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 burned 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 leaned 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 laboring 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 burned 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.
Many of the lightning rods were being hit and already were feeding power into the hemispheres. Long blue sparks were crackling around the railway cars, and Mogget could feel the greedy sucking of the Destroyer, and the stir of the ancient entity within the silver metal.
The albino began to move faster, though not as fast as he could, in order not to alarm the shard inside Nick. But the young man lay quiet in his arms, one part of his mind content that it was too late to stop the joining, the other part grieving that he had failed.
Soon there was visible evidence that Orannis flexed against its bonds. The lightning ceased around the hemispheres themselves and began to move outwards, as if pushed back by some unseen hand. Instead of a concentrated series of strikes in and around the railway cars, the lightning began to hit more and more of the lightning rods that dotted the hillside. There was also more lightning coming down from the storm. Where there had been nine bolts every minute in a small area around the hemispheres, now there were ninety across the hillside, then several hundred, as the storm above roiled and thundered, spreading across the entire Lightning Farm.
Within a few minutes, there was no lightning at all in the center of the storm. But down below, the hemispheres glowed with newfound power, and every time Mogget glanced back, he could see dark shadows writhing deep inside the silver metal. In each hemisphere, the shadows moved to darken the side closest to the other, raging against the repulsion that still kept them apart.
More lightning struck, the crash of the thunder shaking the ground. The hemispheres glowed brighter still, and the shadows grew darker. With a shriek of protesting metal from long-disused wheels, the railway cars began to roll together.
“The hemispheres join!” shouted Mogget, and he ran faster up the hillside, zigzagging between the lightning rods, his body hunched over to protect his burden from the violent energies that struck down all around them.
Inside Nick’s heart, a small sliver of metal quivered, feeling the attraction of its greater whole. For an instant, it moved against the heart wall, as if to burst forth in bloody glory. But the attractive force was not yet strong enough and was too far away. Instead of erupting out through flesh and bone, the shard of the Destroyer caught the flow out through a bright artery, and began to retrace the passage it had made almost a year before.
Sam lowered his hand as a Dead Hand fell shrieking, golden Charter fire eating away at every sinew. Flopping and writhing, it crawled behind two burning trees. Smoke from the fires rose up in spirals, looking like outriders for the huge bank of fog that was rolling over the top of the ridge above.
“Wish my arrows did that,” remarked Sergeant Evans. He’d put several silver arrows into that same Dead Hand, but they had only slowed it down.
“The spirit is still there,” said Sam grimly. “Only the body is useless to it now.”
He could feel many more Dead, climbing up the other side of the ridge, advancing with the fog. So far, Sam and the soldiers had managed to repel the first attack. But that had been only a half dozen Dead Hands.
“They’re making us keep our distance while they prepare for the main attack, I reckon,” said Major Greene, tipping back his helmet to wipe a sheen of sweat from his forehead.
“Yes,” agreed Sam. He hesitated, then quietly said, “There are about a hundred Dead Hands out there, and more appearing every minute.”
He looked behind him to where Lirael’s ice-encrusted body stood between the rocks, and then around the ring of soldiers. Their ranks were thinner than before. None had been slain by the Dead, but at least a dozen or more of them had simply run away, too scared to stand and fight. The Major had reluctantly let them go, muttering something about not being able to shoot them when the whole company shouldn’t be there anyway.
“I wish I knew what was happening!” Sam burst out. “With Lirael—and those Charter-cursed hemispheres!”
“The waiting’s always the worst,” said Major Greene. “But I don’t think we’ll be waiting long, one way or another. That fog is coming down. We’ll be under it in a few minutes.”
Sam looked ahead again. Sure enough, the fog was moving faster, long tendrils pushing down the slope, with the bulk of the fog behind. At the same time, he felt a great surge of the Dead rise all along the ridge.
“Here they come!” shouted the Major. “Stand fast, lads!”
There were too many to blast with Charter spells, Sam realized. He hesitated for a moment, then got out the panpipes Lirael had given him and lifted them to his mouth. He might not be the Abhorsen-in-Waiting anymore, but he would have to act the part now in the face of the onrushing Dead.
Then Sam lost sight of the Major, his whole attention on the advancing Dead and the panpipes. He put his lips to the Saraneth pipe, drew a great breath in through his nose—and blew, the pure, strong sound cutting through the thunder and the damping fog.
With that sound, Sam exerted his will, feeling it stretch across the battleground, encompassing more than fifty Dead Hands. He felt their downward rush slow, felt them fight against him, their spirits raging as dead flesh struggled to keep moving forward.
For an instant, Sam held them all in his grip, and the Dead Hands slowed to a halt, till they stood like grim statues, wreathed in wisps of fog. Arrows plunged at them, and some of the closer soldiers dashed forward to hack at legs or pierce their knees with bayonets.
Still the spirits inside the dead flesh fought, and Sam knew he could not gain total domination. He left Saraneth echoing on the hillside and switched his mouth to the Ranna pipe. But he had to draw breath again, and in that brief moment, the sound of Saraneth faded and Sam’s will was broken. He lost control, and all along the line, the Dead shivered into movement and once more charged down the spur, hungry for Life.
Chapter Twenty-five
The Ninth Gate
LIRAEL AND THE Dog crossed the Seventh Precinct at a run, not even pausing as Lirael sang out the spell to open the Seventh Gate. Ahead of them, the line of fire shivered at her words, and directly in front, it leapt up to form a narrow arch, just wide enough for them to pass.
As she ducked through, Lirael glanced back—and saw a man-shaped figure rushing after them, himself a thing of fire and darkness, holding a sword that dripped red flames the match of those in the Seventh Gate.
Then they were through to the Eighth Precinct, and Lirael had to quickly gasp out another spell to ward off a patch of flame that reared up out of the water towards them. These flames were the main threat in the precinct, for the river was lit with many floating patches of fire that moved according to strange currents of their own or flared up out of nowhere.