He paused to knot the end of the thread, and this time he did look at Lirael.
“And the sendings gave me this surcoat. With the trowel. The Wallmakers’ trowel. They gave it to me, and I’ve been thinking that it’s as if my ancestors are saying it’s all right to make things. That’s what I’m meant to do. Make things, and help the Abhorsen and the King. So I’ll do that, and I’ll do my best, and if my best isn’t good enough, at least I will have done everything I could, everything that is in me. I don’t have to try to be someone else, someone I could never be.”
Lirael didn’t answer. Instead, she looked away, back to where the Dog was returning, a limp rabbit in her jaws.
“Dimsher,” pronounced the Dog, repeating herself more clearly after she dropped the rabbit at Lirael’s feet. Her tail had started to wag again, just at the tip. “Dinner. I’ll get another one.”
Lirael picked up the rabbit. The Dog had broken its neck, killing it instantly. Lirael could feel its spirit close by in Death, but she walled it out. It hung heavy in her hand, and she wished that they could simply have eaten the bread and cheese the sendings had packed for them. But dogs will be dogs, she thought, and if rabbits beckon . . .
“I’ll skin it,” offered Sam.
“How will we cook it?” asked Lirael, gladly handing over the rabbit. She had eaten rabbits before, but only either raw, in her Charter-skin of a barking owl, or cooked and served in the refectories of the Clayr.
“A small fire under one of these boulders should be all right,” replied Sam. “In a little while, anyway. The smoke won’t be visible, and we can shield the flame well.”
“I’ll leave it to you,” said Lirael. “The Dog will eat hers raw, I’m sure.”
“You should sleep,” said Sam as he tested the blade of a short knife with his thumb. “You can get an hour while I prepare the rabbit.”
“Looking after your old aunt,” said Lirael with a smile. She was only two years older than Sameth, but she had once told him she was much older, and he had believed her.
“Helping the Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” said Sameth, and he bowed, not entirely in jest. Then he bent down and, with a practiced move, made a cut and pulled the skin off the rabbit in one piece, like taking the cover off a pillow.
Lirael watched him for a moment, then turned away and lay down on the stony ground with her head on her pack. It wasn’t at all comfortable, particularly since she was still in armor and kept her boots on. But it didn’t matter. She lay on her back and looked up at the sky, watching the last blue fade away, the black creep in, and the stars begin to twinkle. She could not feel any Dead creatures close, or sense any hint of Free Magic, and the weariness that had been in her came back a hundredfold. She blinked twice, three times; then her eyes would stay open no more, and she sank into a deep and instant sleep.
When she awoke, it was dark, save for the starlight and the dim red glow of a well-hidden fire. She saw the silhouette of the Dog sitting nearby, but there was no sign of Sam at first, till she saw a man-sized lump of darkness stretched along the ground.
“What time is it?” she whispered, and the Dog stirred and padded over to her.
“Close to midnight,” replied the Dog quietly. “We thought it best to let you sleep, and then I convinced Sam it would be safe for him to sleep too, leaving me on guard.”
“I bet that wasn’t easy,” said Lirael, levering herself up and groaning at her stiffened muscles. “Has anything happened?”
“No. It is quiet, save for the usual things of the night. I expect Chlorr and the Dead still watch the House, and will do so for many days yet.”
Lirael nodded as she groped between the boulders and trod gingerly over to the spring. It was the only patch of brightness in the calm, dark night, its silver surface picking up the starlight. Lirael washed her face and hands, the cold shock of the water bringing her fully awake.
“Did you eat my share of the rabbit?” Lirael whispered as she made her way back to her pack.
“No, I did not!” exclaimed the Dog. “As if I would! Besides, Sameth kept it in the pot. With the lid on.”
Not that this would have stopped the Dog, thought Lirael as she found the small cast-iron traveling pot by the side of the dying fire. The pieces of rabbit inside had been simmered overlong, but the stew was still warm and tasted very good. Either Sam had found herbs or the sendings had packed them, though Lirael was glad that there was no hint of rosemary. She did not want to smell that herb.
By the time she’d finished the rabbit and washed her hands and scrubbed the pot clean with a handful of grit at the spring, the moon had begun to rise. As Sam had said, it was somewhat past three quarters, well on its way to the full, and the sky was clear. Under its light Lirael could clearly make out details on the ground. It would be enough to climb the Steps.
Sam woke quickly when she shook him, his hand going to his sword. They didn’t speak—something about the quiet of the night forestalled any conversation. Lirael covered the fire as Sam splashed water on his face, and they helped each other shoulder their packs. The Dog loped backwards and forwards as they got ready, her tail wagging, all eagerness to be off again.
The Steps began in a deep cut that went straight into the cliff for twenty yards, so at first it seemed it would become a tunnel. But it was open to the sky, and it soon turned to run along and up the cliff, striking westward. Each step was exactly the same size, in height and breadth and depth, so the climb was regular and relatively easy, though still exhausting.
As they climbed, Lirael came to understand that the cliff was not, as she had thought, a single almost vertical face of rough stone. It was actually composed of hundreds of faces of slipped rock, as if a sheaf of paper had been propped up and many individual pages had slipped down. The stepped path was mainly built between and on top of the faces, running along till it had to turn and be cut back deeper into the cliff in order to reach the next higher face.
The moon rose higher as they climbed, and the sky became much lighter. There was moon shadow now, and whenever they stopped for a rest, Lirael looked out to the lands beyond, to the distant hills to the south and the silver-brushed trail of the Ratterlin to the east. She had often flown in owl shape above the Clayr’s Glacier and the twin mountains of Starmount and Sunfall, but that was different. Owl senses were not the same, and back there she had always known that come the dawn, she would be safely tucked in bed, secure in the fastness of the Clayr. Those flights had been pure adventure. This was something much more serious, and she could not simply enjoy the cool of the night and the bright moon.
Sam looked out, too. He couldn’t see the Wall to the south—it was over the horizon—but he recognized the hills. Barhedrin was one, Cloven Crest of old, where there was a Charter Stone and, since the Restoration, a tower that was the Guard’s southernmost headquarters. Beyond the Wall was the country of Ancelstierre. A strange country, even to Sameth, who had gone to school there. A country without the Charter, or Free Magic, save for its northern regions, close to the Old Kingdom. Sameth thought of his mother and father there, far off to the south. They were trying to find a diplomatic solution to stop the Ancelstierrans from sending Southerling refugees across the Wall, to their certain deaths and, after that, to serve at the command of the necromancer Hedge. It could be no coincidence, Sam thought grimly, that this Southerling refugee problem had arisen at the same time that Hedge was masterminding the digging up of the ancient evil that was imprisoned near the Red Lake. It all smacked of a long-term, well-laid plan, on both sides of the Wall. Which was extremely unusual and did not bode well. What could a necromancer of the Old Kingdom really hope to gain from the world beyond the Wall? Sabriel and Touchstone thought their Enemy’s plan was to bring hundreds of thousands of the Southerlings across the Wall, kill them by poison or spell, and make them into an army of the Dead. But the more Sam thought about it, the more he wondered. If that was the Enemy’s sole intention, what was being dug up? And what part did his friend Nicholas have to play in it all?
The rests became more frequent as the moon slowly drifted down the sky. Though the steps were regular and well made, it was a steep climb, and they were tired to begin with. The Dog kept loping ahead, occasionally doubling back to make sure her mistress was keeping up, but Lirael and Sam were faltering. They trod with mechanical regularity, and their heads were bowed. Even the sight of a nest full of cliff owl chicks near the path attracted only a brief look from Lirael and not even a glance from Sameth.
They were still climbing when a red glow started to the east, coloring the moon’s cold light. Soon it became bright enough to make the moon fade, and birds began to sing. Tiny swifts issued from cracks all along the cliff, flying out to chase insects rising with the morning wind.
“We must be close to the top,” said Sam as they paused to rest, the three of them strung out along the narrow way: the Dog at the top, as high as Lirael’s head, and Sameth below her, his head at about her knee level.
Sam leaned against the cliff face as he spoke, only to recoil with a cry as an unnoticed thorn tree pricked him in the legs.
For a moment Lirael thought he would fall, but he recovered his balance and twisted himself around to pick out the thorns.
The Steps were considerably scarier in daylight, Lirael thought, as she looked down. All it would take was a step to the left and she would fall, if not the whole way down, at least to the next rock slip. That was twenty yards below them here, enough to break bones if it didn’t kill immediately.
“I never realized!” said Sam, who had stopped pulling out thorns and was kneeling down to brush away the dust and fragments of stone on the steps in front of him. “The steps are made of brick! But they would have had to cut into the stone anyway, so why face the stone with brick?”
“I don’t know,” replied Lirael, before she caught on that Sam had actually been asking himself. “Does it matter?”
Sam stood up and brushed his knees.
“No, I suppose not. It’s just odd. It must have been an enormous job, particularly as I can’t see any sign of magical assistance. I suppose sendings could have been used, though they do tend to shed the odd mark here and there. . . .”
“Come on,” said Lirael. “Let’s get to the top. Perhaps there will be some clue to the Steps’ making there.”
But well before they came to the top of the Steps, Lirael had lost all interest in plaques or builder’s monuments. A terrible foreboding that had been lurking in the back of her mind grew stronger as they climbed the last few hundred feet, and slowly it became more and more concrete. She could feel a coldness in her gut, and she knew that what awaited them at the top would be a place of death. Not recent death, not within the day, but death nonetheless.
She knew Sam felt it, too. They exchanged bleak looks as the Steps widened at last near the top. Without needing to talk about it, they moved from single file to a line abreast. The Dog grew slightly larger and stayed close to Lirael’s side.
Lirael’s sense of death was confirmed by the breeze that hit them on the last few steps. A breeze that carried with it a terrible smell, giving a few moments’ warning before they reached the top of the Steps, to look out on a barren field strewn with the bodies of many men and mules. A great gathering of ravens clustered around and on the corpses, tearing at flesh with their sharp beaks and squabbling amongst themselves.
Fortunately, it was immediately clear the ravens were normal birds. They flew away as soon as the Disreputable Dog ran forward, croaking their displeasure at the interruption to their breakfast. Lirael could not sense any Dead among them, or nearby, but she still drew Saraneth and her sword, Nehima. Even from a distance, her necromantic senses told her the bodies had been there for days, though the smell could have told her just as much.
The Dog ran back to Lirael and tilted her head in question. Lirael nodded, and the hound loped off, sniffing the ground around the bodies in wider and wider circles till she disappeared out of sight behind a particularly large clump of thorn trees. There was a body hanging from the tallest tree, tossed there by some great wind or a creature far stronger than any man.
Sam came up next to Lirael, his sword in hand, the Charter marks on the blade glowing palely in the sun. It was full dawn now, the light rich and strong. It seemed wrong for this field of death, Lirael thought. How could good sunshine play across such a place? There should be fog and darkness.
“A merchant party by the look of them,” said Sam as they advanced closer. “I wonder what . . .”
It was clear from the way the bodies lay that they had been fleeing something. All the merchants’ bodies, distinguishable by their richer clothes and lack of weapons, lay closer to the Steps. The guards had fallen defending their employers, in a line some twenty yards farther back. A last stand, turning to face an enemy they could not outrun.
“A week or more ago,” said Lirael as she walked towards the bodies. “Their spirits will be long gone. Into Death, I hope, though I am not sure they have not been . . . harvested for use in Life.”
“But why leave the bodies?” asked Sam. “And what could have made these wounds?”
He pointed at a dead guardsman, whose mail hauberk had been pierced in two places. The holes were about the size of Sam’s fists and were scorched around the edges, the steel rings and the leather underneath blackened as if by fire.
Lirael carefully returned Saraneth to its pouch and walked over to take a closer look at the body and the strange wounds. She tried not to breathe as she got closer, but a few paces away she suddenly stopped and gasped. With that gasp the awful stench entered her nose and lungs. It was too much, and she began to gag and had to turn away and throw up. As soon as she did, Sam immediately followed suit, and they both emptied their stomachs of rabbit and bread.