“I’m not sure,” said Sam. He pointed north, where the ground rose up to a low hill, the thorn trees giving way to a field that once must have been cultivated, though it was now home to weeds and saplings. “We can take a look from that rise. We have to head roughly northwest anyway.”
They did not look back as they left what had become a funerary ground. Lirael tried to look everywhere else, her sight and sense of Death alert for any slight indication of the Dead. The Dog loped along next to her, and Sam walked to her left, a few steps behind.
They followed the remnants of a low stone wall up the hill. Once it would have separated two fields, and there might have been sheep on the higher pasture and crops below. But that was long ago and the wall had not been mended for decades. Somewhere, less than a league or so away, there would be a ruined farmhouse, ruined yards, a choked well. The telltale signs that people had once lived there and had not fared well.
From their high point they could see the Long Cliffs stretching out to the east and west, and the undulating hills of the plateau. They could see the Ratterlin stretching from north to south, and the plume of the waterfall. Abhorsen’s House was hidden by the hills, but the tops of the fog banks that still surrounded it were eerily visible.
Several hundred years ago, before Kerrigor’s rise, they would also have seen farms and villages and cultivated fields. Now, even twenty years after King Touchstone’s Restoration, this part of the Kingdom was still largely deserted. Small forests had joined to become larger ones, single trees had become small forests, and drained marshes had returned happily to swamps. There were villages out there somewhere, Lirael knew, but none she could see. They were few and far between, because just a handful of Charter Stones had been replaced or restored. Only Charter Mages of the royal line could make or mend a Charter Stone – though the blood of any Charter Mage could break a normal stone. Too many Charter Stones had been broken in the two hundred years of the Interregnum for even twenty years of hard work to fix.
“It’s at least two, maybe three days’ solid march to Edge,” said Sam, pointing nor-norwest. “The Red Lake is behind those mountains. Which we pass to the south, I’m glad to say.”
Lirael shielded her eyes against the sun with her hand and squinted. She could just make out the peaks of a distant mountain range.
“We may as well get started then,” she said. Still shading her eyes, she gradually turned a full circle, looking up into the sky. It was a beautiful, clear blue, but Lirael knew that all too soon she would see telltale black blots – distant flocks of Gore Crows.
“We could head for Roble’s Town first,” suggested Sam, who was also looking up at the sky. “I mean, Hedge is going to know where we are anyway soon, and we might be able to get some help in Roble’s Town. There’ll be a Guard post there.”
“No,” said Lirael thoughtfully. She could see a line of puffy, black-streaked clouds far to the north and it had given her an idea. “We’d just be getting other people into trouble. Besides, I think I know how to get rid of the Gore Crows, or hide from them at least – though it won’t be pleasant. We’ll try it a bit later on. Closer to nightfall.”
“What do you plan, Mistress?” asked the Dog. She had collapsed near Lirael’s feet, her tongue lolling out as she panted to cool down after the climb. This was a difficult task since the sky was clear and the day was getting hotter and hotter as the sun climbed.
“We’ll whistle down those rain clouds,” replied Lirael, pointing at the distant cushion of dark cloud. “Good heavy rain and wind will blow away the Gore Crows, make us hard to find and cover our tracks as well. What do you think?”
“An excellent plan!” exclaimed the Dog with approval.
“Do you think we can bring that rain down here?” asked Sam dubiously. “I reckon that cloud is about as far away as High Bridge.”
“We can try,” said Lirael. “Though there is more cloud to the west...”
Her voice trailed off as she really focused on the blacker cloud beyond the hills, close to the western mountains. Even from this far away she could sense a wrongness in it, and as she stared, she saw the sheen of lightning within the cloud.
“I guess not that cloud.”
“No,” growled the Dog, her voice very deep, rumbling in her chest. “That is where Hedge and Nicholas are digging. I fear that they may have already uncovered what they seek.”
“I’m sure Nick doesn’t know he’s doing anything bad,” said Sam quickly. “He’s a good man. He wouldn’t do anything that would hurt anyone intentionally.”
“I hope so,” said Lirael. She was wondering once again what they would do when they got there. Why did Hedge need Nicholas? What was being dug up? What was their Enemy’s ultimate plan?
“We’d better keep moving, anyway,” she said, tearing her gaze away from the distant dark cloud and its flickering lightnings to look at the rolling land to the west. “What if we follow that valley? It goes in the right direction, and there’s quite a lot of tree cover and a stream.”
“That should be practically a small river,” said Sam. “I don’t know what’s happened to the spring rains down here.”
“Weather can be worked two ways,” said the Dog absently. She was still looking towards the mountains. “It may be no accident that the rain clouds hug the north. It would be good to bring them south for several reasons. I would like it even more if we could stop that lightning storm.”
“I guess we could try,” said Sam doubtfully, but the Dog shook her head.
“That storm would not answer to any weather magic,” she said. “There is too much lightning and that confirms a fear I had hoped to lay to rest. I had not thought they would find it so quickly, or that it could be so easily untombed. I should have known. Astarael does not lightly tread the earth, and a Ferenk released already...”
“What is it?” asked Lirael nervously.
“The thing that Hedge is digging up,” said the Dog. “I will tell you more when needs must. I do not wish to fill your bones with fear, or tell ancient tales for no purpose. There are still several possible explanations and ancient safeguards that might yet hold even if the worst is true. But we must hurry!”
With that, the Dog leapt up and shot off down the hill, grinning as she zigzagged around white-barked saplings with silver-green leaves and shot over yet another ruined stone wall.
Lirael and Sam looked at each other and then at the lightning storm.
“I wish she wouldn’t do that,” complained Lirael, who had opened her mouth to ask another question. Then she went down after the Dog, at a considerably slower pace. Magical dogs might not tire, but Lirael was already very weary. It would be a long and exhausting afternoon, if no worse, for there was always the chance the Gore Crows would find them.
“What have you done, Nick?” whispered Sam. Then he followed Lirael, already pursing his lips and thinking about the Charter marks that would be needed to shunt a rain cloud two hundred miles across the sky.
They walked steadily all afternoon, with only short breaks, following a stream that flowed through a shallow valley between two roughly parallel lines of hills. The valley was lightly wooded, the shade saving them from the sun, which Lirael was finding particularly troubling. She was already sunburnt a little on the nose and cheekbones, and had neither the time nor the energy to soothe her skin with a spell. This was also a niggling reminder of the differences that had plagued her all her life. Proper Clayr were brown skinned and they never burnt – exposure to sun simply made them darker.
By the time the sun had begun its slow fall behind the western mountains, only the Dog was still moving with any grace. Lirael and Sam had been awake for nearly eighteen hours, most of it climbing up the Long Cliffs or walking. They were stumbling and falling asleep on their feet, no matter how they tried to stay alert. Finally Lirael decided that they had to rest and they would stop as soon as they saw somewhere defensible, preferably with running water on at least one side.