It was enough to attract the attention of all the wood-weirds in the valley below, and indeed, the sorcerers who were loping along with their keepers behind them holding their silver chains close, like huntsmen keeping dogs of uncertain temper on short leashes.
“The spider-thing turns,” said Ferin. She waved her arms and called out, “Here! Here!” and then made several rude gestures common to all the tribes, though these would mean nothing to the Free Magic creatures, and the sorcerers and their keepers were probably too far away to see her clearly.
Young Laska chuckled at her side. Ferin looked at her.
“You know what that meant?”
The Borderer nodded.
“I was assigned for several years to the Northwest Desert, one of the most distant parts of the Kingdom that borders the lower western steppe. There are several oases there where the Moon Horse clan and the Blood Horses come to trade, and sometimes to raid. So I know a little of the tribes, and even of sand-swimmers, wood-weirds, and Spirit-Walkers, though I confess to having seen a wood-weird only once before. They were very uncommon in the desert.”
“But you survived,” said Ferin. “That is good.”
“I hid from it, and ran when I could, and I was lucky,” said Young Laska. She pointed downward, where the fast wood-weird had already turned and was running toward their hillside. “I think it is time we also quickened our pace, if not to run.”
“No running,” said Swinther. “The path narrows even before the ridge, and it will be broken shale underfoot soon; you will need to set each footfall very carefully, and crouch low. Watch where I go, do what I do. Follow!”
The path grew steeper and more difficult almost immediately. Either frequent passage, or active work, had cleared away the deeper piles of loose shale so that there was bedrock or earth beneath to actually step upon, and here and there in the trickier parts iron staples had been driven deeply into the rock to use as foot- or handholds, though some were so rusted Swinther tested them very carefully before use.
Ferin was pleased the path was difficult, for it would slow the wood-weirds a great deal. But then again, she did not want them to turn back too soon, and go on to catch the fisher-folk before they reached the haven of the old tower.
But after a very steep section, liberally seeded with deeply seated iron spikes, they reached the ridge and the going became much easier, at least at first. The path was six or seven paces wide, and almost level, rising or falling only a few feet for quite some distance. The shale underfoot on the path was loose, but in very crushed, small pieces, so it was reasonably easy to keep one’s footing, unlike the much more treacherous many-layered sheets of stone to either side. The shale there would undoubtedly break at once and slide away if trodden on, taking the unfortunate walker with it.
They had only gone on another hundred paces when Young Laska stopped and held her hand up to test the breeze. There had been little enough below, and not much more on the ridge, but now the wind was freshening and swinging around. It was colder, and brought with it the tang of rain.
“Wind’s changed,” said Young Laska. She looked to the west. “A westerly now, from the mountains. Not natural.”
“They had a wind-eater aboard,” said Ferin. “I shot her. Or him. But they were not killed.”
“Bringing clouds,” said Young Laska. “I wonder—”
She was interrupted by the sound of falling shale. They looked back and saw the speedy wood-weird get its two leading tree-root legs over the top of the steep climb, scrabble for a moment, then haul itself up onto the ridge. It paused there for a few moments, burning eyes looking straight at Ferin and her companions, then immediately started along the path, its movement now reminiscent of a hunting spider.
Young Laska had her bow off her back and an arrow nocked in seconds, with Ferin only a moment behind. Two arrows flew, Ferin’s striking the body of the creature only to shatter without effect. But Young Laska’s Charter-spelled arrow stuck fast in the hollow of the thing’s eye, a great gout of white sparks spraying out where it lodged.
“Save your shafts!” snapped Young Laska to Ferin, sending another arrow speeding into the creature’s other eyehole. Again, there was a shower of sparks. The wood-weird stopped, and for a moment Ferin thought it was mortally wounded. But it was only blinded, and it started forward again, carefully feeling the path ahead with its forelegs.
Young Laska shot again, at one of these forelegs, her arrow sticking in a joint, which became wreathed in golden fire, Charter Magic competing with the sickly red burn of Free Magic within. But her next arrow missed the other leg, striking shale, and the creature rushed forward, opening its rough-cut mouth wide, the fire within roiling, white smoke jetting forth, accompanied by the nauseating, hot-metal reek of Free Magic.
Young Laska dropped her bow to wield a Charter-spelled arrow in her hand, but Swinther nimbly slid past her, his double-bladed axe lifted high.
“For Yellowsands!”
Chapter Eighteen
THE AVOIDANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY
Clayr’s Glacier, Old Kingdom
Qilla, newly made acting lieutenant of the Rangers, did not feel she was of a sufficiently elevated standing to ignore rule thirty-six and send the guardian drill-grub Sending back into its quiescent state under the stones of the landing ground and admit the visitor, despite Lirael’s entreaties.
“Oh, for Charter’s sake!” exclaimed Lirael. “Can someone send for Mirelle? Or the Voice of the Nine Day Watch?”
“The Voice?” asked Qilla. She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I don’t think this calls—”
“Qilla,” said Lirael. “I know it’s hard for you all to come to terms with the fact, but I am not just some junior cousin anymore, I am the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. If it was Sabriel here asking you to let her guest in, would we all be standing around in the cold?”
“Uh, no,” said Qilla. “But . . .”
“Get Mirelle,” said Lirael. “Or the Voice.”
Qilla looked as if she was about to say something, but shut her mouth as Lirael looked at her, her golden hand resting on the handle of Saraneth, the sixth bell, the one used to bind the Dead to the wielder’s will. There was no trace of the meek, withdrawn girl Qilla had known vaguely by sight, as all the Clayr knew one another, if not better because of closer kinship or the propinquity of either work or shared participation in the Nine Day Watch.
“I’ll send word for Mirelle,” said Qilla, and walked away to confer with one of the other rangers. There were four of them on the landing ground now, standing about and gazing outward, down and up, as if they were guarding Lirael and Nick from a surprise attack from without, rather than surreptitiously keeping an eye on these unexpected and complicated arrivals.
Lirael looked down at Nick, who she had made sit back in the relative warmth of the paperwing’s cockpit. He was dressed in a leather-and-fur flying coat and woolen breeches now, and he felt much warmer and more secure, now sufficiently well-clothed not to be embarrassed by a sudden movement or a gust of wind. But, although he did not know it, he still looked awful, very pale and weak, and he shivered from time to time, no longer from cold but simply from lack of blood and weariness.
He smiled at Lirael and said, “I go a thousand miles, to another kingdom, somewhere that feels like another world entirely, and it is just like being back home! Trying to get into the Moot when it is in session, to see my father or uncle, with some flun . . . that is . . . with a guard or an official wanting a particular pass or someone else to take responsibility for letting me through the door.”
“Thank you for not being . . . for not being angry,” said Lirael. She was angry, quite furious that they had not been admitted at once. It made her look stupid and ineffectual in front of Nick, and though she did not want to admit it, even to herself, she had hoped that when she did eventually return to the Glacier that she would finally be treated as someone of note, a handsome frog rather than an ugly tadpole, as in the children’s story.
Mirelle arrived some thirty minutes later, slightly out of breath from running up the Starmount Stair, something that would have left most Clayr half her age, or anyone else for that matter, puking and half-dead. It was a very long way and the steps had much higher risers than was normal, as if they were built for a race of eight-foot-tall people. Yet for the leather-skinned, grey-haired commander of the Rangers it was apparently no more than a mild stretch on a spring afternoon.
“Greetings, Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” said Mirelle, bowing. She raised her hand, two fingers extended, and said, “May I test your mark?”
Lirael nodded. This was correct etiquette, but she doubted Mirelle meant it that way; it was probably her being wary of a potential enemy, some sort of substitution or deceit. Particularly as she noted the older Clayr kept one hand on the hilt of the small but doubtless extremely sharp knife she wore on her left side, next to her sword. Lirael had always found Mirelle rather frightening on the few occasions they’d crossed paths, but this time she was not intimidated. She thought about that for a moment, remembering her earlier self. But that younger Lirael had not fought Free Magic constructs, many Dead creatures, Chlorr of the Mask, and ultimately Orannis itself.