by Garth Nix
She put the bell back, but hesitated as her hand fell on Kibeth. Sleeper and Master had spoken well, but Walker sometimes had its own ideas, and it was stirring suspiciously under her hand. Best to wait a moment, to calm herself, Sabriel thought, taking her hand away from the bandolier. She sheathed her sword, and looked around the shed. To her surprise, everyone except Touchstone and Mogget was asleep. They had only caught the echoes of Ranna, which shouldn’t have been enough. Of course, Ranna could be tricksome too, but its trickery was far less troublesome.
“This is a Mordaut,” she said to Touchstone, who was stifling a half-born yawn. “A weak spirit, catalogued as one of the Lesser Dead. They like to ride with the Living—cohabiting the body to some extent, directing it, and slowly sipping the spirit away. It makes them hard to find.”
“What do we do with it now?” asked Touchstone, eyeing the quivering lump of shadow with distaste. It clearly couldn’t be cut up, consumed by fire, or anything else he could think of.
“I will banish it, send it back to die a true death,” replied Sabriel. Slowly, she drew Kibeth, using both hands. She still felt uneasy, for the bell was twisting in her grasp, trying to sound of its own accord, a sound that would make her walk in Death.
She gripped it harder and rang the orthodox backwards, forwards and figure eight her father had taught her. Kibeth’s voice rang out, singing a merry tune, a capering jig that almost had Sabriel’s feet jumping too, till she forced herself to be absolutely still.
The Mordaut had no such free will. For a moment, Touchstone thought it was getting away, the shadow form suddenly leaping upwards, unreal flesh slipping up his blades almost to the cross-hilts. Then, it slid back down again—and vanished. Back into Death, to bob and spin in the current, howling and screaming with whatever voice it had there, all the way through to the Final Gate.
“Thanks,” Sabriel said to Touchstone. She looked down at his two swords, still deeply embedded in the wooden floor. They were no longer burning with silver flames, but she could see the Charter marks moving on the blades.
“I didn’t realize your swords were ensorcelled,” she continued. “Though I’m glad they are.”
Surprise crossed Touchstone’s face, and confusion.
“I thought you knew,” he said. “I took them from the Queen’s ship. They were a Royal Champion’s swords. I didn’t want to take them, but Mogget said you—”
He stopped in mid-sentence, as Sabriel let out a heartfelt sigh.
“Well, anyway,” he continued. “Legend has it that the Wallmaker made them, at the same time he—or she, I suppose—made your sword.”
“Mine?” asked Sabriel, her hand lightly touching the worn bronze of the guard. She’d never thought about who’d made the sword—it just was. “I was made for Abhorsen, to slay those already Dead,” the inscription said, when it said anything lucid at all. So it probably was forged long ago, back in the distant past when the Wall was made. Mogget would know, she thought. Mogget probably wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell her—but he would know.
“I suppose we’d better wake everybody up,” she said, dismissing speculation about swords for the immediate present.
“Are there more Dead?” asked Touchstone, grunting as he pulled his swords free of the floor.
“I don’t think so,” replied Sabriel. “That Mordaut was very clever, for it had hardly sapped the spirit of poor . . . Patar . . . so its presence was masked by his life. It would have come to the island in that box of grave dirt, having impressed the poor man with instructions before they left the mainland. I doubt whether any others would have done the same. I can’t sense any here, at least. I guess I should check the other buildings, and walk around the island, just to be sure.”
“Now?” asked Touchstone.
“Now,” confirmed Sabriel. “But let’s wake everyone up first, and organize some people to carry lights for us. We’d also better talk to the Elder about a boat for the morning.”
“And a good supply of fish,” added Mogget, who’d slunk back to the half-eaten whiting, his voice sharp above the heavy drone of snoring fisher-folk.
There were no Dead on the island, though the archers reported seeing strange lights moving in the village, during brief lulls in the rain. They’d heard movement on the breakwater too, and shot fire arrows onto the stones, but saw nothing before the crude, oily rag-wrapped shafts guttered out.
Sabriel advanced out on the breakwater, and stood near the sea gap, her oilskin coat loosely draped over her shoulders, shedding rain to the ground and down her neck. She couldn’t see anything through the rain and dark, but she could feel the Dead. There were more than she had sensed earlier, or they had grown much stronger. Then, with a sickening feeling, she realized that this strength belonged to a single creature, only now emerging from Death, using the broken stone as a portal. An instant later, she recognized its particular presence.
The Mordicant had found her.
“Touchstone,” she asked, fighting to keep the shivers from her voice. “Can you sail a boat by night?”
“Yes,” replied Touchstone, his voice impersonal again, face dark in the rainy night, the lantern-light from the villagers behind him lighting only his back and feet. He hesitated, as if he shouldn’t be offering an opinion, then added, “But it would be much more dangerous. I don’t know this coast, and the night is very dark.”
“Mogget can see in the dark,” Sabriel said quietly, moving closer to Touchstone so the villagers couldn’t hear her.
“We have to leave immediately,” she whispered, while pretending to adjust her oilskin. “A Mordicant has come. The same one that pursued me before.”
“What about the people here?” asked Touchstone, so softly the sound of the rain almost washed his words away—but there was the faint sound of reproof under his business-like tone.
“The Mordicant is after me,” muttered Sabriel. She could sense it moving away from the stone, questing about, using its otherwordly senses to find her. “It can feel my presence, as I feel it. When I go, it will follow.”
“If we stay till morning,” Touchstone whispered back, “won’t we be safe? You said even a Mordicant couldn’t cross this gap.”
“I said, ‘I think,’” faltered Sabriel. “It has grown stronger. I can’t be sure—”
“That thing back in the shed, the Mordaut, it wasn’t very difficult to destroy,” Touchstone whispered, the confidence of ignorance in his voice. “Is this Mordicant much worse?”
“Much,” replied Sabriel shortly.
The Mordicant had stopped moving. The rain seemed to be dampening both its senses and its desire to find her and slay. Sabriel stared vainly out into the darkness, trying to peer past the sheets of rain, to gain the evidence provided by sight, as well as her necromantic senses.
“Riemer,” she said, loudly now, calling to the villager who was in charge of their lantern-holders. He came forward quickly, gingery hair plastered flat on his rounded head, rainwater dripping down from a high forehead to catapult itself off the end of his pudgy nose.
“Riemer, have the archers keep very careful watch. Tell them to shoot anything that comes onto the breakwater—there is nothing living out there now. Only the Dead. We need to go back and talk to your Elder.”
They walked back in silence, save for the sloshing of boots in puddles and the steady finger-applause of the rain. At least half of Sabriel’s attention stayed with the Mordicant; a malign, stomachache-inducing presence across the dark water. She wondered why it was waiting. Waiting for the rain to stop, or perhaps for the now-banished Mordaut to attack from within. Whatever its reasons, it gave them a little time to get to a boat, and lead it away. And perhaps, there was always the chance that it couldn’t cross the breakwater gap.
“What time is low tide?” she asked Riemer, as a new thought struck.
“Ah, just about an hour before dawn,” replied the fisherman. “About six hours, if I’m any judge.”
The Elder awoke crankily from his
second sleep. He was loath for them to go in the night, though Sabriel felt that at least half of his reluctance was due to their need for a boat. The villagers only had five left. The others had been sunk in the harbor, drowned and broken by the stones hurled down by the Dead, eager to stop the escape of their living prey.
“I’m sorry,” Sabriel said again. “But we must have a boat and we need it now. There is a terrible Dead creature in the village—it tracks like a hunting dog, and the trail it follows is mine. If I stay, it will try and come here—and, at the ebb, it may be able to cross the gap in the breakwater. If I go, it will follow.”
“Very well,” the Elder agreed, mulishly. “You have cleansed this island for us; a boat is a little thing. Riemer will prepare it with food and water. Riemer! The Abhorsen will have Landalin’s boat—make sure it is stocked and seaworthy. Take sails from Jaled, if Landalin’s is short or rotten.”
“Thank you,” said Sabriel. Tiredness weighed down on her, tiredness and the weight of awareness. Awareness of her enemies, like a darkness always clouding the edge of her vision. “We will go now. My good wishes stay with you, and my hopes for your safety.”
“May the Charter preserve us all,” added Touchstone, bowing to the old man. The Elder bowed back, a bent, solemn figure, so much smaller than his shadow, looming tall on the wall behind.
Sabriel turned to go, but a long line of villagers was forming on the way to the door. All of them wanted to bow or curtsey before her, to mutter shy thank-yous and farewells. Sabriel accepted them with embarrassment and guilt, remembering Patar. True, she had banished the dead, but another life had been lost in the doing. Her father would not have been so clumsy . . .
The second-to-last person in the line was a little girl, her black hair tied in two plaits, one on either side of her head. Seeing her made Sabriel remember something Touchstone had said. She stopped, and took the girl’s hands in her own.
“What is your name, little one?” she asked, smiling. A feeling of déjà vu swept over her as the small fingers met hers—the memory of a frightened first-grader hesitantly reaching out to the older pupil who would be her guide for the first day at Wyverley College. Sabriel had experienced both sides, in her time.
“Aline,” said the girl, smiling back. Her eyes were bright and lively, too young to be dimmed by the frightened despair that clouded the adults’ gaze. A good choice, Sabriel thought.
“Now, tell me what you have learned in your lessons about the Great Charter,” Sabriel said, adopting the familiar, motherly and generally irrelevant questioning tone of the School Inspector who’d descended on every class in Wyverley twice a year.
“I know the rhyme . . .” replied Aline, a little doubtfully, her small forehead crinkling. “Shall I sing it, like we do in class?”
Sabriel nodded.
“We dance around the stone, too,” Aline added, confidingly. She stood up straighter, put one foot forward, and took her hands away to clasp them behind her back.
Five Great Charters knit the land
together linked, hand in hand
One in the people who wear the crown
Two in the folk who keep the Dead down
Three and Five became stone and mortar
Four sees all in frozen water.
“Thank you, Aline,” Sabriel said. “That was very nice.”
She ruffled the child’s hair and hastened through the final farewells, suddenly keen to get out of the smoke and the fish-smell, out into the clean, rainy air where she could think.
“So now you know,” whispered Mogget, jumping up into her arms to escape the puddles. “I still can’t tell you, but you know one’s in your blood.”
“Two,” replied Sabriel distantly. “‘Two in the folk who keep the Dead down.’ So what is the . . . ah . . . I can’t talk about it either!”
But she thought about the questions she’d like to ask, as Touchstone helped her aboard the small fishing vessel that lay just off the tiny, shell-laden beach that served the island as a harbor.
One of the Great Charters lay in the royal blood. The second lay in Abhorsen’s. What were three and five, and four that saw all in frozen water? She felt certain that many answers could be found in Belisaere. Her father could probably answer more, for many things that were bound in Life were unraveled in Death. And there was her mother-sending, for that third and final questioning in this seven years.
Touchstone pushed off, clambered aboard and took the oars. Mogget leapt out of Sabriel’s arms, and assumed a figurehead position near the prow, serving as a night-sighted lookout, while mocking Touchstone at the same time.
Back on shore, the Mordicant suddenly howled, a long, piercing cry that echoed far across the water, chilling hearts on both boat and island.
“Bear a bit more to starboard,” said Mogget, in the silence after the howl faded. “We need more sea-room.”
Touchstone was quick to comply.
Chapter Eighteen
BY THE MORNING of the sixth day out of Nestowe, Sabriel was heartily tired of nautical life. They’d sailed virtually non-stop all that time, only putting into shore at noon for fresh water, and only then when it was sunny. Nights were spent under sail, or, when exhaustion claimed Touchstone, hove-to with a sea anchor, the unsleeping Mogget standing watch. Fortunately, the weather had been kind.
It had been a relatively uneventful five days. Two days from Nestowe to Beardy Point, an unprepossessing peninsula whose only interesting features were a sandy-bottomed beach and a clear stream. Devoid of life, it was also devoid of the Dead. Here, for the first time, Sabriel could no longer sense the pursuing Mordicant. A good, strong, south-easterly had propelled them, reaching northwards, at too fast a pace for it to follow.
Three days from Beardy Point to the island of Ilgard, its rocky cliffs climbing sheer from the sea, a grey and pockmarked tenement, home to tens of thousands of seabirds. They passed it late in the afternoon, their single sail stretched to bursting, clinker-built hull heeling well over, bow slicing up a column of spray that salted mouths, eyes and bodies.
It was half a day from Ilgard to the Belis Mouth, that narrow strait that led to the Sea of Saere. But that was tricky sailing, so they spent the night hove-to just out of sight of Ilgard, to wait for the light of day.
“There is a boom-chain across the Belis Mouth,” Touchstone explained, as he raised the sail and Sabriel hauled the sea anchor in over the bow. The sun was rising behind him, but had not yet pulled itself out of the sea, so he was no more than a dim shadow in the stern. “It was built to keep pirates and suchlike out of the Sea of Saere. You won’t believe the size of it—I can’t imagine how it was forged, or strung across.”
“Will it still be there?” Sabriel asked, cautiously, not wanting to prevent Touchstone’s strangely talkative mood.
“I’m sure of it,” replied Touchstone. “We’ll see the towers on the opposite shores first. Winding Post, to the south, and Boom Hook to the north.”
“Not very imaginative names,” commented Sabriel, unable to help herself from interrupting. It was just such a pleasure to talk! Touchstone had lapsed back into non-communication for most of the voyage, though he did have a good excuse—handling the fishing boat for eighteen hours a day, even in good weather, didn’t leave much energy for conversation.
“They’re named after their purpose,” replied Touchstone. “Which makes sense.”
“Who decides whether to let vessels past the chain?” asked Sabriel. Already, she was thinking ahead, wondering about Belisaere. Could it be like Nestowe—the city abandoned, riddled with the Dead?
“Ah,” said Touchstone. “I hadn’t thought about that. In my time, there was a Royal Boom Master, with a force of guards and a squadron of small, picket ships. If, as Mogget says, the city has fallen into anarchy . . .”
“There may also be people working for, or in alliance with, the Dead,” Sabriel added thoughtfully. “So even if we cross the boom in daylight, there could be trouble. I think I’d bett
er reverse my surcoat and hide my helmet wrapping.”
“What about the bells?” asked Touchstone. He leaned past her, to draw the main sheet tighter, right hand slightly nudging the tiller to take advantage of a shift in the wind. “They’re fairly obvious, to say the least.”
“I’ll just look like a necromancer,” Sabriel replied. “A salty, unwashed necromancer.”
“I don’t know,” said Touchstone, who couldn’t see that Sabriel was joking. “No necromancer would be let into the city, or would stay alive, in—”
“In your day,” interrupted Mogget, from his favorite post on the bow. “But this is now, and I am sure that necromancers and worse are not uncommon sights in Belisaere.”
“I’ll wear a cloak—” Sabriel started to say.
“If you say so,” Touchstone said, at the same time. Clearly, he didn’t believe the cat. Belisaere was the royal capital, a huge city, home to at least fifty thousand people. Touchstone couldn’t imagine it fallen, decayed and in the hands of the Dead. Despite his own inner fears and secret knowledge, he couldn’t help but be confident that the Belisaere they were sailing towards would be little different from the two-hundred-year-old images locked in his memory.
That confidence took a blow as the Belis Mouth towers became visible above the blue line of the horizon, on opposite shores of the strait. At first, the towers were no more than dark smudges, that grew taller as wind and wave carried the boat towards them. Through her telescope, Sabriel saw that they were made from a beautiful, rosy-pink stone that once must have been magnificent. Now they were largely blackened by fire; their majesty vanished. Winding Post had lost the top three storys, from seven; Boom Hook stood as tall as ever, but sunlight shone through gaping holes, showing the interior to be a gutted ruin. There was no sign of any garrison, toll collector, windlass mules, or anything alive.
