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“Let’s go on an adventure,” Nick said.
“What are you doing,” Sam asked, “with my breakfast tray?”
Nick slouched against the door frame with the sly grin he used to wear to talk about the girls he’d met in the pub near school. “Ran into your maid on the way here. Said I could help her out with this.”
Sam could see it: Liana flipping blond curls over her shoulder and saying that if Nick were really interested in helping…though Sam would have thought Nick preferred dark hair now.
“Not that I’m taking your servants away from their duties,” Nick said. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He handed the breakfast tray to Sam and used his moment of distraction to get into Sam’s room and throw open the shutters. “So—adventure?”
“Don’t you need to spend time with Lirael?” Sam asked, trying for casual. He had just gotten back to the castle the day before, but he had seen the way they stood close to each other. Seen, and tried not to remember.
“She left again last night,” Nick said. “Some Dead creature or other in Highgate.”
“Oh.” Sam sat set the tray down on the bed and sat awkwardly on the rumpled covers. At school it had been normal to have Nick in his rooms at all hours, but now his presence made it hard to for Sam to remember what he usually did with his hands and feet. “What did you have in mind?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Something adventurous.” Nick flopped down on the other side of the tray, long body spread across Sam’s bed, and snagged a grilled tomato. “Any villainous creatures we can go fight?”
“Definitely not.” There were plenty of villainous creatures around, but Nick had had his fill of that already, in Sam’s opinion.
“Something else, then.” Nick bit into his second piece of bacon and leaned forward, eyes bright—as if he needed to convince Sam of this, as if Sam wouldn’t leap at the chance to take him away from the castle. “Don’t tell me you don’t want a break from those Charter Stones of yours. We could go riding. Rescue some maidens. Subdue some brigands. Find some hidden treasure.”
“You are aware we don’t actually live in a fairy story, right?” Sam said.
“Though on second thought, maybe not the part with the brigands,” Nick went on, paying no attention to Sam. He leaned back, and Sam watched his fingers work at the shell of a hard-boiled egg. “Maybe just some very minor brigands. The kind we could defeat handily and then stand around looking triumphant while the local village folk applauded our bravery.”
What Sam should really do was go back to the southern wilds and repair more of the Charter Stones, since no one else’s blood seemed to work as well at it. But he had just come back from six weeks in the south. No one would begrudge him a few days to show Nick around the Kingdom.
“Feel like some boating?” he asked, and Nick looked up, hopeful. “As long as you don’t mind the lack of brigands.”
“I can live with that,” Nick said, and took the last piece of bacon.
***
After that Sam had to get dressed so that he could get an actual breakfast, one that Nick hadn’t eaten most of, and pack, and order supplies, and, oh yes, convince his father to let them borrow one of the royal boats for a few days.
“I really should get some new things,” Nick said, twirling his glasses around his finger. “It’s only a matter of time before this magic of yours eats away at everything I brought from home.”
“This magic of ours, you mean,” Sam said as he shrugged into a clean tunic.
“Also, I’m hopelessly out of style,” Nick said. Sam could feel Nick’s gaze on him as he laced up the tunic’s sleeves, and he tried not to let it show in his face. “These must be what everyone’s wearing, right? I mean, if the prince has them.”
He stepped suddenly closer and fingered the fabric of the tunic, which put his hand very close to Sam’s skin. Sam found that he didn’t have the breath for a reply. “You’re overestimating my status as a fashion plate,” he finally managed, in a voice that sounded almost normal.
“Oh, I’m not complimenting you; I’m complimenting your steward.” Nick looked at the fabric between his fingers as if he’d forgotten it was attached to Sam. “Yeah, I definitely need some of these.”
“I can put them in with the supply order.” Sam stood frozen for a few moments, before he remembered that he should move away. He really, really should. But Nick’s hair was just a few inches away from his face, blonder than usual in the morning sun, and he’d only have to lean forward a little bit to…
There was a knock at the door. Sam jumped away from Nick. “Yes!” he said, a little too loudly.
A footman stuck his head in the doorway. “Your pardon, highness. But the king thought you would like to know that the Abhorsen-in-waiting has returned,” he said, and Nick turned his head so fast that Sam knew he shouldn’t hold out hope for this boating trip.
***
Sam saw Lirael before Nick did, as it happened. He went to find Touchstone to ask about the boat, because he wasn’t quite willing to face the way their plans would probably change now that Lirael was back. And there she was, in the king’s private study, looking even paler than usual.
“One of the Greater Dead,” she was saying as Sam entered. Both she and Touchstone turned quickly at the sound of the door opening and relaxed when it was only him.
“Newly conjured?” Touchstone asked.
Lirael shook her head. She must have just returned, because she was still in her armor, and her breastplate had a tear in its corner where something stronger than Charter-spelled metal had cut through it. “Left over from the Destroyer, I think. It must have hidden out during the summer and emerged when it thought we’d stopped paying attention.”
“Sabriel’s been finding a lot of those in the north,” Touchstone said. “They’ve fled to all corners of the kingdom.”
Lirael just nodded. From the tired look in her eyes, Sam guessed this wasn’t news to her.
“I wonder if the Clayr might have any luck tracking them down,” Touchstone said. “It would be better if we caught them before they started picking off townsfolk.”
“I could go find out,” Lirael said, and Sam wondered if Touchstone saw how her shoulders slumped a little under the burden of another journey.
If so, the king didn’t argue with her. “You might take Nick with you,” he said. “They might be able to See something to help us understand his situation. Charter Magic still has no power over him?” he asked, looking between Lirael and Sam.
“No,” Lirael said, and Sam resented the concern in her voice before remembering that that was ridiculous.
He followed Lirael when she left, since there was no point in talking to Touchstone anymore. He caught her in the corridor, and he saw the way her eyes went tired when she looked at him: expecting him to ask something of her, readying herself to take on the burden when he did.
“How’s your hand?” he asked.
Her face relaxed a bit. “It’s good,” she said. “It’s—it’s great, actually.” She spread out the shining fingers, and Sam could see the Charter marks flowing over them.
He touched the metal, just for a moment, to make sure it felt all right. “I can fix that, if you want,” he said, with a gesture at the armor.
“Thanks.” She took her hand back.
She really did look tired. It hadn’t seemed this bad before he’d left for the south. “Nick said—you’ve been gone a lot lately?”
A shutter closed over her face. So that he wouldn’t see her complain, he guessed. “There’s been a lot going on,” she said. “But I’ve been learning a lot.”
“You could take a break sometimes,” he said. It wasn’t because he didn’t want her to take Nick to the Clayr, not really, but he still felt duplicitous as he said it.
“The Clayr will be a break,” she said, and Sam thought, as he’d started to think more often in recent months, how much they needed more people of the blood. More blood mixing—not him and Lirael, he could never, and besides, she was his half-aunt, too close—but maybe his children and Lirael’s. More bearers of the blood, and as soon as possible, to relieve the burden on all of them.
“I guess it will be,” he said.
“Nick’s still in the castle?” Lirael asked, shy hope in her face. Sam saw it and thought, with a twist of his stomach, that as soon as possible might be sooner than he wanted.
***
Sam avoided Nick for the rest of the morning. Which was to say, he went to his workshop, where everyone had the sense not to disturb him, especially since the incident where a serving boy had ended up temporarily melded to a flock of bronze birds. (His hair hadn’t quite lost its feathery look yet.)
Nick tracked him down at lunchtime, though. Sam was aware of him as soon as Nick entered the refectory, though he was careful not to look up from his plate. A few minutes later, Nick slid into the seat across from him.
“So,” he said, “I saw Lirael.”
“Mm,” Sam said, still without looking up.
Nick paused, like he was waiting for Sam to say something else. “She said the king thinks I should go see the Clayr.”
“It’s a good idea,” Sam said.
“Yeah.” Nick gripped the edges of his plate. His fingers were long and pale against the porcelain. “I thought maybe you’d want to—I mean, I know we just talked about going away—”
“What? No,” Sam said. “I mean, it’s fine. You two should go.”
“Yeah?” Nick fiddled with his fork. “It doesn’t have to be—”
“I said, it’s fine,” Sam said.
It might have come out harsher than he intended. There was another pause, Nick waiting for him to speak again. Making sure he hadn’t hurt Sam’s feelings, maybe. Sam would have looked at Nick to reassure him, but he didn’t seem able to do that, so he kept eating.
After a few minutes, he heard Nick sigh, get up, and walk away.
***
It was fine. It was—Sam had known this was going to happen. It was a good thing. He was the one who’d just been thinking about passing on bloodlines, after all.
He went back to his workroom and stayed there for the rest of the day.
It was perfect timing, really. There was something he’d been meaning to try, and it would be best if Nick weren’t anywhere near the castle when he did. He didn’t know how the Free Magic in Nick’s blood would interact with this project, but it was best not to find out, if he didn’t want to risk blowing himself up and the city along with him.
So he spent the rest of the day in his workroom putting Charter marks onto a frame of silver. If he went to bed early, it was because he was tired and needed to be well rested for the next day, not because he wanted to avoid seeing anyone.
The problem with going to bed early was that it also meant waking up before Nick and Lirael had left. Sam thought he could get to his workroom without running into either of them, but Nick called his name as Sam crossed the northwest gallery.
“Hey, Sam, wait,” Nick said when Sam didn’t respond at first. Sam pretended he hadn’t heard and walked faster.
Nick would forgive him. He’d have enough distractions on his trip. And Sam didn’t think he could control his face right then.
Through truly horrendous timing, he emerged from his workroom in search of food just as Touchstone and Ellimere were seeing the two travelers off in the great hall. He managed to duck behind a pillar before he walked right into the middle of the scene.
Nick and Lirael were in traveling clothes, packs at their sides. It made Sam think of how they had looked right after the Destroyer had been bound: the stump of Lirael’s severed hand cradled to her chest, the Free-Magic bruising on Nick’s emaciated frame. Now he saw the way Lirael wore her bells easily and the way Nick’s shoulders filled out his coat.
Nick was looking around, like he was hoping to see someone—probably Sam, which made Sam feel guilty. But every time he tried to visualize walking into their midst and bidding them a cheerful farewell, he couldn’t imagine what he would possibly say.
He went back to his workroom before they left.
There were a few final touches to put on his project, so he did some work while he waited for Nick and Lirael to be far enough away from the city that there wouldn’t be any risk of complications. Then he packed up what he needed, left word with Ellimere so she wouldn’t yell at him for running off, and rode to one of the less-used corners of the castle’s park. There, he unpacked his things, tethered his horse a safe distance away, enclosed himself in two concentric diamonds of protection, and prepared himself to create a brand-new Charter Stone.
***
It wasn’t that no one had ever created a Charter Stone before. It was just that no one had done it in thousands of years. Sam had gotten Lirael to look into the past for him, months ago when he had first come up with this idea, and he had used what she told him to put together his own plan. There was no guarantee that it would work, but he was fairly sure at this point that he could do it without making anything explode.
Fairly sure; hence the diamonds of protection.
Sam took the silver construct out of his bag. He had put hundreds of Charter marks into the metal yesterday, each one representing another long chain of marks, so that he’d be able to juggle them all in his mind for long enough for the spell to reach critical mass. Once he started, there was no stopping, or the whole spell would fall apart.
He pressed his Charter-spelled blade against his palm and let the blood spill onto the metal.
This was the easy part. He had done this dozens of times over the past few months, repairing the Charter Stones in the south that the Destroyer’s servants had broken the winter before. With the Southerlings settling there and so ignorant of magic, it was important to make the land as stable and well-protected as possible. New Stones would do even more for that.
The blood fell hot onto the silver and made the marks light up. Sam could feel them in his mind, arraying themselves and filling him with the energy that they always did. He whispered the mark that would knit his skin back together. Then he closed his eyes and delved into the Charter.
This wasn’t like normal Charter Magic. Instead of just drawing on the energy of the Charter, this Stone had to generate it. It was a hundred times larger than anything Sam had done before.
He had done most of the technical work when he’d put the marks on the silver. Now he had to use specific marks to activate specific parts of the spell in the silver in the right order and at the right times. He had to hold the chains in his mind and keep them separate, like skeins of yarn, until they were caught up at exactly the right moment and blended into the whole. He had to—
It was happening. Sam siphoned the marks carefully through his mind, feeling the building energy. It would increase slowly, slowly, until the point when it wasn’t slow at all. He could feel that point coming: hundreds of golden marks spiraling through his hands and mind, thousands, each mark connected to a thousand other marks. They pulled on the fabric of the Charter, gathering connection points and thrumming with growing energy until they could pull it free, pull it into this world. Sam kept his grip on the marks in his mind and held on as the volume increased, as the magic poured through his mind and ripped him open and tried to buck him off as it burst through—
“So, I know you’ve been avoiding me and all,” Nick said, and Sam’s eyes popped open. The energy of the spell kept churning through his mind and body as he watched Nick approach, jaunty in a way that was slightly forced. “But I was hoping that maybe you didn’t mean that, so…”
The spell lurched and tried to leap out of Sam’s control. “Go,” he managed to gasp out, “away,” golden marks pouring out of his mouth with the words. He tried to grasp after them, replace them, keep them from breaking the chains—
“I say, are you all right?” Nick asked, and Sam watched helplessly, hands and mouth full of magic, as he stepped over not one but both of the diamonds of protection as if they weren’t there. “Ellimere said you were out here, and I thought—”
Sam made a grinding sound as he tried to hold onto the magic. It was all slipping its bonds now, marks spilling out like water from a shattered aqueduct. The force of it made Sam’s skin burn and eyes water, so that for a moment he couldn’t see anything as all his carefully linked chains left his mind in a rush.
He blinked his eyes to clear them, prepared to see all his hard work drifting into the ground. Instead he saw Nick’s face aglow.
Aglow with the white light of Free Magic that filled Sam’s nose with the acrid scent of burning. Nick looked shocked, and then he arched and threw his head back as the magic crackled around him. Sam leapt at him, ready to pull the magic away with his bare hands if possible, but a moment before he could reach him, it all left Nick’s body with a crack like a lightning bolt.
It shot into the silver construct on the ground, and Nick collapsed.
Sam rushed forward and caught him before he hit the ground. Nick’s head lolled back, and for a moment, Sam thought…
But then Nick’s eyelids fluttered. For the second time that year, Sam was confronted with the miraculous fact of Nick’s life.
“What…” Nick croaked.
“It’s okay.” Sam patted a hand frantically over Nick’s chest, checking for holes, fisting the fabric of his shirt. “You’re okay.”
“What,” Nick said again. He coughed, and Sam choked on the desire to touch his face. “What is happening to the ground?”
Sam turned to look, and Nick got to his feet. Sam took his arms away, even though he wanted to hold on harder than ever, because the silver construct was gone. In its place was a pit in the ground where Free Magic crackled in a swirling white vortex. And it was growing.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?” Nick asked.
Sam shook his head mutely.
***
Nick had a little metal mouse he activated with a Charter mark—”One of the three marks I know,” he said—to send word to Lirael. Sam didn’t have the attention to feel anything about that, because there was a vortex of Free Magic eating into the earth at his feet.
“She’s just a few towns over,” Nick was saying. “Another Dead creature. She sent me back, because she said that having me near Charter spells can make them go—“
“Stand back,” Sam croaked at him, barely getting the words out around the edges of the spell that was taking up his whole mind. A spell for closing, for dispersal, for the cessation of magic. He loosed it with a master mark and threw it at the corrosive glow.
It splashed off as if it were so much water. Sam fell back, panting.
The white light burned brighter as the pit kept growing. Maybe a different spell would be able to break through. Maybe a…
“This is my fault, isn’t it?” Nick said.
“I don’t know,” Sam said, then felt bad about being dishonest, so he said, “Yes. At least, it’s the fault of the Free Magic in your blood. Which isn’t your fault. So.”
“You can fix it, though,” Nick said. “Or Lirael can.”
Sam wasn’t at all sure about that. This wasn’t a Dead thing or a piece of metal. “Hold on. I’m going to try something else.”
This time he called up marks for cutting and invading, marks that might break through whatever protective barrier the Free Magic was creating. He cast them at the pit.
They bounced off more aggressively than the first spell, white light roaring. The force of its power was like a battering wind in their faces.
“I’ll ride for help,” Nick said as they braced themselves against it. “Or—no, I shouldn’t leave you with this.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sam said. His temples throbbed with the pulsing of the white light, and he walked back ten paces to try to shake his head clear of it. “No one will have time to get here. If we don’t stop this before it gets too large…” Actually, he wasn’t sure what would happen, but he had a feeling it would involve large-scale destruction of the kingdom. Just the kind of thing the Destroyer would have wanted from its legacy in Nick’s blood.
He had to think of something else. Something that would contain it for even a few minutes so that someone could come and help. But everything he thought of involved Charter Magic. Without that, he was just a kid with a pointy stick.
Nick’s fingers dug into his arm. “Look!”
He pointed at the sky, where a dark shape was flapping its wings and banking towards them. Sam’s heart leapt, because he knew that shape.
The barking owl landed on the ground in front of them, feathers ruffling away from the vortex. There was a glow of Charter marks as the skin peeled away, rather faster and more roughly than usual, and Lirael stood there, windblown and terrified and furious.
Sam had thought, back at the castle, that she had looked tired, drawn, overextended. There was none of that now. Her face was fierce with power.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“We don’t know,” Sam said, because it was the simplest explanation, and because anything more would feel like blaming Nick
But Nick said, “The Free Magic in my blood. It—Sam was trying to build a Charter Stone. It interfered.”
Fury displaced the terror in Lirael’s face. She didn’t say anything to them, though; just went to the edge of the pit and stood there, braced against the force that blew from it. Her hair whipped back from her face. Sam heard her speaking Charter marks, saw them slide away from the surface.
After a minute she turned around. “It’s no good,” she said, and Sam felt sick with terror. Then: “We’ll have to go in.”
“In?” Sam repeated.
“We can’t spell it from the outside,” Lirael said. “Inside, it might not be as well protected.”
“But—” Sam said.
“Do you have any better ideas?” she asked, and he didn’t. But going in would be…
Lirael turned to Nick. “I want you to take a horse and ride for the castle. Bring the king, bring any Charter Mages you can find, and if we haven’t come back out in two hours—”
“Hang on,” Nick said. “I’m going with you.”
There was a pause, and then both Lirael and Sam started talking at once.
Nick interrupted them with a shout. “Listen to me,” he said when they were quiet. His face was calm and determined as Sam had rarely seen it, blue eyes serious behind his glasses. “This is my fault. I have to help fix it.”
“But you won’t be able to—” Sam started to say, and Nick spoke over him again.
“I can’t stay behind.” Nick looked at him, really looked, and there had been times in the past when Sam had felt like meeting Nick’s eyes had taken his breath away, but never like this. “If I’m ever going to have a place in this world, I have to do this.” He looked at Lirael, and the absence of his gaze on Sam was a physical sensation. “And—and I promised the Dog.”
She looked back at him for a moment. The fury in her face softened into something else, and Sam was suddenly full of a fury of his own. He felt like he didn’t need to go into the pit to fight the Free Magic; he could crush it from right here, using nothing but a pointy stick and the force of the feeling in his chest.
“No,” Lirael said to Nick, gentle but firm. “You wouldn’t be able to help. And we need someone to go get help in case we—well.”
Nick’s hands closed into fists. “All right, then, fine,” he said, and walked away.
Sam sat it coming a split second before it happened. Nick was walking past the vortex, towards the horses, shoulders slumped in defeat—and then he broke away, running toward the pit.
“No!” Lirael shouted, and threw magic at him, but it glowed along his limbs and did nothing to stop him. He was still glowing a moment later when he jumped into the pit.
Sam sprinted toward the grinding vortex, Lirael cursing just behind him. Anger pounded in him like a pulse. Nick was an idiot; he was going to get himself killed; Sam would never forgive him—
He didn’t pause before he leapt into the crackling white.
The power flowing from the pit buffeted him, cushioning his fall even as it burned him. Hot, corrosive air touched every bit of exposed skin and got inside his lungs and made him want to wretch. Only his anger let him hold onto consciousness as he landed.
It was a little quieter at the bottom of the pit. Every breath was still charged with poison, but the light was less, even if the walls were swimming around him.
Lirael got to her feet next to him. “I’m going to kill him,” she rasped.
“Not if I get there first,” Sam said, and he didn’t care about Lirael, or Lirael and Nick, or anything that might be going on between them. He just needed to get to Nick as soon as possible.
One side of the pit was open in a tunnel. Sam and Lirael ran down it as fast as their lungs would let them in the Free Magic-charged air. The walls seemed to shift around them as they went, as if they were more magic than earth. Or maybe as if they were crumbling away.
They hadn’t run twenty yards before Sam saw Nick up ahead, a dark shape against the bright white light beyond, hand braced against the wall of the tunnel. Sam ran up to his side.
“Hard to go beyond here,” Nick said, panting. “Too much power,” and yes, Sam could feel it: the white light, battering him back. But his eyes were on Nick.
“What were you thinking?” he asked.
Nick said something that sounded like, “Couldn’t let you,” but Lirael was grabbing Sam’s arm and pulling him away.
“We have to try,” she said, and right, that was why they were here.
Lirael started sketching Charter marks in the air with the tip of her sword. Sam raised his Charter-spelled dagger beside it. This was what he was good at: analyzing the shape of a Charter spell in an instant, finding the marks that would strengthen it, and weaving them in seamlessly so that the doubled spell was much greater than any spell could have been on its own.
Their spell bloomed in the air. Lirael spoke one master mark, and Sam added two more. Gold spread over the burning white.
This time it didn’t bounce off. Lirael had been right: from the inside, the Free Magic wasn’t able to defend itself as well. There was a moment where individual marks gleamed in the air. Then white welled up alongside them and drew them in like bits of metal melting in a forge. The Free Magic roared, stronger than ever, and the three of them staggered back.
Sam felt like the skin was melting off his face. “We’re just feeding it,” he gasped. “We need to strike it hard enough to take it down.”
“Bells?” Lirael asked.
“Blood,” Nick said, from where he was doubled over, struggling to breathe, and yes, Sam didn’t know how he knew that, but blood. Lirael’s bells needed a creature to work on. The power in their blood didn’t have that limitation.
Lirael put her sword to her palm, the one that wasn’t metal and magic, and cut the skin. Sam did the same with his dagger, cutting over the faint scar from earlier that day. Blood welled up on their palms, and they pressed them together.
“That’s five,” Lirael said, and Sam knew what she meant. The five Bright Shiners who had given themselves to the bloodlines: Royal and Abhorsen and Clayr and builders of Walls and Charter Stones.
“Five will have to be enough,” he said, but she was digging in her pocket with her other hand. She pulled out a tiny clay dog statue.
“Six,” she said.
Sam felt his throat clench as he put the tiny statue of Kibeth between their palms, stinging against the edges of his skin. It wasn’t the Dog anymore, but it might lend them whatever trace of her power lingered in the world.
“And seven,” Lirael said, touching a golden Charter-made finger to the largest bell in her bandolier.
Sam stiffened and almost pulled his palm away. Astarael was the most dangerous of the bells: the Weeper, the Sorrowful. The one who would cast all listeners into Death. They hadn’t exhausted their options that thoroughly yet. But Lirael didn’t bring the bell from its pouch: she just ran her finger over the edge, so that Sam thought he might be imagining the faint hum that filled the air. She kept her finger there as Sam dipped his other hand in the mingled blood on their palms and began drawing marks in the air.
This time each individual mark buzzed under his fingers like nothing he’d felt before. They hung in the air, blood absorbed into their golden glow. He readied chains of marks in his mind, and they poured out at dizzying speeds, drawn in blood faster than his mind could move.
“Now,” he said to Lirael, and they spoke the master mark together.
The spell came together like a conflagration. The dog in their hands grew hot, and Lirael’s hand flashed on the bell. The marks burned in the air like the golden fire of the sun itself. Sam felt them pulling on his bones as they wrapped around the inferno of Free Magic and smothered it from view.
“That’s done it,” he said, sagging back.
But even as he said it, a tendril of white snaked out from behind the gold. Then another, and another, and the whole golden web exploded outward in a triumphant burst of white.
Hands on Sam, as Nick pulled him backwards. Sam was looking at the Free Magic in disbelief. “But…there’s nothing else we can try,” he said.
“There must be,” Lirael said.
But Sam had felt the amount of power that had gone into that spell. It had drawn on everything they had. And if the two of them couldn’t stop it, there was no more powerful Charter mage in the Kingdom. Maybe Sabriel—but by the time she got there, she would be facing it alone, because Sam and Lirael would be consumed by the fire that was scorching their skin and burning the inside of their lungs and making Sam want to crumple to his knees.
Then Sam heard the distant sound of singing, and he knew all was lost.
He turned his head immediately to Lirael, and she looked back, eyes wide. “Stay back,” she said. “Let me handle this.”
Sam and Nick fell back a few steps. Nick’s face was pale, washed almost white in the light of the Free Magic, but his chin was still set. Then again, he didn’t know what was coming. Sam felt a sudden full-body wave of regret that he had drawn Nick into this. If he had pulled away from Nick years ago, when he’d first had a glimmer that it would be wiser to do so, Nick would be at Sunbere right now, tanned and safe and laughing with other friends, unaware that Sam was fighting horrors in the north.
Lirael stepped forward, standing tall against the white light. Her left hand raised her sword. The right hand, the glowing Charter construct Sam had built, went for the bells.
Then Astarael’s song swelled, and the Charter blinked out.
The song slammed into them, deep and low and full of broken longing. Sam felt it lodge underneath his muscles and prevent them from moving. A chill spread through him, cold as the phantom river that lapped against his ankles, and sorrow crawled deep within him and stayed there.
No Charter. No movement. Sam was trapped in the underbelly of his thoughts: the place where he knew that the things he wanted were out of reach forever, that nothing good remained. In that place, he could not move, couldn’t twitch a fingertip or blink an eyelid or draw the shallowest breath, and he did not care.
Lirael was silhouetted in front of his unmoving gaze, frozen, as he was. Her useless metal hand hung in the air near soundless bells as Astarael, the seventh Bright Shiner, came ever closer, and their bodies slowly starved for lack of air. It would only take a minute, and then it would all be over. And maybe, Sam thought, thoughts rising like bubbles from the river of deep-flowing sorrow, maybe it would be better…
Something moved beside him.
It was just a flicker; just enough to see out of the corner of his eye. It startled him, so that he tried to turn before remembering that he couldn’t. He had thought for a moment that it was Nick. But no: it was just a lie, another wisp of hope that tried to distract him from the inevitability of the river around his ankles. All a lie. Nick and Lirael, lying together, turning away from him, leaving him to this bleakness and cold that would be over soon.
“Sam,” Nick whispered, and the sound made Sam want to gasp.
He was standing close. Closer than Sam normally let them stand. The surprise of it awoke him from the dream of complacency, so that his heart and lungs spasmed with the effort to keep him alive. His head swam in the sudden panic of airlessness.
“I think,” Nick whispered, sounding strained, “I think I can move.”
Sam wanted desperately to breathe now. He was so cold, cold and trapped, and he was going to freeze and never move again—and then a glimmer of warmth touched his hand. Nick’s fingers, stroking the back of his hand and warming it. Bringing it back to life with the aching tingle of skin long gone cold.
The warmth made the rest of the cold harder to take. Sam felt as if his entire body were screaming. But Nick’s hand was still moving. It slipped into Sam’s, palm to palm, and Nick moved to stand in front of him so that his breath warmed Sam’s face. One long shuddering breath, and then Nick leaned in to press his mouth to Sam’s.
Sam’s mouth filled with the metallic taste of Free Magic. It choked him for a moment, before it gave way to a rush of air: Nick breathing into his mouth, his own starving body gasping for it. Nick’s tongue moved against his, and heat raced into his body, displacing the chill of the river and turning flesh to fire.
Sam didn’t realize he was moving until he was cupping Nick’s head and stroking his tongue into Nick’s mouth. He could feel power flowing into him: Free Magic, but from Nick it didn’t feel acrid or corrosive. It was the warm flow of life, setting Sam aglow and making him want—
Nick moved his mouth a millimeter away from Sam’s and breathed against him for a moment. “Save her,” he whispered, and Sam felt the glow of heat vanish.
But he could still move. And—it was Lirael.
She stood frozen in front of them, fading into Death as Astarael approached and the singing grew louder. Sam wrapped his hand around Nick’s, gathered all his borrowed power and all the knowledge of his blood, and did the thing he’d been born to do: he built a wall.
He could feel the power unfurl even at a distance of ten paces, hurtling into place between Lirael and the blinding glow that was the Free Magic. It didn’t block the light or Astarael’s mournful song, but Sam felt the sudden warmth as the Charter reappeared around them and the burn of Free Magic in the air lessened.
Lirael jerked as if she’d received an electric charge. Her hands moved—both hands—to her bandolier, to the handles of Ranna and Saraneth. She unsheathed them and flipped them in a single motion.
Their tones rang out through the earth. Sam felt them wrap around him: Ranna, lulling him to sleep, and Saraneth, urging him to give up his will to the wielder, to give up and sink into the sound…
His head drooped, and he felt the corrosive power slam against his wall.
He jerked his head up. “Not those!” he shouted, the sound cutting through the ringing of the bells and the low song of Astarael. “Dyrim!”
The bells faltered as Lirael turned to look at him. Sam could see her confusion. But his veins were still full of power that should have been destructive but was not, and his hand was full of Nick’s, and he said, “Dyrim. Let her speak.”
Lirael hesitated for only a moment more before she flipped the bells back into their pouches and took the fourth bell instead. The tones of the Speaker rang out in the cavern.
The peals of the bell blended with the singing, and the singing changed. Almost like words—almost—Sam strained to pick them out. Then: “Run,” Lirael said, and Sam could understand: “Run. Run while you can,” he heard. “I have received your power. Run.”
“Run,” Lirael said, still ringing her bell, and “Run,” Sam said, and “Run,” Nick said, and they all turned and ran. Nick’s hand slipped out of Sam’s, and Sam didn’t catch it again: he needed his hands to push against the earthen walls. They scrambled along the tunnel and up the steep pitted slope as if Death itself were behind them.
The singer of Death sang again: “Run,” and then new words: “Run, and build a wall.”
Dirt was crumbling away beneath Sam’s fingers. He clawed his way to the top and threw himself over the lip of the hole. Nick was next, and the two of them hauled up Lirael and her bells and her sword. When they were all out, Sam turned to the wide mouth of the hole and started calling up Charter Magic.
Its power sprang easily to his fingertips. Sam sank into it, drawing marks from the endless flow. Then—heat on his neck.
Nick’s hand. It pressed against Sam’s skin, giving him a trickle of another kind of power that Sam struggled to grasp. It flared hot and white under his fingers as he sketched marks in the air, threatening to overpower them—but this was only a little bit of power, much less than before, and Sam was able to gain control of it, the way he’d learned to master Charter marks when he was a child.
He wove the two strands into a single spell, made of Charter Magic and Free, and cast the whole thing across the lip of the hole.
It fell in a shining curtain that spanned the hole from edge to edge and sparked golden in the night. They stared at it for a moment, waiting, and when nothing happened, Lirael took a step backward and made a sound that was suspiciously like a sob.
Sam felt rather wobbly himself. Nick slid his fingers away from his neck, and the loss of that warmth made it even harder for his knees to stay firm.
“Here,” he said, in a voice he barely recognized. “Let’s …sit. Keep watch.”
They dragged themselves twenty feet back and collapsed onto the ground. They had barely done so when the golden sparks from the makeshift wall vanished.
Sam was on his feet again in a second, Nick and Lirael just behind. There was nothing visible in that direction: just shadows on the field, which could be good or could be disastrous. They approached carefully, ready to leap back at a moment’s notice.
Except… “There’s nothing there,” Nick said, when they were close enough that there was no denying it.
Sam looked at the normal ground that just moments before had been eaten away by Free Magic. “She reversed it,” Sam said. “I didn’t know she could do that.”
“Or that she wanted to,” Lirael said. The tiredness was back in her face, though Sam knew that it only needed another disaster to disappear again. “I don’t understand what happened down there.”
“I’m not sure,” Sam said. He glanced at Nick, but Nick was looking at the ground. Sam felt cold again, as if the phantom river were still lapping at his ankles. “But I think maybe we don’t understand Free Magic as well as we thought we did.”
Lirael nodded, in a way that meant she was too tired to get into it. Which was fine, because Sam was too tired to think about it—would maybe never be able to think about some parts of it too clearly. Would be wiser not to.
“I’ll keep watch for an hour or two,” he said. “Just to make sure.”
Lirael nodded. “I’ll go back to the castle. Let them know what happened.”
Nick’s head came up at that. “I should go with you,” he said. Then, “Should—shouldn’t I?”
Lirael looked back at him for a long moment. “I don’t think you need to,” she said. “If you don’t…well. You know.” She worried at the edge of her bandolier and let her hair fall over her face. “I don’t think that was what the Dog meant, Nick.”
Sam had the sudden conviction that he shouldn’t be here right now. But before he could do anything awkward like turn and walk away, Nick made a jerky motion that was sort of a nod, and Lirael was the one who walked away.
Then it was just Sam and Nick, and Sam didn’t understand what had just happened, and he couldn’t look at Nick. He turned away, surveying the new ground that was still just ground. Nick’s hand touched his elbow.
“Hey.” Nick’s hand pressed for a moment and withdrew. Sam darted his eyes to Nick’s face, but Nick was looking down. A lock of blond hair fell across his dirt-smudged face. “I just wanted to say sorry. About before. I know that probably wasn’t the best method…”
Sam’s insides sank into something very like the hole that had been in the ground. “It worked, didn’t it?” he said, as if he could play this off as a joke.
Nick raised his eyes to Sam’s. Sam wanted to look away, but he forced himself not to. And what he saw…it wasn’t a joke to Nick, either.
Sam leaned forward and kissed him.
There was no Free Magic in it this time, but Sam’s blood reacted just as strongly. His hands slid into Nick’s hair, and Nick made a soft noise into his mouth and pressed against him.
In an hour or so, they would have to go back to the castle. Then they’d have to pretend nothing had happened, and later there would have to be explanations and apologies and problems of succession and bloodlines and maybe even secrecy and lies. But at the moment, Nick kissed him back so thoroughly that Sam thought the river of Death would never chill him again.