Lirael

by Garth Nix

  The words of the school song were suddenly cut off as Nick left the trees, smacked into a stone wall, tumbled over it, and fell down six or seven feet into the sunken road. The sword spun out of his hand, and his palms skidded across asphalt, which took off most of the skin.

  He lay on the road for a moment, gathering his wits, then started to get up. He was on his hands and knees when he became aware that someone was standing right in front of him. Leather boots, with metal plates at the knee, clanked as whoever it was stepped forward.

  “So, you have come as ordered, even without Saraneth to seal the pledge,” said the man, his voice somehow turning off all the other sounds that had filled Nick’s ears. Gunfire, grenade explosions, the singing—all of it was gone. All he could hear was that terrible voice, a voice that filled him with indescribable fear.

  Nick had started to lift his head as the man spoke, but now he was afraid to look. Instinctively he knew that this was the necromancer he’d so foolishly sought. Now all he could do was hang his head, the peak of his cricket cap shielding his face from what he knew would be a terrible gaze.

  “Lift up your hand,” ordered the necromancer, the words as piercing as hot wires through Nick’s brain. Slowly, the boy knelt as if in prayer, his head still bowed—and he held out his right hand, bloody from the fall.

  The necromancer’s hand slowly came to meet it, palm outwards. For a moment, Nick thought he was going to shake hands, and he suddenly thought of the pattern in the terrible burns on Sam’s wrists. A pattern of finger-marks! But he couldn’t move. His body was locked in place by the power of the necromancer’s words.

  The necromancer’s hand stopped several inches away, and something quivered under the skin of his palm, like a parasite trying to get out. Then it was free, a sliver of silver metal that slowly oriented itself towards Nick’s open hand. It hung suspended for another second, then it suddenly leapt across the gap.

  Nick felt it strike his hand, felt it break through his skin and enter his bloodstream. He screamed, his body arched back in convulsions, and for the first time the necromancer saw his face.

  “You are not the Prince!” shouted the necromancer, and his sword flashed through the air, straight at Nick’s wrist. But it stopped suddenly, less than a finger’s width away, as the convulsions stopped and the boy looked up at him calmly, cradling his hand to his chest.

  Inside that hand, the sliver of arcane metal swam, negotiating the complex pathway of the boy’s veins. It was weak here, on the wrong side of the Wall, but not too weak to reach its ultimate destination.

  It hit Nicholas Sayre’s heart a minute later, and lodged there. A minute later still, puffs of thick, white smoke began to issue from his mouth.

  Hedge waited, watching the smoke. But the white smoke suddenly dissipated, and Hedge felt the wind swing around to the east, and his own power diminish. He heard the sound of many hob-nailed boots farther up the road, and the whoosh of a flare being fired directly overhead.

  Hedge hesitated for a moment, then leapt up the embankment with inhuman dexterity, into the trees. Lurking there, he watched as soldiers cautiously approached the unconscious boy. Some of them had rifles with bayonets fixed, and there were two with Lewin light machine-guns. These were no threat to Hedge, but there were others there, those who wielded proper swords that bore glowing Charter marks, and shields that carried the symbol of the Perimeter Scouts. These men had the Charter mark on their foreheads, and were practiced Charter Mages, even if the Army denied that any such thing existed.

  There were enough of them to hold him off, Hedge knew. His Dead Hands were almost all gone too, either immobilized in some way he still didn’t understand, or driven back into Death when their newly occupied bodies were too damaged to hold them.

  Hedge blinked, holding his eyes shut for a full second—his only acknowledgment that his plan had gone awry. But he had been in Ancelstierre for four years, and his other plans were in full motion. He would come back for the boy.

  As Hedge fled into the darkness, stretcher bearers picked up Nick; a young officer convinced the schoolboys on the hill that they really could stop singing; and Ted and Mike tried to tell the barely conscious Sam what had happened as an Army medic looked at the burns on his wrist and legs and prepared a surette of morphine.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A Father’s Healing Hand

  The hospital in Bain was relatively new, built six years before, when a flurry of hospital reform came sweeping up from the South. Even in only six years, many people had died there, and it was close enough to the Wall for Sam’s sense of Death to remain active. Weakened by pain and by the morphine they were giving him for it, Sam was unable to drive away his sense of Death. Always it loomed close, filling his bones with its bitter chill, making him shiver constantly and the doctors increase his medication.

  He dreamed of bodiless creatures that would come from Death and finish off what the necromancer had begun, and he could not wake himself from the dreams. When he did wake, he often saw that same necromancer stalking towards him, and would scream and scream until the nurse who it really was gave him another injection and started the cycle of nightmares again.

  Sam suffered four days of this, drifting in and out of consciousness, without ever really waking up, and never losing his sense of Death and the fear that accompanied it. Sometimes he was lucid enough to realize that Nick was there, too, in the next bed, his hands bandaged. Sometimes they talked briefly, but it wasn’t ever a real conversation, since Sam could neither answer questions nor continue whatever talk Nick began.

  On the fifth day, everything changed. Sam was once again in the grip of a nightmare, once again in Death, facing a necromancer who was many things all at once, simultaneously in, under, and above the water. Sam was running, and falling and drowning, as had actually happened, and then came the grip on his wrist . . . but this time it wasn’t on his wrist, it was on his shoulder, and it was cool and comforting. A grip that somehow led him out of the nightmare, lifting him up through a sky that was all Charter marks and sunshine.

  When Sam opened his eyes, he could see clearly for the first time, his vision clear of the drug haze and vertigo. He felt fingers resting lightly on his neck, on the pulse there, and knew his father’s hand before he even looked up. Touchstone was right next to him, his eyes closed as he directed a healing-spell into his son’s body, the marks flashing under his fingers as they left him and entered Sam.

  Sam looked up at Touchstone, grateful that his father’s eyes were closed and he couldn’t see the pathetic relief on his son’s face, or the tears that he hastened to brush away. The Charter Magic was making him warm for the first time in days. Sam could feel the marks driving the drugs out of his bloodstream, while they took over quelling the pain from his burns. But it was the mere presence of his father that had driven away the fear of Death. He could still sense Death, but it was dim and far away, and he was no longer afraid.

  King Touchstone I finished the spell and opened his eyes. They were grey, like his son’s, but Touchstone’s were the more troubled now, and he was obviously tired. Slowly, he took his hand away from Sam’s neck.

  They almost hugged until Sam saw that there were two doctors, four of Touchstone’s guards, and two Ancelstierran Army officers in the ward as well as a whole crowd of Ancels-tierran police, soldiers, and officials gathered out in the corridor, peering in. So Sam and Touchstone gripped one another’s forearms instead, Sam sitting up in the bed. Only the tightness of Sam’s grip and his reluctance to let go indicated just how glad he was to see his father.

  Both doctors were amazed that Sam was even conscious, and one checked the chart at the foot of the bed to affirm that the patient really had been receiving intravenous morphine for days.

  “Really, this is impossible!” the doctor began, till a cold glance from one of Touchstone’s guards convinced him that his conversation was currently not required. A slight further movement convinced him that his presence was not required
either, and he backed away to the door. Like the King, the guards were all wearing three-piece suits of a sober charcoal grey, so as not to alarm delicate Ancelstierran sensibilities. This effect was only slightly spoiled by the fact that they also carried swords, badly disguised in rolled-up trenchcoats.

  “The entourage,” said Touchstone dryly, seeing Sam look out at all the people in the corridor. “I told them I was simply here as a private individual to see my son, but apparently even that requires an official escort. I hope you’re feeling up to riding. If we stay here any longer, I’ll be cornered by some sort of committee or politician for sure.”

  “Riding?” asked Sam. He had to say it twice, his throat initially too weak to get the word out. “I’m to leave school before the end of term?”

  “Yes,” said Touchstone, keeping his voice low. “I want you home. Ancelstierre is no longer a safe haven. The police here caught your bus driver. He was bribed, and bribed with Old Kingdom silver deniers. So one of our enemies has found a way to work on both sides of the Wall. Or has at least found out how to spend money in Ancelstierre.”

  “I think I’m well enough to ride,” said Sam, wrinkling his brow. “I mean, I don’t know whether I’m really hurt. My wrist is sore. . . .”

  He paused and looked at the bandage on his wrist. Charter marks still moved around the edge of the bandage, oozing out of his pores like golden sweat. Healing him, Sam realized, for his wrist really was only sore, where it had been excruciatingly painful before, and the pain from the lesser burns on his thighs and ankles was completely gone.

  “The bandage can come off now,” said Touchstone, and he began to untie it. As he unwound it, he lowered his head still closer to Sam and whispered, “You have not been badly hurt in body, Sam. But I feel that you have suffered an injury of the spirit. That will take time to heal, for it is beyond my power to repair.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sam anxiously. He felt very young all of a sudden, not at all like the nearly adult Prince he was supposed to be. “Can’t Mother fix it up?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Touchstone, resting his hand on Sam’s shoulder, the small white scars from years of sword practice and actual fighting bright across his knuckles in the hospital light. “But then I cannot tell the nature of it, only that it has happened. I would guess that as a result of your going into Death unprepared and unprotected, some small fragment of your spirit has been leeched away. Not much, but enough to make you feel weaker, or slower . . . basically less than yourself. But it will come back, in time.”

  “I shouldn’t have done it, should I?” whispered Sam, looking up into his father’s face, searching for some sternness or sign of disapproval. “Is Mother furious with me?”

  “Not at all,” said Touchstone, surprised. “You did what you thought was necessary to save the others, which was both brave and in the best traditions of both sides of the family. Your mother is more worried about you than anything else.”

  “Then where is she?” asked Sam, before he could stop himself. It was a petulant question, and as soon as his mouth closed, he wished he hadn’t said it.

  “Apparently, there is a Mordaut riding the ferryman at Oldmond,” explained Touchstone patiently, as he had explained so many of Sabriel’s necessary absences over the course of Sam’s childhood. “We received word of it as we reached the Wall. She took the Paperwing and flew off to deal with it. She’ll meet us back at Belisaere.”

  “If she doesn’t have to go somewhere else,” said Sam, knowing he was being bitter and childish. But he could have died, and apparently that still wasn’t enough for his mother to come and see him.

  “Unless she has to go somewhere else,” agreed Touchstone, as calmly as ever. His father worked hard at staying calm, Sam knew, for there was the old berserker blood in him, and Touchstone feared its rise. The only time Sam had ever seen that fury was when a false ambassador from one of the northern clans had tried to stab Sabriel with a serving fork at a formal dinner in the Palace. Touchstone, roaring like some sort of terrible beast, had picked up the six-foot barbarian and hurled him the length of the table, onto a roast swan. This had scared everyone much more than the assassination attempt, particularly when Touchstone then tried to pick up the double throne and throw that after the man. Fortunately, he’d failed and was eventually calmed by Sabriel stroking his brow as he blindly wrenched at the marble footing of the throne.

  Sam remembered this as he saw his father’s eyelids close just a fraction and a line appear on his forehead.

  “Sorry,” Sam mumbled. “I know she has to do it. Being the Abhorsen and everything.”

  “Yes,” said Touchstone, and Sam got a slight hint of his father’s own deep feelings about the many and frequent absences required by Sabriel’s battles with the Dead.

  “I’d better get dressed, then,” said Sam, and he swung his legs out of the bed. Only then did he notice that the opposite bed was empty and made up.

  “Where’s Nick?” he asked. “He was there, wasn’t he? Or did I just dream that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Touchstone, who had met his son’s friend on previous visits to Ancelstierre. “He wasn’t here when we arrived. Doctor! Was Nicholas Sayre in this bed?”

  The doctor hurried forward. He didn’t know who this strange but obviously important visitor was, or who the patient was either, since the Army had insisted on secrecy and the use of first names only. Now he wished that he hadn’t heard the other patient’s surname, since the name Sayre was not unknown to him. But the Chief Minister didn’t have a son of that age, so the fellow could only have been a cousin or something, which was some relief.

  “The patient Nicholas X,” he said, emphasizing the “X,” “was released to one of his parents’ confidential servants yesterday. He only had minor shock and some abrasions.”

  “Did he leave me a message?” asked Sam, surprised that his friend wouldn’t have tried to communicate in some way.

  “I don’t believe so—” the doctor started to say, when he was interrupted by a nurse who pushed her way through the massed ranks of blue, khaki, and grey in the corridor. She was quite young and pretty, with striking red hair not very well concealed under her starched cap.

  “He left a letter, Your Highnesses,” she said, with the characteristic accent of the North. Obviously a native of Bain, she knew exactly who both Sam and Touchstone were, much to the doctor’s annoyance. The doctor took the letter in her outstretched hand with a sniff and handed it to Sam, who immediately tore it open.

  He didn’t recognize the handwriting at first; then he realized that it was Nick’s, only the individual letters were much larger and the flourishes less regular. It took a moment for him to work out that this must be a consequence of Nick’s writing with heavily bandaged hands.

  Dear Sam,

  I hope you are soon well enough to read this. I seem to be quite recovered myself, though I admit that the events of our unusual evening are somewhat hazy. I guess you wouldn’t know that I took it in my head to chase down that necromancer fellow you went after first, wherever it was you went. Unfortunately, what with the dark and the rain and perhaps a little too much zing in my step, all I managed to do was fall into the sunken road and knock myself out. I was lucky not to break any bones, the doctors say, though I have some interesting bruises. I don’t expect that the debs back in Corvere will be as prepared to look at them as Nurse Moulin, though!

  I understand that the Army got hold of your pater and he’s coming down to take you home, so you won’t be finishing the term. I daresay I won’t bother either, since I already have my place at Sunbere. It won’t be the same without you, or poor Harry Benlet. Or even Cochrane. They found him five miles away the next morning, apparently, gibbering and frothing, and I expect he’s locked up in Smithwen Special Hospital by now. Should have been done years ago, of course.

  In fact, I was thinking that I might come and visit you in your mysterious Old Kingdom before I have to go up to college next spring.
I admit that my scientific interest has been piqued by those apparently animated corpses and your own exhibition of whatever it was. I’m sure you think of it as magic, but I expect it can all be explained by the proper application of scientific method. I hope I can be the one to do so, of course. Sayre’s Theory of Surreality. Or Sayre’s Law of Magical Explication.

  It’s very boring in hospital, particularly if your wardmate can’t carry a conversation. So you’ll have to excuse me rambling on. Where was I? Oh yes, experiments in the Old Kingdom. I expect the reason no one has done the proper scientific work before is due to the Army. Would you believe that no less than a colonel and two captains were here yesterday, wanting me to sign the Official Secrets Act and a declaration that I wouldn’t ever speak or write of the recent odd events near the Perimeter? They forgot sign language, so I expect I shall inform a deaf journalist when I get back.

  I won’t, of course. At least not until I have something better to tell the world—some truly great discovery.

  The officers wanted you to sign as well, but since you weren’t in a signing mood, they just waited and got cross with each other. Then I told them that you weren’t even a citizen of Ancelstierre, and they got thoughtful and had a big discussion outside with the lieutenant in charge of the guards. Something tells me the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doeth, since they were from Corvere Legal Affairs and the guards outside are from the Perimeter Scouts. I was interested to note that the latter belong to your peculiar religion, with the caste mark or whatever it is on their foreheads. Not that sociology is really in my field of interest, I hasten to add.

  I must go now. The aged parents have sent some sort of private undersecretary to the oversecretary chamberlain of the personal privy type of fellow to collect me and take me home to Amberne Court. Apparently Father is too busy with the Southerling refugee problem, questions in the House and all that sort of thing, and Uncle Edward needs his support blah blah blah as per usual. Mother probably had a charity dinner or something equally all-engrossing. I’ll write soon so we can arrange my visit. I expect I’ll have everything prepared in a couple of months, three at the outside.