Lirael

by Garth Nix

  Then something grabbed his right wrist and he came to a sudden stop, the river raging and frothing impotently about him. Sam almost struggled against his rescuer, for fear of what it might be, but his fear of the river was greater and he needed to breathe so desperately that he could think of nothing else. So he simply fought to get a proper footing, and cough up at least some of the water that had managed to get into his throat and lungs.

  Then he realized that steam was billowing from his sleeve, and his wrist was burning. He cried out. Fear of his captor rose in him again, and he was almost too afraid to look and see who—or what—it might be.

  Slowly Sam raised his head. He was being held by the necromancer he’d hoped to surprise. A thin, balding man, who wore leather armor with red-enameled plates for reinforcement—and a bandolier of bells across his chest.

  Here in Death, Free Magic magnified his stature, cloaking him with a great shadow of fire and darkness that moved as he moved, transforming his presence into something truly terrible and cruel. The touch of his hand blistered Sam’s wrist, and flames burnt where the whites of his eyes should be.

  In his left hand he held a sword level with Sam’s neck, the sharp edge a few inches from his throat. Dark flames ran slowly down the blade like mercury and fell to the surface of the river, where they continued to burn as the current carried them away.

  Sam coughed again, not because he needed to, but to cover an attempt to reach into the Charter. He had hardly begun when the sword swung even closer, the acrid fumes of the ensorceled blade making him cough for real.

  “No,” said the necromancer, his voice redolent with Free Magic, his breath carrying the reek of drying blood. Desperately, Sam tried to think of what he could do. He couldn’t reach the Charter, and he couldn’t fight barehanded against that sword. He couldn’t even move, for that matter, as his sword-arm was held impossibly still in the necromancer’s burning grasp.

  “You will return to Life and seek me out,” ordered the necromancer, his voice low and hard, supremely confident. It wasn’t just words either, Sam realized. He felt a compulsion to do exactly what the necromancer said. It was a Free Magic spell—but one that Sam knew would not be complete till it was sealed with the power of Saraneth, the sixth bell. And there was his chance, because the necromancer would have to let go of Sam or sheathe his sword in order to wield the bell.

  Let me go, Sam wished fervently, trying not to tense his muscles too much and give his intentions away. Let me go.

  But the necromancer chose to sheathe his sword instead, and draw the second-largest of the bells with his right hand. Saraneth, the Binder. With it he would bind Sam to his will, though it was strange that he wanted Sam to return to Life. Necromancers did not normally care for living servants.

  His grip on Sam’s wrist did not slacken. The pain there was intense, so bad that it had gone beyond bearing, and his mind had decided to shut it out. If he hadn’t still been able to see his fingers he would have believed that his hand had been burnt off at the wrist.

  The necromancer carefully opened the pouch that held Saraneth. But before he could transfer his grip to grasp the bell by its clapper and pull it out, Sam threw himself backwards and scissored his legs around the necromancer’s waist.

  Both of them plunged into the icy water, the necromancer sending up a huge plume of steam as he hit. Sam was underneath, the water instantly filling his mouth and nose, beating at the last breath in his lungs. He could feel the flesh of his thighs burning, even through the cold, but he did not let go. He felt the necromancer twisting and turning to get free, and through half-closed eyes he saw that under the river, the necromancer was a shape of fire and darkness, more monstrous and much less human than he had seemed before.

  With his free hand, Sam desperately clawed at the necromancer’s bandolier, trying to get one of the bells. But they felt strange, the ebony handles biting to his touch, quite unlike the smooth, Charter-spelled mahogany of his mother’s bells. His fingers couldn’t close on any handle, his legs were slowly being unlocked by the necromancer’s inhuman strength, the grip on his wrist was unrelenting—and his breath was almost gone.

  Then the current quickened, picking them both up and turning them into a dizzy spin, till Sam couldn’t tell which way he could stretch to find a breath. Then they were hurtling down—down through the waterfall of the First Gate.

  The waterfall spun them about viciously, and then they were in the Second Precinct, and Sam couldn’t hold the necromancer anymore. The man got free of Sam’s scissored legs and elbowed Sam savagely in the stomach, driving the last pathetic remnant of air from his lungs in one choked-off explosion of bubbles.

  Sam tried to hit back, but he was already sucking in water instead of air, and his strength was almost gone. He felt the necromancer let go and slip away from him, moving through the water like a snake, and he lost all thought save the desperate urge for survival.

  A second later, he broke the surface, coughing madly, getting as much water as air. At the same time, he fought to keep his balance against the current and locate his enemy. Hope sparked in him as he caught no sign of the necromancer. And he seemed to be close to the First Gate. It was hard to tell in the Second Precinct, where some quality of the light made it impossible to see farther than you could touch.

  But Sam could see the froth of the waterfall, and when he stumbled forward, he touched the rushing water of the First Gate, and all he had to remember was the spell that would let him past. It was from The Book of the Dead, which he had begun to study last year. As he thought of it, pages appeared in his mind, the words of the Free Magic spell shining, ready for him to say.

  He opened his mouth—and two burning hands came down on his shoulders, driving him face-first into the river. This time he had no chance of holding his breath, and his scream was nothing more than bubbles and froth, barely disturbing the flow of the river.

  It was pain that brought him back to consciousness. Pain in his ankles, and a strange feeling in his head. It took him a moment to realize that he was still in Death—but back at the border with Life. And the necromancer was holding him upside down by the ankles, water still pouring from his ears and nose.

  The necromancer was speaking again, speaking words of power that rose up around Sam like bands of steel. He could feel them pressing against him, making him their prisoner, and he knew that he should try to resist. But he couldn’t. He could barely keep his eyes open, even that small thing taking all the willpower and energy he had left.

  Still the necromancer kept on speaking, the words weaving around and around him, till Sam finally understood the single most important thing: the necromancer was sending him back into Life, and this binding was to make sure that he did what he was told.

  But the binding didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, save that he was going back to Life. He didn’t care that back in Life, he would have to follow some terrible purpose of the sorcerer. He would be back in Life. . . .

  The necromancer let go of one ankle, and Sam swung like a pendulum, his head just brushing the surface of the river. The necromancer seemed to have grown much taller, for he wasn’t holding his arm very high. Or perhaps, Sam thought muzzily through the pain and shock, he was the one who had shrunk.

  “You will come to me in Life, near where the road sinks and the graves lie broken,” ordered the necromancer finally, when the spell had settled on Sam so tightly that he felt like a fly trussed up by a spider. But it had to be sealed by Saraneth. Sam tried to struggle as he saw the bell come out, but his body wouldn’t respond. He tried to reach the Charter, but instead of the cool comfort of the endless flow of marks, he felt a great whirlpool of living fire, a maelstrom that threatened to maim his mind as much as his body had already been burnt.

  Saraneth sounded, deep and low, and Sam screamed. Some instinct helped him hit the one note that would be most at discord with the bell. The scream cut through Saraneth’s commanding tone, and the bell jarred in the necromancer’s hand, becomi
ng suddenly shrill and raucous. Instantly, he let go of Sam, his free hand stilling the clapper, for a bell gone awry could have disastrous consequences for its wielder.

  When the bell was finally still, the necromancer turned his attention back to the boy. But there was no sign of him, and no chance the current could have taken him out of sight so soon.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Nicholas and the Necromancer

  Sam returned to Life to hear the harsh tap-tap-tap of machine-gun fire and to see the landscape turned black and white by the stark brilliance of the parachute flares that were falling slowly through the rain.

  Ice cracked as he moved, the frost on his clothes crazing into strange patterns. He took half a step forward and fell to his knees, sobbing with pain and shock as his fingers scrabbled at the muddy earth, seeking comfort from the feel of Life.

  Slowly he became aware that there were arms around him, and people speaking. But he couldn’t hear properly, because the necromancer’s words kept repeating in his head, telling him what he must do. He tried to speak himself, through teeth that chattered with cold, unconsciously imitating the rhythm of the gunfire.

  “Necromancer . . . sunken road . . . near graves,” he said haltingly, not really knowing what he was saying or whom he was talking to. Someone touched his wrist and he screamed, the pain blinding him more than the flares that continued to blossom in the sky above. Then, after the brightness, there was sudden darkness. Sam had fainted.

  “He’s hurt,” said Nick, staring at the blistered finger-marks on Sam’s wrist. “Burnt somehow.”

  “What?” asked the sergeant. He was staring down the slope, watching red tracer rounds fly in low arcs from the neighboring hill down into and along the road. Every now and then one would be accompanied by the sudden bang, whoosh, and blinding sunburst of white phosphorus. Clearly the troops from the Perimeter were fighting their way towards where the sergeant and the boys were. What worried the sergeant was the way the machine-gunners were traversing their fire to the left and right of the road.

  “Sam’s burnt,” replied Nick, unable to tear his eyes off the livid marks on his friend’s wrist. “We have to do something.”

  “We sure do,” said the sergeant, suddenly faceless again as the last flare fizzled out. “The boys down there are driving the Dead towards us—and they must think we’re already done for, because they’re not being real careful. We’ll be taking rounds any minute now if we don’t clear off.”

  As if to punctuate his remark, another flare arced up overhead, and a sudden flurry of tracer shot over their heads with a whip and a crack. Everybody ducked, and the sergeant shouted, “Down! Get down!”

  In the light of the new flare, Nick saw dark shapes emerge from the trees and start up the hill, their telltale shambling gait showing what they were. At the same time, one of the boys farther around the hill screamed out, “They’re coming up behind! Lots of—”

  Whatever he was saying was drowned out by more machine-gun fire, long bursts of tracer that drew lines of red light right through the Dead, clearly hitting them many times. They twitched and staggered under the multiple impacts, but still they came on.

  “Got ’em enfiladed from that hill,” said the sergeant. “But they’ll get here before the guns rip them apart. I’ve seen it before. And we’ll get shot to pieces as well.”

  He spoke slowly, almost dumbly, and Nick realized that he wasn’t able to think—that his brain had become saturated with danger and could not deal with the situation.

  “Can’t we signal the soldiers somehow?” he shouted above yet another burst of fire. Both the dark silhouettes of the Dead and the momentarily bright shifting lines of tracer were advancing towards them at an inexorable rate, like something slow but unstoppable, a hypnotic instrument of fate.

  One line of tracer suddenly swung farther up towards them, and bullets ricocheted off stone and earth, whistling past Nick’s head. He pressed himself further into the mud, and pulled Sam closer too, shielding his unconscious friend with his own body.

  “Can’t we signal?” Nick repeated frantically, his voice muffled, mouth tasting dirt.

  The sergeant didn’t answer. Nick looked across and saw that he was lying still. His red-banded cap had come off, and his head was in a pool of blood, black in the flare light. Nick couldn’t tell if he was still breathing.

  Hesitantly, he reached out towards the sergeant, pushing his arm through the mud, dreadful visions of bullets smashing through the bone making him keep it as low as possible. His fingers touched metal, the hilt of the man’s sword. He would have flinched and drawn back, but at that moment someone screamed behind him, a scream of such terror that his fingers convulsively gripped the weapon.

  Twisting around, he saw one of the boys silhouetted, grappling with a larger figure. It had him gripped around the neck and was shaking him around like a milk shake.

  Without thinking of getting shot, Nick leapt up to help. Even as he did so, other boys jumped up too, hacking at the Dead Hand with bats, stumps, and rocks.

  Within seconds they had it down and stumped through, but not quickly enough to save its victim. Harry Benlet’s neck was broken, and he would never take three wickets in a single afternoon ever again, or hurdle every desk in the exam hall at Somersby just for the fun of it.

  The fight with the Hand had taken them to the crest of the hill, and there Nick saw that there were Dead on both sides. Only the ones on the forward slope were being slowed by gunfire. He could see where the soldiers were firing from, and could make out groups of them. There were several machine-guns on the neighboring hill, and at least a hundred soldiers were advancing through the trees on either side of the road.

  As Nick watched, he saw one line of tracer suddenly swing up towards them. It got within thirty yards and suddenly stopped. It was too far to see clearly with the rain, but Nick realized that the gun had only stopped for reloading or to shift the tripod, as soldiers moved swiftly around it. Obviously they had seen a target of opportunity: figures silhouetted on the hilltop.

  “Move!” he shouted, rushing down the side of the hill in a half-crouch. The others followed in a mad, sliding dash that ended only when several boys crashed into each other and fell over.

  A moment later, tracer shot overhead and the hilltop exploded in a spray of water, mud, and ricocheting bullets.

  Nick instinctively ducked, though he was well down the slope. In that second, he realized three terrible facts: he had left Sam behind, halfway around the hill; they absolutely had to signal the soldiers to avoid getting shot; and even if they kept moving, the Dead would catch them before the soldiers finished off the Dead.

  But with those dreadful realizations came sudden energy, and a determination Nick had never known, a clarity of thought that he’d never experienced before.

  “Ted, get out your matches,” he ordered, knowing Ted’s affectation of smoking a pipe, though he was no good at it. “Everyone else, get out anything you’ve got that’s dry and will burn. Paper, whatever!”

  Everyone clustered around as he spoke, their fear-filled faces revealing their eagerness to be doing something. Letters were proffered, dog-eared playing cards, and after a moment’s hesitation pages torn from a notebook that had up till then contained what its owner imagined was his deathless prose. Then came the prize of the lot, a hip flask of brandy from, of all people, the very rules-conscious Cooke Minor.

  The first three matches fizzled out in the rain, increasing everyone’s anxiety. Then Ted used his cap to shield the fourth. It lit nicely, as did the brandy-soaked paper. A bright fire sprang up, of orange flames tinged with brandy blue, suddenly bringing color back to the monochrome landscape, lit by the seemingly endless succession of parachute flares.

  “Right,” snapped Nick. “Ted, will you and Mike crawl around and drag Sam back here? Stay off the crest. And do be careful of his wrists—he’s burnt.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Ted, hesitating as more tracer rounds flew o
ver the hill, and white phosphorus grenades exploded in the distance. Clearly he was afraid to go but didn’t want to admit it.

  “I’m going to try to find the necromancer, the man who controls the things out there,” said Nick, brandishing the sword. “I suggest everyone else start singing, so the Army knows there are real people here, by the fire. You’ll have to keep the creatures away, too, though I’m going to try to draw the closer ones after me.”

  “Sing?” asked Cooke Minor. He seemed quite calm, possibly because he’d drunk half the contents of his hip flask before handing it over. “Sing what?”

  “The school song,” replied Nick over his shoulder as he headed down the hill. “It’s probably the only thing everybody knows.”

  To keep out of the way of the machine-guns, Nick ran around the hill before he headed down, towards the Dead, who were now behind their original position. As he ran, he waved the sword above his head and shouted, meaningless words that were half-drowned by the constant chatter of the guns.

  He was halfway to the closest Hands when the singing started, loud enough to be heard even above the gunfire, the boys singing with a volume greater than the Somersby choirmaster would have believed possible.

  Snatches of the words followed Nick as he dummied a left turn in front of the Hands and then darted right, turning back towards the trees and the road.

  “Choose the path that honor takes—”

  He slowed to avoid a tree trunk. It was much darker among the trees, the flare light diminished by the foliage overhead. Nick risked a glimpse behind and was both pleased and terrified to see that at least some of the Dead had turned and were following him. Terror was the stronger emotion, making him run faster between the trees than common sense called for.

  “Play the game for its own sakes—”