Goldenhand (6 page)

Lirael wiped her forehead and rather shakily got to her feet, still watching the miniature spiral of gold and silver Charter marks patiently wind its way into Nick's chest. She was weary now, the effort of casting such a spell taxing her strength. But there was still the Hrule to deal with, and for that she needed both a spear-shaft and a thistle. The spear-shaft she could get from the guards back at the gateway, and she had seen a patch of thistles by the Wall nearby.

It would take her only a few minutes to get both. Lirael hurried back toward the gate, not noticing that behind her the Hrule's black, violet-pupiled eyes had flickered open, and the muscles around its hideously wide mouth were beginning to twitch.

On the Greenwash River

T
he current took Ferin's raft quickly out from the shore, which was just as well, as a nomad appeared there only minutes later and fired several arrows after her. With the benefit of good moonlight to aim by, these came perilously close but did not hit. Ferin was pleased to see that the woman then tried to wade out to get a closer shot, but was tumbled over by the river and only just made it back ashore, without her bow.

In less happy news, the exertion of launching the raft made the wound on her leg bleed again, soaking through the bandage. As she carefully rewound it, trying not to tip the raft, Ferin noticed her makeshift transportation was already sinking lower in the water as the reeds grew sodden. It wasn't going to sink, but it certainly wasn't going to be buoyant enough to keep her entirely dry.

The water was very cold. Ferin shivered, grimaced, and locked her jaw tight to stop her teeth chattering. Slowly drawing herself up, she tried to move to a sitting position atop her pack. But the river was too rough, and the raft too unstable. She had to lie down over her pack, and try to use her makeshift paddle as a steering oar rather than as a means of propulsion. The current was too strong for her to make any headway paddling.

After twenty or thirty minutes of striving with the paddle, Ferin knew that she couldn't steer the raft either. Even a proper wooden oar, rather than her splayed reed paddle, would be useless. The river was flowing too swiftly, and it would take her where it willed.

There was only a slim chance this would be to the southern shore.

Still, she kept up her efforts with the paddle. Not because it did anything to change the direction of the raft, but simply as a physical activity to try to keep from freezing to death.

The night grew colder as the sky continued to clear, the stars and moon growing brighter, while giving no warmth. Ferin paused in her paddling to draw her fur cloak around her more tightly, and to eat some dried goat meat and lumps of crystallized honey. The food would help somewhat, she knew, but she also knew she was too wet and too cold. She would be dead before dawn unless something happened.

And as nothing would happen unless she made it happen, Ferin considered her last, not very attractive chance of survival.

The one spirit-glass arrow remaining in her arrow case.

The chief shaman of her tribe had given her three, all the Athask people possessed, and told her how to use them. Generally they were simple weapons, to be fired at certain points of a Free Magic creature's anatomy, like the head, if it had one, or, if being shot at a shaman or witch, aimed at their navel where their power was centered.

But spirit-glass arrows had other uses. Dangerous uses.

One of these was to start a fire, when all other fire-starting methods had failed. Once started, such a fire would burn of its accord, without fuel, for a day or more. But unlike a normal fire, one started in this way could potentially draw other Free Magic creatures to it, and the smoke was poisonous.

Given definitely freezing to death against only
possibly
drawing more enemies or inhaling the smoke, Ferin thought there was not much choice. Though as an added complication, such a fire would be quite capable of burning her reed raft to ashes, regardless of how wet it was. The fire from a deliberately broken spirit-glass arrow would
continue to burn underwater. Or earth. It could not be extinguished, save by other magic, or the passage of time.

Ferin thought about that for some time, until she realized she was slowly slipping into a dazed sleep, a cold sleep from which there would be no awakening. There had to be some way to have the benefit of the fire, without burning the raft. . . .

Some time later, Ferin snapped back into consciousness again. She had gone to sleep, she didn't know for how long. She couldn't remember where the moon had been in the sky. All she knew was that she was very, very cold, and her legs, which were sodden and not covered by her cloak from the knees down, could only be moved with great effort, and she could no longer feel her feet. Even the pain from the wound above her ankle was only a dull ache, but this was not a good sign.

Ferin forced herself to move her recalcitrant limbs, flexing her feet backward and forward, wriggling her toes and fingers and arms and every part of her body that could move. The raft rocked a little, but though it was even lower in the water, it was steadier as well. After a few minutes of wriggling brought some life back into her hands and feet, Ferin managed to sit up without oversetting the raft.

She had to use the spirit-glass arrow to make a fire, she knew, and she had to do it very soon. Desperately she tried to get her cold and frozen mind to think of some way of containing the magical flames.

Slowly an idea did rise to the surface, rather like the lumps of ice that were popping up here and there in the river. Suddenly there, and then gone again. Ferin made sure this idea didn't go, concentrating all her willpower to both remember it and put it in action.

Fumbling with frozen fingers at her pack, she managed to get one strap undone. Reaching inside, she groped about until she felt—or thought she felt, because her fingers were so numb—the ceramic pot of wound grease she'd used before. Dragging it out, she wedged
it between two bundles of reeds on the floor of the raft, as far forward as she could reach. The pot had a wooden plug which it took great effort to pull out with uncooperative fingers, but she did it.

Then she took the spirit-glass arrow from the quiver. Removing the leather hood was also quite a trial, but she managed it. Holding the arrow high, she eyed the pot, focusing her mind. The trick would be to bring the arrow down with enough force to shatter the head but make sure all of it fell in the pot . . .

She was just about to try this when she realized the pot might shatter instead, and in any case, bits of arrowhead would go all over the place. There was an easier way; she was just so cold and tired the dramatic method had come to her first.

Settling the arrowhead over the pot, keeping her eyes somewhat averted so she didn't have to look at the fierce glow of the writhing figure trapped inside the dark volcanic glass, she took out her knife. Reversing it, she took a deep breath and struck the arrowhead hard with the pommel.

Spirit-glass shattered, the fragments falling into the pot at the same time a blazing white flame shot up to a height of several feet. Ferin flinched back, making the raft rock dangerously, and turned her head aside to avoid the piercing, metallic smoke that spun in circles around the white flame.

Don't let the pot break, thought Ferin. Don't let the pot break!

Even through tightly lidded eyes, she could see the white flame. There were sparks flying up from it too, and she had the sensation that it wasn't so much a flame as an incredibly thin, capering creature of intense light that was trying to bend itself over to her.

She inched back as far as she could, the raft rocking again. The pot tilted a little as well, the sight of that almost stopping Ferin's heart. But it did not go over, and slowly the tall white flame diminished, shrinking back down and becoming somewhat redder, more like a normal fire. The smoke changed color too, turning black and
lessening until it was no more than a narrow, steady stream.

Ferin watched it as she might watch a coiled snake, until she could bear the cold no more and approached the pot. She could feel the heat from it on her face as she slid over her pack toward it. The raft bobbed again, the pot tilting back just a fraction. Ferin stopped moving, sensation returning to her nose. She hadn't realized it had started to freeze as well. Her ears were protected by the hood of her cloak, but her face was open to the chill.

The pot began to glow red, and the water slopping around it to hiss and boil. Ferin watched with alarm. If it got hotter still, the pot might crack and fall apart, or burn through the reeds and sink, and she would freeze to death after all.

But it didn't. The pot glowed entirely red, but it didn't crack, and the constantly slopping water through the bottom of the raft cooled it enough that it didn't burn through the reeds. Every time the raft shifted and another small wave sloshed around the bottom, Ferin thought she might hear the hissing suddenly become a terrible cracking sound and she braced herself for disaster, but each time the pot just sat there steadily giving off heat.

Eventually, she realized it probably wasn't going to crack and sink her. Ferin drew herself up on the pack and slowly rotated herself around to put her feet near the fire. She could feel the warmth of it even through her moccasin-like low boots, which were of triple-thickness goat hide lined with the fur of the pine martens the
athask
cats liked to hunt and eat.

As her feet warmed, they were shot with sudden pains, and by the time those pains had subsided, her hands and face were cold again. Slowly rotating herself around the pack again, she got in position to warm the top part of her body.

Judging by the moon, there were only three or four hours to dawn. The sky was almost entirely clear now, with no hint of cloud. She had the pot, which, barring an accident, would keep her warm
until the sun came up. With the warmth, her mind was starting to work again as well, beginning to grapple with the next problem.

She was in the middle of a very big river in full spring flood. It was taking her east at great speed, faster than a horse could trot, and unlike a horse, it was going to keep doing it without rest, until the raft sank, or it ran into something . . . or they reached the sea.

Ferin had been shown a map back at the Athask clan's spring camp. It wasn't very detailed, nor very accurate (though she didn't know that), but it did indicate that the Greenwash Bridge was a long way upstream from the open ocean, perhaps thirty or forty leagues. But a swiftly flowing river could go such a long way in a relatively short time, taking whatever it carried with it.

Ferin looked at her makeshift paddle. She could swim well, and had direct experience with rivers and lakes, though none anywhere so broad and swiftly flowing as the Greenwash. But she knew almost nothing about the sea, or what would happen when this river met it.

It would be best if she could get ashore before the raft reached the ocean, she told herself. Perhaps in daylight it would be easier to work out some way to escape the clutch of the current. If she was lucky, some swirl or eddy might even get her close enough to swim, and she could drag the raft behind her.

There was still quite some time before sunup. Ferin moved again, until she was lying across the raft, slightly curled up, so her entire front was warmed by the pot. Admittedly every now and then the raft rolled so far her head got a slight dunking, or her feet, but it was worth it.

All she had to do now was stay awake until dawn, she told herself. Then she would begin paddling again, and try and reach the southern side of the river.

But staying awake was not easy now that she was relatively secure, warm, and totally exhausted. Even the dull ache of her wound was not enough to keep sleep at bay. Slowly she drew herself into a tighter
ball on top of her pack as the river grew a little less wild and the raft steadier.

The current was slowing because the river was broadening out. Ferin couldn't see this in the dark, and in any case did not know this was a sign it was beginning to approach its confluence with the sea. There were still a dozen leagues to go, but as the river spread wider and the current lessened, Ferin lost her battle against weariness.

She slept, and the raft spun and bobbed onward toward the mouth of the river and the open sea, the little pot glowing red all the way, a thin drizzle of black smoke rising from it to mark her passage.

The smoke was as good as invisible now, in the night. But come the morning, that plume would be like a sharply drawn line of charcoal against the blue sky, declaring to all with eyes to see that there was something unusual adrift on the Greenwash.

The Wall

A
s Lirael made her way back to Nick, fixing a thistle to the head of a spear-shaft with a simple mark of attachment, the Ancelstierrans fired star-shells again, four in a line abreast, several thousand feet above. With a southerly wind, they actually worked for once, and the white flares slowly descended on their parachutes, illuminating a huge stretch of no-man's-land in stark black and white, all color lost in the harsh glare of brilliantly burning magnesium.

In the light from the star-shells, Lirael could see a party of around twenty soldiers climbing out of the forward trenches. Some carried stretchers and were presumably healers of a sort, but there were more with rifles, their bayonets gleaming in the monochrome light of the drifting flares.

Behind her, she heard Captain Anlow call out to the guards, ordering them to come forward. Clearly the guard officer feared the Ancelstierrans might do something foolish, perhaps even attack Lirael. Or there might be an accident.

The Ancelstierrans might want to take the Hrule back, Lirael suddenly thought. It had come from the south, and it was still on their side of their Wall. That could not be allowed; it had to be dispatched before they arrived.

She hurried, and was greatly relieved to see the Free Magic creature was still lying in the dirt, not moving. Lirael kept an eye on it as she rushed over to Nicholas, who had regained consciousness and
was trying to lift his head. She knelt by his side, brushing back her hair from her face so she could see him properly. And he could see her.

“Can you hear me?” she asked. He was conscious, but his eyes were only partly open and his wits might well be wandering. She could feel that the healing spell was still working on him, but was surprised to see the Charter marks moving about just under the skin at his throat and on his face, faint golden symbols rising momentarily only to vanish again, carried around in his bloodstream. That didn't normally happen, but she had to presume it was a good thing.

“Yes,” whispered Nick. He smiled and said, “Lirael.”

Lirael brushed her hair back again nervously, not noticing that her golden hand was glowing rather more brightly than it had been. She didn't smile. She was too anxious about the healing spell, and the Hrule, and the approaching Ancelstierrans. At least she told herself that was why she felt unsettled. It couldn't have anything to do with Nick smiling at her.

Focus, she told herself sternly. Be the Abhorsen-in-Waiting.

“The spells are working strangely on you, but they are working. I'd best deal with the Hrule.”

“The monster?”

Lirael nodded. She kept flicking her gaze away to keep an eye on the creature, not acknowledging to herself that this was also because she was nervous looking at Nick up so close.

“Didn't I kill it?” asked Nick. “I thought my blood might poison it . . .”

“It has sated it,” said Lirael, once again looking at the beast. At least that's what she thought had happened. “And made it more powerful, when it can digest it.”

“You'd better kill it first, then,” gasped Nick. He tried to lift his head again, but was too weak.

“It can't be killed,” said Lirael. She had remembered pretty much
the whole entry in
Creatures by Nagy
now. Though it would be more accurate to say that no one
knew
how a Hrule might be killed, this was hardly the time to start such a discussion. “Nothing of stone or metal can pierce its flesh. But a thistle will return it to the earth, for a time.”

It was a postponement more than a solution. For a year and a day, the Hrule would be bound under the earth. Lirael frowned, thinking about the slim, red leather diary Ellimere had given her, insisting that she keep it for forthcoming social events. Dealing with a Hrule a year hence would be an unusual entry.

She took up the thistle-headed spear and walked over to the creature. Its violet-pupiled eyes followed her, but the thing still didn't move. Presumably it couldn't, or it would have already attacked her. That was another thing Lirael remembered. Hrule were very fast.

Lirael lifted the spear high, and drove it down at the creature's chest. She wasn't sure what she'd expected, but it wasn't for the thistle-point to enter the Hrule's body almost without resistance. The crocodilian hide that could turn swords and Ancelstierran bullets simply parted, and the thistle went deep into the creature's flesh.

The spear-shaft quivered for a moment, then it gently puffed away, turning into dust so that her fingers clutched at empty air. The dust fell in a tight cloud upon the Hrule, and where it fell, the tough hide and the flesh beneath became like water, which sank into the ground. Soon there was nothing left, not even a stain upon the earth.

“How did you know to bring a thistle?” asked Nick, his voice wavering as he tried to get up or just roll onto his side. Lirael went to him and put her hand on his chest, gently pressing him back down.

“I didn't. I arrived an hour ago, in answer to a rather confused message from the Magistrix at Wyverley. I expected merely to cross here, not to find one of the rarest of all Free Magic creatures. And . . . and you. I bound your wounds and put some healing charms upon you, and then I went to find a thistle.”

“I'm glad it was you,” said Nick. He was already feverish, Lirael thought. She looked down, letting her hair fall across her face again, and felt the pulse in his neck, trying to act as unconcerned as possible. Intent on the healing, making sure all was correct.

“It's lucky I read a lot of bestiaries when I was younger,” said Lirael conversationally. She paused, wondering what she could talk about. She looked over at the approaching Ancelstierrans and then across to her own guards, who were lining themselves up about twenty yards away. Captain Anlow was closest, trying to attract Lirael's attention. She waved at them to go back. They did retreat a little, but stopped as soon as Lirael turned away.

The last star-shell fizzled out as Lirael looked back at Nick. She found it easier to talk to him in the dark. The Ancelstierrans would arrive shortly, and she presumed they would take him away again.

“I'm not sure even Sabriel would know about the peculiar nature of the Hrule.”

That sounded too much like boasting, Lirael suddenly thought. She stood up, a little flustered, and continued.

“Well, I'd best be on my way. There are stretcher-bearers waiting to come over to take you in. I think you'll be all right now. There's no lasting damage. Nothing from the Hrule, I mean. No new lasting effects, that is . . . I really do have to get going. Apparently there's some Dead thing or other farther south—the message wasn't clear . . .”

Lirael stopped talking and didn't exactly bite her lip, but rather gripped it with her teeth in an agony of embarrassment. She'd just spouted a lot of nonsense. Nick would think she was a fool, since obviously he'd sent the message and the creature mentioned in the telegram was the Hrule, and it was dealt with and she wished she had never come, except that if she hadn't Nick would probably have died and the Hrule would have done who knew what—

“That was the creature,” said Nick, but it wasn't in the tone of
voice of someone pointing out the blindingly obvious. “I sent a message to the Magistrix. I followed the creature all the way here from Dorrance Hall.”

“Then I can go back to the guards who escorted me here,” Lirael said. She gestured behind her, oblivious to the fact that Anlow and the whole company of Guards were sneaking forward again like guilty children. “They won't have started back for Barhedrin yet. That's where I left my paperwing. I can fly by myself now. I mean, I'm still—”

“I don't want to go back to Ancelstierre,” Nick burst out. He tried to sit up and this time succeeded. Lirael reached out to help him, and touched his arm for a moment before immediately letting go. She felt foolish again, because of course he was just a wounded man who needed help; there was nothing about the touching that was anything else.

“I want to come to the Old Kingdom,” said Nick. He looked up at Lirael, but she looked away, toward the approaching Ancelstierrans. They were following a zigzag lane through the wire and somebody was shouting very officiously, though she couldn't make out the words.

“I want to come to the Old Kingdom,” repeated Nick.

“But you didn't come before,” said Lirael. She still didn't look at him. “When we left and Sabriel said you should because of what . . . because of what had happened to you. I wondered . . . that is, Sam thought later, perhaps you didn't want to . . . that is, you needed to stay in Ancelstierre for some person, I mean reason—”

“No,” said Nick. “There is nothing for me in Ancelstierre. I was afraid, that's all.”

“Afraid?” asked Lirael. She did look at him, but hesitantly, half-hiding behind the hair that fell across her face, as she had used to do back in the Glacier. “Afraid of what?”

“I don't know,” said Nick. He smiled again, a hesitant smile,
seeking her approval. “Can you give me a hand to get up? Oh, your hand! Sam really did make a new one for you!”

Lirael flexed the fingers on her golden, Charter-spelled hand, and once again regretted Sam's desire to show off his work. Her hand was glowing like a candle, soft behind gold-colored glass. It was warm, and charming, but just too visible for her liking. There and then she decided the spell would go, whether it hurt Sam's feelings or not.

Nick held up his hands, one still bloody. He seemed confident she would take them.

“I've had it for only a week,” said Lirael, slowly turning her golden hand, opening and closing her fist. “And I don't think it will work very far south of here. Sam really is a most useful nephew . . .”

Lirael looked directly at Nick this time. He was still holding up his hands. She knew if she reached out to them, she would be beginning something, making herself vulnerable, open to more hurt. If she took his hands, and he came to the Old Kingdom, what would happen? Or not happen, which might be even worse . . .

She wished the Disreputable Dog was there, to help her understand her own feelings, and to offer comfort if once again she found herself alone among all the other people who seemed to instinctively just
know
how to make friends and find lovers—

Focus, Lirael told herself. One step at a time.

“Do you think you can walk?”

“If you help me,” said Nick.

Lirael leaned forward, and their hands joined, just as the Ancelstierrans arrived and Lirael's guards closed in, Captain Anlow gesturing so they spread out in a wide crescent about the Abhorsen-in-Waiting they were there to protect.

With a distant boom another star-shell blossomed high above, casting its harsh light across the barren landscape as it slowly drifted down on its silken parachute.

The sudden illumination was accompanied by more shouting. It came from a tall, remarkably slender, and very pallid Ancelstierran general. He was so pale that for a moment Lirael almost reached for a bell, thinking he must actually be a Dead creature, even though she had not felt the presence of such a thing.

But he was alive. Alive and protesting.

The general wasn't wearing a helmet or hat, his completely bald head white under the flare. Nor was he wearing khaki and mail like the others; he had on a swallow-tailed coat of scarlet with many miniature medals on his breast, though a keen observer would note none of them were for valor or wartime service. His black trousers had a broad red stripe down the sides, and his dress shoes were very much the worse for crossing the mud and debris of no-man's-land. He looked extremely out of place compared with the other Perimeter troops.

“That's him!” cried the pale general, pointing at Nick. “Arrest him at once! And get these other people out of here!”