Goldenhand (9 page)

The broad-shouldered woman bent down and lifted Ferin up under the arms. As her ankle dragged across the deck and her leg jerked and hung down when she was upright, Ferin blacked out from the sudden, intense pain. Only for a few seconds, but when she came back, the pain was still there, and she gasped several times as she tried to steady her breath. Her hand had also opened, and her bow had fallen.

“Bring . . . bow . . . and . . . arrow case,” Ferin managed to get out.

“I'll go back for 'em,” muttered Karrilke. She maneuvered Ferin over her shoulder and carefully made her way astern, keeping one hand ready to grab at a stay or rail as the deck rolled and pitched under her feet, far less than she would have wanted, for it meant they were slowing again. There was almost no breath of wind, and the sails hung limp and useless.

The rowers' chorus could be clearly heard now, even without the benefit of a breeze to blow their chant to the fishing boat. They were close, and closing.

Karrilke laid Ferin down by the post of the tiller, as gently as she could. Ferin hung over the rail, fighting back the pain, trying to focus her eyes on what lay behind, the dark mass that looked like a monster eating up the silver wake of their own passage.

There were small fires aboard the pursuing raider, spots of red light, that perhaps to some would suggest lit torches, a strange thing to have on a wooden ship. Ferin knew better. As she continued to look, and her eyes adapted to the starlight, she noted that most of the ship's oars, though over the side, were held or lashed high. Only
six oars a side stroked the water, but those six moved deep and with inexorable force.

“Only six a side are actually rowing,” she said. “But those twelve are wood-weirds, or something similar. Untiring, and easily four or five times as strong as the strongest warrior. There must also be at least twelve witches or shamans aboard, with their keepers. No, thirteen, for the wind-eater could not also command a wood-weird.”

“No ordinary raider,” said Karrilke, who had returned with Ferin's bow and arrow case, and her fur cloak, which the captain laid over the girl's legs.

“Sky Horse is a small clan; they could not have so many sorcerers. A dozen such: that is the full strength of two clans, at least,” said Ferin. She felt a leaden weight forming in her stomach, which she refused to accept as the beginnings of despair. “The tribes never normally ride together. And all sent to sea, which they hate and fear, as they do all deep water? This must be the doing of the Witch With No Face.”

“The Witch With No Face?” asked Karrilke.

“If we live, I will tell you of her,” said Ferin. She nocked an arrow, but did not draw, peering into the night while trying to ignore the pain that began in her ankle and coursed its way along her leg, stabbing at her in time with her heartbeat.

No targets presented themselves on the raider. It was directly in line behind them, some eighty paces back, but drawing a little closer with every dip and sweep of its oars, pushing ahead as the fishing boat wallowed with flapping sails.

The wind altered. A few points. Sails filled, Karrilke's children hauled on sheets, Karrilke herself took the tiller and heaved it, hoping to catch as much of the wind as possible.

A silhouette, something a shade darker than the night sky, appeared atop the long curved prow of the raider, someone standing for a better look.

The wind-eater.

Ferin caught the acrid stench of Free Magic, carried in on that blessed wind, the wind that was already fading, pulled back from their sails by sorcery.

She was sitting, on a swaying platform, a drumbeat of pain echoing from ankle to leg to head, her eyes blurred. It was night.

Ferin drew and shot, and her arrow sped across the starlit waters.

Northern Side of the Wall, the Old Kingdom

T
he bells fell silent as Lirael ran from the Wall. They quieted almost as soon as she left the northern gate, back into a warm spring evening and the last soft light of day, with the stars just beginning to be visible in the darkening sky. Despite the bells' stillness, she ran on another fifty paces before she stopped and took her hands away from the bandolier. Her golden hand was glowing more brightly than usual, she noted, a corona of unknown Charter marks floating around her fingers, none that were anything to do with the spells Sam had cast there. But these marks faded as she glanced at them, and were gone even as she tried to memorize them for later research.

The guards came running out, six of them carrying Nick, or rather what she presumed must be Nick, because right now what they bore was a cocoon of golden fire, almost too bright to look upon. Marks from the northern face of the Wall were still rushing across to join this brilliant shroud of Charter Magic, but as the guards continued on, the rivers of light fell back. Then, a dozen or more paces away, the marks that enclosed Nick either faded or sank into him, and Lirael could see him again. Still unconscious and unaware of what had occurred in crossing the Wall.

Lirael cautiously walked toward the guards, as they moved toward her. She kept her hands across the bells, in case they should begin to stir again, but they did not. This confirmed her suspicion that it was an interaction that required the power inherent in the Wall, not just
the Free Magic that lurked within Nicholas Sayre.

Captain Anlow came hurrying out of the gate, followed by the remainder of her detachment. She came straight to Lirael, looking more anxious than she wished to show, Lirael was sure. Up until a few minutes ago, the captain had been the very model of a tough officer of the Guard, willing to take on anything and, in the process, show the young Abhorsen-in-Waiting that she knew best.

“Is that going to happen again?” asked Anlow. “And . . . what was it?”

“I don't know,” said Lirael. She gestured to the guards to lay Nick down, and knelt down next to him as they did so. She hesitated for a moment, then touched two fingers to his baptismal Charter mark.

She felt the warm welcome of the Charter and fell into the endless flow of marks. There was no corruption here, nothing that was anything different from when she touched any true mark. But she could feel a massive force of Free Magic behind the Charter . . . or under . . . or somehow kept back from somewhere else that was undefined . . . something she could not conceptually grasp, because the Charter was endless, but then there was something
beyond
or
behind
it . . .

A slight headache began to form between her eyes.

Lirael leaned back and stood up.

“I don't know, Captain,” she said. “His Charter mark is unsullied, he is as much part of it as we are . . . but he is also deeply . . . deeply
full
of Free Magic. And he has lost a lot of blood. My healing spell still works upon him, but he is very weak . . .”

Lirael's voice trailed off as she tried to think what she should do.

“Selemi's back at Barhedrin,” said Anlow, her voice dubious. “Our chief healer. He has much experience with common wounds and illnesses, as healer and mage.”

“Thank you,” said Lirael. She was already forming a plan in her mind. It was one she was reluctant to adopt, though already she knew
it was the only choice. “But this is a most uncommon . . . um . . . condition.”

“You'll take him to Belisaere, then?” asked Anlow. Lirael could hear the relief in the captain's voice.

Lirael had thought of that. But this wasn't the kind of thing that even the most experienced of the healers in the city hospital could deal with. Even if Sabriel and Touchstone were there, she doubted they would know what was going on with Nick. They were both very powerful Charter Mages, of course, and fine healers themselves. But this wasn't a medical problem but a mystery, one rooted in the nature of Free Magic and the Charter.

The best place for solving any kind of mystery like that, or even beginning to work out the nature of such a mystery, was in the Great Library of the Clayr. And in conjunction with that, the very best healers of all the Kingdom were to be found in the Infirmary of the Clayr.

Which meant it was finally time for Lirael to go back to her childhood home, something she had been putting off for months, despite a number of invitations and even some quite pointed suggestions from Sabriel. To return to the Clayr's Glacier, where she had been both extraordinarily unhappy, and never happier. But all those happy memories of the place were deeply entwined with memories of the Disreputable Dog, once her only and still her truest friend. Even though the Dog was no longer in the living world, and Lirael knew she would never see her again.

“No,” said Lirael slowly. “Not Belisaere.”

She took a deep breath, shutting away memories she hadn't wanted to face, blocking off the feelings that rose in her when she thought of the Glacier, her life there, the Dog, all her cousins and aunts and relatives. The Clayr, the great family she had never really belonged to, and never would. Who had, in the end, effectively cast her out. Even if they didn't think of it that way.

“No,” repeated Lirael, after a long pause. “Not Belisaere. I'll take him to the Clayr's Glacier. That's the best place.”

“We'll rig a proper stretcher between two horses, then,” said Anlow, visibly more cheerful with the prospect of this particular problem departing from her area of command. “You'll fly him back in your paperwing?”

“Yes,” said Lirael. That was another thing. She'd grown somewhat used to flying paperwings, but it was only six weeks since she'd first flown alone, and she'd never flown with a passenger, let alone one who was some kind of Free Magic reservoir. Hopefully the paperwing would agree to carry him . . .

The paperwings weren't simply magical aircraft, but had a level of self-awareness that was difficult to gauge. They were more like a free-willed Charter Magic sending than anything, a created entity that could, to some degree at least, think for itself.

Nick would have to sit behind her, an unsettling thought even though she was fairly sure he wasn't going to be consumed by Free Magic and become some sort of sorcerer or sorcerous monster. But even without such considerations, he'd need to be propped up or maybe lashed in place somehow, if he hadn't regained consciousness by the time they got to Barhedrin.

Lirael looked down at Nick again. He was very pale, almost as pale as she was herself, but in her case, though she had been pale to begin with, she had become much more so from traveling in Death, the cold river which leached all color from even the darkest skin. In Nick, the pallor was from dangerous loss of blood. She felt a sudden urge to just rest her hand on his forehead, and almost reached out before she stopped herself and turned away.

“Yes, by paperwing,” she repeated herself gruffly. “And I'll need to send a message-hawk to Belisaere, to Princess Ellimere. And one to Magistrix Coelle, for a telegram to General Tindall, explaining why we took Nick with us . . .”

“We have a score or more of hawks in the mews,” said Anlow. “Always need them, where we are.”

“I'm sure,” said Lirael absently. She was wondering what exactly she should say to Ellimere in the limited space provided by a message-hawk's little brain. Sabriel and Touchstone also needed to be informed, of course, though perhaps not until they returned . . . Ellimere had been very insistent they were not to be bothered save in a real emergency. But Sam should also be told. In fact, Sam might well be able to help work out exactly what was going on with Nick. He had already explored different paths of Charter Magic from most mages, and though it was mostly to do with making things, he might have a particular insight. Besides, Nick was one of Sam's closest friends . . .

Lirael blinked and brought her attention back to whatever Anlow was saying.

“What was that?”

“I was thinking it would be best to keep him away from the Charter Stone,” said Anlow. “The one atop Barhedrin Hill.”

“Yes,” said Lirael. Anlow was thinking more clearly than she was, she recognized. The Wall and the Charter Stones were both taproots into the greater power of the Charter. Though whatever had happened to Nick crossing the Wall did not appear to be dangerous, they had no way of knowing what potential spell might have been placed within him, and though the Charter was generally benevolent, that benevolence might be a weighted thing, where some greater good would be gained at the cost of trouble to those locally involved. Even death, blindness, or permanent stilling of a tongue, as happened when people tried to command Charter Magic beyond their ability or experience, thus preventing larger trouble by stopping an individual doing something irrevocably stupid.

“Your paperwing is quite close to the Stone,” continued Anlow.

Lirael stared at the guard captain.

“I'll move it,” she said.

“But why take him . . . Nicholas Sayre . . . to Barhedrin anyway?” suggested Anlow. “If you go ahead, you can fly back, easily land on the flat here, and take him away.”

“Oh, right,” said Lirael. She blushed, something made worse by the pallor of her skin. “I'm sorry, Captain. I've not been thinking.”

“You dealt with the Free Magic creature,” said Anlow. “The Hrule.”

“That might have been the easy part,” said Lirael. She glanced at Nick again, and brushed the hair back from her eyes in the nervous gesture she did not realize was familiar to anyone who had known her for more than a few days. “I'd best go, then . . .”

She hesitated, thinking it through. It was only a few hours' ride to the guard post at Barhedrin; she would be there well before midnight. But flying back would not be so easy . . . and Nick would be left with only the guards for the night. If something happened . . .

“Paperwings don't like to fly at night. I might not be able to make it back before morning.”

“We'll make camp over by that copse,” said Anlow, pointing to a stand of trees another few hundred paces farther away, on the flat, grassy plain that accompanied the Wall's northern side from sea to sea. Nothing more significant than ankle-high grass ever grew there, some further magic from the Wallmakers, making it easier to watch for people or things who sought to cross.

“Keep a careful watch, Captain,” said Lirael. “Free Magic, even contained as it is in . . . in Nicholas . . . may draw the Dead or other things.”

Still, she hesitated. Anlow saw that.

“You are feared for us? Or for him?”

“A little of both,” said Lirael, honestly. She frowned. “Still, I agree it is best he doesn't come near the Charter Stone. If . . . if something does show up in the night, it might make sense to take him
back to the gate, go into the Wall.”

“Even not knowing what happened back there?”

Lirael nodded slowly. “The marks were not attacking him, or us. It was only their waking the bells. In any case, I hope nothing does eventuate . . . and my healing spell should hold for at least another day.”

“I can cast that spell myself,” said Anlow. “The spiral cure-all. I saw that was what you did.”

“It was much more difficult than it should have been,” said Lirael. She looked at Nick again. Whatever had happened crossing the Wall, there was no evidence of it now. She couldn't sense any Free Magic “leaking” out of him, and though he had lost a lot of blood, he was stable and in a healing sleep.

Lirael shook her head, but it wasn't in negation; it was to tell herself to stop dithering and get on with things.

“I'll be back as quick as I can, come the morning.”