“Life,” said Yrael, who was more Mogget than it ever knew. “Fish and fowl, warm sun and shady trees, the field mice in the wheat, under the cool light of the moon. All the—”
Lirael didn’t hear any more. She gathered up all her courage and struck.
Sword met silver metal with a shriek that silenced everything, the blade cutting through in a blaze of blue-white sparks that fountained up into the ashen sky.
Even as it cut, the sword melted and red fire streaked up into Lirael’s hand. She screamed as it hit, but hung on, putting all her weight and strength and fury into the blow. She could feel Orannis in the fire, feel it in the heat. It was seeking its last revenge on her, filling her with its destructive power, a power that would burn her into ash.
Lirael screamed again as the flames engulfed the hilt, her hand now no more than a lump of pain. But still she held on, to complete the breaking.
The sword broke through, the sphere split asunder. Even knowing she would fail, Lirael tried to let go. But Orannis had her, its spirit kept momentarily whole by the thin bridge of her sword, the last remnants of the blade between the hemispheres. A bridge to her destruction.
“Dog!” screamed Lirael instinctively, not knowing what she said, pain and fear overwhelming her intention to simply die. Again she tried to open her hand, but her fingers were welded to the metal, and Orannis was in her blood, spreading through to consume her in its final fire.
Then the Dog’s teeth suddenly closed on Lirael’s wrist. There was a new pain, but a clean one, sharp and sudden. Orannis was gone from her, as was the fire that threatened to destroy her. A moment later, Lirael realized that the Dog had bitten off her hand.
All that remained free of Orannis’s vengeful power was directed at the Disreputable Dog. Red fire flowered about her as she spat out the hand, throwing it between the hemispheres, where it writhed and wriggled like a dreadful spider made from burned and blackened flesh.
A great gout of flame erupted and engulfed the Dog, sending Lirael stumbling back, her eyebrows frizzled into nothing. Then, with a long, final scream of thwarted hope, the hemispheres hurtled apart. One narrowly missed Lirael, tumbling past her into the loch and the returning sea. The other flew up past Sabriel, to land behind her in a flurry of dust and ash.
“Bound and broken,” whispered Lirael, staring at her wrist in disbelief. She could still feel her hand, but there was nothing there save a cauterized stump and the burnt ends of her sleeve.
She started to shake then, and the tears came, till she couldn’t see for crying. There was only one thing she knew to do, so she did it, stumbling forward blindly, calling to the Dog.
“Here,” called the Dog softly, in answer to the call. She was lying on her side where the sphere had been, upon a bed of ash. Her tail wagged as she heard Lirael, but only the very tip of it, and she didn’t get up.
Lirael knelt by her side. The hound didn’t seem hurt, but Lirael saw that her muzzle was now frosted white, and the skin was loose around her neck, as if she had suddenly become old. The Dog raised her head very slowly as Lirael bent over her, and gave her a little lick on the face.
“Well, that’s done, Mistress,” she whispered, her head dropping back. “I have to leave you now.”
“No,” sobbed Lirael. She hugged her with her handless arm and buried her cheek against the Dog’s snout. “It was supposed to be me! I won’t let you go! I love you, Dog!”
“There’ll be other dogs, and friends, and loves,” whispered the Dog. “You have found your family, your heritage; and you have earned a high place in the world. I love you too, but my time with you has passed. Goodbye, Lirael.”
Then she was gone, and Lirael was left bowed over a small soapstone statue of a dog.
Behind her, she heard Yrael speak, and Sabriel, and the brief chime of Belgaer, so strange after the massed song of all the bells, its single voice freeing Mogget from his millennia of servitude. But the sound was far away, in another place, another time.
Sam found Lirael a moment later, curled up in the ash, the carving of the Dog nestled in the crook of her handless arm. She held Astarael—the Weeper—with her remaining hand, her fingers clenched tight around the clapper so it could not sound.
Epilogue
NICK STOOD IN the river and watched with interest as the current tugged at his knees. He wanted to go with that current, to lie down and be swept away, taking his guilt and sorrow with him to wherever the river might go. But he couldn’t move, because he was somehow fixed in place by a force that emanated from the patch of heat on his forehead, which was very strange when everything else was cold.
After a time that could have been minutes or hours or even days—for there was no way to tell whether time meant anything at all in this place of constant grey light—Nick noticed there was a dog sitting next to him. A large brown and black dog, with a serious expression. It looked kind of familiar.
“You’re the dog from my dream,” said Nick. He bent down to scratch it on the head. “Only it wasn’t a dream, was it? You had wings.”
“Yes,” agreed the dog. “I’m the Disreputable Dog, Nicholas.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Nick formally. The Dog offered a paw, and Nicholas shook it. “Do you happen to know where we are? I thought I—”
“Died,” replied the Dog cheerily. “You did. This is Death.”
“Ah,” replied Nick. Once he might have wanted to argue about that. Now he had a different perspective, and other things to think about. “Do you . . . did they . . . the hemispheres?”
“Orannis has been bound anew,” announced the Dog. “It is once again imprisoned in the hemispheres. In due course, they will be transported back to the Old Kingdom and buried deep beneath stone and spell.”
Relief crossed Nick’s face and smoothed out the lines of worry around his eyes and mouth. He knelt down beside the Dog to hug her, feeling the warmth of her skin in sharp contrast to the chill of the river. The bright collar around her neck was nice, too. It gave him a warm feeling in his chest.
“Sam and . . . and Lirael?” asked Nick hopefully, his head still bowed, close to the Dog’s ear.
“They live,” replied the Dog. “Though not without scathe. My mistress lost her hand. Prince Sameth will make her one, of course, of shining gold and clever magic. Lirael Goldenhand, she’ll be forever after. Remembrancer and Abhorsen, and much else besides. But there are other hurts, which require different remedies. She is very young. Stand up, Nicholas.”
Nicholas stood. He wavered a little as the current tried to trip him and take him under.
“I gave you a late baptism to preserve your spirit,” said the Dog. “You bear the Charter mark on your forehead now, to balance the Free Magic that lingers in your blood and bone. You will find Charter mark and Free Magic both boon and burden, for they will take you far from Ancelstierre, and the path you will walk will not be the one you have long thought to see ahead.”
“What do you mean?” asked Nick in bewilderment. He touched the mark on his forehead and blinked as it flared with sudden light. The Dog’s collar shone too, with many other bright marks that surrounded her head with a corona of golden light. “What do you mean, far from Ancelstierre? How can I go anywhere? I’m dead, aren’t—”
“I’m sending you back,” said the Dog gently, nudging Nick’s leg with her snout, so he turned to face towards Life. Then she barked, a single sharp sound that was both a welcome and a farewell.
“Is this allowed?” asked Nick as he felt the current reluctantly release him, and he took the first step back.
“No,” said the Dog. “But then I am the Disreputable Dog.”
Nick took another step, and he smiled as he felt the warmth of Life, and the smile became a laugh, a laugh that welcomed everything, even the pain that waited in his body.
In Life, his waking eyes looked up, and he saw the sun breaking through a low, dark cloud, and its warmth and light fell on a diamond-shaped patch of earth where he lay, safe amid
st ruin and destruction. Nick sat up and saw soldiers approaching, picking their way across an ashen desert. Southerlings followed the soldiers, their just-scrubbed hats and scarves bright blue, the only color in the wasteland.
A white cat suddenly appeared next to Nicholas’s feet. He sniffed in disgust and said, “I might have known”; then he looked past Nick at something that wasn’t there and winked, before trotting off in a northerly direction.
The cat was followed a little later by the weary footsteps of six people, who were supporting the seventh. Nick managed to stand and wave, and in the space of that tiny movement and its startled response, he had time to wonder what all the future held, and think that it would be much brighter than the past.
The Disreputable Dog sat with her head cocked to one side for several minutes, her wise old eyes seeing much more than the river, her sharp ears hearing more than just the gurgle of the current. After a while a small, enormously satisfied rumble sounded from deep in her chest. She got up, grew her legs longer to get her body out of the water, and shook herself dry. Then she wandered off, following a zigzag path along the border between Life and Death, her tail wagging so hard, the tip of it beat the river into a froth behind her.