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“The Clayr Saw a sword and so I was. Remember the Wallmakers. Remember Me.”
“It was her coming,” said the Dog. “It is her fate, that her knowing self will be forever outside what she chose to make, the Charter that her unknowing self is part of.
“Time and Death sleep side by side,” said the Dog. “Both are in Astarael’s domain. She has helped us, in her own way.”
“There is something of the Destroyer in him,” growled the Dog softly. “A sliver of one of the silver hemispheres, most like, infused with a fragment of its power. It is eating away at him, body and spirit. He is being used as the Destroyer’s avatar. A mouthpiece. We must not awaken this force inside him.”
Lirael almost apologized, but she held it back. She did feel sorry for Nick. It wasn’t his fault he had been chosen by an ancient spirit of evil to be its avatar.
She shook her head several times again as they went inside, past more armed schoolgirls, who looked on in awe at the legendary Sabriel and her consort, even if he was only the King of the Old Kingdom and nowhere near as interesting. Sabriel had once been one of them.
That would only make it worse for the Ancelstierran . . . what do you call it? Technologia?”
“For everyone, and everything, there is a time to die. Some do not know it, or would delay it, but its truth cannot be denied. Not when you look into the stars of the Ninth Gate. I’m glad you came back, Mistress.”
Together, the bells and Dog sang a song that was more than sound and power. It was the song of the earth, the moon, the stars, the sea, and the sky, of Life and Death and all that was and would be.
“I am Yrael,” it said, casting a hand out to throw a line of silver fire into the breaking spell-ring, its voice crackling with force. “I also stand against you.”
“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—”
“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.
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.
