we should try to leave it behind.”

Lirael nodded as she walked and took a firmer grip on both bell and sword. Whatever they met next, from in front or behind, she was determined not to be surprised.

Chapter Twenty-two

Junction Boxes and Southerlings

THE FOG HAD
hidden the quay and was drifting inexorably up the slope. Nick watched it roll and watched the lightning that shot through it. Unpleasantly, it made him think of luminous veins in partly transparent flesh. Not that there was anything living that had flesh like that. . . .

There was something he had to do, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He knew the hemispheres were not far away, through the fog. Part of him wanted to go over to them and oversee the final joining. But there was another, rebellious self that wanted exactly the opposite, to stop the hemispheres from joining by whatever means possible. They were like two whispering voices inside his head, both so strident that they mixed and became unintelligible.

“Nick! What have they done to you?”

For a moment Nick thought this was a third voice, also inside his head. But as it repeated the same words, he realized it wasn’t.

Laboriously, Nick staggered around. At first he couldn’t see anything through the fog. Then he spotted a face peering out from behind the corner of the nearest shed. It took a few seconds for him to work out who it was. His friend from the University of Corvere. Timothy Wallach, the slightly older student who he’d hired to oversee the construction of the Lightning Farm. Usually Tim was a debonair and somewhat languid individual, who was always impeccably dressed.

Tim didn’t look like that now. His face was pale and dirty, his shirt had lost its collar, and there was mud all over his shoes and trousers. Crouched down behind the hut, he constantly shook, as if he had a fever or was scared out of his mind.

Nick waved and forced himself to take a few shambling steps to Tim, though he had to clutch at the wall in the last second to stop himself from falling.

“You have to stop him, Nick!” Tim exclaimed. He didn’t look at Nick but everywhere else, his eyes flickering fearfully from side to side. “Whatever he’s doing . . . you’re both doing . . . it’s wrong!”

“What?”asked Nick wearily. The walk had tired him, and one of the internal voices had become stronger. “What are we doing? It’s a scientific experiment, that’s all. And who is the him I have to stop? I’m in charge here.”

“Him! Hedge!” blurted Tim, pointing back towards the hemispheres, where the fog was thickest. “He killed my workmen, Nick! He killed them! He pointed at them and they fell down. Just like that!”

He mimicked a spellcasting movement with his hand and started to sob, without tears, his words tumbling out in a mixture of gasps and cries.

“I saw him do it. It was only—only . . .”

He looked at his watch. The hands were stuck in place, stopped forever at six minutes to seven.

“It was only six to seven,” whispered Tim. “Robert saw the coasters coming in, and woke us all up, so we could celebrate the completion of the work. I went back to the hut for a bottle I’ve been saving. . . . I saw it all through the window—”

“Saw what?” asked Nick. He was trying to understand what had upset Tim so much, but there was an awful pain in his chest, and he simply couldn’t think. He couldn’t put the concept of Hedge together with Tim’s murdered workers.

“There’s something wrong with you, Nick,” Tim whispered, crawling back away from him. “Don’t you understand? Those hemispheres are pure poison, and Hedge killed my workmen! All of them, even the two apprentices. I saw it!”

Without warning, Tim suddenly retched violently, coughing and gasping, though nothing came out. He had already thrown everything up.

Nick watched dumbly, as something inside him reveled at this news of death and misery and an opposing force writhed against it with feelings of fear, revulsion, and terrible doubt. The pain in his chest redoubled, and he fell down, clawing at his heart and his ankle.

“We have to get away,” said Tim, wiping his mouth with the back of one shaking hand. “We have to warn somebody.”

“Yes,” whispered Nick. He had managed to sit up but was still hunched over, one pale hand over his heart, the other clutching the fragment of wind flute through his trouser cuff. He fought against the pain in both places and the pressure in his head. “Yes—you go, Tim. Tell her . . . tell them I’ll try and stop it. Tell her—”

“What? Who?” asked Tim. “You have to come with me!”

“I can’t,” whispered Nick. He was remembering again. Talking to Lirael in the reed boat, trying to keep the shard of the Destroyer within him at bay. He remembered the nausea, and the metallic bite on his tongue. He could feel it again now, rising up.

“Go!” he said urgently, pushing at Tim to make him go away. “Run, before I— Aah!”

He stifled a scream, fell down, and curled into a ball. Tim crawled around to him and saw Nick’s eyes roll back. For a moment he contemplated picking him up. Then he saw the white smoke trickling out of Nick’s slack-jawed mouth.

Fear overcame everything then, and he started to run, between the lightning rods, up the hill. If only he could get over the ridge, get out of sight. Away from the Lightning Farm and the steadily rising fog . . .

Behind him, Nick’s hand gripped his trouser cuff even more tightly. He was whispering to himself, jumbled words spilling out in a frenzy.

“Corvere capital of two million principal products manufactured banking the attraction between two objects is directly proportional to the product of the day breaks not it is my heart four thousand eight hundred and the wind shifts generally in direction white wild Father help me Mother Sam help me Lirael—”

Nick stopped, coughed, and drew breath. The white smoke drifted off into the fog, and no new smoke emerged. Nick drew in two more shaky breaths, then experimentally let go of his trouser cuff and the piece of wind flute inside it. He felt a chill run through his body as he let go, but he still knew who he was and what he must do. Using the corner of the building, he hauled himself upright and staggered off into the fog. As always, the silver hemispheres glowed in his mind, but he had forced them into the background. Now he was thinking of the blueprints of the Lightning Farm. If Tim had made it according to Nick’s design instructions, then one of the nine electrical junction boxes would be just around the corner of the main mill building.

Nick almost ran into the western wall of the mill, the fog was so thick. He skirted around it to the north as quickly as he could, staying away from the southern end, where the Dead labored to lift the first hemisphere onto a flatbed railway wagon.

The hemispheres. They glowed in Nick’s mind brighter than the lightning flashes. He was suddenly struck with a compulsion to make sure that they were properly lifted into the cradles, that the cables were correctly joined, the track sanded for traction in this wet fog. He had to see to it. The hemispheres had to be joined!

Nick fell to his knees on the railway, and then forward, to lie curled up across the cold steel and the worn wooden sleepers. He clutched at his trouser cuff, fighting against that overwhelming urge to turn right and go over to the hemisphere on its railway wagon. Desperately he thought of Lirael lifting him into the reed boat, of his promise to her. His friend Sam, picking him up after he’d been knocked out by a fast ball playing cricket. Tim Wallach, bow tied and dapper, pouring him a gin and tonic.

“Word of a Sayre, word of a Sayre, word of a Sayre,” he repeated over and over again.

Still mumbling, he forced himself into a crawl. Across the track, ignoring the splinters from the old railway sleepers. He crawled to the far side of the mill, and used the wall to half crawl, half stumble down to the junction box, which was actually a small concrete hut. Here, hundreds of cables from the lightning rods fed into one of the nine master cables, each as thick as Nick’s body.

“I’ll stop it,” he whispered to himself as he reached the junction box. Deafened by thunder, half blind from the lightning, and crippled by pain and nausea, he reached up and tried to open the metal door that was marked with a vivid yellow lightning bolt and the word “
DANGER
.”

The door was locked. Nick shook the handle, but that small act of defiance did nothing but use up his last store of energy. Exhausted, Nick slid back down and sprawled across the doorway.

He had failed. Lightning continued to spread up the slope, accompanied by fog and booming thunder. The Dead continued to struggle with the hemispheres. One was on its railway wagon, which was being moved along the rails to the far end of the line, even as the Dead who pushed it were struck again and again by lightning. The other hemisphere was swinging off the coaster—till lightning burned the rope and it came crashing down, crushing several Dead Hands. But when the hemisphere was raised, the crushed Hands came slithering out. No longer recognizable as anything remotely human, and no use in the work, they squirmed their way east. Up the ridge, to join the Dead that Hedge had already sent to make sure that the final triumph of the Destroyer was not delayed.