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Inside the fiery wall, forms began to take shape, humanoid figures that flexed arms and legs within the flame. Charter marks roared and swam in the yellow-blue-red inferno, flowing too fast for Lirael to see what they were.
Then the figures stepped out of the flames, warriors composed entirely of fire, their swords white-hot and brilliant.
“Do something!” barked the Dog.
But Lirael just kept staring at the advancing warriors, mesmerized by the flames that flickered through their bodies. They were all part of one great Charter-spell, she saw, one enormously powerful sending made up of many parts. A guardian-sending, like the one on the red wood door . . .
Lirael stood up, patted the Dog once on the head, and walked out, straight towards the ferocious heat and the guardians with their swords of flame.
“I am Lirael,” she said, investing her speech with the Charter marks of truth and clarity. “A Daughter of the Clayr.”
Her words hung in the air for a moment, cutting through the buzz and crackle of the fiery sendings. Then the guardians raised their swords as if in salute—and a wave of even more intense heat rolled forward, robbing Lirael’s lungs of air. She choked, coughed, took one step back . . . and fainted.
When she came to, the Disreputable Dog’s tongue was just about to lick her face. For about the tenth time, judging from the thick film of dog saliva on her cheek.
“What happened?” she asked, quickly looking around. There were no fires now, no burning guardians, but small Charter marks for light twinkled all around her like tiny stars.
“They burnt up your air when they saluted. I think that whoever created those sendings expected people to identify themselves from the door,” said the Dog, attempting another lick, only to be fended off. “Or else they were particularly stupid sendings. Still, at least one of them had the good grace to throw out a handful of these little lights. Some of your hair has been burnt off, by the way.”
“Curse it!” exclaimed Lirael, examining the singed ends of her hair, where they stuck out from under her scarf. “Aunt Kirrith will notice that for sure! I’ll have to tell her I leant over a candle or something. Speaking of Kirrith, we’d better start back.”
“Not yet!” protested the Dog. “Not after all this effort. Besides, the lights mark a path. Look! That must be it. Lirael’s Path!”
Lirael sat up and looked where the Dog was pointing—in the classic pose, one foreleg up and snout eagerly forward. Sure enough, there was a path of tiny, twinkling Charter lights, leading farther along the ledge, to where the Rift narrowed into an even more ominous darkness.
“We really should go back,” she said, half-heartedly. The path of lights was there, beckoning. The sendings had let her past. There must be something at the other end worth getting to. Maybe even something that would help her gain the gift of Sight, she thought, helpless against that longing, the tiny hope that still lived inside her heart. All her years of searching in the Library had not helped her. Perhaps it would be otherwise, here in the ancient heart of the Clayr’s realm.
“Come on, then,” she said, pushing herself up with a groan. Burnt hair and bruises—that was all she’d found so far. “What are you waiting for?”
“You go first,” retorted the Dog. “My nose still hurts from your stupid relatives’ blazing doormen.”
The path of lights led farther along the ledge, and the Rift narrowed, the rock walls closing in, till Lirael could reach out and run her fingers along the cold, wet stone on either side of her. She stopped doing that when she discovered that the luminescence came from a damp fungus that made her fingertips glow and smell like rotten cabbage.
As the way grew narrower, it also descended farther into the mountain, and a chill dankness banished the last remnants of heat from Lirael’s scorched face. There was also a sound, a deep rumbling that vibrated up through her feet, getting louder as they walked on. At first, Lirael thought she was imagining it, that perhaps it was part of what the Dog called her sense of Death. Then she realized what it was: the full-throated roar of rushing water.
“We must be near an underground river or something,” she said, nervously raising her voice to counter the rising roar of the water. Like most of the Clayr, she could barely swim, and her experience of rivers was confined to the awesome ice-melt torrents that raged from the glacier every Spring.
“We are almost upon it,” replied the Dog, who could see farther in the glow of the star-lined path. “As the poet had it:
“Swift river born in deepest night,
Rushing forth to catch the light.
Deep ice and dark its swaddling cloth,
The Kingdom’s foes will feel its wroth.
Till mighty Ratterlin spends its strength,
In the Delta at full length.
“Hmmm . . . I may have forgotten a line there. Let’s see, ‘Swift river—’ ”
“The Ratterlin’s source is here?” interrupted Lirael, pointing ahead. “I thought it was just meltwater. I didn’t know it had a source.”
“There is a spring,” replied the Dog, after a pause. “A very old spring. In the heart of the mountain, in the deepest dark. Stop!”
Lirael obeyed, one hand instinctively clutching at the loose fold of skin on the Dog’s neck, just behind her collar.
At first she didn’t understand why the Dog had stopped her, till the hound led her on, a few more cautious steps. With those steps, the sound of the river suddenly became a thundering roar, and cold spray slapped her in the face.
They had come to the river. The path ahead was a slender, slippery bridge of wet stone that stretched out twenty paces or more, to end in yet another door. The bridge had no rails, and was less than two feet wide. Its narrowness, and the rushing water below, were a clear indication that it was designed to be a barrier to the Dead. Nothing of that kind could cross here.
Lirael looked at the bridge, the door, then down at the dark, rushing water, feeling both fear and a terrible fascination. The constant motion of the water and the incessant roar were mesmerizing, but finally she managed to tear her gaze away. She looked at the Dog, and though her words were half-drowned by the crash of the river, exclaimed, “I am not going to cross that!”
The Dog ignored her, and Lirael started to repeat herself. But the words stayed on her tongue as Lirael saw that the Dog’s paws had grown twice as large as usual, and flattened out. She also looked quite smug.
“I bet you’ve even grown suckers,” shouted Lirael, shuddering with distaste at the thought. “Like an octopus.”
“Of course I have,” the Dog shouted back, lifting one paw with a squelching pop that Lirael could hear even over the river’s roar. “This looks like a very treacherous bridge.”
“Yes, it does,” bawled Lirael, looking at the bridge again. Clearly the Dog intended to cross, and with her sucker-footed help, Lirael guessed, crossing would go from impossible to merely dangerous. Sighing, she bent down and took off her shoes, eyes blinking against the constant spray. After tying the laces of her soft leather ankle-boots through her belt, she wriggled her toes on the stone. It was very cold, but Lirael was relieved to feel faint cross-hatching that she hadn’t seen in the dim light. That would give her some grip.
“I wonder what this bridge was designed to keep out,” she said, carefully slipping her fingers under the Dog’s collar, feeling the comforting buzz of the Charter Magic there and the even more comforting bulk of a well-balanced dog.
They had only taken the first step when Lirael voiced her second thought, her words inaudible with the river’s bellow all around them.
