"Anet! Anet! Anet!"

Terciel woke in pitch darkness to the sound of Andrael's voice. But it had changed since dusk: notes of urgency and fear had cracked her steady rhythm. And the sound of Charter-blade on wood had changed to the all-too-familiar squelch of impact with rotting flesh.

"Anet!" Andrael's voice shrieked, "Anet! Terciel, help me!"

Now fully awake, Terciel sprang to his feet. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the dying fire, he saw a revenant like the one from the night before advancing on Andrael. But instead of being overtaken, she was holding her ground and casting attack after attack at her opponent. Her weak casting couldn't hurt the revenant, but each impact did make it stagger a bit, and kept it from continuing into the camp.

But Andrael couldn't keep it up for long. Terciel could see that after so many Charter marks in such a short time, her limited stamina was nearly spent. He grabbed her hands, stilling their frantic sketching of Anet, and she slumped with exhaustion. Now unimpeded, the revenant shook off its wounds and ran towards the pair with a roar of triumph.

Terciel was ready. He held the pipes to his lips and blew a long, clear note into Saraneth. It bound the revenant strongly, and the creature stopped its charge just short of grasping Terciel's throat.

He wondered why Abhorsen, who was usually so quick to wake and fight, hadn't destroyed the creature at the first sign of trouble. He looked to where she had been sleeping and saw her fully awake, crouching and scanning the edges of the camp. Slowly, his death-sense awakened to what she was already aware of: a half-dozen Dead encircling the camp.

But these were no ordinary revenants, holding on to a stolen body by their own power. There were threads of stronger magic within them. They had been created by a powerful necromancer. "They're Hands!" Terciel said. Abhorsen nodded.

"What?" demanded Andrael, who was still only aware of the one Hand that Terciel had bound.

"We're surrounded," Abhorsen informed her calmly, "Don't panic. Terciel?" He looked up just in time to catch the bell bandolier Abhorsen had thrown him. His jaw dropped. Allowing him to wear her bells while on watch had been almost a symbolic gesture. Giving them to him in the middle of a battle was an unprecedented show of trust.

He was about to protest, but the Hands were already entering the circle of light cast by their dying fire. Andrael gasped, and dropped back into a casting stance, her exhaustion pushed aside. Terciel threw the bandolier over his shoulder and ran his hands over the bells. Saraneth was the most reliable, the favorite of Abhorsens, but he knew he wasn't skilled enough to bind six Hands at once. He settled on Ranna, ringing it carefully with two hands. Ranna was a safe choice, but even it could be tricky. Even though Terciel tried to keep the bell's power focused, he felt Andrael slump against him, suddenly barely awake. Even Abhorsen yawned and held her sword two-handed to keep from dropping it. But most importantly, five of the Hands dropped to the ground like sandbags. Only the one Terciel had bound with Saraneth remained on its feet, paralyzed.

Terciel replaced Ranna, only then allowing his hands to begin shaking. He had faced this many Dead at once before, but always with Abhorsen fully armed beside him. Somehow, when she wasn't wearing her bells, Abhorsen seemed diminished, as if she perhaps wouldn't have been able to take over if Terciel had failed.

But of course that wasn't true. Even without weapons Abhorsen was a powerful mage. She showed as much by stepping forward and sketching out advanced Charter marks for binding, silence, and final death. She cast them at the five prone bodies, then delivered a coup-de-grace to each with her sword. Their bodies destroyed, the Hands' Charter-bound souls would be quickly carried deep into Death.

Terciel tried to hand back the bells, but Abhorsen held up her hand, refusing them. With practiced ease she cast a large diamond of protection around the entire camp, including Andrael and the remaining bound Hand. "Follow me," she said to Terciel, and closed her eyes. The air around her crackled with cold, and her body became stiff. She had gone into Death.

"I'll be back soon," Terciel promised Andrael. She was still struggling to stay awake with Ranna's spell lingering in her ears, and she was clearly bewildered by the sudden turns of events, but she nodded bravely. Terciel took a deep breath and stepped into the cold river after his master.

He opened his eyes on a gray landscape. Water tugged at his feet, but he was familiar with the First Precinct, and it was easy to resist the pull. "Are you ready?" said a voice. It was Abhorsen, who was standing just downriver.

"What are we doing here?" he said, "Andrael is alone back in Life."

Abhorsen looked almost confused for a moment. "We're going to find out who sent those Hands, of course," she said, "Surely you didn't think we would just keep traveling after such an attack without trying to discover its origin?" Terciel blushed. It hadn't even occurred to him. Of course, everything had happened so fast…

"Andrael will be fine," Abhorsen added, "That's why I cast the diamond before we left her. Now, which bell will you use?" She gestured to Terciel's left, where the Hand had stood in Life. In Death, only the soul remained, and it was warped by its time in the river and by the bindings of its master. It was only a shadow, almost transparent in the dim light. He fingered the bells uncertainly.

He wanted to ask Abhorsen to take the bandolier back and do it herself. Though he had long coveted the bells, using them in their true owner's presence was strange. He knew he was only being tested, but he felt like a thief. But Abhorsen had made up her mind, and asking her to take the bells back now would only seem like weakness. Terciel turned to the bound shadow before him.

The soul had long lost its ability to speak, so Terciel began to draw Dyrim to restore it. Abhorsen cleared her throat. Terciel hesitated, his hands hovering over the bells, and only then did he notice that the shadow was twisting and writhing, fighting against his binding spell. He drew Saraneth and rang it once to renew the binding. The shadow fell still.

More confident now, Terciel held Saraneth left-handed and drew Dyrim. Turning the handle in a slow circle, he rolled the tongue around the inside of the bell to produce a high singing sound. The shadow responded by folding in on itself to form a mouth, but all the came out was incomprehensible gurgling. Terciel froze, hoping that he hadn't made a mistake.

"The necromancer that animated it wiped its memories," Abhorsen prompted, "It's forgotten how to speak." Terciel nodded, now understanding, and replaced Dyrim in his right hand with Belgaer. Another difficult bell, Terciel had struggled with Belgaer in the past. But he mustered his confidence and his concentration, and it rang true.

The shadow's choked noises slowly became recognizable syllables, and then words. "Free me!" it begged, "I fought death before, but I would embrace it now if I could be free of this half-life."

Terciel looked to Abhorsen, but she said nothing. So he spoke to the spirit, "I will, I promise you. But first you must tell me who you serve."

The thing was only too eager to answer. "A necromancer. I don't know his name. He summoned dozens of us in secret, in a workshop in the mountains. But something happened. He died."

"Then you are following orders that he gave before his death?" Terciel asked.

"No," said the shadow, "He didn't stay dead. Simple enough for a necromancer to resist his own end. After that, he took us all and began moving north through the mountains. He meant to go somewhere new and carry out some plan, but I don't know where or what. Forgive me, it's so hard to remember."

Terciel almost responded to the pitiful voice by releasing his binding, but Abhorsen finally spoke up to ask, "Why did your master send you to us? He must have known that six Hands would be no match for the Abhorsen and her apprentice."

"We knew nothing of the Abhorsen," the shadow said, "Our orders were to capture the girl."

Terciel saw the same astonishment that was on his face reflected on Abhorsen's. "Why?" he demanded.

"I don't know any more!" the shadow wailed, "Please, let me go before he binds me anew!"

"Get rid of it," said Abhorsen, already walking back toward Life.

"But we have to know why it was after Andrael!" Terciel shouted, but Abhorsen had already crossed the boundary. He suddenly felt very alone, standing on the featureless plain with only the shadow for company. But the weight of the bells against his chest was a comfort, because he knew that there was almost nothing in the First Precinct that he could not defeat with them. He mused that Abhorsen must feel the same mixture of confidence and loneliness every time she walked in Death.

As Terciel drew Kibeth, he wondered why Abhorsen had suddenly given him such responsibility. Loaning him the bells, insisting that he use them in battle, having him conduct an interrogation, and now leaving him alone in Death. It was nothing shockingly new - he had used the bells before, in controlled situations, and he had certainly been in Death alone many times - but something about the tone and circumstance of it made Terciel uncomfortable. It was almost as if his aunt were letting him do her job, and while he knew that he would one day be Abhorsen, he was not exactly eager to make the transition.

The soul that had once been the Hand was now gibbering uncontrollably with fear. There would be no more information forthcoming. Abhorsen had been right; it was time to let it go before its master sensed its defeat. Otherwise, the necromancer might seek it out in Death, find out what it had told them, and put it in a new body to continue its servitude. The thought clearly terrified the soul. Terciel readied Kibeth to walk it to its final rest.

Ringing Kibeth was harder than he anticipated for a bell he knew so well, and he suddenly realized that he was exhausted. He had rung five bells in quick succession - more than he ever had before. The only bells that remained in their holsters were Mosrael and Astarael, the forbidden bells. It was such a complete lesson that it was almost as if Abhorsen had planned it. He concentrated harder as he finished ringing Kibeth in an angular figure-eight, and the sound was pure. The shadow collapsed into the water, its mouth and all form gone, and as a dark spot in the river it drifted easily through the First Gate.

Terciel replaced his bells and turned to go. He felt a rush of warmth as he pushed back through the wellspring of the river into Life, where Andrael was staring worriedly at him. He shifted his stiff limbs and the thin sheet of frost over his crackled as it broke.

"He's okay!" said Andrael, sounding relieved and almost surprised.

Abhorsen was dragging the bodies of the Hands into a pile outside of camp. "I told you he'd be back soon," she said, not even looking up. She whispered and made a quick motion with her hands, and the whole pile of corpses went up in a blaze of Charter-fire.

"I don't understand," Andrael pouted, looking back and forth between the two, "Back from where? Where did you go?"

"We'll explain everything," said Abhorsen, striding back to her apprentice who was shivering from exertion and nerves. She held out her hand, and this time it took Terciel a moment to realize that she was waiting for him to give her bells back. As their hands touched, she held his fingers for a moment and smiled at him. From Abhorsen, it was high praise when she said, "Well done."