But it didn’t. The pot glowed entirely red, but it didn’t crack, and the constantly slopping water through the bottom of the raft cooled it enough that it didn’t burn through the reeds. Every time the raft shifted and another small wave sloshed around the bottom, Ferin thought she might hear the hissing suddenly become a terrible cracking sound and she braced herself for disaster, but each time the pot just sat there steadily giving off heat.
Eventually, she realized it probably wasn’t going to crack and sink her. Ferin drew herself up on the pack and slowly rotated herself around to put her feet near the fire. She could feel the warmth of it even through her moccasin-like low boots, which were of triple-thickness goat hide lined with the fur of the pine martens the athask cats liked to hunt and eat.
As her feet warmed, they were shot with sudden pains, and by the time those pains had subsided, her hands and face were cold again. Slowly rotating herself around the pack again, she got in position to warm the top part of her body.
Judging by the moon, there were only three or four hours to dawn. The sky was almost entirely clear now, with no hint of cloud. She had the pot, which, barring an accident, would keep her warm until the sun came up. With the warmth, her mind was starting to work again as well, beginning to grapple with the next problem.
She was in the middle of a very big river in full spring flood. It was taking her east at great speed, faster than a horse could trot, and unlike a horse, it was going to keep doing it without rest, until the raft sank, or it ran into something . . . or they reached the sea.
Ferin had been shown a map back at the Athask clan’s spring camp. It wasn’t very detailed, nor very accurate (though she didn’t know that), but it did indicate that the Greenwash Bridge was a long way upstream from the open ocean, perhaps thirty or forty leagues. But a swiftly flowing river could go such a long way in a relatively short time, taking whatever it carried with it.
Ferin looked at her makeshift paddle. She could swim well, and had direct experience with rivers and lakes, though none anywhere so broad and swiftly flowing as the Greenwash. But she knew almost nothing about the sea, or what would happen when this river met it.
It would be best if she could get ashore before the raft reached the ocean, she told herself. Perhaps in daylight it would be easier to work out some way to escape the clutch of the current. If she was lucky, some swirl or eddy might even get her close enough to swim, and she could drag the raft behind her.
There was still quite some time before sunup. Ferin moved again, until she was lying across the raft, slightly curled up, so her entire front was warmed by the pot. Admittedly every now and then the raft rolled so far her head got a slight dunking, or her feet, but it was worth it.
All she had to do now was stay awake until dawn, she told herself. Then she would begin paddling again, and try and reach the southern side of the river.
But staying awake was not easy now that she was relatively secure, warm, and totally exhausted. Even the dull ache of her wound was not enough to keep sleep at bay. Slowly she drew herself into a tighter ball on top of her pack as the river grew a little less wild and the raft steadier.
The current was slowing because the river was broadening out. Ferin couldn’t see this in the dark, and in any case did not know this was a sign it was beginning to approach its confluence with the sea. There were still a dozen leagues to go, but as the river spread wider and the current lessened, Ferin lost her battle against weariness.
She slept, and the raft spun and bobbed onward toward the mouth of the river and the open sea, the little pot glowing red all the way, a thin drizzle of black smoke rising from it to mark her passage.
The smoke was as good as invisible now, in the night. But come the morning, that plume would be like a sharply drawn line of charcoal against the blue sky, declaring to all with eyes to see that there was something unusual adrift on the Greenwash.
Chapter Six
THE GENERAL LOOKS DEAD
The Wall
As Lirael made her way back to Nick, fixing a thistle to the head of a spear-shaft with a simple mark of attachment, the Ancelstierrans fired star-shells again, four in a line abreast, several thousand feet above. With a southerly wind, they actually worked for once, and the white flares slowly descended on their parachutes, illuminating a huge stretch of no-man’s-land in stark black and white, all color lost in the harsh glare of brilliantly burning magnesium.
In the light from the star-shells, Lirael could see a party of around twenty soldiers climbing out of the forward trenches. Some carried stretchers and were presumably healers of a sort, but there were more with rifles, their bayonets gleaming in the monochrome light of the drifting flares.
Behind her, she heard Captain Anlow call out to the guards, ordering them to come forward. Clearly the guard officer feared the Ancelstierrans might do something foolish, perhaps even attack Lirael. Or there might be an accident.
The Ancelstierrans might want to take the Hrule back, Lirael suddenly thought. It had come from the south, and it was still on their side of their Wall. That could not be allowed; it had to be dispatched before they arrived.
She hurried, and was greatly relieved to see the Free Magic creature was still lying in the dirt, not moving. Lirael kept an eye on it as she rushed over to Nicholas, who had regained consciousness and was trying to lift his head. She knelt by his side, brushing back her hair from her face so she could see him properly. And he could see her.
“Can you hear me?” she asked. He was conscious, but his eyes were only partly open and his wits might well be wandering. She could feel that the healing spell was still working on him, but was surprised to see the Charter marks moving about just under the skin at his throat and on his face, faint golden symbols rising momentarily only to vanish again, carried around in his bloodstream. That didn’t normally happen, but she had to presume it was a good thing.
“Yes,” whispered Nick. He smiled and said, “Lirael.”
Lirael brushed her hair back again nervously, not noticing that her golden hand was glowing rather more brightly than it had been. She didn’t smile. She was too anxious about the healing spell, and the Hrule, and the approaching Ancelstierrans. At least she told herself that was why she felt unsettled. It couldn’t have anything to do with Nick smiling at her.
Focus, she told herself sternly. Be the Abhorsen-in-Waiting.
“The spells are working strangely on you, but they are working. I’d best deal with the Hrule.”
“The monster?”
Lirael nodded. She kept flicking her gaze away to keep an eye on the creature, not acknowledging to herself that this was also because she was nervous looking at Nick up so close.
“Didn’t I kill it?” asked Nick. “I thought my blood might poison it . . .”
“It has sated it,” said Lirael, once again looking at the beast. At least that’s what she thought had happened. “And made it more powerful, when it can digest it.”
“You’d better kill it first, then,” gasped Nick. He tried to lift his head again, but was too weak.
“It can’t be killed,” said Lirael. She had remembered pretty much the whole entry in Creatures by Nagy now. Though it would be more accurate to say that no one knew how a Hrule might be killed, this was hardly the time to start such a discussion. “Nothing of stone or metal can pierce its flesh. But a thistle will return it to the earth, for a time.”
It was a postponement more than a solution. For a year and a day, the Hrule would be bound under the earth. Lirael frowned, thinking about the slim, red leather diary Ellimere had given her, insisting that she keep it for forthcoming social events. Dealing with a Hrule a year hence would be an unusual entry.
She took up the thistle-headed spear and walked over to the creature. Its violet-pupiled eyes followed her, but the thing still didn’t move. Presumably it couldn’t, or it would have already attacked her. That was another thing Lirael remembered. Hrule were very fast.