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 breath
e 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.
“Sorry,” said Sam. “Can’t stand other people being sick. Are you all right?”
“I knew him,” said Lirael, glancing back at the guardsman. Her voice trembled until she took a deep breath.
“I knew him. He came to the Glacier years ago, and he talked to me in the Lower Refectory. His hauberk didn’t fit him then.”
She took the bottle Sam offered her, poured some water into her hands, and rinsed out her mouth.
“His name was . . . I can’t quite remember. Larrow, or Harrow. Something like that. He asked me my name, and I never answered—”
She hesitated, about to say more, but stopped as Sam suddenly whipped around.
“What was that?”
“What?”
“A noise, somewhere over there,” replied Sam, pointing to a dead mule that was lying on the lip of a shallow erosion gully that led down to the cliffs. Its head hung over the gully and was out of sight.
As they watched, the mule shifted slightly; then with a jerk, it slid over the edge and into the gully. They could still see its hindquarters, but most of it was hidden. Then the mule’s rump and back legs began to shake and shiver.
“Something’s eating it!” exclaimed Lirael in disgust. She could see drag marks on the ground now, all leading to the gully. There had been more bodies of mules and men. Someone . . . or something had dragged them to the narrow ditch.
“I can’t sense anything Dead,” said Sam anxiously. “Can you?”
Lirael shook her head. She slipped off her pack and took up her bow, strung it, and nocked an arrow. Sam drew his sword again.
They advanced slowly on the gully while more and more of the mule disappeared from sight. Closer, they could hear a dry gulping noise, rather like the sound of someone shoveling sand. Every now and then it would be accompanied by a more liquid gurgle.
But they still couldn’t see anything. The gully was deep and only three or four feet wide, and whatever was in it lay directly under the mule. Lirael still couldn’t sense anything Dead, but there was a faint tang of something in the air.
Both of them recognized what it was at the same time. The acrid, metallic odor characteristic of Free Magic. But it was very faint, and it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. Perhaps the gully, or possibly blowing in on the faint breeze.
When they were only a few paces from the edge of the gully, the rear legs of the mule disappeared with a final shake, its hooves flying in a grim parody of life. The same liquid gurgle accompanied the disappearance.
Lirael stopped at the edge and looked down, her bow drawn, a Charter-spelled arrow ready to fly. But there was nothing to shoot. Just a long streak of dark mud at the bottom of the gully, with a single hoof sinking under the surface. The smell of Free Magic was stronger, but it was not the corrosive stench she had encountered from the Stilken or other lesser Free Magic elementals.
“What is it?” whispered Sam. His left hand was crooked in a spell-casting gesture, and a slim golden flame burned at the end of each finger, ready to be thrown.
“I don’t know,” said Lirael. “A Free Magic thing of some kind. Not anything I’ve ever read about. I wonder how—”
As she spoke, the mud bubbled and peeled back, to reveal a deep maw that was neither earth nor flesh but pure darkness, lit by a long, forked tongue of silver fire. With the open maw came a rolling stench of Free Magic and rotten meat, an almost physical assault that sent Lirael and Sam staggering back even as the tongue of silver fire rose into the air and struck down where Lirael had stood a moment before. Then a great snake head of mud followed the tongue, rearing out of the gully, looming high above them.
Lirael loosed her arrow as she stumbled back, and Sam thrust out his hand, shouting the activating marks that sent a roaring, crackling fountain of fire towards the thing of mud and blood and darkness that was rising up. Fire met silver tongue, and sparks exploded in all directions, setting the grass alight. Neither arrow nor Charter fire seemed to affect the creature, but it did recoil, and Lirael and Sam had no hesitation in running farther back.
“Who dares disturb my feasting!” roared a voice that was many voices and one, mixed with the braying of mules and the cries of dying men. “My feast so long since due!”
In answer Lirael dropped her bow and and drew Nehima. Sam muttered marks and drew them into the air with his sword and hand, knitting together many complex symbols. Lirael took a half step forward to guard Sam while he completed the spell.
Sam finished with a master mark that wreathed his hand in golden flames as he drew it in the air. It was a mark that Lirael knew could easily immolate an unready caster, and she flinched slightly as it appeared. But it left Sam’s hand easily, and the spell hung in the air, a glowing tracery of linked marks, rather like a belt of shining stars. He took one end gingerly, swung the whole thing round his head, and let it fly at the creature, simultaneously shouting out, “Look away!”
There was a blinding flash, a sound like a choir screaming, and silence. When they looked back, there was no sign of the creature. Just small fires burning in the grass, coils of smoke twining together to cast a pall across the field.
“What was that?” asked Lirael.
“A spell for binding something,” replied Sam. “I was never quite sure what, though. Do you think it worked?”
“No,” said the Dog, her sudden appearance making Lirael and Sam jump. “Though it was quite bright enough to let every Dead thing between here and the Red Lake know where we are.”
“If it didn’t work, then where is that thing?” asked Sam. He looked around nervously as he spoke. Lirael looked, too. She could still smell the Free Magic, though once more only faintly, and it was impossible to tell where it was coming from amidst the eddying smoke.
“It’s probably under our feet,” said the Dog. She suddenly thrust her nose into a small hole and snorted. The snort sent a gout of dirt flying into the air. Lirael and Sam jumped away, hesitated on the brink of flight, then slowly stood back-to-back, their weapons ready.
Chapter Five
Blow Wind, Come Rain!
“EXACTLY WHERE UNDER our feet!?” exclaimed Sam. He looked down anxiously, his sword and spell-casting hand ready.
“What can we do?” asked Lirael quickly. “Do you know what that was? How do we fight it?”
The Dog sniffed scornfully at the ground.
“We will not need to fight. That was a Ferenk, a scavenger. Ferenks are all show and bluster. This one lies under several ells of earth and stone now. It will not come out till dark, perhaps not even till dark tomorrow.”
Sam scanned the ground, not trusting the Dog’s opinion, while Lirael bent down to talk to the hound.
“I’ve never read anything about Free Magic creatures called Ferenks,” said Lirael. “Not in any of the books I went through to find out about the Stilken.”
“There should be no Ferenk here,” said the Dog. “They are elemental creatures, spirits of stone and mud. They became nothing more than stone and mud when the Charter was made. A few would have been missed, but not here . . . not in a place so traveled. . . .”
“If it was just a scavenger, what killed these poor people?” asked Lirael. She’d been wondering about the wounds she’d seen and not liking the direction her thoughts were going in. Most of the corpses had, like the guardsman, two holes bored right through them, holes where clothing and skin were scorched around the edges.
“Certainly a Free Magic creature, or creatures,” said the Dog. “But not a Ferenk. Something akin to a Stilken, I think. Perhaps a Jerreq or a Hish. There were many thousands of Free Magic creatures who evaded the making of the Charter, though most were later imprisoned or made to serve after a fashion.
There were entire breeds, and others of a singular nature, so I cannot speak with absolute certainty. It is complicated by the fact that there was a forge here long ago, inside the ring of thorns. There was a creature bound inside the stone anvil of that forge, yet I can find neither anvil nor any other remnants. Possibly whatever was bound here killed these people, but I think not. . . .”
The Dog paused to sniff the ground again, wandered in a circle, absently snapped at her own tail, and then sat down to offer her conclusion.
“It might have been a twinned Jerreq, but I am inclined to think the killing here was done by two Hish. Whatever did the deed, it was done in the service of a necromancer.”
“How do you know that?” asked Sam. He’d stopped circling when the Dog started, though he still kept on looking at the ground. Now he was looking for signs of a stone anvil as well as an erupting Ferenk. Not that he’d ever seen an anvil here.
“Tracks and signs,” replied the Dog. “The wounds, the smells that remain, a three-toed impression in soft soil, the body hung in the tree, the thorns stripped from seven branches in celebration . . . all this tells me what walked here, up to a point. As to the necromancer, no Jerreq or Hish or any of the other truly dangerous creatures of Free Magic has woken in a thousand years save to the sound of Mosrael and Saraneth, or by a direct summons using their secret names.”
“Hedge was here,” whispered Lirael. Sam flinched at the name, and the burn scars on his wrists darkened. But he did not look at the scars or turn away.
“Perhaps,” said the Dog. “Not Chlorr, anyway. One of the Greater Dead would leave different signs.”