by Garth Nix
“Ever cheerful, aren’t you, Mogget?” said Lirael. She actually felt surprisingly cheerful herself, and not as tired as she’d thought she was. She felt quietly proud that the giant owl Charter-skin had worked, and she was sure that they had got ahead of Hedge and his barges.
“I suppose we should push on,” she said. Better not to count her apples before the tree grew. “Sam, I hadn’t actually thought of this, but how will we get into Ancelstierre? How do we get across the Wall?”
“The Wall is the easy part,” replied Sam. “There are lots of old gates. They’ll be locked and warded, except for the one at the current Crossing Point, but I think I can open them.”
“I’m sure you can,” said Lirael encouragingly.
“The Perimeter is more difficult in some ways. They shoot on sight over there, though most of the troops are around the Crossing Point, so there will only be a chance of a patrol this far west. To be on the safe side, I was thinking we might take on the semblance of an officer and a sergeant from the Crossing Point Scouts. You can be the sergeant, with a head wound—so you can’t talk and get us into trouble. They might believe that—enough not to shoot us straightaway.”
“What about the Dog and Mogget?” asked Lirael.
“Mogget can stay in my pack,” said Sam. With a backwards glance towards the cat, he added, “But you have to promise to be quiet, Mogget. A talking pack will get us killed for sure.”
Mogget didn’t answer. Sam and Lirael took this to be a surly agreement, since he didn’t protest.
“We can disguise the Dog with a glamour as well,” continued Sam. “To make her look like she’s got a collar and breastplate like the Army sniffer dogs.”
“What do they sniff?” asked the Disreputable Dog with interest.
“Oh, bombs and other . . . um . . . exploding devices—like the blasting marks we use, only made from chemicals, not magic,” explained Sam. “Down south, that is. But they have special dogs on the Perimeter that sniff out the Dead or Free Magic. The dogs are much better than ordinary Ancelstierrans at detecting such things.”
“Naturally,” said the Disreputable Dog. “I take it I’m not allowed to talk, either?”
“No,” confirmed Sam. “We’ll have to give you a name and number, like a real sniffer dog. How about Woppet? I knew a dog called that. And you can have my old service number from the cadet corps at school. Two Eight Two Nine Seven Three. Or Nine Seven Three Woppet for short.”
“Nine Seven Three Woppet,” mused the Dog, rolling the words around in her mouth as if they were something potentially edible. “A curious name.”
“We’d better cast the illusions here for us to take on,” said Sam. “Before we try to cross the Wall.”
He looked at the full dark of the Ancestierran night beyond the Wall and said, “We need to cross before dawn, which can’t be too far away. We’re less likely to run into a patrol at night.”
“I’ve never cast a glamour before,” said Lirael doubtfully.
“I have to do them anyway,” replied Sam. “Since you don’t know what we want to look like. They’re not that hard—a lot easier than your Charter-skins. I can do three easily enough.”
“Thank you,” said Lirael. She sat down next to the Dog, easing her aching muscles, and scratched the hound under the collar. Sam walked a few paces away and began to reach into the Charter, gathering the marks that he needed for casting the spells of disguise.
“Funny to think he’s my nephew,” whispered Lirael to the Dog. “It feels very strange. An actual family, not just a great clan of cousins, like the Clayr. To be an aunt, as well as having one. To have a sister, too . . .”
“Is it good as well as strange?” asked the Dog.
“I haven’t had a chance to think about it,” replied Lirael, after a moment of thoughtful silence. “It’s sort of good and sort of sad. Good, because I am . . . I am an Abhorsen, blood and bone, so I have found where I belong. Sad, because all my life before was about not belonging, not being properly one of the Clayr. I spent so many years wanting to be something I wasn’t. Now I think if I could have become a Clayr, would it have been enough for me? Or would I simply be unable to imagine being anything else?”
She hesitated, then quietly added, “I wonder if my mother knew what my childhood would be. But then Arielle was a Clayr, too, and probably couldn’t comprehend what it would be like growing up at the Glacier without the Sight.”
“That reminds me,” Mogget said, unexpectedly emerging from the pack, his left ear crumpled by his rapid exit. “Arielle. Your mother. She left a message with me when she was at the House.”
“What!” exclaimed Lirael, jumping over to grab Mogget by the scruff of the neck, ignoring Ranna’s call to sleep and the unpleasant interchange of Free Magic under cat skin and the Charter-spelled collar. “What message? Why didn’t you give it to me before?”
“Hmmm,” replied Mogget. He pulled himself free, catching his collar against Lirael’s hand. She let go just before he could slip out of the leather band, and Ranna’s warning chime made the cat stop wriggling. “If you listen, I’ll tell you—”
“Mogget!” growled the Dog, stalking over to breathe in the cat’s face.
“Arielle Saw me with you, near the Wall,” said Mogget quickly. “She was sitting in her Paperwing, and I was handing her a package—I had a different form in those days, you understand. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have remembered this if I hadn’t taken that shape again after my forced conversation under the House. It’s funny how in man shape I remember things differently. I suppose I had to forget in order to not remember until I was where she Saw me—”
“Mogget! The message!” pleaded Lirael.
Mogget nodded and licked his mouth. Clearly he would proceed only in his own time.
“I handed her the package,” he continued. “She was looking into the mist above the waterfall. There was a rainbow there that day, but she did not see it. I saw her eyes cloud with the Sight, and she said, ‘You will stand by my daughter near the Wall. You will see her grown, as I will not. Tell Lirael that . . . that my going will be . . . will have been . . . no choice of mine. I have linked her life and mine to the Abhorsen, and put the feet of both mother and daughter on a path that will limit our own choosing. Tell her also that I love her, and will always love her, and that leaving her will be the death of my heart.’”
Lirael listened intently, but it was not Mogget’s voice she heard. It was her mother’s. When the cat finished, she looked up at the red-washed sky above and the glittering stars beyond the Wall, and a single tear ran down her cheek, leaving a trail of silver, caught by the last moments of evening light.
“I’ve made your glamour,” said Sam, who had been so intent on his spells that he had totally missed what Mogget said. “You just need to step into it. Make sure you keep your eyes closed.”
Lirael turned to see the glowing outline hanging in the air and stumbled towards it. She had her eyes closed well before she walked into the spell. The golden fire spread across her face like warm, welcoming hands and brushed away her tears.
Chapter Fifteen
The Perimeter
“SARGE—THERE’S DEFINITELY something moving out there,” whispered Lance Corporal Horrocks, as he looked out over the sights of his Lewin machine-gun. “Should I let ’em have a few rounds?”
“No bloody fear!” Sergeant Evans whispered back. “Don’t you know anything? If it’s a haunt or a Ghlim or something, it’ll just come over here and suck your guts out! Scazlo—get back and tell the Lieutenant something’s up. The rest of you, pass the word to fix bayonets, quiet like. And don’t nobody do nothing unless I say so.”
Evans looked again himself as Scazlo hurried back down the communications trench behind them. All along the main fighting trench there was the click of bayonets being fixed as quietly as possible. Evans himself strung his bow and loaded a flare pistol with a red cartridge. Red was the sign for an incursion from across the Wall. At least it wou
ld be the sign if it worked, he thought. There was a warm, northerly wind blowing in from the Old Kingdom. It was good for taking the chill out of the icy mud of the trenches, for spring had yet to fully banish the past winter, but it also meant that guns, planes, trip flares, mines, and everything else technological might not work.
“There’s two of them—and something, looks like a dog,” whispered Horrocks again, his trigger finger slowly curling back from its orthodox position held straight against the trigger guard.
Evans peered into the darkness, trying to make something out himself. Horrocks wasn’t too bright, but he did have extraordinary night vision. A lot better than Evans. He couldn’t see anything, but there were tin cans tinkling together on the wire. Someone . . . or something . . . was slowly coming through.
Horrocks’s finger was inside the trigger guard now, the safety off, a full drum of ammunition on top, a round in the chamber. All he needed was the word, and maybe the wind to change.
Then he suddenly sighed, his trigger finger came out again, and he leaned back from the stock.
“Looks like some of our mob,” he said, no longer whispering. “Scouts. An officer and some poor bastard with a bandaged head. And one of them . . . you know . . . smeller dogs.”
“Sniffer dogs,” corrected Evans automatically. “Shut up.”
Evans was thinking about what to do. He’d never heard of Old Kingdom creatures taking the shape of an Ancelstierran officer or an Army dog. Practically invisible shadows, yes. Ordinary-looking Old Kingdom folk, yes. Flying horrors, yes. But there was always a first time—
“What’s up, Evans?” asked a voice behind him, and he felt an internal relief he would never show. Lieutenant Tindall might be a General’s son, but he wasn’t a good-for-nothing staff officer. He knew what was what on the Perimeter—and he had the Charter mark on his forehead to prove it.
“Movement in front, about fifty yards out,” he reported. “Horrocks thinks he can see a couple of Scouts, one wounded.”
“And a smell . . . sniffer dog,” added Horrocks.
Tindall ignored him, stepping up to peer over the parapet himself. Two dim shapes were definitely closing, whoever they were. But he could sense no inimicable force or dangerous magic. There was something . . . but if they were Crossing Point Scouts, they would both be Charter Mages as well.
“Have you tried a flare?” he asked. “White?”
“No, sir,” said Evans. “Wind’s northerly. Didn’t think it would work.”
“Very well,” said the Lieutenant. “Warn the men that I’m going to cast a light out in front. Everyone to stand ready for my orders.”
“Yes, sir!” confirmed Evans. He turned to the man at his side and said quietly, “Stand to the step! Light in front! Pass it on.”
As the word rippled down the line, the men stood up on the firing step, tension evident in their postures. Evans couldn’t see all the platoon—it was too dark—but he knew his corporals at each end would sort them out.
“Casting now,” said Lieutenant Tindall. A faint Charter mark for light appeared in his cupped hand. As it began to brighten, he threw it overarm like a cricket ball, directly out in front.
The white spark became brighter as it flew through the air, till it became a miniature sun, hovering unnaturally over No Man’s Land. In its harsh light all shadows were banished, and two figures could clearly be seen following the narrow zigzagged trail through the wire entanglements. As Horrocks had said, they had a sniffer dog with them, and both wore the khaki uniforms of the Ancelstierran Army under the mail coats that were peculiar to the Perimeter Forces. Some indefinable unorthodoxy about their webbing gear and weapons also proclaimed them to be members of the Northern Perimeter Reconnaissance Unit, or as they were better known, the Crossing Point Scouts.
As the light fell on them, one of the two men put up his hands. The other, who was bandaged around the head, followed suit more slowly.
“Friendly forces! Don’t shoot!” shouted Sameth as the Charter light slowly faded above him. “Lieutenant Stone and Sergeant Clare coming in. With a sniffer dog!”
“Keep your hands up and come in single file!” shouted Tindall. Aside to his sergeant, he said, “Lieutenant Stone? Sergeant Clare?”
Evans shook his head. “Never heard of ’em, sir. But you know the Scouts. Keep themselves to themselves. The Lieutenant does look sort of familiar.”
“Yes,” murmured Tindall, frowning. The approaching officer did look vaguely familiar. The wounded sergeant was moving with the shuffling gait of someone forcing himself into action despite constant pain. And the sniffer dog had the correct khaki breastplate with its number stenciled on in white, and a broad, spiked leather collar. All together, they looked authentic.
“Stop there!” Tindall called as Sameth trod down a piece of unsupported concertina wire, only ten yards from the trench. “I’m coming out to test your Charter marks.
“Cover me,” he whispered aside to Evans. “You know the drill if they’re not what they seem.”
Evans nodded, stuck four silver-tipped arrows in the mud between the duckboards for quick use, and nocked another. The Army didn’t issue or even recognize the use of bows and silver arrows, but like a lot of such things on the Perimeter, every unit had them. Many of the men were practiced archers, and Evans was one of the best.
Lieutenant Tindall looked at the two figures, dim shapes again now that his spell was fading. He’d kept one eye closed against the light, as taught, to preserve his night vision. Now he opened it, noting once again that it didn’t seem to make that much of a difference.
He drew his sword, the silver streaks on it shining even with the dim starlight, and climbed out of the trench, his heart thumping so loud, it seemed to be echoing inside his stomach.
Lieutenant Stone stood waiting, his hands held high. Tindall approached him carefully, all his senses open to any sensation, any hint or scent of Free Magic or the Dead. But all he could feel was Charter Magic, some fuzzy, blurring magic that wrapped both men and the dog. Some protective charm, he presumed.
At arm’s length, he gently placed his sword point against the stranger Lieutenant’s throat, an inch above where the mail coat laced. Then he reached forward and touched the Charter mark on the man’s forehead with the index finger of his left hand.
Golden fire burst from the mark as he touched it, and Tindall felt himself fall into the familiar, never-ending swirl of the Charter. It was an unsullied mark, and Tindall felt relief as strongly as he felt the Charter.
“Francis Tindall, isn’t it?” asked Sam, thankful that he’d made a luxurious mustache part of the glamour that disguised him with the uniform and accoutrements of a Scout officer. He’d met the young officer several times the year before at the regular official functions he always attended in term time. The Lieutenant was only a few years older than Sam. Francis’s father, General Tindall, commanded the entire Perimeter Garrison.
“Yes,” replied Francis, surprised. “Though I don’t recall?”
“Sam Stone,” said Sameth. But he kept his hands up and jerked his head back. “You’d better check Sergeant Clare. But be careful of his head. Arrow wound on the left side. He’s pretty groggy.”
Tindall nodded, stepped past, and repeated the procedure with sword and hand on the wounded sergeant. Most of the man’s head was roughly bandaged, but the Charter mark was clear, so he touched it. Once again he found it uncorrupted. This time he also realized that the power within the Sergeant was very, very strong—as had been Lieutenant Stone’s. Both these soldiers were enormously powerful Charter Mages, the strongest he’d ever encountered.
“They’re clear!” he shouted back to Sergeant Evans. “Stand the men down and get the listening posts back out!”
“Ah,” said Sam. “I wondered how you picked us up. I didn’t expect the trenches here to be manned.”
“There’s some sort of emergency farther west,” explained Tindall, as he led the way back to the trench. “We were order
ed out only an hour ago. It’s lucky we were still here, in fact, since the rest of the battalion is halfway to Bain. Called out in support of the civil authorities. Probably trouble with the Southerling camps again, or Our Country demonstrations. Our company was the rear party.”
“An emergency west of here?” asked Sam anxiously. “What kind of emergency?”
“I haven’t had word,” replied Tindall. “Do you know something?”
“I hope not,” replied Sam. “But I need to get in touch with HQ as quickly as possible. Do you have a field telephone with you?”
“Yes,” replied Tindall. “But it’s not working. The wind from across the Wall, I expect. The one at the Company CP might just work, I suppose, but otherwise you’ll have to go all the way back to the road.”
“Damn!” exclaimed Sam as they climbed down into the trench. An emergency to the west. That had to have something to do with Hedge and Nicholas. Absently, he returned Evans’s salute and noted all the white faces staring at him out of the darkness of the trench, faces that showed their relief that he was not a creature of the Old Kingdom.
The Dog jumped down beside him, and the closest soldiers flinched. Lirael climbed down slowly after the hound, her muscles still sore from flying. It was strange, this Perimeter, and frightening, too. She could feel the vast weight of many deaths here, everywhere about her. There were many Dead pressing against the border with Life, prevented from crossing only by the wind flutes that sang their silent song out in No Man’s Land. Sabriel had made them, she knew, for wind flutes would stand only as long as the current Abhorsen lived. When she passed on, the wind flutes would fail with the next full moon, and the Dead would rise, till they were bound again by the new Abhorsen. Which, Lirael realized, would be herself.
