“Sorry,” sighed Lirael. “I know it’s not his fault, and I won’t call him ‘your friend Nick’ anymore. But he does have that letter. Or actually, someone on the other side of the Wall has it, who will be meeting them.”

Sam scratched his head and frowned in exasperation.

“It depends on where they cross and who is in charge,” he said despondently. “I guess they’ll be intercepted at the Perimeter by a patrol, who will probably be all regular Army and not Scouts, and only the Scouts are Charter Mages. So they might let Nick and Hedge and everyone go through the Perimeter. I don’t think any of the normal patrols could stop Hedge anyway, even if they wanted to. If only we could get there first! I know General Tindall well—he commands the Perimeter. And we would be able to wire my parents at the embassy in Corvere. If they’re still there.”

“Can we sail ourselves?” asked Lirael. “Where could we get a boat that’s faster than the barges?”

“Edge would be the closest,” replied Sam. “At least a day north, so we’d lose as much time as we gained. If Edge is still there. I don’t want to think about how Hedge got his barges.”

“Well, what about downstream?” asked Lirael. “Is there a fishing village or something?”

Sam shook his head absently. There was an answer, he knew. He could feel an idea just lurking out of reach. How could they reach the Wall faster than Hedge and Nick?

Land, sea . . . and air.

“Fly!” he exclaimed, jumping up and throwing his arms in the air. “We can fly! Your owl Charter-skin!”

It was Lirael’s turn to shake her head.

“It would take me at least twelve hours to make two Charter-skins. Maybe more, since I need some sort of rest first. And it takes weeks to learn how to fly properly.”

“But I won’t need to,” said Sam excitedly. “Look—I watched you making the barking owl skin before and I noticed that there’s only a few key Charter marks that set how big it is, right?”

“Maybe,” said Lirael dubiously.

“Well, my idea is that you make a really big owl, big enough to carry me and Mogget in your claws,” continued Sam, gesturing wildly. “It wouldn’t take any longer than it usually does. Then we fly to the Wall . . . um, cross it . . . and take it from there.”

“An excellent idea,” said the Dog, her expression a mixture of surprise and approval.

“I don’t know,” said Lirael. “I’m not sure a giant Charter-skin would work.”

“It will,” said Sam confidently.

“I don’t suppose there’s much else we can do,” Lirael said quietly. “So I guess I’d better give it a go. Where’s Mogget? I’m curious to see what he thinks of your plan.”

“It stinks,” said Mogget’s muffled voice from the shade below the boulder. “But there’s no reason why it won’t work.”

“There’s one other thing I guess I might have to do later,” Lirael said hesitantly. “Is it possible to enter Death on the other side of the Wall?”

“Sure, depending how far into Ancelstierre you go, just like with magic,” Sam replied, his voice suddenly very serious. “What . . . what is it you might have to do?”

“Use the Dark Mirror and look back into the past,” Lirael said, her voice unconsciously taking on some of the timbre of a Clayr’s prophecy. “Back to the Beginning, to see how the Seven defeated the Destroyer.”

Chapter Fourteen

Flight to the Wall

“IT WAS HUGE,” sobbed the man, panic in his eyes and voice. “Bigger than a horse, with wings . . . wings that blocked the sky. And it had a man in its claws, dangling . . . horrible . . . horrible! The screeching . . . you must have heard the screeching?”

The other members of the small band of Travelers nod-ded, many of them looking up into the fading light of the evening sky.

“And something else was flying with it,” whispered the man. “A dog. A dog with wings!”

His listeners exchanged glances of disbelief. A giant owl they could accept, after the screeching they’d heard. This was the Borderlands, after all, and in troubled times. Many things they had thought never to see had walked the earth in the last few days. But a winged dog?

“We’d best move along,” said the leader, a tough-looking woman who bore the Charter mark on her forehead. She sniffed the air and added, “There’s something odd about, all right. We’ll go on to the Hogrest, unless anyone has a better idea. Somebody help Elluf, too. Give him some wine.”

Quickly, the Travelers broke their camp and unhobbled their horses. Soon, they were headed north, with the unfortunate Elluf swigging from a wineskin as if it were water.

South of the Travelers, Lirael flew with gradually slowing wing beats. It was much, much harder to fly as a twenty-times-sized barking owl than as a normal one, particularly carrying Sam, Mogget, and both packs. Sam had helped along the way by casting Charter marks of strength and endurance into her, but a large part of the sustaining magic had been absorbed by the Charter-skin itself.

“I have to set down,” she called to the Disreputable Dog, who was flying behind her, as pain coursed through her wings again. She picked a clear glade amongst the mass of trees and started to glide in for a landing.

Then she suddenly saw their destination. There, beyond the forest—a long grey line snaking along the crest of a low hill, going from east to west as far as she could see. The Wall that separated the Old Kingdom from Ancelstierre.

And on the far side of the Wall, darkness. The full dark, near midnight of an Ancelstierran early spring, spreading up to the Wall, where it suddenly met the warmth of an Old Kingdom summer evening. It gave Lirael an instant headache, her owl eyes unable to adjust to the contradiction—sunset here and night over there.

But there was the Wall, and buoyed up by this sighting, she forgot her pain and the intended landing site. With a push of her wings she lofted up again, heading straight for the Wall, a triumphant screech splitting the night.

“Don’t try to cross!” Sam called urgently from below, as he swung in the makeshift harness of sword baldrics and pack straps that was held tight by her claws. “We have to land on this side, remember!”

Lirael heard him, recalled his warnings about the Perimeter on the Ancelstierran side, and dropped one wing. Immediately this became a diving turn, followed by frenzied flapping as Lirael realized she’d misjudged their airspeed and was about to plow Sam, Mogget, and herself into the ground at a painful velocity.

The flapping worked, after a fashion. Sam picked himself off the ground, checked that his bruised knees still functioned, and went over to the enormous owl who lay next to him, apparently stunned.

“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously, uncertain how he could check. How did you feel an owl’s pulse, particularly an owl that was twenty feet long?

Lirael didn’t answer, but faint lines of golden light began to run in hairline cracks through the giant owl shape. The lines ran together till Sam could see individual Charter marks; then the whole thing began to blaze so brightly that Sam had to back off, shielding his eyes against the brilliance.

Then there was only soft twilight in his eyes, as the sun slowly set on the Old Kingdom side. And there was Lirael, lying spread-eagled on her stomach, groaning.

“Ow! Every muscle in my entire body hurts,” she muttered, slowly pushing herself up with her hands. “And I feel absolutely disgusting! Worse than the mud, that Charter-skin. Where’s the Dog?”

“Here, Mistress,” answered the Disreputable Dog, rushing over to surprise Lirael with a lick to her open mouth. “That was fun. Particularly flying over that man.”

“That wasn’t intentional,” said Lirael, using the Dog as a crutch to help herself up. “I was just as surprised as he was. Let’s just hope that we’ve saved enough time to make it worthwhile.”

“If we can get across the Wall—and the Perimeter—tonight, we have to be ahead of Hedge,” said Sam. “How fast can a barge go, after all?”

It was a rhetorical question, but it was answered.

“With a spelled wind, they could sail more than sixty leagues in a day and night,” said Mogget, a hidden voice of authority from inside Sam’s pack. “I would presume they reached the Redmouth around noon today. From there, who knows? It depends how quickly they can move the hemispheres. They may even have crossed, and time is disjointed between the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre. Hedge—aided by the Destroyer—may even be able to manipulate that difference to gain a day . . . or more.”

“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?”