“Not the crowd!” roared Touchstone’s voice. “Only armed targets!”
Their attackers were not so careful. They had gone under their vehicles and behind a post box and the wall of a flower-bed, and were firing wildly.
Bullets ricocheted off the street and the armoured cars in mad, zinging screeches. There was noise everywhere, harsh, confused sound, a mixture of screaming and shouting combined with the constant crack and chatter of gunfire. The crowd, so eager to rush forward only seconds before, had become a terrible, tumbling crush of people trying to flee.
Damed rushed to a knot of guards who were crouched between the two cars.
“The river,” he shouted. “Go through the square and down the Warden Steps. We have two boats there. You’ll lose any pursuit in the fog.”
“We can fight our way back to the Embassy!” retorted Touchstone.
“This is too well planned! The police have turned, or enough of them! You must get out of Corvere. Out of Ancelstierre!”
“No!” shouted Sabriel. “We haven’t finished—”
She was cut off as Damed violently pushed her and Touchstone over and dived on to the street. With his legendary quickness, he intercepted a large black cylinder that was tumbling through the air, trailing smoke behind it.
A bomb.
Damed caught and threw it in one swift motion, but even he was not fast enough.
The bomb exploded while it was still in the air. Packed with high explosive and pieces of metal, it killed Damed instantly. The blast broke every window for two miles, and momentarily deafened and blinded everyone within a hundred yards. But it was the thousands of metal fragments that did the real damage, ripping and screaming through the air, to bounce off stone or metal, or all too often, to cut through flesh.
Silence followed the explosion, save for the roar of the burning gas from the shattered lamps. Even the fog had been thrown back by the force of the blast, which had cleared a great circle open to the sky. Rays of weak sunshine filtered through, to illuminate the scene of destruction.
There were bodies strewn all around the cars, not one overcoated guard still standing. Even the car’s armoured windows were broken, and the occupants were slumped in death.
The assassins waited for a few minutes before they started forward, laughing and congratulating each other, their weapons cradled casually under their arms, or across a shoulder with what they imagined was debonair style.
Their talk and laughter was too loud, but they didn’t notice. Their senses were battered, their minds in shock. Not only from the gunfire, the explosion, the terrible sights that drew closer and more real with every step, or even the relief at being alive.
It was three hundred years since a King and a Queen had been slain on the streets of Corvere. Now it had happened again — and they had done the deed.
About the Author
Garth Nix was born in 1963 and grew up in Canberra, Australia. After taking his degree in professional writing from the University of Canberra, he slowly sank into the morass of the publishing industry, steadily devolving from sales rep through publicist, until in 1991 he became a senior editor with a major multinational publisher. After a period traveling in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in 1993, he left publishing to work as a marketing communications consultant. In 1999, he was lured back to the publishing world to become a part-time literary agent. He now lives in Sydney, a five-minute walk from Coogee Beach, with his wife, Anna, and lots of books.
Garth is the author of, among other books, Sabriel, Lirael, and Shade’s Chldren.
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Credits
Jacket art © 2001 by Leo and Diane Dillon
Jacket design by Lizzy Bromley
Jacket © 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
LIRAEL: DAUGHTER OF THE CLAYR. Copyright © 2001 by Garth Nix. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
ABHORSEN PREVIEW © 2001 by Garth Nix
EPub © Reader Edition MAY 2001 ISBN: 9780061756801
Print edition first published in 2001 HarperCollins Publishers
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Garth Nix, Lirael
(Series: Abhorsen # 2)
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