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—”

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 Ancelstierran 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?”