Читать книгу Across The Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other Stories - Гарт Никс, Garth Nix - Страница 8

“Iam going back to the Old Kingdom, Uncle,” said Nicholas Sayre. “Whatever Father may have told you. So there is no point in your trying to fix me up with a suitable Sayre job or a suitable Sayre marriage. I am coming with you to what will undoubtedly be a horrendous house party only because it will get me a few hundred miles closer to the Wall.”

Nicholas’s Uncle Edward, more generally known as The Most Honourable Edward Sayre, Chief Minister of Ancelstierre, shut the red-bound letter book he was reading with more emphasis than he intended, as their heavily armoured car lurched over a hump in the road. The sudden clap of the book made the bodyguard in front look round, but the driver kept his eyes on the narrow country lane.

“Have I said anything about a job or a marriage?” Edward enquired, gazing down his long patrician nose at his nineteen-year-old nephew. “Besides, you won’t even get within a mile of the Perimeter without a pass signed by me, let alone across the Wall.”

“I could get a pass from Lewis,” said Nicholas moodily, referring to the newly anointed Hereditary Arbiter. The previous Arbiter, Lewis’s grandfather, had died of a heart attack during Corolini’s attempted coup d’état half a year before.

“No, you couldn’t, and you know it,” said Edward. “Lewis has more sense than to involve himself in any aspect of government other than the ceremonial.”

“Then I’ll have to cross over without a pass,” declared Nicholas angrily, not even trying to hide the frustration that had built up in him over the past six months, during which he’d been forced to stay in Ancelstierre. Most of that time spent wishing he’d left with Lirael and Sam in the immediate aftermath of the Destroyer’s defeat, instead of deciding to recuperate in Ancelstierre. It had been weakness and fear that had driven his decision, combined with a desire to put the terrible past behind him. But he now knew that was impossible. He could not ignore the legacy of his involvement with Hedge and the Destroyer, nor his return to Life at the hands—or paws—of the Disreputable Dog. He had become someone else and he could only find out who that was in the Old Kingdom.

“You would almost certainly be shot if you try to cross illegally,” said Edward. “A fate you would richly deserve. Particularly since you are not giving me the opportunity to help you. I do not know why you or anyone else would want to go to the Old Kingdom—my year on the Perimeter as General Hort’s ADC certainly taught me the place is best avoided. Nor do I wish to annoy your father and hurt your mother, but there are certain circumstances in which I might grant you permission to cross the Perimeter.”

“What! Really?”

“Yes, really. Have I ever taken you or any other of my nephews or nieces to a house party before?”

“Not that I know—”

“Do I usually make a habit of attending parties given by someone like Alastor Dorrance in the middle of nowhere?”

“I suppose not…”

“Then you might exercise your intelligence to wonder why you are here with me now.”

“Gatehouse ahead, sir,” interrupted the bodyguard as the car rounded a sweeping corner and slowed down. “Recognition signal is correct.”

Edward and Nicholas leaned forward to look through the open partition and the windscreen beyond. A few hundred yards in front, a squat stone gatehouse lurked just off the road with its two wooden gates swung back. Two slate-grey Heddon-Hare roadsters were parked, one on either side of the gate, with several mackintosh-clad, weapon-toting men standing around them. One of the men waved a yellow flag in a series of complicated movements that Edward clearly understood and Nicholas presumed meant all was well.

“Proceed!” snapped the Chief Minister. Their car slowed more, the driver shifting down through the gears with practised double-clutching. The mackintosh-clad men saluted as the car swung off the road and through the gate, dropping their salute as the rest of the motorcade followed. Six motorcycle policemen were immediately behind, then another two cars identical to the one that carried Nicholas and his uncle, then another half dozen police motorcyclists, and finally four trucks that were carrying a company of fully armed soldiery. Corolini’s attempted putsch had failed and there had surprisingly been no further trouble from the Our Country Party since, but the government continued to be nervous about the safety of the nation’s Chief Minister.

“So, what is going on?” asked Nicholas. “Why are you here? And why am I here? Is there something you want me to do?”

“At last, a glimmer of thought. Have you ever wondered what Alastor Dorrance actually does, other than come to Corvere three or four times a year and exercise his eccentricities in public?”

“Isn’t that enough?” asked Nick with a shudder. He remembered the newspaper stories from the last time Dorrance had been in the city, only a few weeks before. He’d hosted a picnic on Holyoak Hill for every apprentice in Corvere and supplied them with fatty roast beef, copious amounts of beer, and a particularly cheap and nasty red wine, with predictable results.

“Dorrance’s eccentricities are all show,” said Edward. “Misdirection. He is in fact the head of Department Thirteen. Dorrance Hall is the Department’s main research facility.”

“But Department Thirteen is just a made-up thing, for the moving pictures. It doesn’t really exist…um…does it?”

“Officially, no. In actuality, yes. Every state has need of spies. Department Thirteen trains and manages ours, and carries out various tasks ill suited to the more regular branches of government. It is watched over quite carefully, I assure you.”

“But what has that got to do with me?”

“Department Thirteen observes all our neighbours very successfully, and has detailed files on everyone and everything important within those countries. With one notable exception. The Old Kingdom.”

“I’m not going to spy on my friends!”

Edward sighed and looked out the window. The drive beyond the gatehouse curved through freshly mown fields, the hay already gathered into hillocks ready to be pitchforked into carts and taken to the stacks. Past the fields, the chimneys of a large country house peered above the fringe of old oaks that lined the drive.

“I’m not going to be a spy, Uncle,” repeated Nicholas.

“I haven’t asked you to be one,” said Edward as he looked back at his nephew. Nicholas’s face had paled and he was clutching his chest. Whatever had happened to him in the Old Kingdom had left him in a very run-down state and he was still recovering. Though the Ancelstierran doctors had found no external signs of significant injury, his X-rays had come out strangely fogged and all the medical reports said Nick was in the same sort of shape as a man who had suffered serious wounds in battle.

“All I want you to do is to spend the weekend here with some of the Department’s technical people,” continued Edward. “Answer their questions about your experiences in the Old Kingdom, that sort of thing. I doubt anything will come of it and, as you know, I strictly adhere to the wisdom of my predecessors, which is to leave the place alone. But that said, they haven’t exactly left us alone over the past twenty years. Dorrance has always had a bit of a bee in his bonnet about the Old Kingdom, greatly exacerbated by the…mmm…event at Forwin Mill. It is possible that he might discover something useful from talking to you. So if you answer his questions, you shall have your Perimeter pass on Monday morning. If you’re still set on going, that is.”

“I’ll cross the Wall,” said Nick forcefully. “One way or another.”

“Then I suggest it be my way. You know, your father wanted to be a painter when he was your age. He had talent too, according to old Menree. But our parents wouldn’t hear of it. A grave error, I think. Not that he hasn’t been a useful politician and a great help to me. But his heart is elsewhere and it is not possible to achieve greatness without a whole heart.”

“So all I have to do is answer questions?”

Edward sighed the sigh of an older and wiser man talking to a younger, inattentive and impatient relative.

“Well, you will have to appear a little bit at the party. Dinner and so forth. Croquet perhaps, or a row on the lake. Misdirection, as I said.”

Nicholas took Edward’s hand and shook it firmly.

“You are a splendid uncle, Uncle.”

“Good. I’m glad that’s settled,” said Edward. He glanced out the window. They were past the oak trees now, gravel crunching beneath the wheels as the car rolled up the drive to the front steps of the six-columned entrance. “We’ll drop you off, then and I’ll see you Monday.”

“Aren’t you staying here? For the house party?”

“Don’t be silly! I can’t abide house parties of any kind. I’m staying at the Golden Sheaf. Excellent hotel, not too far away. I often go there to get through some serious confidential reading. Place has got its own golf course too. Thought I might go round tomorrow. Enjoy yourself!”

Nicholas hardly caught the last two words as his door was flung open and he was assisted out by Edward’s personal bodyguard. He blinked in the afternoon sunlight, no longer filtered through the smoked glass of the car’s windows. A few seconds later, his bags were deposited at his feet; then the Chief Minister’s cavalcade started up again and rolled out the drive as quickly as it had arrived, the Army trucks leaving considerable ruts in the gravel.

“Mr Sayre?”

Nicholas looked around. A top-hatted footman was picking up his bags, but it was another man who had spoken. A balding, burly individual in a dark blue suit, his hair cut so short it was practically a monkish tonsure. Everything about him said policeman, either active or recently retired.

“Yes, I’m Nicholas Sayre.”

“Welcome to Dorrance Hall, sir. My name is Hedge—”

Nicholas recoiled from the offered hand and nearly fell over the footman. Even as he regained his balance, he realised that the man had said Hodge and then followed it up with a second syllable.

Hodgeman. Not Hedge.

Hedge the necromancer was finally, completely and utterly dead. Lirael and the Disreputable Dog had defeated him and Hedge had gone beyond the Ninth Gate. He couldn’t come back. Nick knew he was safe from him, but that knowledge was purely intellectual. Deep inside him, the name of Hedge was linked irrevocably with an almost primal fear.

“Sorry,” gasped Nick. He straightened up and shook the man’s hand. “Ankle gave way on me. You were saying?”

“Hodgeman is my name. I am an assistant to Mr Dorrance. The other guests do not arrive till later, so Mr Dorrance thought you might like a tour of the grounds.”

“Um, certainly,” replied Nick. He fought back a sudden urge to look around to see who might be listening and, as he started up the steps, resisted the temptation to slink from shadow to shadow just like a spy in a moving picture.

“The house was originally built in the time of the last Trouin-Durville Pretender, about four hundred years ago, but little of the original structure remains. Most of the current house was built by Mr Dorrance’s grandfather. The best feature is the library, which was the great hall of the old house. Shall we start there?”

“Thank you,” replied Nicholas. Mr Hodgeman’s turn as a tour guide was quite convincing. Nicholas wondered if the man had to do it often for casual visitors, as part of what Uncle Edward would call “misdirection”.

The library was very impressive. Hodgeman closed the double doors behind them as Nick stared up at the high dome of the ceiling, which was painted to create the illusion of a storm at sea. It was quite disconcerting to look up at the waves and the tossing ships and the low scudding clouds. Below the dome, every wall was covered by tiers of shelves stretching up twenty or even twenty-five feet from the floor. Ladders ran on rails around the library, but no one was using them. The library was silent; two crescent-shaped couches in the centre were empty. The windows were heavily curtained with velvet drapes, but the gas lanterns above the shelves burned very brightly. The place looked like there should be people reading in it, or sorting books, or something. It did not have the dark, dusty air of a disused library.

“This way, sir,” said Hodgeman. He crossed to one of the shelves and reached up above his head to pull out an unobtrusive, dun-coloured tome, adorned only with the Dorrance coat of arms, a chain argent issuant from a chevron argent upon a field azure.

The book slid out halfway, then came no further.

Hodgeman looked up at it. Nick looked too.

“Is something supposed to happen?”

“It gets a bit stuck sometimes,” replied Hodgeman. He tugged on the book again. This time it came completely out. Hodgeman opened it, took a key from its hollowed-out pages, pushed two books apart on the shelf below to reveal a keyhole, inserted the key and turned it. There was a soft click, but nothing more dramatic. Hodgeman put the key back in the book and returned the volume to the shelf.

“Now, if you wouldn’t mind stepping this way,” Hodgeman said, leading Nick back to the centre of the library. The couches had moved aside on silent gears and two steel-encased segments of the floor had slid open, revealing a circular stone staircase leading down. Unlike the library’s brilliant white gaslights, it was lit by dull electric bulbs.

“This is all rather cloak-and-dagger,” remarked Nick as he headed down the steps with Hodgeman close behind him.

Hodgeman didn’t answer, but Nick was sure a disapproving glance had fallen on his back. The steps went down quite a long way, equivalent to at least three or four floors. They ended in front of a steel door with a covered spy hole. Hodgeman pressed a tarnished bronze bell button next to the door and a few seconds later the spy hole slid open.

“Sergeant Hodgeman with Mr Nicholas Sayre,” said Hodgeman.

The door swung open. There was no sign of a person behind it. Just a long, dismal, white-painted concrete corridor stretching off some thirty or forty yards to another steel door. Nick stepped through the doorway and some slight movement to his right made him look. There was an alcove there, with a desk, a red telephone on it, a chair and a guard—another plainclothes policeman type like Hodgeman, this time in shirtsleeves, with a revolver worn openly in a shoulder holster. He nodded at Nick but didn’t smile or speak.

“On to the next door, please,” said Hodgeman.

Nick nodded back at the guard and continued down the concrete corridor, his footsteps echoing just out of time with Hodgeman’s. He heard behind him the faint ting of a telephone being taken off its cradle and then the low voice of the guard, his words indistinguishable.

The procedure with the spy hole was repeated at the next door. There were two policemen behind this one, in a larger and better-appointed alcove. They had upholstered chairs and a leather-topped desk, though it had clearly seen better days.

Hodgeman nodded at the guards, who nodded back with slow deliberation. Nick smiled but got no smile in return.

“Through the left door, please,” said Hodgeman, pointing. There were two doors to choose from, both of unappealing, unmarked steel bordered with lines of knuckle-size rivets.

Hodgeman departed through the right-hand door as Nick pushed the left, but it swung open before he exerted any pressure. There was a much more cheerful room beyond, very much like Nick’s tutor’s study at Sunbere, with four big leather club chairs facing a desk, and off to one side a drinks cabinet with a large, black-enamelled radio sitting on top of it. There were three men standing around the cabinet.

The closest was a tall, expensively dressed, vacant-looking man with ridiculous sideburns whom Nick recognised as Dorrance. The second-closest was a fiftyish man in a hearty tweed coat with leather elbow patches. The skin of his thick neck hung over his collar and his fat face was much too big for the half-moon glasses that perched on his nose. Lurking behind these two was a nondescript, vaguely unhealthy-looking shorter man who wore exactly the same kind of suit as Hodgeman but in a much more untidy way, so he looked nothing like a policeman, serving or otherwise.

“Ah, here is Mr Nicholas Sayre,” said Dorrance. He stepped forward, shook Nick’s hand and ushered him to the centre of the room. “I’m Dorrance. Good of you to help us out. This is Professor Lackridge, who looks after all our scientific research.”

The fat-faced man extended his hand and shook Nick’s with little enthusiasm but a crushing grip. Somewhere in the very distant past, Nick surmised, Professor Lackridge must have been a rugby enthusiast. Or perhaps a boxer. Now sadly run to fat, but the muscle was still there underneath.

“And this is Mr Malthan, who is…an independent adviser on Old Kingdom matters.”

Malthan inclined his head and made a faint, repressed gesture with his hands, turning them towards his forehead as if to brush his almost nonexistent hair away. There was something about the action that triggered recognition in Nick.

“You’re from the Old Kingdom, aren’t you?” he asked. It was unusual for anyone from the Old Kingdom to be encountered this far south. Very few travellers could get authorisation from both King Touchstone and the Ancelstierran government to cross the Wall and the Perimeter. Even fewer would come any further south than Bain, which was at least a hundred and eighty miles north. They didn’t like it, as a rule. It didn’t feel right, Sam had always said.

But then, this little man didn’t have the Charter Mark on his forehead, which might make it more bearable for him to be on this side of the Wall. Nick instinctively brushed his dark forelock aside to show his Charter Mark, his fingers running across it. The Mark was quiescent under his touch, showing no sign of its connection to the magical powers of the Old Kingdom.

Malthan clearly saw the Mark, even if the others didn’t. He stepped a little closer to Nick and spoke in a breathy half whine.

“I’m a trader, out of Belisaere,” he said. “I’ve always done a bit of business with some folks in Bain, as my father did before me, and his father before him. We’ve a Permission from the King and a Permit from your government. I only come down here every now and then, when I’ve got something special-like that I know Mr Dorrance’s lot will be interested in, same as my old dad did for Mr Dorrance’s granddad—”

“And we pay very well for what we’re interested in, Mr Malthan,” Dorrance interrupted him. “Don’t we?”

“Yes, sir, you do. Only I don’t—”

“Malthan has been very useful,” interjected Professor Lackridge. “Though we must discount many of his, ahem, traveller’s tales. Fortunately he tends to bring us interesting artefacts in addition to his more colourful observations.”

“I’ve always spoken true,” said Malthan. “As this young man can tell you. He has the Mark and all. He knows.”

“Yes, the forehead brand of that cult,” remarked Lackridge, with an uninterested glance at Nick’s forehead, the Mark mostly concealed once more under his floppy forelock. “Sociologically interesting, of course. Particularly its regrettable prevalence among our Northern Perimeter Reconnaissance Unit. I trust it is only an affectation in your case, young man? You haven’t gone native on us?”

“It isn’t just a religious thing,” Nick said carefully. “The Mark is more of a…a connection with…how can I explain…unseen powers. Magic—”

“Yes, yes. I am sure it seems like magic to you,” said Lackridge. “But the great majority of it is easily explained as mass hallucination, the influence of drugs, hysteria and so forth. It is the minority of events that defy explanation but leave clear physical effects that we are interested in—such as the explosion at Forwin Mill.” He looked over his half-moon glasses at Nicholas.

Dorrance looked at him as well, his stare suddenly intense.

“Our studies there indicate that the blast was roughly equivalent to the detonation of twenty thousand tons of nitrocellulose,” continued Lackridge. He rapped his knuckles on the desk as he exclaimed, “Twenty thousand tons! We know of nothing capable of delivering such explosive force, particularly as the bomb itself was reported to be two metallic hemispheres, each no more than ten feet in diameter. Is that right, Mr Sayre?”

Nick swallowed, his throat moving in a dry gulp. He could feel sweat forming on his forehead and a familiar jangling pain in his right arm and chest.

“I…I don’t really know,” he said after several long seconds. “I was very ill. Feverish. But it wasn’t a bomb. It was the Destroyer. Not something our science can explain. That was my mistake. I thought I could explain everything under our natural laws, our science. I was wrong.”

“You’re tired, and clearly still somewhat unwell,” said Dorrance. His tone was kindly, but the warmth did not reach his eyes. “We have many more questions, of course, but they can wait until the morning. Professor, why don’t you show Nicholas around the establishment. Let him get his bearings. Then go back upstairs and we can all resume life as normal, what? Which reminds me, Nicholas—everything discussed down here is absolutely confidential. Even the existence of this facility must not be mentioned once you return to the main house. Naturally you will see me, Professor Lackridge and the others at dinner, but in our public roles. Most of the guests have no idea that Department Thirteen lurks beneath their feet and we want it to remain that way. I trust you won’t have a problem keeping our existence all to yourself?”

“No, not at all,” muttered Nick. Inside he was wondering how he could avoid answering questions but still get his pass to cross the Perimeter. Lackridge obviously didn’t believe in Old Kingdom magic, which was no great surprise. After all, Nick had been like that himself. But Dorrance had voiced no such scepticism, nor had he shown it by his body language. Nick definitely did not want to discuss the Destroyer and its nature with anyone who might seriously look into what it was or what had happened at Forwin Mill.

He didn’t want to dabble in anything to do with Old Kingdom magic, especially without proper instruction, even two hundred miles south of the Wall.

“Follow me, Nicholas,” said Lackridge. “You too, Malthan. I want to show you something related to those photographic plates you found for us.”

“I need to catch my train,” muttered Malthan. “My horses…stabled near Bain…the expense…I’m eager to return home.”

“We’ll pay you a little extra,” said Dorrance, the tone of his voice making it clear Malthan had no choice. “I want Lackridge to see your reaction to one of the artefacts we’ve picked up. I’ll see you at dinner, Nicholas.”

Dorrance shook Nick’s hand in parting, gave a dismissive wave to Lackridge and ignored Malthan completely. As Dorrance turned back to his desk, Nick noticed a paperweight sitting on top of the wooden in-tray. A lump of broken stone, etched with intricate symbols. They did not shine or move about, not so far from the Old Kingdom; but Nick recognised their nature, though he did not know their dormant power or meaning. They were Charter Marks. The stone itself looked as if it had been broken from a greater whole.

Nick looked at Dorrance again and decided that even if it meant having to work out some other way to get across the Perimeter, he was not going to answer any of Dorrance’s questions. Or rather, he would answer them vaguely and badly, and generally behave like a well-meaning fool.

Hedge had been an Ancelstierran originally, Nick remembered as he followed Malthan and the professor out. Dorrance struck him as someone who might be tempted to walk a path similar to Hedge’s.

They left through the door Nick had come in by, out through the opposite door, and then rapidly through a confusing maze of short corridors and identical riveted metal doors.

“Bit confusing down here, what?” remarked Lackridge. “Takes a while to get your bearings. Dorrance’s father built the original tunnels for his underground electric railway. Modelled on the Corvere Metro. But the tunnels have been extended even further since then. We’re just going to take a look in our holding area for objects brought in from north of the Wall or found on our side, near it.”

“You mentioned photographic plates,” said Nick. “Surely no photographic equipment works over the Wall?”

“That has yet to be properly tested,” said Lackridge dismissively. “In any case, these are prints from negative glass plates taken in Bain of a book that was brought across the Wall.”

“What kind of book?” Nick asked Malthan.

Malthan looked at Nick, but his eyes failed to meet the younger man’s gaze. “The photographs were taken by a former associate of mine. I didn’t know she had this book. It burned of its own accord only minutes after the photographs were captured. Half the plates also melted before I could get them far enough south.”

“What was the title of the book?” asked Nick. “And why ‘former’ associate?”

“She burned with the b-b-book,” whispered Malthan with a shiver. “I do not know its name. I do not know where Raliese might have got it.”

“You see the problems we have to deal with,” said Lackridge with a sneer at Malthan. “He probably bought the plates at a school fête in Bain. But they are interesting. The book was some kind of bestiary. We can’t read the text as yet, but there are very fine etchings—illustrations of the beasts.”

The professor stopped to unlock the next door with a large brass key, but he opened it only a fraction. He turned to Malthan and Nick and said, “The photographs are important, as we already had independent evidence that at least one of the beasts depicted in that book really does exist—or existed at one time—in the Old Kingdom.”

“Independent evidence of one of those things?” squeaked Malthan. “What kind of—”

“This,” declared Lackridge, opening the door wide. “A mummified specimen!”

The storeroom beyond was cluttered with boxes, chests and paraphernalia. For a second, Nick’s eye was drawn to two very large blow-ups of photographs of Forwin Loch, which were leaning on the wall near the door. One showed a scene of industry from the last century, and the other showed the destruction wrought by Orannis—the Destroyer.

But the big photographs held his attention for no more than a moment. There could be no question what Lackridge was referring to. In the middle of the room there was a glass cylinder about nine feet high and five feet in diameter. Inside the case, propped up against a steel frame, was a nightmare.

It looked vaguely human, in the sense that it had a head, a torso, two arms and two legs. But its skin or hide was of a strange violet hue, crosshatched with lines like a crocodile’s, and looked very rough. Its legs were jointed backward and ended in hooked hooves. The arms stretched down almost to the floor of the case and ended not in hands but in club-like appendages that were covered in inch-long barbs. Its torso was thin and cylindrical, rather like that of a wasp. Its head was the most human part, save that it sat on a neck that was twice as long; it had narrow slits instead of ears, and its black, violet-pupilled eyes—presumably glass made by a skilful taxidermist—were pear-shaped and took up half its face. Its mouth, twice the width of any human’s, was almost closed, but Nick could see teeth gleaming there.

Black teeth that shone like polished jet.

“No!” screamed Malthan. He ran back down the corridor as far as the previous door, which was locked. He beat on the metal with his fists, the drumming echoing down the corridor.

Nick pushed Lackridge gently aside with a quiet “Excuse me.” He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, but it was not from fear. It was excitement. The excitement of discovery, of learning something new. A feeling he had always enjoyed, but it had been lost to him ever since he’d dug up the metal spheres of the Destroyer.

He leaned forwards to touch the case and felt a strange, electric thrill run through his fingers and out along his thumbs. At the same time, there was a stabbing pain in his forehead, strong enough to make him step back and press two fingers hard between his eyes.

“Not a bad specimen,” said Lackridge. He spoke conversationally, but he had come very close to Nick and was watching him intently. “Its history is a little murky, but it’s been in the country for at least three hundred years and in the Corvere Bibliomanse for the past thirty-five. One of the things my staff has been doing here at Department Thirteen is cross-indexing all the various institutional records, looking for artefacts and information about our northern neighbours. When we got Malthan’s photographs, Dorrance happened to remember he’d seen an actual specimen of one of the creatures somewhere before, as a child. I cross-checked the records at the Bibliomanse and found the thing, and we had it brought up here.”

Nick nodded absently. The pain in his head was receding. It appeared to emanate from his Charter Mark, though that should be totally quiescent this far from the Wall. Unless there was a roaring gale blowing down from the north, which he supposed might have happened since he came down into Department Thirteen’s subterranean lair. It was impossible to tell what was going on in the world above them.

“Apparently the thing was found about ten miles in on our side of the Wall, wrapped in three chains,” continued Lackridge. “One of silver, one of lead and one made from braided daisies. That’s what the notes say, though of course we don’t have the chains to prove it. If there was a silver one, it must have been worth a pretty penny. Long before the Perimeter, of course, so it was some time before the authorities got hold of it. According to the records, the local folk wanted to drag it back to the Wall, but fortunately there was a visiting Captain-Inquirer who had it shipped south. Should never have got rid of the Captain-Inquirers. Wouldn’t have minded being one myself. Don’t suppose anyone would bring them back now. Lily-livered lot, the present government…excepting your uncle, of course…”

“My father also sits in the Moot,” said Nick. “On the government benches.”

“Well, of course, everyone says my politics are to the right of old Arbiter Werris Blue-Nose, so don’t mind me,” said Lackridge. He stepped back into the corridor and shouted, “Come back here, Mr Malthan. It won’t bite you!”

As Lackridge spoke, Nick thought he saw the creature’s eyes move. Just a fraction, but there was a definite sense of movement. With it, all his sense of excitement was banished in a second, to be replaced by a growing fear.

It’s alive, thought Nick.

He stepped back to the door, almost knocking over Lackridge, his mind working furiously.

The thing is alive. Quiescent. Conserving its energies, so far from the Old Kingdom. It must be some Free Magic creature and it’s just waiting for a chance—

“Thank you, Professor Lackridge, but I find myself suddenly rather keen on a cup of tea,” blurted Nick. “Do you think we might come back and look at this specimen tomorrow?”

“I’m supposed to make Malthan touch the case,” said Lackridge. “Dorrance was most insistent upon it. Wants to see his reaction.”

Nick edged back and looked down the corridor. Malthan was crouched by the door.

“I think you’ve seen his reaction,” he said. “Anything more would simply be cruel and hardly scientific.”

“He’s only an Old Kingdom trader,” said Lackridge. “He’s not even strictly legal. Conditional visa. We can do whatever we like with him.”

“What!” exclaimed Nick.

“Within reason,” Lackridge added hastily. “I mean, nothing too drastic. Do him good.”

“I think he needs to get on a train north and go back to the Old Kingdom,” said Nick firmly. He liked Lackridge less and less with every passing minute, and the whole Department Thirteen set-up seemed very dubious. It was all very well for his Uncle Edward to talk about having extra-legal entities to do things the government could not, but the line had to be drawn somewhere and Nick didn’t think Dorrance or Lackridge knew where to draw it—or if they did, when not to step over it.

“I’ll just see how he is,” added Nick. An idea started to rise from the recesses of his mind as he walked down the corridor towards the crouched and shivering man pressed against the door. “Perhaps we can walk out together.”

“Mr Dorrance was most insistent—”

“I’m sure he won’t mind if you tell him that I insisted on escorting Malthan on his way.”

“But—”

“I am insisting, you know,” Nick cut in forcefully. “As it is, I shall have a few words to say about this place to my uncle.”

“If you’re going to be like that, I don’t think I have any choice,” said Lackridge petulantly. “We were assured that you would cooperate fully with our research.”

“I will cooperate, but I don’t think Malthan needs to do any more for Department Thirteen,” said Nick. He bent down and helped the Old Kingdom trader up. He was surprised by how much the smaller man was shaking. He seemed totally in the grip of panic, though he calmed a little when Nick took his arm above the elbow. “Now, please show us out. And you can organise someone to take Malthan to the railway station.”

“You don’t understand the importance of our work,” said Lackridge. “Or our methods. Observing the superstitious re-actions of northerners and our own people delivers legitimate and potentially useful information.”

This was clearly only a pro forma protest, because as Lackridge spoke, he unlocked the door and led them quickly through the corridors. After a few minutes, Nick found that he didn’t need to half carry Malthan any more, but could just point him in the right direction.

Eventually, after numerous turns and more doors that required laborious unlocking, they came to a double-width steel door with two spy holes. Lackridge knocked, and after a brief inspection, they were admitted to a guardroom inhabited by five policeman types. Four were sitting around a linoleum-topped table under a single suspended lightbulb, drinking tea and eating doorstop-size sandwiches. Hodgeman was the fifth, and clearly still on duty, as unlike the others he had not removed his coat.

“Sergeant Hodgeman,” Lackridge called out rather too loudly. “Please escort Mr Sayre upstairs and have one of your other officers take Malthan to Dorrance Halt and see he gets on the next northbound train.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Hodgeman. He hesitated for a moment, then with a curiously unpleasant emphasis, which Nick would have missed if he hadn’t been paying careful attention, he said, “Constable Ripton, you see to Malthan.”

“Just a moment,” said Nick. “I’ve had a thought. Malthan can take a message from me over to my uncle, the Chief Minister, at the Golden Sheaf. Then someone from his staff can take Malthan to the nearest station.”

“One of my men would happily take a message for you, sir,” said Sergeant Hodgeman. “And Dorrance Halt is much closer than the Golden Sheaf. That’s all of twenty miles away.”

“Thank you,” said Nick. “But I want the Chief Minister to hear Malthan directly about some matters relating to the Old Kingdom. That won’t be a problem, will it? Malthan, I’ll just write something out for you to take to Garran, my uncle’s principal secretary.”

Nick took out his notebook and gold propelling pencil and casually leaned against the wall. They all watched him, the five policeman with studied disinterest masking hostility, Lackridge with more open aggression and Malthan with the sad eyes of the doomed.

Nick began to whistle tunelessly through his teeth, pretending to be oblivious to the pent-up institutional aggression focused upon him. He wrote quickly, sighed and pretended to cross out what he’d written, then ripped out the page, palmed it and started to write again.

“Very hard to concentrate the mind in these underground chambers of yours,” Nick said to Lackridge. “I don’t know how you get anything done. Expect you’ve got cockroaches too…maybe rats…I mean, what’s that?”

He pointed with the pencil. Only Malthan and Lackridge turned to look. The policemen kept up their steady stare. Nick stared back, but he felt a slight fear begin to swim about his stomach. Surely they wouldn’t risk doing anything to Edward Sayre’s nephew? And yet…they were clearly planning to imprison Malthan at the least, or perhaps something worse. Nick wasn’t going to let that happen.

“Only a shadow, but I bet you do have rats. Stands to reason. Underground. Tea and biscuits about,” Nick said as he ripped out the second page. He folded it, wrote “Mr Thomas Garran” on the outside and handed it to Malthan, at the same time stepping across to shield his next action from everyone except Lackridge, whom he stumbled against.

“Oh, sorry!” he exclaimed, and in that moment of apparently lost balance, he slid the palmed first note into Malthan’s still open hand.

“I…ah…still not quite recovered from the events at Forwin Mill,” Nick mumbled, as Lackridge suppressed an oath and jumped back.

The policemen had stepped forward, apparently only to catch him if he fell. Sergeant Hodgeman had seen him stumble before. They were clearly suspicious but didn’t know what he had done. He hoped.

“Bit unsteady on my pins,” continued Nick. “Nothing to do with drink, unfortunately. That might make it seem worthwhile. Now I must get on upstairs and dress for dinner. Who’s taking Malthan over to the Golden Sheaf?”

“I am, sir. Constable Ripton.”

“Very good, Constable. I trust you’ll have a pleasant evening drive. I’ll telephone ahead to make sure that my uncle’s staff are expecting you and have dinner laid on.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ripton woodenly. Again, if Nick hadn’t been paying careful attention, he might have missed the young constable flicking his eyes up and down and then twice towards Sergeant Hodgeman—a twitch Nick interpreted as a call for help from the junior police officer, looking for Hodgeman to tell him how to satisfy his immediate masters as well as insure himself against the interference of any greater authority.

“Get on with it then, Constable,” said Hodgeman, his words as ambiguous as his expression.

“Let’s all get upstairs,” Nick said with false cheer he dredged up from somewhere. “After you, Sergeant. Malthan, if you wouldn’t mind walking with me, I’ll see you to your car. Got a couple of questions about the Old Kingdom I’m sure you can answer.”

“Anything, anything,” babbled Malthan. He came so close, Nick thought the little trader was going to hug him. “Let us get out from under the earth. With that—”

“Yes, I agree,” interrupted Nick. He gestured towards the door and met Sergeant Hodgeman’s stare. All the policemen moved closer. Casual steps. A foot slid forward here, a diagonal pace towards Nick.

Lackridge coughed something that might have been “Dorrance”, scuttled to the door leading back to the tunnels, opened it just wide enough to admit his bulk and squeezed through. Nick thought about calling him back but instantly dismissed the idea. He didn’t want to show any weakness.

But with Lackridge gone, there was no longer a witness. Nick knew Malthan didn’t count, not to anyone in Department Thirteen.

Sergeant Hodgeman pushed one heavy-booted foot forward and advanced on Nick and Malthan till his face was inches away from Nick’s. It was an intimidating posture, long beloved of sergeants, and Nick knew it well from his days in the school cadets.

Hodgeman didn’t say anything. He just stared, a fierce stare that Nick realised hid a mind calculating how far he could go to keep Malthan captive, and what he might be able to do to Nicholas Sayre without causing trouble.

“My uncle is the Chief Minister,” Nick whispered very softly. “My father a member of the Moot. Marshal Harngorm is my mother’s uncle. My second cousin is the Hereditary Arbiter himself.”

“As you say, sir,” said Hodgeman loudly. He stepped back, the sound of his heel on the concrete snapping through the tension that had risen in the room. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”

That was a warning of consequences to come, Nick knew. But he didn’t care. He wanted to save Malthan, but most of all at that moment he wanted to get out under the sun again. He wanted to stand above ground and put as much earth and concrete and as many locked doors as possible between himself and the creature in the case.

Yet even when the afternoon sunlight was softly warming his face, Nick wasn’t much comforted. He watched Constable Ripton and Malthan leave in a small green van that looked exactly like the sort of vehicle that would be used to dispose of a body in a moving picture about the fictional Department Thirteen. Then, while lurking near the footmen’s side door, he saw several gleaming, expensive cars drive up to disgorge their gleaming, expensive passengers. He recognised most of the guests. None were friends. They were all people he would formerly have described as frivolous and now just didn’t care about at all. Even the beautiful young women failed to make more than a momentary impact. His mind was elsewhere.

Nick was thinking about Malthan and the two messages he carried. One, the obvious one, was addressed to Thomas Garran, Uncle Edward’s principal private secretary. It said:

Garran

Uncle will want to talk to the bearer (Malthan, an Old Kingdom trader) for five minutes or so. Please ensure he is then escorted to the Perimeter by Foxe’s people or Captain Sverenson’s, not D13. Ask Uncle to call me urgently. Word of a Sayre.

Nicholas

The other, more hastily scrawled, said:

Send telegram TO MAGISTRIX WYVERLEY COL LEGE NICK FOUND BAD KINGDOM CREATURE DORRANCE HALL TELL ABHORSEN HELP

There was every possibility neither message would get through, Nick thought. It would all depend on what Dorrance and his minions thought they could get away with. And that depended on what they thought they could do to one Nicholas Sayre before he caused them too much trouble.

Nick shivered and went back inside. As he expected, when he asked to use a telephone, the footman referred him to the butler, who was very apologetic and bowed several times while regretting that the line was down and probably would not be fixed for several days, the telegraph company being notoriously slow in the country.

With that avenue cut off, Nick retreated to his room, ostensibly to dress for dinner. In practice he spent most of the time writing a report to his uncle and another telegram to the Magistrix at Wyverley College. He hid the report in the lining of his suitcase and went in search of a particular valet who he knew would be accompanying one of the guests he had seen arrive, the ageing dandy Hericourt Danjers. The permanent staff of Dorrance Hall would all really be Department Thirteen agents, or informants at the least, but it was much less likely the guests’ servants would be.

Danjers’s valet was famous among servants for his ability with shoe polish, champagne and a secret oil. So neither he nor anyone else in the belowstairs parlour was much surprised when the Chief Minister’s nephew sought him out with a pair of shoes in hand. The valet was a little more surprised to find a note inside the shoes asking him to go out to the village and secretly send a telegram, but as the note was wrapped around four double-guinea pieces, he was happy to do so. When he’d finished his duties, of course.

Back in his room, Nick dressed hastily. As he tied his bow tie, his hands moved automatically while he wondered what else he should be doing. All kinds of plans raced through his head, only to be abandoned as impractical, or foolish, or likely to make matters worse.

With his tie finally done, Nick went to his case and took out a large leather wallet. There were three things inside. Two were letters, both written neatly on thick, linen-rich handmade paper, but in markedly different hands.

The first letter was from Nick’s old friend Prince Sameth. It was concerned primarily with Sam’s current projects and was illustrated in the margins with small diagrams. Judging from the letter, Sam’s time was being spent almost entirely on the fabrication and enchantment of a replacement hand for Lirael, and the planning and design of a fishing hut on an island in the Ratterlin Delta. Sam did not explain why he wanted to build a fishing hut and Nick had not had a reply to his most recent letter seeking enlightenment. This was not unusual. Sam was an infrequent correspondent and there was no regular mail service of any kind between Ancelstierre and the Old Kingdom.

Nick didn’t bother to read Sam’s letter again. He put it aside, carefully unfolded the second letter and read it for the hundredth or two hundredth time, hoping that this time he would uncover some hidden meaning in the innocuous words.

This letter was from Lirael and it was quite short. The writing was so regular, so perfectly spaced and so free of ink splotches that Nick wondered if it had been copied from a rough version. If it had, what did that mean? Did Lirael always make fine copies of her letters? Or had she done it just for him?

Dear Nick,

I trust you are recovering well. I am much better,and Sam says my new hand will be ready soon.Ellimere has been teaching me to play tennis, a gamefrom your country, but I really do need two hands. I have also started to work with the Abhorsen. Sabriel, I mean, though I still find it hard to call her that. I still laugh when I remember you calling her “MrsAbhorsen, Ma’am Sir”. I was surprised by thatlaugh, amidst such sorrow and pain. It was a strangeday, wasn’t it? Waiting for everything to be discussed and sorted and explained just enough so we could all gohome, with the two of us lying side by side on ourstretchers with so much going on all around. You made it better for me, telling me about my friend theDisreputable Dog. I am very grateful for that. That is why I’m writing, really, and Sam said he was sending something so this could go in with it.

Be well.

Lirael, Abhorsen-in-Waiting and Remembrancer

Nick stared at the letter for several minutes after he finished reading it, then gently folded it and returned it to the wallet. He drew out the third thing, which had come in a package with the letters three weeks ago, though it had apparently left the Old Kingdom at least a month before that. It was a small, very plain dagger, the blade and hilt blued steel, with brass wire wound around the grip, the pommel just a big teardrop of metal.

Nick held it up to the light. He could see faint etched symbols upon the blade, but that was all they were. Faint etched symbols. Not living, moving Charter Marks, bright and flowing, all gold and sunshine. That’s what Charter-spelled swords normally looked like, Nick knew, the marks leaping and splashing across the metal.

Nick knew he ought to be comforted. If the Charter Marks on his dagger were still and dead, then the thing beneath the house should be as well. But he knew it wasn’t. He’d seen its eyes flicker.

There was a knock on the door. Nick hastily put the dagger back in its sheath.

“Yes!” he called. The sheathed dagger was still in his hand. For a moment he considered exchanging it for the slim .32 automatic pistol in his suitcase’s outer pocket. But he decided against it when the person at the door called out to him.

“Nicholas Sayre?”

It was a woman’s voice. A young woman’s voice, with the hint of a laugh in it. Not a servant. Perhaps one of the beautiful young women he’d seen arrive. Probably a not very successful actor or singer, the usual adornments of typical country-house parties.

“Yes. Who is it?”

“Tesrya. Don’t say you don’t remember me. Perhaps a glimpse will remind you. Let me in. I’ve got a bottle of champagne. I thought we might have a drink before dinner.”

Nick didn’t remember her, but that didn’t mean anything. He knew she would have singled him out from the seating plan for dinner, homing in on the surname Sayre. He supposed he should at least tell her to go away to her face. Courtesy to women, even fortune hunters, had been drummed into him all his life.

“Just one drink?”

Nick hesitated, then tucked the sheathed dagger down the inside of his trousers, at the hip. He held his foot against the door in case he needed to shut it in a hurry; then he turned the key and opened it a fraction.

He had the promised glimpse. Pale, melancholy eyes in a very white face, a forced smile from too-red lips. But there were also two hooded men there: one threw his shoulder against the door to keep it open. The other grabbed Nick by the hair and pushed a pad the size of a small pillow against his face.

Nick tried not to breathe as he threw himself backwards, losing some hair in the process, but the sickly-sweet smell of chloroform was already in his mouth and nose. The two men gave him no time to recover his balance. One pushed him back to the foot of the bed, while the other got his right arm in a wrestling hold. Nick struck out with his left, but his fist wouldn’t go where he wanted it to. His arm felt like a rubbery length of pipe, the elbow gone soft.

Nick kept flailing, but the pad was back on his mouth and nose, and all his senses started to shatter into little pieces like a broken mosaic. He couldn’t make sense of what he saw and heard and felt, and all he could smell was a sickly scent like a cheap perfume badly imitating the scent of flowers.

In another few seconds, he was unconscious.

Nicholas Sayre returned to his senses very slowly. It was like waking up drunk after a party, his mind still clouded and a hangover building in his head and stomach. It was dark and he was disoriented. He tried to move and for a frightened instant thought he was paralysed. Then he felt restraints at his wrists and thighs and ankles, and a hard surface under his head and back. He was tied to a table or perhaps a hard bench.

“Ah, the mind wakes,” said a voice in the darkness. Nick thought for a second, his clouded mind slowly processing the sound. He knew that voice. Dorrance.

“Would you like to see what is happening?” asked Dorrance. Nick heard him take a few steps, heard the click of a rotary electric switch. Harsh light came with the click, so bright that Nick had to screw his eyes shut, tears instantly welling up in the corners.

“Look, Mr Sayre. Look at your most useful work.”

Nick slowly opened his eyes. At first all he could see was a naked, very bright electric globe swinging directly above his head. Blinking to clear the tears, he looked to one side. Dorrance was there, leaning against a concrete wall. He smiled and pointed to the other side, his hand held close against his chest, fist clenched, index finger extended.

Nick rolled his head and then recoiled, straining against the ropes that bound his ankles, thighs and wrists to a steel operating table with raised rails.

The creature from the case was right next to him. No longer in the case, but stretched out on an adjacent table ten inches lower than Nick’s. It was not tied up. There was a red rubber tube running from one of Nick’s wrists to a metal stand next to the creature’s head. The tube ended an inch above the monster’s slightly open mouth. Blood was dripping from the tube, small dark blobs falling in between its jet black teeth.

Nick’s blood.

Nick struggled furiously for another second, panic building in every muscle. The ropes did not give at all and the tube was not dislodged. Then, his strength exhausted, he stopped.

“You need not be concerned, Mr Nicholas Sayre,” said Dorrance. He moved around to look at the creature, gently tapping Nick’s slippered feet as he passed. “I am taking only a pint. This will all just be a nightmare in the morning, half remembered, with a dozen men swearing to your conspicuous consumption of brandy.”

As he spoke, the light above him suddenly flared into white-hot brilliance. Then, with a bang, the bulb exploded into powder and the room went dark. Nick blinked, the after-image of the filament burning a white line across the room. But even with that, he could see another light. Two violet sparks that were faint at first but became brighter and more intense.

Nick recognised them instantly as the creature’s eyes. At the same time, he smelled a sudden acrid odour, which got stronger and stronger, coating the back of his mouth and making his nostrils burn. A metallic stench that he knew only too well.

The smell of Free Magic.

The violet eyes moved suddenly, jerking up. Nick felt the rubber hose suddenly pulled from his wrist and the wet sensation of blood dripping down his hand.

He still couldn’t see anything save the creature’s eyes. They moved again, very quickly, as the thing stood up and crossed the room. It ignored Nick, though he struggled violently against his bonds as it went past. He couldn’t see what happened next, but something…or someone…was hurled against his table, the impact rocking it almost to the point of toppling over.

“No!” shouted Dorrance. “Don’t go out! I’ll bring you blood! Whatever kind you need—”

There was a tearing sound and flickering light suddenly filled the room. Nick saw the creature silhouetted in the doorway, holding the heavy door it had just ripped from its steel hinges. It threw this aside and strode out into the corridor, lifting its head back to emit a hissing shriek that was so high-pitched it made Nick’s ears ring.

Dorrance staggered after it for a moment, then returned and flung open a cabinet on the wall. As he picked up the telephone handset inside, the lights in the corridor fizzed and went out.

Nick heard the dial spin three times. Then Dorrance swore and tapped the receiver before dialling again. This time the phone worked and he spoke very quickly.

“Hello? Lackridge? Can you hear me? Yes…ignore the crackle. Is Hodgeman there? Tell him ‘Situation Dora’. All the fire doors must be barred and the exit grilles activated. No, tell him now…‘Dora’…Yes, yes. It worked, all too well. She’s completely active and I heard Her clearly for the first time, speaking directly into my head, not as a dreaming voice. Sayre’s blood was too rich and there’s something wrong with it. She needs to dilute it with normal blood…What? Active! Running around! Of course you’re in danger! She doesn’t care whose blood…We need to keep Her in the tunnels; then I’ll find someone…one of the servants. Just get on with it!”

Nick kept silent, but he remembered the dagger at his hip. If he could bend his hand back and reach it, he might be able to unsheathe it enough to work the rope against the blade. If he didn’t bleed to death first.

“So, Mr Sayre,” said Dorrance in the darkness. “Why would your blood be different from that of any other bearer of the Charter Mark? It causes me some distress to think I have given Her the wrong sort. Not to mention the difficulty that now arises from Her desire to wash Her drink down.”

“I don’t know,” Nick whispered after a moment’s hesitation. He’d thought of pretending to be unconscious, but Dorrance would certainly test that.

In the distance, electric bells began a harsh, insistent clangour. At first none sounded in the corridor outside, then one stuttered into life. At the same time, the light beyond the door flickered on, off, and on again, before giving up in a shower of sparks that plunged the room back into total darkness.

Something touched Nick’s feet. He flinched, taking off some skin against the ropes. A few seconds later there was a click near his head, a whiff of paraffin; and a four-inch flame suddenly shed some light on the scene. Dorrance lifted his cigarette lighter and set it on a head-high shelf, still burning.

He took a bandage from the same shelf and started to wind it around Nick’s wrist.

“Waste not, want not,” said Dorrance. “Even if your blood is tainted, it has succeeded beyond my dearest hopes. I have long dreamed of waking Her.”

“It, you mean,” croaked Nick.

Dorrance tied off the bandage, then suddenly slapped Nick’s face hard with the back of his hand.

“You are not worthy to speak of Her! She is a goddess! A goddess! She should never have been sent away! My father was a fool! Fortunately I am not!”

Nick chose silence once more and waited for another blow. But it didn’t come. Dorrance took a deep breath, then bent under the table. Nick craned his head to see what he was doing but could hear only the rattle of metal on metal.

The man emerged holding two sets of old-style handcuffs, the kind whose cuffs were screwed in rather than key locked. He quickly handcuffed Nick’s left wrist to the metal rail of the bed, then did the same with the second set to his right wrist.

“It has been politic to play the disbeliever about your Charter Magic,” he said as he screwed the handcuffs tight. “But She has told me different in my dreams, and if She can rise so far from the Wall, perhaps your magic will also serve you…and ropes do burn or fray so easily. Rest here, young Nicholas. My mistress may soon need a second drink, whether the taste disagrees with Her or not.”

After shaking the handcuffs to make sure they were secure, Dorrance picked up his still-burning cigarette lighter and left, muttering something to himself that Nick couldn’t quite hear. It didn’t sound entirely sane, but Nick didn’t need to hear bizarre mumblings to know that Dorrance was neither the harmless eccentric of his public image or the cunning spymaster of his secret identity. He was a madman in league with a Free Magic creature.

As soon as Dorrance had gone, Nick tested the handcuffs, straining against them. But he couldn’t move his hands more than a few inches off the table, certainly not far enough to reach the screws. However, he could reach the pommel of his dagger with the tips of three fingers. After a few failed attempts, he managed to get the blade out, and by rolling his body, he sliced through the rope on his left wrist, cutting himself slightly in the process.

He was trying to move his left ankle up towards his hand when he heard the first distant gunshots and screams. There were more, but they got fainter and fainter, lending hope that the creature was moving further away.

Not that it made much difference, Nick thought as he rattled his handcuffs in frustration. He couldn’t get free by himself. He would have to work out a plan to get Dorrance to at least uncuff him when he returned. Then Nick might be able to surprise him. If he did return. Until then, Nick decided, he should try to rest and gather his strength. As much as the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream would let him rest, immobilised on a steel operating table in a secret underground facility run by a lunatic, with a totally inimical creature on the loose.

He lay in silence for what he estimated was somewhere between fifteen minutes and an hour, though he was totally unable to judge the passage of time when he was in the dark and so wound up with tension. In that time, every noise seemed loud and significant, and made him twist and tilt his head, as if by moving his ears he could better capture and identify each sound.

There was silence for a while, or near enough to it. Then he heard more gunshots but without the screams. The shots were repeated a few seconds later, louder and closer and were followed by the slam and echo of metal doors and then hurrying footsteps. Of more than one person.

“Help!” cried Nick. “Help! I’m tied up in here!”

He figured it was worth calling out. Even fanatical Department Thirteen employees must have realised by now that Dorrance was crazy and he’d unleashed something awful upon them.

“Help!”

The footsteps came closer and a torch beam swung into the room, blinding Nick. Behind its yellow nimbus, he saw two partial silhouettes. One man standing in front of another.

“Get those shackles off and untie him,” ordered the second man. Nick recognised the voice. It was Constable Ripton. The man who shuffled ahead, allowing the light to fall on his face and side, was Professor Lackridge. A pale and trembling Lackridge, who fumbled with the screws of the handcuffs. Ripton was holding a revolver on him, but Nick doubted that was why the scientist was so scared.

“Sorry to take so long, sir,” said Ripton calmly. “Bit of a panic going on.”

Nick suddenly understood what Ripton had actually been trying to convey with his quick glances back in the guardroom. His uncle’s words ran through his head.

It is watched over quite carefully, I assure you.

“You’re not really D13, are you? You’re one of my uncle’s men?”

“Yes, sir. Indirectly. I report to Mr Foxe.”

Nick sat up as the handcuffs came off and quickly sliced through the remaining ropes. He was not entirely surprised to see the faint glimmer of Charter Marks on the blade, though they were nowhere near as bright and potent as they’d be near the Wall.

“Can you walk, sir? We need to get moving.”

Nick nodded. He felt a bit light-headed but otherwise fine, so he guessed he hadn’t lost too much blood to the creature.

“Sorry,” Lackridge blurted out as Nick slid off the table and stood up. “I never…never thought that this would happen. I never believed Dorrance, thought only to humour him…He said that it spoke to him in dreams, and if it was more awake, then…We hoped to be able to discover the secret of waking mental communication…It was—”

“Mind control is what Dorrance thought he could get from it,” Ripton said, interrupting him. He tapped his coat pocket. “I’ve got your diary here. Mind control through people’s dreams. And you just went along with whatever Dorrance wanted, you stupid sod.”

“What’s actually happening?” asked Nick. “Has it killed anyone?”

Lackridge choked out something unintelligible.

“Anyone! It’s killed almost everyone down here, and by now it’s probably upstairs killing everyone there,” said Ripton. “Guns don’t work up close to it, bullets fired further back don’t do a thing and the electric barrier grilles just went phhht when it walked up! As soon as I figured it was trying to get out, I doubled around behind it. Now I reckon we follow its path outside and then run like the clappers while it’s busy—”

“We can’t do that,” said Nick. “What about the guests? And the servants—even if they do work for D13, they can’t be abandoned.”

“There’s nothing we can do,” said Ripton. He no longer appeared so calm. “I don’t know what that thing is, but I do know that it has already killed a dozen highly trained and fully armed D13 operatives. Killed them and…and drunk their blood. Not…not something I ever want to see again…”

“I know what it is,” said Nick. “Somewhat. It is a Free Magic creature from the Old Kingdom. A source of Free Magic itself, which is why guns and electricity don’t work near it. I would have thought that bullets coming in from further away would at least hurt it though…”

“They bounced off. I saw the lead splashes on its hide…Here’s a torch. You go in front, Professor. Get your key ready.”

“We have to try to save the people upstairs,” Nick said firmly as they nervously entered the corridor, torch beams probing the darkness in both directions. “Has it definitely already got out of here?”

“I don’t know! It was through the second guardroom. The library exit might slow it more. It’s basically a revolving re-inforced concrete-and-steel slab, like a vault door. Supposed to be bombproof—”

“Is there another way up?”

“No,” said Ripton.

“Yes,” said Lackridge. He stopped and turned, the bronze key gleaming in his hand. Ripton stepped back and his finger whipped from resting outside the trigger guard to curl directly around the trigger.

“The dumbwaiter!” Lackridge blurted out. “Dorrance has a dumbwaiter from the wine cellar below us here, which goes up through his office to the pantry above.”

“What time is it?” asked Nick.

“Half eight,” said Ripton. “Or near enough.”

“The guests will be at dinner,” said Nick. “They won’t have heard what’s going on down here. If we can take the dumb-waiter to the pantry, we might be able to get everyone out of the house before the creature breaks through to the library.”

“And then what?” asked Ripton. “Talk as we go. Head for the office, Prof.”

“It’s not a Dead thing, so running water won’t do much,” said Nick as they broke into a jog. “Fire might, though…If we made a barrier of hay and set it alight, that could work. It would attract attention at least. Bring help.”

“I don’t think the sort of help we need exists around here,” said Ripton. “I’ve never been up north, but I know people in the NPRU and this is right up their alley. Things like this just don’t happen down here.”

“No, they don’t,” said Nick. “They wouldn’t have happened this time either, only Dorrance fed his creature the wrong blood.”

“I don’t understand,” Lackridge said, puffing after them. Now that they were heading for a possible exit, he had got more of a grip on himself. “I didn’t believe him…but…Dorrance thought the blood of one of you people with the Charter brand would rouse the creature a little, without danger. Then when we got you to come in for the Forwin Mill investigation, he saw you had a Charter Mark. The opportunity was too good to resist—”

“Shut up!” ordered Ripton. As Lackridge calmed down, the policeman got more tense.

“Dorrance worships the creature, but I don’t think even he wanted it this active,” snapped Nick. “I can’t explain the whole thing to you, but my blood is infused with Free Magic as well as the Charter. I guess the combination is what got the creature going so strongly…but it was too rich or something; that’s why it’s trying to dilute it with normal blood…I wonder if that means that the power it got from my blood will run out. Maybe it’ll just drop at some point…”

Lackridge shook his head, as if he still couldn’t believe what he was hearing, despite the evidence.

“It might come back for a refill from you as well,” said Ripton. “Here’s the office. You first, Professor.”

“But what if the creature’s in there?”

“That’s why you’re going first,” said Ripton. He gestured with his revolver, and when Lackridge still didn’t move, he pushed him hard with his left hand. The bulky ex-boxer rebounded from the door and stood there, his eyes glazed and jowls shivering.

“Oh, I’ll go first!” said Nick. He pushed Lackridge aside a little more gently, turned the door handle and went into Dorrance’s office. It was the room he’d been in before, with the big leather club chairs, the desk and the drinks cabinet.

“It’s empty—come on!”

Ripton locked the door after them as they entered the room, and then he slid the top and bottom bolts home.

“Thought I heard something,” he whispered. “Maybe it’s coming back. Keep your voices down.”

“Where’s the dumbwaiter?” asked Nick.

Lackridge crossed to a bookshelf and pressed a corner. The whole shelf swung out an inch, allowing Lackridge to get a grip and open it out completely. The beam of Nick’s torch revealed a square space behind it about three feet high and just as wide: a small goods elevator or dumbwaiter.

“We’ll have to go one at a time,” said Ripton. He slipped his revolver into his shoulder holster, laid his torch on the desk and dragged one of the heavy studded leather chairs against the door. “You first, Mr Sayre. I think it must have heard us, or smelled us, or something; there’s definitely movement outside—”

“Let me go!” Lackridge burst out, darting towards the elevator. He was brought up short as Ripton whirled around and kicked him behind the knee, bringing him crashing down, his fall rattling the bottles in the drinks cabinet.

Nick hesitated, then climbed into the dumbwaiter. There were two buttons on the outside frame of the elevator, one marked with an up arrow and one with a down; but as he expected, neither did anything. However, there was a hatch in the ceiling, which when pushed open revealed a vertical shaft and some heavily greased cables. The shaft was walled with old yellow bricks, and some had been removed every few feet to make irregular, but usable, hand—and footholds.

Nick ducked his head out and said, “It’s electric, not working. We’ll have to climb the—”

His voice was drowned out as the metal office door suddenly rang like a bell and the middle of it bowed in, struck with tremendous force from the other side.

“Fire!” Nick shouted as he jumped out of the elevator. “Start a fire against the door!”

He rushed to the drinks cabinet and ripped it open as the creature struck the door again. This second blow sheared the top bolt and bent the top half of the door over and a dark shape with glowing violet eyes could be seen beyond the doorway. At the same time, Ripton’s torch shone intensely bright for a second, then went out forever.

The remaining torch, left in the elevator, continued to shine erratically. Nick frantically threw whisky and gin bottles at the base of the door, and Ripton struck a match on the chair leg, swearing as it burst into splinters instead of flame. Then his second match flared and he flicked it across to the alcohol-soaked chair, and there was a blue flash and a ball of flame exploded around the door, searing off both Ripton’s and Nick’s eyebrows.

The creature made a horrid gargling, drowning sound and backed away. Nick and Ripton retreated to the wall and hunched down to try to get below the smoke, which was already filling the room. Lackridge was still slumped on the floor, not moving, the smoke twirling and curling over his back.

“Go!” Ripton coughed, gesturing with his thumb at the dumbwaiter.

“What…about…ridge?”

“Leave him!”

“You go!”

Ripton shook his head, but when Nick crawled across to Lackridge, Ripton climbed into the dumbwaiter. The professor was a dead weight, too heavy for Nick to move without standing up. As he tried again, an unopened bottle exploded behind him, showering the back of his neck with hot glass. The smoke was getting thicker with every second, and the heat more intense.

“Get up!” Nick coughed. “You’ll die here!”

Lackridge didn’t move.

Flames licked at Nick’s back and he smelled burning hair. He could do nothing more for the professor. He had only reduced his own chances of survival. Cradling his arms around his head, Nick dived into the dumbwaiter.

He had hoped for clean air there, but it was no better. The elevator shaft was acting as a chimney, sucking up the smoke. Nick felt his throat and lungs closing up and his arms and legs growing weaker. He thrust himself through the hatch, climbed on to the roof of the dumbwaiter and felt about for the hatch cover, slapping it down in the hope that this might stop some of the smoke. Then, coughing and spitting, he found the first missing bricks and began to climb.

He could hear Ripton somewhere up above him, coughing and swearing. But Nick wasn’t listening for Ripton. All his senses were attuned to what might be happening lower down. Would the creature come through the fire and swarm up the shaft?

The smoke did begin to thin a little as Nick climbed, but it was still thick enough for him to smash his head into Ripton’s boots after he had climbed up about forty feet. The sudden shout it provoked confirmed that Ripton had been thinking about where the creature was as well.

“Sorry!” Nick gasped. “I don’t think it’s following us.”

“There’s a door here. I’m standing on the edge of it, but I can’t slide the bloody thing—Got it!”

Light spilt into the shaft as smoke wafted out of it. Hard white gaslight. Ripton stepped through, then turned to help Nick pull himself up and over.

They were in a long whitewashed room lined from floor to ceiling with shelves and shelves of packaged food of all varieties. Tins and boxes and packets and sacks and bottles and puncheons and jars.

There was a door at the other end. It was open and a white-clad cook’s assistant was staring at them open-mouthed.

“Fire!” shouted Nick, waving his arms to clear the smoke that was billowing out fast from behind him. He started to walk forwards, continuing to half shout, his voice raspy and dulled by smoke. “Fire in the cellars! Everyone needs to get out, to the—Which field is closest, with hay?”

“The home meadow,” croaked Ripton. He cleared his throat and tried again. “The home meadow.”

“Tell the staff to evacuate the house and assemble on the home meadow,” Nick ordered in his most commanding manner. “I will tell the guests.”

“Yes, sir!” stammered the cook’s assistant. There was still a lot of smoke coming out, even though Ripton had managed to close the door to the dumbwaiter. “Cook will be angry!”

“Hurry up!” said Nick. He strode past the assistant and along a short corridor, to find himself in the main kitchen, where half a dozen immaculately white-clad men were engaged in an orderly but complex dance around a number of counters and stove tops, directed by the rapid snap of commands from a small, thin man with the tallest and whitest hat.

“Fire!” roared Nick. “Get out to the home meadow! Fire!”

He repeated this as he strode through the kitchen and out the swinging doors immediately after a waiter who showed the excellence of his training by hardly looking behind him for more than a second.

As Nick had thought, the dinner guests were making so much noise of their own that they would never have heard any kind of commotion deep in the earth under their feet. Even when he burst out of the servants’ corridor and jumped on to an empty chair near the head of the table that was probably his, only five or six of the forty guests looked around.

Then Ripton fired two rapid shots into the ceiling.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I do beg your pardon!” shouted Nick. “There is a fire in the house! Please get up at once and follow Mr Ripton here to the home meadow!”

Silence met this announcement for perhaps half a second; then Nick was assaulted with questions, comments and laughter. It was such a babble that he could hardly make out any one coherent stream of words; but clearly half the guests thought this was some game of Dorrance’s; a quarter of them wanted to go and get their jewels, favourite coats or lapdogs; and the last quarter intended to keep eating and drinking whether the house burned down around them or not.

“This isn’t a joke!” Nick screamed, his voice barely penetrating the hubbub. “If you don’t go now, you’ll be dead in fifteen minutes! Men have already died!”

Perhaps ten of the guests heard him. Six of them pushed their chairs back and stood. Their movement caused a momentary lull and Nick tried again.

“I’m Nicholas Sayre,” he said, pointing at his burnt hair and blackened dress shirt, and his bloodied cuffs. “The Chief Minister’s nephew. I am not playing games for Dorrance. Look at me, will you! Get out now or you will die here!”

He jumped down as merry pandemonium turned into panic, and almost knocked down the butler, who had been standing by to either assist or restrain him; Nick couldn’t be sure which.

“You’re D13, right?” he asked the imposing figure. “There’s been an accident downstairs. There is a fire, but there’s an…animal…loose. Like a tiger, but much stronger, fiercer. No door can hold it. We need to get everyone out on the home meadow and get them building a ring of hay. Make it about fifty yards in diameter, and we’ll gather in the middle and set it alight to keep the animal out. You understand?”

“I believe I do, sir,” said the butler, with a low bow and a slight glance at Ripton, who nodded. The butler then turned to look at the footmen, who stood impassively against the wall as guests ran past them, some of them screaming, some giggling, but most fearful and silent. He tuned his voice to a penetrating pitch and said, “James, Erik, Lancel, Benjamin! You will lead the guests to the home meadow. Lukas, Ned, Luther, Zekall! You will alert Mrs Krane, Mr Rowntree, Mr Gowing and Miss Greyne, to have all their staff immediately go to the home meadow. You will accompany them. Patrick, go and ring the dinner gong for the next three minutes without stopping, then run to the home meadow.”

“Good!” snapped Nick. “Don’t let anyone stay behind, and if you can take any bottles of paraffin or white spirits out to the meadow, do so! Ripton, lead the way to the library.”

“No, sir,” said Ripton. “My job’s to get you out of here. Come on!”

“We can bar the doors! What the—”

Nick felt himself suddenly restrained by a bear hug around his arms and chest. He tried to throw himself forwards but couldn’t move whoever had picked him up. He kicked back but was held off the ground, his feet uselessly pounding the air.

“Sorry, sir,” said Ripton, edging well back so he couldn’t be kicked. “Orders. Take him out to the meadow, Llew.”

Nick snapped his head back, hoping to strike his captor’s nose, but whoever held him was not only extremely big and strong but also a practised wrestler. Nick craned around and saw he was in the grip of a very tall and broad footman, one he had noticed when he had first arrived, polishing a suit of armour in the entrance hall that, though man-sized, came up only to his shoulder.

“Nay, you shan’t escape my clutch, Master,” said Llew, striding out of the dining room like a determined child with a doll. “Won the belt at Applethwick Fair seven times for the wrestling, I have. You get comfortable and rest. It baint far to the home meadow.”

Nick pretended to relax as they joined the column of people going through the main doors and out across the gravelled drive and lawn. It was still quite light and a harvest moon was rising, big and kind and golden. Many of the people slowed down as the sudden hysteria of Nick’s warning ebbed. It was a beautiful night and the home meadow looked rustic and inviting, with the haycocks still standing, the work of spreading the hay into a defensive ring not yet begun, though the butler was already directing servants to the task.

Halfway across the lawn, Nick suddenly arched his back and tried to twist sideways and out of Llew’s grip, but to no avail. The big man just laughed.

The lawn and the meadow were separated by a fence in a ditch, or ha-ha, so as not to spoil the view. Most of the guests and staff were crossing this on a narrow mathematical bridge that supposedly featured no nails or screws, but Llew simply climbed down. They were halfway up the other side when there was a sudden, awful screech behind them, a shrill howl that came from no human throat or any animal the Ancelstierrans had ever heard.

“Let me go!” Nick ordered. He couldn’t see what was happening, save that the people in front had suddenly started running, many of them off in random directions, not to what he hoped would be safety. If they could get the hay spread quickly enough and get it alight…

“Too late to go back now, sir,” said Ripton. “Let him go, Llew! Run!”

Nick looked over his shoulder for a second as they ran the last hundred yards to the centre of the meadow. Smoke was pouring out of one wing of the house, forming a thick, puffy worm that reached up to the sky, black and horrid, with red light flickering at its base. But that was not what held his attention.

The creature was standing on the steps of the house, its head bent over a human victim it held carelessly under one arm. Even from a distance, Nick knew it was drinking blood.

There were people running behind Nick, but not many; and while they might have been dawdling seconds before, they were sprinting now. For a moment Nick hoped that everyone had got out of the house. Then he saw movement behind the creature. A man casually walked outside to stand next to it. The creature turned to him and Nick felt the grip of horror as he expected to see it snatch the person up. But it didn’t. The creature returned to its current victim and the man stood by its side.

“Dorrance,” said Ripton. He drew his revolver, rested the barrel on his left forearm and aimed for a moment, before holstering the weapon again. “Too far. I’ll wait till the bastard’s closer.”

“Don’t worry about Dorrance for the moment,” said Nick. He looked around. The guests were all clustered together in the centre of the notional fifty-yard-diameter circle, and only the servants were spreading hay, under the direction of the butler. Nick shook his head and walked over to the guests. They surged towards him in turn, once again all speaking at the same time.

“I demand to know—”

“What is going on?”

“Is that…that animal really—”

“Clearly this is not properly—”

“This is an outrage! Who is respons—”

“Shut up!” roared Nick. “Shut up! That animal is from the Old Kingdom! It will kill all of us if we don’t keep it out with fire, which is why everybody needs to start spreading hay in a ring! Hurry!”

Without waiting to see their response, Nick ran to the nearest haycock and tore off a huge armful of hay and ran to add it to the circle. When he looked up, some of the guests were helping the servants, but most were still bickering and complaining.

He looked across at the house. The creature was no longer on the steps. There was a body sprawled there, but Dorrance had vanished as well.

“Start pouring the paraffin!” shouted Nick. “Get more hay on the ring! It’s coming!”

The butler and some of the footmen began to run around the circle, spraying white petroleum spirit out of four-gallon tins.

“Anyone with matches or a cigarette lighter, stand by the ring!” yelled Nick. He couldn’t see the creature, but his forehead was beginning to throb, and when he pulled his dagger out an inch, the Charter Marks were starting to glow.

Two people suddenly jumped the hay and ran across the meadow, heading for the drive and the front gate. A young man and woman, the woman throwing aside her shoes as she ran. She was the one who had come to his door, Nick saw. Tesrya, as she had called herself.

“Come back!” shouted Nick. “Come back—”

His voice fell away as a tall, strange shape emerged from the sunken ditch of the ha-ha, its shadow slinking ahead. Its arms looked impossibly long in the twilight and its legs had three joints, not two. It began to lope slowly after the running couple, and for a brief instant Nick thought perhaps they might have a chance.

Then the creature lowered its head. Its legs stretched; the lope became a run and then a blurring sprint that caught it up with the man and woman in a matter of seconds. It knocked them down with its clubbed hands as it overshot them, turning to come back slowly as they flopped about on the ground like fresh-caught fish.

Tesrya was screaming, but the screams stopped abruptly as the creature bent over her.

Nick looked away and saw a patch of tall yellow flowers near his feet. Corn daisies, fooled into opening by the bright moonlight.

…wrapped in three chains. One of silver, one of lead and one made from braided daisies…

“Ripton!”

“Yes, sir!”

Nick jumped as Ripton answered from slightly behind him and to his left.

“Get anyone who can make flower chains braiding these daisies, and those poppies over there too. The maids might know how.”

“What?”

“I know what it sounds like, but there’s a chance that thing can be restrained with chains made from flowers.”

“But…”

“The Old Kingdom. Magic. Just make the chains!”

“I knows the braiding of flowers,” Llew said, bending down to gently pick a daisy in his huge hand. “As does my kin here, my nieces Ellyn and Alys, who are chambermaids and will have needle and thread in their apron pockets.”

“Get to it then, please,” said Nick. He looked across at where the young couple had fallen. The creature had been there only seconds ago, but now it was gone. “Damn! Anyone see where it went?”

“No,” snapped Ripton. He spun around on the spot as he tried to scan the whole area outside the defensive circle.

“Light the hay! Light the hay! Quickly!”

Ripton struggled with his matches, striking them on his heel, but others were quicker. Guests with platinum and gold cigarette lighters flicked them open and on and held them to the hay; kitchen staff struck long, heavy-headed matches and threw them; and one old buffer wound and released a clockwork cigar fire starter, an affectation that had finally come into its own.

Accelerated by paraffin, brandy and table polish, the ring of hay burst into flames. But not everywhere. While the fire leapt high and smoke coiled towards the moon over most of the ring, one segment about ten feet long remained stubbornly dark, dank and unlit. The meadow was sunken there, and wet, and the paraffin had not been spread evenly, pooling in a hole.

“There it is!”

The creature came out of the shadow of the oaks near the drive. Its strangely jointed legs propelled it across the meadow in a sprint that would have let it run down a leopard. It moved impossibly, horribly fast, coming around the outside of the ring. Nick and Ripton started to run too, even though they knew they had no chance of beating the creature.

It would be at the gap in seconds. Only one person was close enough to do anything—a kitchen maid running with a lit taper clutched in her right hand, her left holding up her apron.

The creature was far faster, but it had further to go. It accelerated again, becoming a blur of movement.

Everyone within the ring watched the race, all of them desperately hoping that the fire would simply spread of its own accord, all of them wishing that this fatal hole in their shield of fire would not depend upon a young woman, an easily extinguished taper and an apron that was too long for its wearer.

Six feet from the edge of the hay, the apron slipped just enough for the girl to trip over the hem. She staggered, tried to recover her balance and fell, the taper dropping from her hand.

Though she must have been shocked and bruised by the fall, the maid did not lie there. Even as the creature bunched its muscles for the last dash to the gap, the young woman picked up the still-burning taper and threw it the last few feet into the centre of the dark section.

It caught instantly, fed by a pool of paraffin that had collected in the dip in the ground. Blue fire flashed over the hay and flames licked up towards the yellow moon.

The creature shrieked in frustration, its hooked heels throwing up great clods of grass and soil as it checked its headlong rush. For a moment it looked as if it might try to jump the fire, but instead it turned and loped back to the ha-ha, disappearing out of sight.

Nick and Ripton stopped and bent over double, resting their hands on their knees, panting as they tried to recover from their desperate sprint.

“It doesn’t like fire,” Ripton coughed out after a minute. “But we haven’t got enough hay to keep this circle going for more than an hour or so. What happens then?”

“I don’t know,” said Nick. He was acutely aware of his ignorance. None of this would be happening if the creature hadn’t drunk his blood. His blood, pumping furiously around his body that very second but a mystery to him. He knew nothing about its peculiar properties. He didn’t even know what it could do, or why it had been so strong that the creature needed to dilute it with the blood of others.

“Can you do any of that Old Kingdom magic the Scouts talk about?”

“No,” said Nick. “I…I’m rather useless, I’m afraid. I’ve been planning to go to the Old Kingdom…to learn about, well, a lot of things. But I haven’t managed to get there yet.”

“So we’re pretty well stuffed,” said Ripton. “When the fire burns down, that thing will just waltz in here and kill us all.”

“We might get help,” said Nick.

Ripton snorted. “Not the help we need. I told you. Bullets don’t hurt it. I doubt even an artillery shell would do anything, if a gunner could hit something moving that fast.”

“Keep your voice down,” Nick muttered. Most of the people inside the ring were huddled right in the centre, as much to get away from the drifting smoke of the fires as for the psychological ease of being further away from the creature. But a knot of half a dozen guests and servants was only a dozen yards away, the servants helping the kitchen maid up and the guests getting in the way. “I meant Old Kingdom help. I sent a message with Malthan. A telegram for him to send to some people who can get a message to the Old Kingdom quickly.”

Ripton bent his head and mumbled something.

“What? What did you say?”

“Malthan never made it past the village,” Ripton muttered. “I handed him over to two of Hodgeman’s particular pals at the crossroads. Orders. I had to do it, to maintain my cover.”

Nick was silent, his thoughts on the sad, frightened, greedy little man who was now probably dead in a ditch not too many miles away.

“Hodgeman said you’d never follow up what happened to Malthan,” said Ripton. “He said your sort never did. You were just throwing your weight around, he said.”

“I would have checked,” said Nick. “I would have left no stone unturned. Believe me.”

He looked around at the ring of fire. Sections of it were already dying down, generating lots of smoke but little flame. If Malthan had managed to send the telegram six or more hours ago, there might have been a slim chance that the Abhorsen…or Lirael…or somebody competent to deal with the creature would have been able to get there before they ran out of things to burn.

“Hodgeman’s dead now, anyway. He was one of the first that thing got.”

“I sent another message,” said Nick. “I bribed Danjers’s valet to go down to the village and send a telegram.”

“Nowhere to send one from there,” said Ripton. “Planned that way, of course. D13 keeping control of communications. The closest telephone would be at Colonel Wrale’s house and that’s ten miles away.”

“I don’t suppose he would have managed it anyway—”

Nick broke off and peered at the closer group of people and then at the central muddle, wiping his eyes as a tendril of smoke wafted across.

“Where is Danjers? I don’t remember seeing him at the dinner table and he’s pretty hard to miss. What’s the butler’s name again?”

“Whitecrake,” said Ripton, but Nick was already striding over to the butler who was issuing orders to his footmen, who in turn were busy feeding the fires with more straw.

“Whitecrake!” Nick called before he had closed the distance between them. “Where is Mr Danjers?”