The Creature in the Case Read online

  The second checkpoint was a much more serious affair than the first, blocking the road with two heavy chain-link-and-timber gates, built between concrete pillboxes that punctuated the first of the Perimeter’s many defensive lines, a triple depth of concertina wire five coils high that stretched to the east and west as far as the eye could see.

  One of the gates had been knocked off its hinges, and there were more bodies on the ground just beyond it. These soldiers had been wearing mail coats and helmets, which hadn’t saved them. More soldiers were running out of the pillboxes, and there were several in firing positions to the side of the road, though they’d stopped shooting because of the risk of hitting their own people farther north.

  Nick throttled back and weaved the motorcycle through the slalom course of bodies, debris from the gate, and the live but shaken soldiers who were staring north. He was just about to accelerate away when someone shouted behind him.

  ‘You on the motorcycle! Stop!’

  Nick felt an urge to open the throttle and let the motorcycle roar away, but his intelligence overruled his instinct. He stopped and looked back, wincing as the thin sole of his left carpet slipper tore on a piece of broken barbed wire.

  The man who had shouted ran up and, greatly surprising Nick, jumped on the pillion seat behind him.

  ‘Get after it!’

  Nick only had a moment to gain a snapshot of his unexpected passenger. He was an officer, not visibly armed, wearing formal dress blues with more miniatures of gallantry medals than he should have, since he looked no more than twenty-one. He had the three pips of a captain on his sleeves and, more important, on his shoulders the metal epaulette tags NPRU, for the Northern Perimeter Reconnaissance Unit, or as it was better known, the Crossing Point Scouts.

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ shouted the captain over the noise of the engine and rush of the wind. ‘You tried out for the Scouts last week?’

  ‘Uh, no,’ Nick shouted back. He had just realized that he knew his passenger too. It was Francis Tindall, who had been at Forwin Mill as a lieutenant six months ago. ‘I’m afraid I’m … well, I’m Nicholas Sayre.’

  ‘Nick Sayre! I bloody hope this isn’t going to be like last time we met!’

  ‘No! But that creature is a Free Magic thing!’

  ‘Got a hostage, too, from the look of it. Skinny old duffer. Pointless carrying him along. We’ll still shoot.’

  ‘He’s an accomplice. It’s already killed a lot of people down south.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll settle its hash,’ Tindall shouted confidently. ‘You don’t happen to know exactly what kind of Free Magic creature it is? Can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it, but I only got a glimpse. Didn’t expect anything like that to run past the window at a dining-in night at Checkpoint Two.’

  ‘No, but it’s bulletproof and it gets power by drinking the blood of Charter Mages.’

  Whatever Tindall said in response was lost in the sound of gunfire up ahead, this time long, repeated bursts of machine-gun fire, and Nick saw red tracer bouncing up into the air.

  ‘Slow down!’ ordered Tindall. ‘Those are the enfilading guns at Lizzy and Pearl. They’ll stop firing when the thing hits the gate at Checkpoint One.’

  Nick obediently slowed. The road was straight ahead of them, but dark, the moon having sunk farther. The red tracer was the only thing visible, crisscrossing the road four or five hundred yards ahead of them.

  Then big guns boomed in unison.

  ‘Star shell,’ said Tindall. ‘Thanks to a southerly wind.’

  A second after he spoke, four small suns burst high above, and everything became stark black and white, either harshly lit or in blackest shadow.

  In the light, Nick saw another deep defensive line of high concertina wire, and another set of gates. He also saw the creature slow not at all, but simply jump up and over thirty feet of wire, smashing its way past the two or three fast but foolish soldiers who tried to stick a bayonet in it as it hit the ground running.

  Dorrance was no longer on its back.

  Nick saw him a moment later, lying in the middle of the road. Braking hard, he lost control of the bike at the last moment, and it flipped up and out, throwing both him and Tindall onto the road, but fortunately not at any speed.

  Nick lay there for a moment, the breath knocked out of him by the impact. After a minute, he slowly got to his feet. Captain Tindall was already standing, but only on one foot.

  ‘Busted ankle,’ he said as he hopped over to Dorrance. ‘Why, it’s that idiot jester Dorrance! What on earth would someone like him be doing with that creature?’

  ‘Serving Her,’ whispered Dorrance, his voice startling both Tindall and Nick. The older man had been shot several times and looked dead, his chest black and sodden with blood. But he opened his eyes and looked directly at Nick, though he clearly saw something or someone else. ‘I knew Her as a child, in my dreams, never knowing She was real. Then Malthan came, and I saw Her picture, and I remembered Father sending Her away. He was mad, you know. Lackridge found Her for me again. It was as I remembered, Her voice in my head … She only wanted to go home. I had to help Her. I had to …’

  His voice trailed away and his eyes lost their focus. Dorrance would play the fool no more in Corvere.

  ‘If it wants to go north, I suppose we could do worse than just let it go across the Wall,’ said Tindall. He waved at someone at the checkpoint and made a signal, crossing his arms twice. ‘If it can, of course. We can send a pigeon to the Guards at Barhedrin, leave it to them to sort out.’

  ‘No, I can’t do that,’ said Nick. ‘I … I’m already responsible for loosing the Destroyer upon them, and I did nothing to help fight it. Now I’ve done it again. That creature would not be free if it weren’t for me. I can’t just leave it to Lirael, I mean the Abhorsen … or whoever.’

  ‘Some things are best left to those who can deal with them,’ said Tindall. ‘I’ve never seen a Free Magic creature move like that. Let it go.’

  ‘No,’ said Nick. He started walking up the road. Tindall swore and started hopping after him.

  ‘What are you going to do? You have the Mark, I know, but are you a Mage?’

  Nick shook his head and started to run. A sergeant and two stretcher bearers were coming through the gate, while many more soldiers ran purposefully behind them. With star shell continuing to be fired overhead, Nick could clearly see beyond the gates to a parade ground, with a viewing tower or inspection platform next to it, and beyond that a collection of low huts and bunkers and the communications trenches that zigzagged north.

  ‘The word for the day is Collection and the countersign is Treble,’ shouted Tindall. ‘Good luck!’

  Nick waved his thanks and concentrated on ignoring the pain in his feet. Both his slippers were ripped to pieces, barely more than shreds of cloth holding on at the heels and toes.

  The sergeant saluted as he went past, and the stretcher bearers ignored him, but the two soldiers at the gate aimed their rifles at him and demanded the password. Nick gave it, silently thanking Tindall, and they let him through.

  ‘Lieutenant! Report!’ shouted a major Nick almost ran into as he entered the communications trench on the northern side of the parade ground. But he ignored the instruction, dodging past the officer. A few steps farther on, he felt something warm strike his back, and his arms and hands suddenly shone with golden Charter Magic fire. It didn’t harm him at all, but actually made him feel better and helped him recover his breath. He ran on, oblivious to the shocked Charter Mage behind him, who had struck him with his strongest spell of binding and immobility.

  Soldiers stood aside as he ran past, the Charter Magic glow alerting them to his coming. Some cheered in his wake, for they had seen the creature leap over them, and they feared that it might return before a Scout came to deal with it, as they dealt with so many of the strange things that came from the north.

  At the forward trench, Nick found himself suddenly among a whole company
of garrison infantry. All one hundred and twenty of them clustered close together in less than sixty yards of straight trench, all standing to on the firing step, looking to the front. The wind was still from the south, so their guns would almost certainly work, but none was firing.

  A harried-looking captain turned to see what had caused the sudden ripple of movement among the men near the communications trench, and he saw a strange, very irregularly dressed lieutenant outlined in tiny golden flames. He breathed a sigh of relief, hopped down from the step, and stood in front of Nick.

  ‘About time one of you lot got here. It’s plowing through the wire toward the Wall. D Company shot at it for a while, but that didn’t work, so we’ve held back. It’s not going to turn around, is it?’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Nick, not offering the certainty the captain had hoped for. He saw a ladder and quickly climbed up it to stand on the parapet.

  The Wall lay less than a hundred yards away, across barren earth crisscrossed with wire. There were tall poles of carved wood here and there, quietly whistling in the breeze among the metal pickets and the concertina wire. Wind flutes of the Abhorsen, there to bar the way from Death. A great many people had died along the Wall and the Perimeter, and the border between Life and Death was very easily crossed in such places.

  Nick had seen the Wall before, farewelling his friend Sam on vacation. But apart from a dreamlike memory of it wreathed in fierce golden fire, he had never seen it as more than an antiquity, just an old wall like any other medieval remnant in a good state of preservation. Now he could see the glow of millions of Charter Marks moving across, through, and under the stones.

  He could see the creature, too. It was surrounded by a nimbus of intense white sparks as it used its club hands to smash down the concertina wire and wade directly toward a tunnel that went through the Wall.

  ‘I’m going to follow it,’ said Nick. ‘Pass the word not to shoot. If any other Scouts come up, tell them to stay back. This particular creature needs the blood of Charter Mages.’

  ‘Who should I say—’

  Nick ignored him, heading west along the trench to the point where the creature had begun to force its path. There were no soldiers there, only the signs of a very rapid exodus, with equipment and weapons strewn across the trench floor.

  Nick climbed out and started toward the Wall. It was night in the Old Kingdom, a darker night without the moon, but the star-shell light spread over the Wall, so he could see that it was snowing there, not a single snowflake coming south.

  He lifted the daisy-chain wreath over his head and held it ready in his left hand, and he drew the dagger with his right. The flowers were crushed, and many had lost petals, but the chain was unbroken, thanks to the linen thread sewn into the stems. Llew and his nieces really had known their business.

  Nick was halfway across the No Man’s Land when the creature reached the Wall. But it did not enter the tunnel, instead hunkering down on its haunches for half a minute before easing itself up and turning back. It was still surrounded by white sparks, and even thirty yards away Nick could smell the acrid stench of hot metal. He stopped, too, and braced himself for a sudden, swift attack.

  The creature slowly paced toward him. Nick lifted the wreath and made ready to throw or swing it over the creature’s head. But it didn’t attack or increase its pace. It walked up close and bent its long neck down.

  Nick didn’t take his eyes off it for even a microsecond. As soon as he was sure of his aim, he tossed the wreath over the creature’s head. The chain settled on its shoulders, the yellow and red flowers taking on a bluish cast from the crackling sparks that jetted out from the creature’s hide.

  ‘Let us talk and make truce, as the day’s eye bids me do,’ a chill, sharp voice said directly into Nick’s mind, or so it felt. His ears heard nothing but the wind flutes and the jangle of cans tied to the wire. ‘We have no quarrel, you and I.’

  ‘We do,’ said Nick. ‘You have slain many of my people. You would slay more.’

  The creature did not move, but Nick felt the mental equivalent of a snort of disbelief.

  ‘These pale, insipid things? The blood of a great one moves in you, more than in any of the inheritors that I have drunk from before. Come, shed your transient flesh and travel with me back to our own land, beyond this prison wall.’

  Nick didn’t answer, for he was suddenly confused. Part of him felt that he could leave his body and go with this creature, which had somehow suddenly become beautiful and alluring in his eyes. He felt he had the power to shuck his skin and become something else, something fierce and powerful and strange. He could fly over the Wall and go wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted.

  Against that yearning to be untrammeled and free was another set of sensations and desires. He did want to change, that was true, but he also wanted to continue to be himself. To be a man, to find out where he fitted in among people, specifically the people of the Old Kingdom, for he knew he no longer could be content in Ancelstierre. He wanted to see his friend Sam again, and he wanted to talk to Lirael …

  ‘Come,’ said the creature again. ‘We must be away before any of Astarael’s get come upon us. Share with me a little of your blood, so that I may cross this cursed Wall without scathe.’

  ‘Astarael’s get?’ asked Nick. ‘The Abhorsens?’

  ‘Call them what you will,’ said the creature. ‘One comes, but not soon. I feel it, through the bones of the earth beneath my feet. Let me drink, just a little.’

  ‘Just a little …’ mused Nick. ‘Do you fear to drink more?’

  ‘I fear,’ said the creature, bowing its head still lower. ‘Who would not fear the power of the Nine Bright Shiners, highest of the high?’

  ‘What if I do not let you drink, and I do not choose to leave this flesh?’

  ‘Your will is yours alone,’ said the creature. ‘I shall go back and reap a harvest among those who bear the Charter, weak and prisoned remnant of my kin of long ago.’

  ‘Drink then,’ said Nick. He cut the bandage at his wrist and, wincing at the pain, sliced open the wound Dorrance had made. Blood welled up immediately.

  The creature leaned forward, and Nick turned his wrist so the blood fell into its open mouth, each drop sizzling as it met the thing’s internal fires. A dozen drops fell; then Nick took his dagger again and cut more deeply. Blood flowed more freely, splashing over the creature’s mouth.

  ‘Enough!’ said the voice in his mind. But Nick did not withdraw his hand, and the creature did not move. ‘Enough!’

  Nick held his hand closer to the creature’s mouth, sparks enveloping his fingers, to be met by golden flames, blue and gold twirling and wrestling, as if Charter Magic visibly sought dominance over Free Magic.

  ‘Enough!’ screamed the silent voice in Nick’s head, driving out all other thoughts and senses, so that he became blind and dumb and couldn’t feel anything, not even the rapid stammer of his own heartbeat. ‘Enough! Enough! Enough!’

  It was too much for Nick’s weakened body to bear. He faltered, his hand wavering. As the blood missed the creature’s mouth, it staggered, too, and fell to one side. Nick fell also, away from it, and the voice inside his head gave way to blessed silence.

  His vision returned a few seconds later, and his hearing. He lay on his back, looking up at the sky. The moon was just about to set in the west, but it was like no moonset he had ever seen, for the right corner of it was diagonally cut off by the Wall.

  Nick stared at the bisected moon and thought that he should get up and see if the creature was moving, if it was going to go and attack the soldiers in order to dilute his blood once again. He should bandage his wrist, too, he knew, for he could feel the blood still dripping down his fingers.

  But he couldn’t get up. Whether it was blood loss or simply exhaustion from everything he’d been through, or the effects of the icy voice on his brain, he was as limp and helpless as a rag doll.

  I’ll gather my strength, he thought, closing
his eyes. I’ll get up in a minute. Just a minute …

  Something warm landed on his chest. Nick forced his eyes to open just enough to look out. The moon was much lower, now looking like a badly cut slice of pumpkin pie.

  His chest got even warmer, and with the warmth, Nick felt just a tiny fraction stronger. He opened his eyes properly and managed to raise his head an inch off the ground.

  A coiled spiral made up of hundreds of Charter Marks was slowly boring its way into his chest, like some kind of celestial, star-wrought drill, all shining silver and gold. As each Mark went in, Nick felt strength return to the far-flung parts of his body. His arms twitched, and he raised them too, and saw a nice, clean, Army-issue bandage around his wrist. Then he regained sensation in his legs and lifted them up, to see his carpet slippers had been replaced with more bandages.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ asked a soft voice, just out of sight. A woman’s voice, familiar to Nick, though he couldn’t place it for a second.

  He turned his head. He was still lying near the Wall, where he’d fallen. The creature was still lying there, too, a few steps away. Between them, a young woman knelt over Nick. A young woman wearing an armored coat of laminated plates, and over it a surcoat with the golden stars of the Clayr quartered with the silver keys of the Abhorsen.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Nick. He smiled and said, ‘Lirael.’

  Lirael didn’t smile back. She brushed her black hair back from her face with a golden-gloved hand, and said, ‘The spells are working strangely on you, but they are working. I’d best deal with the Hrule.’

  ‘The creature?’

  Lirael nodded.

  ‘Didn’t I kill it? I thought my blood might poison it …’

  ‘It has sated it,’ said Lirael. ‘And made it much more powerful, when it can digest it.’

  ‘You’d better kill it first, then.’

  ‘It can’t be killed,’ said Lirael. But she picked up a very odd-looking spear, a simple shaft of wood that was topped with a fresh-picked thistle head, and stepped over to the creature. ‘Nothing of stone or metal can pierce its flesh. But a thistle will return it to the earth, for a time.’