“The Clayr?” asked Aron. “Oh, the witches in the ice, who See—”

“More than you do,” interrupted Haral. “Can I let you go?”

Aron nodded and relaxed. Haral released her hold and quickly stood up, looking out over the wall.

Ferin was not in sight. The wood-weird was burning fiercely, sending up a great billowing column of choking black smoke. The shaman and his keeper lay sprawled on the snowy ground, both dead with quite ordinary arrows in their eyes, evidence of peerless shooting at that range in the dying light. Their horses were running free, spooked by blood and sudden death.

“Where did she go?” asked Aron.

“Probably not very far,” said Haral grimly, gazing intently at the ground. There was a patch of blood on the snow there as big as the guard’s hand, and blotches like dropped coins of bright scarlet continued for some distance, in the direction of the river shore.

Chapter Two

TWO HAWKS BRING MESSAGES

Belisaere, the Old Kingdom

The hawk came down through the clouds, dodging raindrops for the sheer fun of it, despite having already flown more than two hundred leagues. Born from a Charter-spelled egg and trained for its work since it was a fledgling, the hawk carried a message imprinted in its mind, and with it the burning desire to fly as swiftly as possible to the tower mews in the royal city of Belisaere.

The rain-dodging hawk from the south beat another bird flying in from the north by half a minute, so it was the first to get to Mistress Finney, the chief falconer, while the later hawk had to be content going to the fist of an apprentice.

As a matter of procedure, Mistress Finney checked the anklet on the bird, to see where it had come from, though she already recognized him. She knew all the message-hawks of the Old Kingdom, having raised them herself, even if they were later assigned elsewhere, and became only occasional visitors to the capital.

“From Wyverley College, my lovely,” she said softly, making her own peculiar tongue-clicking sound, one all the hawks knew from the egg. “What a long way, and over the Wall too, my brave one. What’s your message, dear?”

The hawk opened its beak and spoke with a woman’s voice, that of Magistrix Coelle, who taught Charter Magic at Wyverley College, in that strange land beyond the Wall, where magic waned and then disappeared entirely, once too far south.

“Telegram from Nicholas Sayre for the Abhorsen. Extremely urgent,” said the hawk.

“Ah, for the Abhorsen,” said Mistress Finney. “Messenger!”

A seven-year-old page who hoped to become one of the falconer’s apprentices leaped up from the bench where she sat with three others, waiting to take the messages the hawks brought in on the next part of their journey.

“Yes, Mistress!”

“Find out where the Abhorsen-in-Waiting Lirael is. Tell her I am transcribing an urgent message from Ancelstierre calling for the Abhorsen, and ask her to either come here for it, or to stay wherever she is and you come back and let me know and we will send it on.”