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"The hemispheres are across the Wall!"

Nick didn’t knoho spoke The voice was strange and echoing, and it made him feel unclean But the words had an i Nick up and down He gripped the sides and, on the peak of one of the bounces, used its extrainto a tunnel through the Wall that separated the Old Kingdoh the stone It was packed with the Night Crew froreat lines of thee in between the lines Every ot closer, he saw that the gloas fro and joining, and the people farther inside the ere actually on fire

Nick cried out in horror as they entered the tunnel There was fire everywhere, strange golden fire that burnt without s consumed by it, they did not atte to stop it Even worse than that, Nick realized that as individuals were consumed by the fire, others would step into their places Hundreds and hundreds of blue-cladin fro ahead, Nick saw But it was not exactly Hedge It wasof darkness, liold Every step he took was clearly an effort, and the gold fla to prevent his crossing through the tunnel in the Wall

Suddenly a whole group of the Night Crew ahead blazed, like candles collapsing into a final pool of wax, and disappeared completely Before the people on either side could relink are of the gap and roared out all the way across the tunnel The stretcher bearers saw it, and they swore and screa They hit the fire like swih it But though the stretcher and its bearers h, Nick was plucked off the stretcher by the fire, wrapped in flame, and tuolden fire ca cold pain in his heart, as if an icicle had been thrust through his chest But it also brought a sudden clarity to his mind, and sharper senses He could see individual symbols in the flaed and formed in new combinations These were the Charter ic of Sa that had happened recently rushed back into his head He reht fro in the reeds His conversation with Lirael He had proe

The flames beat at Nick’s chest but did not burn his skin They tried to attack as in him, to force the shard froic of the Wall, and that power chose to re-assert itself even as Nick tried to e at flaht

White sparks spewed out of Nick’s mouth, nose, and ears, and his body suddenly uncurled, went raht, elbows and knees vertically locked Like soolden fla at every step Deep within his own , but he was only an observer He had no power over his own h it didn’t kno to make him walk properly

Joints locked, Nick luht Crew, as more and more of them poured into the tunnel froht Crew at all but could almost be normal men and women, their skin and hair fresh and alive Only their eyes proclaimed their difference, and somewhere deep inside, Nick knew that they were dead, not just sick Like their more putrescent brethren, these new arrivals also wore blue caps or scarves

Ahead of hiesture at Nick He felt the gesture like a physical grasp, dragging hiolden fire reached out to hiht Crew, toobodies The fire could not reach Nicholas, and finally he staggered out of the tunnel, away froolden flames

He had crossed the Wall and was in Ancelstierre Or rather in the No Man’s Land between the Wall and the Perimeter Normally this would be a quiet, empty place of raw earth and barbed wire, made somehow peaceful by the soft whisper of the wind flutes that Nick had always presumed to be some sort of weird decoration oreerily underlit by the low, red glow of the setting sun and flashes of lightning The fog thinned in places as it rolled inexorably south, revealing scenes of awful carnage The whiteback to show piles of corpses, bodies everywhere, bodies hanging on the wire and piled on the ground They were all blue capped and blue scarved, and Nick finally recognized that they were slain Southerling refugees, and that in soht Crew had also been

Lightning crackled above hiht a glie sleds that Nick knew had been waiting for thees at the Red between talking to Lirael in the reed boat and his awakening just before crossing the Wall The heed here, obviously by thetheht Crew Men dressed in strange, ragged codo leathers, bright colored breeches, and rusty h the tunnel suddenly retreated, and Nick fell at Hedge’s feet The necromancer was at least seven feet tall now, and the red flahter and htened of hi But he was too weak to do anything but crouch at Hedge’s feet and clutch at his chest, where the pain still throbbed

"Soon," said Hedge, his voice ru like the thunder "Soon ourenthusiastically and was as frightened by this as he was by Hedge He was already drifting back into that dreamy state where all he could think about was the he Farm, and what had to be done--

"No," whispered Nick What , and until he did know, he wasn’t going to do anything "No!"

Hedge recognized that Nick spoke with an independent voice He grinned, and fire flickered in his throat He lifted Nick up like a baby and cradled hiainst the bandolier of bells