Lirael stood up, ignoring the river’s sudden grab at her knees. She thought of Nick, out there in the airless plain, and felt a terrible pang in her heart. Was it already too late; had she spent too long in Death? Would he turn and run back when her body crumpled, the ice cracked, and she lay dead at his feet?
She hoped he would, but feared he would not.
“This is what it is, to be an Abhorsen,” she said sadly, and drew Astarael.
The Greenwash rose sixty paces above the usual waterline, a churning rampart of muddy water from bank to bank. Everywhere downstream of the magic wall made by the Spirit-Walkers and their black iron chain was now a broad expanse of drying rock and mud, dotted everywhere with the silvery shapes of thousands of dying fish, and here and there the tumbled wrecks of long-lost boats, everything from sunken rafts used in the construction of the bridge to the narrow war boats of the clans, destroyed in attacks of long ago.
Sam and Ferin were in the North Castle now, on the wall. Both had bows in their hands, quivers leaning against the wall, arrows ready, waiting for the next attack. They had not needed to go farther in search of sorcerers and keepers, for they were here aplenty. Dozens of wood-weirds had charged the walls only minutes after Sam had led his garrison into the castle, running from the south tower that joined the bridge straight to the battlements in answer to frantic blasts of the alarm horns.
But the wood-weirds came not to try and scale the high walls but to hurl great tubs of stone into the moat, under a storm of Charter-spelled arrows that left only four or five able to retire. The rest stood out there, no longer wood-weirds, now just burning stumps.
The second wave had been much harder to shoot at, for it was composed of forty sand-swimmers, huge undulating mounds of sand and grit that shimmered over the ground and were hard to differentiate from the earth around them. But again, they did not try to slither up the walls but instead poured themselves into the moat, filling the gaps between the tubs of stone. There, they were destroyed by more Charter-spelled arrows and spells cast by Sam and several Charter Mages from the Bridge Company.
But their work was done. The inhabiting Free Magic creatures had been banished or bound; the sand-swimmers became the raw sand and stone of their making, vast quantities of solid material, filling the moat for a stretch of two hundred paces, so the next assault could come right up to the walls. Sam could see this third wave preparing in the distance, four or five hundred warriors on foot. Out of bowshot, but well within sight, under the brilliant moon.
“I feared this,” said Ferin, and tore at her hair, releasing the queue she normally wore tightly coiled around her head.
“What?” asked Sam. They were very much outnumbered by the line of enemy forming up, but they did not look particularly formidable. They had no scaling ladders or any other siege equipment, and the walls above the moat were fifty paces high. Nor was there the glint of silver chain to show the presence of keepers and their charges, and the few wood-weirds who had survived the first assault had disappeared altogether.
“You will see,” said Ferin. “Look, they reverse their coats, so we might see who we face, and gain honor from the knowledge.”
There was a flash of white in that line of warriors, and then another. It took Sam a moment to realize what he was looking at. They were turning their coats inside out, to show the white fur of the athask, great cat of the northwestern mountains.
“Your people,” said Sam.
“Yes . . . and no,” said Ferin. “I am the Offering, the one they would give up so the clan may live. The best and the least.”
“Go to the northern wall, or the west,” said Sam. “There will be other clans to fight there.”
“No,” said Ferin. “You will need me here. They will be on the walls soon enough, and there are too few defenders.”
“But they have no ladders, no ram for the gate . . .”
“The Athask shoot ropes, and the Athask climb,” said Ferin, with considerable pride, alloyed with sadness. “We must not let them get close. And perhaps . . . perhaps there is still a chance Lirael will slay the Witch With No Face, and we will live after all, you, me, and the Athask.”
Sam began to say something, but it was lost in the sudden, ground-shaking sound of hundreds of nomad horn-blasts, mixed with the cheer from ten thousand nomad throats, and most of all the deep thunderous shudder of ten thousand horses breaking into a trot and then a canter and then, as they reached the flat, rocky bottom of the river, the full-out gallop of their charge.
“It is too late,” said Sam.
He reached down for an arrow, but his hand froze as his fingers met soft fur, and he looked down at two small almond-shaped eyes, bright emeralds in the moonshadow of the battlements.
“What’s too late?” asked Mogget.
“Hold on to my hand,” said Lirael. “Hold very tight!”
She thrust her golden hand at Clariel, who gripped it with both of her own.
Lirael swung Astarael up, let go of the clapper, and caught the bell by the handle as it fell, letting it swing behind her and up again in one great arc. As it moved, the bell sang one pure note, a sound that cut through Lirael everywhere, as if she were pierced all over by a thousand hair-fine needles.
Lirael screamed, her scream joining Astarael’s call, and in that moment the river of Death rose up around her with sudden, tremendous force. She was picked up and thrown forward, tumbling and choking, thrust through the waterfalls of the First Gate, no spells needed to open the way beyond Astarael’s imperious, mournful cry; and then through the Second Precinct in one shocking, drowning swoop, Clariel smashing against her, though her spirit form was so slight Lirael barely felt the knocks, and she tried to drop Astarael but the bell was stuck fast to her hand and it kept on ringing, ringing with the one terrible single note of doom.
Onward they went, straight down the whirlpool of the Second Gate, gasping for air, then bumping and sliding as the waters froze and the whirlpool became a spiral path, and they were dumped out into the Third Precinct, but only for a few seconds, the wave there catching them as Lirael staggered to her feet and once again tried to still the bell. But her hand, her hand of normal flesh, would not obey, and before she knew it she was underwater again, rushing through the mists of the Third Gate, surrounded by yammering, panicked, desperate Dead who had been picked up by the wave or caught by Astarael, the Dead washing one way and Lirael and Clariel another; and then they were in the Fourth Precinct, and Lirael exerted every scrap of will she possessed and made her hand move, and somehow she got the bell back into its pouch on her bandolier, and it was still.
The current was much stronger here than it had been closer to Life. Lirael slipped several paces before she could get her feet set, and lean the opposite way from the river’s pull.
“Let go,” she said to Clariel. There was still a chance, after all, a chance she could get back to Life, get back to Nick before he died, choking for want of air. Astarael had not flung her as far as she had feared. “The river will take you.”
“Thank you,” said Clariel. She bent her head, let go of Lirael’s golden hand, and fell back into the river.
But the current did not take her. She floated there on her back, a puzzled look slowly gathering on her scarred face, while Lirael looked on in horror. Then Clariel slowly lifted one foot out of the water.
The dark spell-rope was still there. She could not go on unless it was broken, unmade, and Lirael did not know how this could be done.
Lirael shut her eyes, just for a moment; then she slowly took Astarael from the bandolier once more. Pins and needles shot through her fingers as she did so, and she could feel the bell shivering under her hand. Astarael was keen to sound again, to take them farther.
Lirael knew she had no choice. She would have to go with Clariel to the Ninth Precinct, to stand with her beneath the unforgiving stars of the Ninth Gate. There was no spell-rope strong enough to hold against the Ninth Gate’s call to a final death.
She swung the bell up and released the clapper.
“Mogget!” exclaimed Sam. He bent down and tried to embrace the little white cat, who avoided the move by zipping between Sam’s legs. “What are you doing here?”
“I smelled the fish,” said Mogget. “Thousands of good salmon gone to waste. I smelled the Free Magic too, and I was curious.”
“Will you help us?” asked Sam swiftly. “I know we cannot compel you. I ask as a . . . a friend.”
“What . . . who is that?” hissed Ferin.
“I am Mogget,” said the cat. “Nice coat. I trust you fought fair for it?”
“Knife against claws, as is the custom,” said Ferin, very slowly. She kept staring at Mogget, then slowly hopped her crutches sideways to lower herself on one knee and incline her head, greatly surprising Sam. She hadn’t done that for Touchstone. “Are you . . . are you the athask? The great one?”