Quick Disclaimer: The sign at the front of the wall is the writing property of Garth Nix, he owns it not me. (Fair enough I say. I only wish I had thought of all his amazing characters… Still… Fanar is mine… hehe. Oh yeah, so is Nartook… and Uliscé, come to that…) Mary Sues Rock! Haha. Ok, I' done

Pale fingers fumbled and finally dug into the dry, grassy flesh that composed most of the top of the cliff… It was not flat, but sloped, steeply to reach a summit of terrible height, but from there, Abhorsen explained, it was an easy downhill climb, save from several nasty holes.

In any case, he seemed confident that they would reach the wall before nightfall, and the cliff should have left behind the nosy necromancer, or slow his pursuit at least.

Abhorsen offered her his hand as she reached the finally part of the cliff, her hands, neck and back disgustingly sweaty, her forehead was shining, eyes glassy and unfocused, streaming from the harsh wind that had picked up mid-climb. Her hat, a sort of grey beret with a small peak had almost come off and she tugged it away hastily, allowing her hit head to feel the cool of the wind. It was only moments before the heat of the climb had evaporated, and she was starting to feel very cold. She longed for her pelt, but said nothing and retrieved a woollen sweater from her bag, pulling the hat back down over her ears.

Fanar looked carefully around for signs of Mogget, and she started to see the little man by Abhorsen's feet, eyes bored.

Abhorsen turned to smile at her, dark eyes twinkling. 'Alright?'

Fanar raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. 'Can't complain.'

'Really?'

'Really.'

Abhorsen mopped his sweaty brow. 'What do they teach you in school, girls should be seen and not heard?'

'No,' Fanar replied evenly, 'But we learn in etiquette that it is never sporting to complain, soldier on is the best thing to do.'

'Do you believe that?' Abhorsen asked as they began to walk again, trudging heavily up the steep climb.

Fanar's legs felt like jelly, wobbly and thin, worn out from the climb and the adrenaline of merely holding on. She passed behind Abhorsen and muttered a spell to dispel the wet of her sweat-soaked undershirt, so that she could carry on without too much discomfort.

'Yes,' she said, her spell completed. 'I do.'

Abhorsen only half-smiled, eyebrows raised, and continued on.

True to his word, the wall came into view as the sun set on the horizon.

Fanar was utterly baffled to see it still sinking on the other side of the wall, It was a warmer glow than the pale egg-yolk disc that set in Ancelstierre, and Fanar gasped to see so many hills on the other side still bathed in warm glow.

Abhorsen laughed as he saw her face, 'Winter's just melting here,' he said, smiling, 'which means, therefore, over there, the spring is turning to summer. Always about a season ahead, the Old Kingdom.'

'Were you born there?' Fanar asked, surprised by this information.

'Yes.' Abhorsen replied. His grey eyes looked suddenly tired and dim and Fanar frowned as she detected a hint of regret in his voice.

'What is it?' she asked.

Abhorsen smiled half-heartedly, 'I always get a little down with my return to the Old Kingdom,' he said, quietly, 'The dead are so much less numerous.'

Fanar shook her head; 'I still don't know what you're talking about,' said, a little louder than she meant to, 'What is all this about dead?'

Abhorsen rolled his eyes, 'You Ancelstierrans.' He sighed.

'What about us?'

'You never give in to the blindingly obvious do you?'

Fanar frowned, hands on hips, her eyes surveying him haughtily.

'What's blindingly obvious?' she demanded.

Abhorsen chuckled at her outrage. 'Did you never suspect anything supernatural about all these eruptions of leprosy-ridden savages, as you Ancelstierrans like to call them?'

'The Refugees from Nartook? No! They're dangerous, everyone knows that, and some have even compared them to zombies!' Fanar smiled at this. 'But it's all over imaginative nonsense, nothing more, and Nartook is known for nasty diseases.'

Mogget, from his position at Abhorsen's shimmered, and became an owl once more, nestling on his master's shoulder. 'Do you see now about what Abhorsen refers to as blinding obvious?'

'No!'

Mogget sighed exasperatedly. 'I am sure, along with the importance of etiquette,' (Mogget paused to sneer), 'That at your school they taught you basic skills in Geography? And if they did that then surely you have been taught the lay out of your local Ancelstierran area?'

'Yes…' Fanar replied unsurely.

Mogget sighed. 'Perhaps Abhorsen was wrong about you,' Mogget sneered when Fanar continued to look confused.

'You are clearly an imbecile. Nartook is next to the wall. The dead come from the Old Kingdom! The Uliscé breakout of the disease – Uliscé is next to the wall! The wall divides the Old Kingdom from Ancelstierre. The dead, that is, human corpses that are occupied with a lesser or greater dead spirit are always looking to cross! Ancelstierrans are just easy meat!'

'They eat people?' Fanar cried, quite disgusted. Her disbelief was dissipating, replaced by a cold, shuddering fear that froze her marrow. She had seen pictures of the disease from Nartook. Bodies peeling away from skeleton, she remembered from the newspaper, eyes that burn with a savage hunger. Some had called them cannibals. Others, as Fanar had mentioned had talked of zombies.

Fanar had heard of the dead, being so close to the wall, but she had never believed it. She didn't want to believe it.

'Yes.' Said Mogget, his tone growling.

Fanar quietened and bowed her head. 'Then it is your duty… Abhorsen? Your duty to bind them back? Send them back to…. To what?'

'To death.' Abhorsen answered quickly, and then murmured, 'you have your passports I trust?'

Fanar pondered on the former part of his reply, and then muttered, 'Yes.'

Absently, she retrieved the papers and looked around to see why she needed them. They stood at a tall corrugated fence stretching as far as she could see in either direction, though this one held the frame of a door, and quickly, Fanar spotted an officer making his way towards them. Discreetly, she pulled her jumper down and stifled her shiver of cold, rubbing her numb fingers together under the wool.

The sign that was nailed to the side of the door caught her attention, as the officer, garbed in a grey mail hauberk and sword sheath un padlocked the gate and took Abhorsen's papers.

The sign said :

PERIMETER COMMAND

NORTHERN ARMY GROUP

Unauthorised egress from the Perimeter Zone is strictly forbidden.

Anyone attempting to cross the Perimeter Zone will be shot without warning

Authorised travellers must report to the Perimeter Command HQ

REMEMBER: NO WARNING WILL BE MADE

Fanar bit her lip, and heard the officer say to Abhorsen, 'You'll be wanting to look for a tourist Bus back to Ancelstierre Proper, sir?'

'No, thank-you.' Abhorsen said firmly, 'We wish to cross the wall.'

The officer went white and leaned right of Abhorsen.

'You with 'im, Missus?' he asked tentatively.

'Yes.' Fanar informed him, handing him her papers, which he barely looked at.

'You'll be wanting to talk to Colonel Bauch 'bout this, Sur, Miss, it ain't my field, for sure.'

'Where might we find him?' asked Abhorsen politely.

'The South trench, I should think Suhr,' the officer replied, eyeing the bandoleer nervously.

'Thank-you.' Abhorsen nodded at the officer, who steeped aside, still looking apprehensive. There were two South trenches, as it turned out, one lay behind the wall and one in front. The logic was that both lay South of the Old Kingdom, but it would not do to have just one, so there were two – on either side.

Fanar spotted the Colonel before Abhorsen. A stout man, boasting a number of sparkling medals which glinted up at with authority.

She turned to report her find to Abhorsen, but found that he was looking in the other direction, facing West, and looking towards the upper part of a staircase, which emerged into a squarely built, grey archway. Framed in the archway, stood a woman and two small children. All three bore the charter mark, which shimmered a white-blonde, the colour of their very fair hair. The woman's was dead straight and hung over a face, a silky curtain which hung down beside her tanned cheeks, contrasting with alarmingly blue eyes, shimmering with something that could have been tears, save for the fact that it was silver.

The elder of the girl's had shorter hair, reaching only her shoulders, a more golden colour than the other two, but her skin was tanned, and she shared the same bright green eyes with the youngest of them all.

They were dressed in white, pale robes swishing the floor with grace, but apparently picked up no dirt.

Fanar gaped to see three so out of place in this grey structure, and she turned to Mogget, once more an owl on Abhorsen's shoulder.

'Clayr.' He whispered, 'three from the glacier.'

He raised his voice a little louder and called at the three females, 'What are we doing so far from our icicle, Chindrae?'

The woman, looked up, startled, and her eyes instantly focused on Abhorsen. Her look brightened, and she laughed, covering the distance between them in three quick strides.

Abhorsen went to her too, and the two met in a fierce embrace, followed quickly by a small, badly disguised kiss.

Fanar gulped and blushed at the open sign of affection. 'Terciel!' the woman was saying,

'Terciel, it's been so long!'

'Too long, Chindrae,' Abhorsen confirmed, eyes burning with a fierce passion.

Fanar blinked and felt a well of some awful feeling, something like betrayal. She bashed it away, and spotted the elder girl glare at Abhorsen with contempt.

'Terciel, these are my daughters. This here,' she pointed to the elder of the girls who stepped forward, quickly masking her look of disapproval. 'Is Kirrith. And my younger daughter, Arielle.'

Abhorsen nodded to the smaller girl, who looked to be no more than six or seven.

'Chindrae, this is Fanar.' Abhorsen grabbed Fanar's arm and pulled her forward, and Fanar bowed politely.

Chindrae smiled at her, blue eyes showing no emotion as they flicked across Fanar's slender frame and rested briefly on her charter mark, now visible through Fanar's neatly parted hair.

Terciel? She thought, vaguely.

'But what are you doing here?' Fanar's confused state dissipated as she tuned in to what Abhorsen was saying, as Mogget came to rest on her shoulder instead of his. His talons nicked her nick under the thick jumper and she jumped, then ignored the scratches and stroked the snowy white plumage absently.

Chindrae was talking again, her brilliant eyes wide, her voice soft. 'We had not seen any of our number leave the Glacier for many decades, but here we are, and imagine!' she laughed, 'We… that is to say, I bring news, Abhorsen, news of a place you have been Seen… strange, that you were there it seems. Quite without your companion here.'

There was something about that word Seen that made Fanar's neck prickle with a sense of strange misunderstanding. Some premonition that the word meant much more than merely to see with eyes.

'Where was I seen?' Abhorsen asked.

Chindrae smiled, 'We do not know. Somewhere that is not here, nor…' she paused and smiled again, 'Nor were you seen there.' She gestured to the Old Kingdom, on their left and Fanar looked out. She could see taller buildings in the greater stretch of the distance, and the winding river that Abhorsen and her map of the Old Kingdom had called The Ratterlin. Far, far in the distance and broad strip of pale horizon suggested mountains….

'You were in Ancelstierre, it seems, but we do not know where, nor may be show you.'

'Chindrae, I don't understand, what brought you to bring your daughters? Why can't you tell me?'

'Ahh, well some things are better left un said. They are here because young Arielle was blessed with the Sight not fourteen days ago. She is here because she saw us, that is to say herself, Kirrith and I, here, meeting you, here, today…. Or… yesterday?'

Abhorsen nodded without correcting her confusement on what tense she was supposed to be talking in.

Chindrae looked at her daughter, and continued, 'She also saw a baby, Abhorsen, a baby… over the wall, back there…. a small baby girl being born.'

Fanar felt her heart skip a beat. 'A… a girl baby?' she asked tentatively.

The dream… the birth of a child… her child?

'Yes,' Chindrae replied, with no real interest. 'Strange… well, it was nice seeing you, Terciel, and good meeting you too, young Fanar.'

Fanar bowed, dipping her head low, her eyes catching on the smallest girl. She has seen what I have seen…

Then she looked away, her stomach trembling with nerves… a baby? Her baby?

She straightened, meaning to ask questions of the girl, but the archway was empty. Arielle, sister and mother had gone.

'They like to vanish abruptly.' Abhorsen said wisely, with the tone of someone who has experienced something before.

Fanar smiled crookedly, and was about to suggest they move on, until a cry intervened. A shrill, harsh cry that echoed along their part of the wall, a horribly clear cry, strangled and wretched.

A moment later and something twinged in Fanar's heart. Like a piece of her had taken a bruise. She flinched, and realised she had just felt someone die.

Another yell exploded beside them and Fanar looked around wildly, watching Abhorsen's face which was lined, his eyes were wide a fearful, his black hair flying about in the wind. 'What is it?' she whispered.

Abhorsen steadied his breath. 'A necrsomancer. A necromancer is here.'

What happens next?? Haha, not telling. Promise it won't be so long next time.

Wild Blood Rose