Goldenhand (28 page)

“Listen. The Witch With No Face has summoned the
entire
fighting and sorcerous strength of
all
the clans to gather at the Field Market by the second full moon of spring in the year you turn twenty. From what I have Seen this is only a week or ten days from when you look at me here. This great host will attack the day after the full moon, at the Greenwash Bridge. Yet the bridge is only part of it; there is some other plan that I cannot See. You must warn the King and the Abhorsen. But force of arms cannot hold back the northern assault; at least I do not think so. I have Seen so many futures where the nomads roam the Kingdom, towns burn, the walls breached at Belisaere, the Glacier besieged . . . so many on both sides dead and dying . . .”

Arielle coughed again, and when she looked back up, her eyes were lit with a feverish light, and Lirael saw sweat beaded everywhere upon her face, though her breath blew out in frosty clouds.

“It is the Witch With No Face who holds the chance of victory. She must be killed. I have Seen you and a young man, you go to do it, you go beyond the Great Rift, to the Empty Lands where the Charter does not exist and the spirit-glass shards lie all about. I don't know how . . . but you do it, that's the main thing. Find her and kill her. That's what you do. Except when you don't. Too many times, too many times, my daughter dead . . . it is a terrible thing to See, so terrible . . .”

Arielle began to weep and clutch at her hair. Lirael reflexively tried to go forward, to hold her, but nothing changed. She could only watch and listen, until her mother coughed again, and somehow the act of dealing with this calmed her, and she could begin again.

“Beyond the Great Rift. The Empty Lands, where the sorcerers
go for spirit-glass. That's where she is, lying in her sarcophagus. The offerings know the way, though they don't know they know. All joined together, the Witch With No Face and the offerings, that's why she wants them burned. Wait? If they're burned, if they're all burned, then there's nothing, no thread to follow . . . but there was one. The one who goes to Lirael. Doesn't she? I can't remember . . . her hand,
your
poor hand, though the golden hand, a hand of gold . . .”

Arielle started to weep again, tears mixing with the sweat upon her cheeks. But once again she stopped herself, wiped her eyes with hands bloody from her coughing, and pulled herself upright, wincing and shuddering at the pain in her chest.

“Lirael. You must go beyond the Great Rift, where the Free Magic sorcerers go to collect spirit-glass. The Witch With No Face's first body is there, in a sarcophagus, a stone coffin. Follow the thread. You must kill her. I have Seen what must be done, though I cannot clearly See if . . . if you succeed. I have Seen where you do not . . . no . . . I must not think of that.”

She coughed a little, but managed to still it.

“Go now, with my love. I always loved you. Always. You probably don't believe it. Perhaps you shouldn't. Love should always be shown, not merely said. I was too slow to learn this, too distracted by my visions. Do better! Go now. Go, Lirael. Do not watch me die. Farewell!”

Lirael shut her right eye hard, and kept it closed for a good two seconds. When she opened it again, she saw only the river of Death and Sabriel by her side, carefully watching.

“You saw her?” asked Sabriel quietly.

Lirael nodded, shut the Dark Mirror, and slid it back under the bandolier and into her waistcoat pocket. Then she drew Raminah and Ranna again. It was best to always be prepared in Death.

“She was dying,” said Lirael. “She told me about her visions. An army of nomads, gathered by the Witch With No Face, to attack on
or soon after the night of the second full moon of spring.”

“A week from tomorrow,” said Sabriel.

“At the bridge,” said Lirael. “But she said there was some other plan as well, which she could not See. And in many, perhaps most futures, we lose the battle anyway.”

“Not very encouraging,” said Sabriel.

“She told me I had to kill the Witch With No Face's first body. She is in a sarcophagus beyond the Great Rift, where the sorcerers go for spirit-glass,” continued Lirael.

“Ah,” said Sabriel bleakly. “Unfortunately, that does make sense. Chlorr's original body, her anchor in Life. But beyond the Great Rift . . .”

“I know nothing about that place,” said Lirael.

“We will talk of it when we go back,” said Sabriel. She stopped to listen and look around again, Lirael doing likewise. “But before we do, could you keep watch while I examine this charm I took from Ferin?”

Lirael nodded. She found herself shaking slightly from seeing her mother in such straits, so distressed and ill. But the river would exploit such weakness, so she willed herself to be still, to put aside the emotional turmoil that threatened to rise within her.

Next to her, Sabriel opened the metal box with the bone charm. Red fire sprang up around it, far more than had out in the living world, in the Map Room. Outlined by the fire, both Abhorsens saw two threads of absolute blackness connected to the bone.

Both threads led back into Life, but one went to the right, and the other to the left.

In Death

H
ow very unusual,” said Sabriel, lifting the box to watch the threads lift out of the river. “Both go back into Life. We must follow them, see where they go.”

Lirael nodded. She knew about such threads from
The Book of the Dead
. They were typically used by powerful necromancers to control distant spirits in their power, or as trip wires to alert a necromancer to something of theirs being disturbed in Death. But she had not read about two such threads connecting a charm that had been cut out of a living person, or ones which lead from Death back out into Life.

The first thread took them some hundred paces along the border before it went out into Life.

“Watch my back,” warned Sabriel. She went right up to the edge of Life. Even a few steps away, Lirael could feel the warmth of it, the lure of the living world. But if she went out here, it would not be back into her own body.

Sabriel placed her hand in seemingly empty air, feeling for the unseen border where Death met Life. Then she laid her head against it and shut her eyes.

Lirael knew how to look out into Life in this way, though she was by no means as practiced at it as she would like to be. She watched Sabriel for a few seconds, then quickly looked away, to concentrate on the river, to listen for the First Gate. If the sound of the waterfall paused, it would mean something was coming through from deeper in Death.

Sabriel did not stay in her eavesdropping pose for long. She straightened up and turned away, holding the bone charm in the box up to lift the second thread, which ran along the border in the opposite direction.

“That first one goes out somewhere in the far north,” she said. “I would say beyond the Great Rift, which fits in with what Arielle had to say. Let us see where this other one goes.”

Lirael nodded, and followed. As always, it was very tiring to be in Death. The river constantly leached away heat and energy and hopefulness. She could feel it in every small wavelet that washed around her legs, inviting her to give up, to lie down, to be swept away. A constant refrain that she had to shut out and ignore, in addition to resisting the sheer physical force of the current upon her spirit form.

Sabriel crouched longer where the second thread went out into Life. When she straightened up, it was with a cry of alarm.

“Stand ready! Shadow Hands!”

Irregular shapes of blackest shadow sprang from Life into the river, goaded by their master somewhere in the living world beyond. Impossibly long claws of stretching darkness reached for Sabriel, but she was retreating fast, and Saraneth was already ringing.

The harsh voice of the bell held the Shadow Hands in place, but there were a dozen of them, and more were coming through. Lirael returned Ranna to the bandolier, slapping home the strap that kept it silent, and as swiftly drew her own Saraneth. Swinging the bell in a long overhand loop, she added its voice to Sabriel's. This was something they had practiced together often, for it more than doubled the power of the individual bells. Provided neither of them made a mistake, and a bell twisted in their hand . . .

“Hold them there,” ordered Sabriel. “We will return to Life.”

Slowly they edged along the border, still ringing their bells, seeking the place where their bodies awaited them. Lirael was surprised
by this retreat, because Sabriel usually would want to bind any Dead they found, and send them on to die the final death. The Abhorsen had never retreated in the time Lirael had learned from her, and though there were now sixteen Shadow Hands, that was not too many for Sabriel and her apprentice, at least in Lirael's opinion.

But as they neared their crossing point, Lirael saw why Sabriel had retreated. Scores more Dead were coming through. Dead drawn out of the bodies they were inhabiting in Life, so things of lesser power than Shadow Hands, but there were so many of them! A hundred, perhaps more, and behind these lesser creatures came several hulking shapes of shadow, with burning fire in their eye sockets, flames dripping from their hands. Greater Dead, at least five of them.

Coming from the wrong direction, coming from Life into Death. Even without intervention from the Abhorsens, many of these Dead would be taken by the river. Which meant there was something or someone making them come back to the place they had fought so long to leave.

“Out!” said Sabriel, and stepped into Life, Lirael close at her heels.

Ice cracked and fell from skin and armor as they returned. Clayr rangers turned swiftly to look at them, then resumed their watching, though many hands stayed in spell-casting gestures or on bows and swords.

“Stay ready!” warned Sabriel to Lirael. “Some might be driven to come through, even with the sun.”

Shadow Hands were fast. As close as they had been, it would not be too difficult for them to come back into Life, particularly here where the border had been crossed and made more permeable.

The tentative attack, when it came, was exactly as Sabriel predicted. A Shadow Hand oozed out slowly into Life, a thin tendril of shadow appearing in midair, which immediately smoked and bubbled under the sun. It tried to recoil, but Sabriel was already ringing
Saraneth, and under the compulsion of the bell, the entire spirit was forced to emerge.

Rays of sunshine bored holes in its shadowy spirit flesh as it fought against the bell and Sabriel's implacable will. Smoke boiled and eddied from it as it writhed and wriggled, desperate to get under some rock if it could not escape to Death. Yet still Saraneth rang, its commanding voice impossible to avoid, ordering obedience or
else
.

A minute later, the Shadow Hand ceased to exist. The afternoon sun on a spring day was more than strong enough to quickly slay all but one of the Greater Dead, and even they would fear it.

“I do not think more will follow,” said Sabriel, returning her bell to the bandolier. “But I would double the watch here tonight, you rangers, and summon
many
Charter lights. Come, Lirael. We had best get back to the council, and I need you to tell me exactly what Arielle said. I fear she did indeed See truly. That second thread led to a great host, including many Dead and Free Magic creatures, and it was somewhere on the steppe. Quite possibly the Field Market.”

Lirael told Sabriel as much as she could remember as they raced down from the lookout. The Abhorsen listened carefully, firing off questions as they negotiated stairs and doors and sloping corridors and groups of Clayr who scattered like ants fleeing heavy raindrops when Sabriel charged toward them, calling “Urgent business!” in a voice that brooked no argument.

After Lirael had recounted twice everything she could remember from looking back, Sabriel told her what she had put together, a rapid-fire assessment of what was a much worse situation than anyone had thought only a few hours before.

“Your mother Saw truly indeed, I have no doubt,” said Sabriel. “There is a host on the steppe, doubtless growing by the day. We should know by tomorrow evening if it is at the Field Market, provided Ryelle returns safely . . . actually, I must send a message-hawk
to the bridge, to warn her; there will be Gore Crows without a doubt. Hey, you!”

A young Clayr pressing herself against the side of the hallway to allow Sabriel to pass made a shivering reply.

“Yes, Abhorsen?”

“I need you to go to the Mews right now, tell the Hawkmistress or whoever is in charge there to send a message-hawk to the Greenwash Bridge from the Abhorsen Sabriel, for Ryelle of the Clayr. Message is ‘Beware Gore Crows and Free Magic at Field Market.' Repeat that back to me.”

The girl stammered out the instructions and the message.

“Good work,” said Sabriel. “What's your name?”

“Blindyl,” whispered the girl.

“Go!” ordered Sabriel, and Blindyl fled. Fortunately in the right direction to get to the Third Front Stair, Lirael noted, the quickest way to the Mews.

“So a host on the steppe, and that other thread definitely led to the Empty Lands, I could tell from the silence. What do you make of that?”

“I don't know,” said Lirael. “I mean, one thread must lead to the necromancer who made the charm. That would be the Witch With No Face. I mean, Chlorr. Is that right?”

Sabriel stopped suddenly and gripped Lirael by the shoulders.

“Both lead to Chlorr!”

“Oh,” said Lirael, slowly putting it together. “You mean to . . . to Chlorr's original body as well as her current Dead shape?”

“Yes!” cried Sabriel, striding off again, narrowly avoiding a collision with a steamworks engineer, who had to swing her toolbox behind herself to avoid tangling it up in Sabriel's legs.

“And your mother told us that too,” continued Sabriel. “Follow the thread to the first Witch With No Face, the thread from the
charm taken from an offering. They're all joined together, just as Arielle Saw.”

“But what are the Empty Lands?” asked Lirael, taking Sabriel's elbow to direct her to the left-hand door. “What lies beyond the Great Rift?”

“There are some inhabitable lands beyond the western arm of the Great Rift,” said Sabriel. “But beyond the northern arm there is a bleak and featureless plain where nothing lives, nothing at all. That is the Empty Lands. There are no plants, no animals, nothing. There is not even air to breathe.”

“What?”

“Free Magic sorcerers go there to collect spirit-glass, shards of volcanic glass that contain trapped spirits,” explained Sabriel. They were back at the Apple Peelings, and she broke into a run down the sloping corridor. “They use their magic to make bubbles of air around themselves that last long enough for a dash into the Empty Lands, a quick scrabble for spirit-glass and an even swifter return. Many die, of course.”

“But how can we go there?” asked Lirael. “We can't do that.”

“You could make a bubble of air with Charter Magic, though, couldn't you?” asked Sabriel.

“Yes,” said Lirael. “But I thought . . . Mother said the Charter isn't there beyond the Rift.”

“It isn't,” said Sabriel. “I think it is the remnant of a world destroyed by Orannis.”

“What!” exclaimed Lirael. She stopped mid-stride, suddenly remembering what she had seen in the Dark Mirror before the binding of Orannis. She had seen worlds destroyed, seen the awful power of the Destroyer, the rings of fiery devastation that exploded from it, each larger than the last . . .

“I think it is the remnant of a world destroyed by Orannis,” repeated Sabriel. “The spirit-glass fragments are the last surviving
things left, Free Magic creatures that were either allies or enemies of the Destroyer, sufficiently powerful not to be entirely annihilated along with everything else. Come on!”

Sabriel took off again, with Lirael following more slowly. She called out after her half-sister, returning to her previous question.

“But if the Charter isn't there, how can we make a bubble of air with Charter Magic to go there?”

“By taking the Charter with us!” shouted Sabriel, without slowing down. “Come on!”