by Garth Nix
Now they waited. Sabriel didn’t know why. Somehow, Abhorsen seemed to be able to see into Life, or to work out what was happening. He stood like an eavesdropper, body slightly bent, ear cocked to a non-existent door.
Sabriel, on the other hand, stood like a soldier, keeping watch for the Dead. The broken stones made this part of Death an attractive high road into Life, and she had expected to find many Dead here, trying to take advantage of the “hole.” But it was not so. They seemed to be alone in the grey, featureless river, their only neighbors the swells and eddies of the water.
Abhorsen closed his eyes, concentrating even harder, then opened them to a wide-eyed stare and touched Sabriel lightly on the arm.
“It is almost time,” he said gently. “When we emerge, I want you to take . . . Touchstone . . . and run for the southern stairs. Do not stop for anything, anything at all. Once outside, climb up to the top of the Palace Hill, to the West Yard. It’s just an empty field now—Touchstone will know how to get there. If the Clayr are watching properly, and haven’t got their whens mixed up, there’ll be a Paperwing there—”
“A Paperwing!” interrupted Sabriel. “But I crashed it.”
“There are several around,” replied Abhorsen. “The Abhorsen who made it—the forty-sixth, I think—taught several others how to construct them. Anyway, it should be there. The Clayr will also be there, or a messenger, to tell you where to find Kerrigor’s body in Ancelstierre. Fly as close to the Wall as possible, cross, find the body—and destroy it!”
“What will you be doing?” whispered Sabriel.
“Here is Saraneth,” replied Abhorsen, not meeting her gaze. “Give me your sword, and . . . Astarael.”
The seventh bell. Astarael the Sorrowful. Weeper.
Sabriel didn’t move, made no motion to hand over bell or blade. Abhorsen pushed Saraneth into its pouch, and did up the strap. He started to undo the strap that held Astarael, but Sabriel’s hand closed on his, gripping it tightly.
“There must be another way,” she cried. “We can all escape together—”
“No,” said Abhorsen firmly. He gently pushed her hand away. Sabriel let go, and he took Astarael carefully from the bandolier, making sure it couldn’t sound. “Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?”
Numbly, Sabriel handed him her sword . . . his sword. Her empty hands hung open by her sides.
“I have walked in Death to the very precipice of the Ninth Gate,” Abhorsen said quietly. “I know the secrets and horrors of the Nine Precincts. I do not know what lies beyond, but everything that lives must go there, in the proper time. That is the rule that governs our work as the Abhorsen, but it also governs us. You are the fifty-third Abhorsen, Sabriel. I have not taught you as well as I should—let this be my final lesson. Everyone and everything has a time to die.”
He bent forward, and kissed her forehead, just under the rim of her helmet. For a moment, she stood like a stringed puppet at rest, then she flung herself against his chest, feeling the soft fabric of his surcoat. She seemed to diminish in size, till once again she was a little girl, running to his embrace at the school gates. As she could then, she heard the slow beating of his heart. Only now, she heard the beats as grains in a timepiece, counting his hard-won hundred hundreds, counting till it was time for him to die.
She hugged him tightly, her arms meeting around his back, his arms outstretched like a cross, sword in one hand, bell in the other. Then, she let go.
They turned together, and plunged out into Life.
Kerrigor laughed again, an obscene cackle that rose to a manic crescendo, before suddenly cutting to an ominous silence. The Dead resumed their drumming, softer now, and the fog drifted forward with horrible certainty. Touchstone, drenched and partly drowned, watched it with the taut nerves of a mouse captivated by a gliding snake. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he noted that it was easier to see the whiteness of the fog. Up above, the clouds had gone, and the edges of the reservoir were once again lit by filtered sunlight. But they were forty paces or more from the edge . . .
A cracking noise behind him made him start, and turn, a jolt of fear suddenly overlaid with relief. Sabriel, and her father, were returning to Life! Ice flakes fell from them in miniature flurries, and the layer of ice around Abhorsen’s middle broke into several small floes and drifted away.
Touchstone blinked as the frost fell away from their hands and faces. Now Sabriel was empty-handed, and Abhorsen wielded the sword and bell.
“Thank the Charter!” exclaimed Touchstone, as they opened their eyes and moved.
But no one heard him, for in that instant a terrible scream of rage and fury burst out of the fog, so loud the columns shivered, and ripples burst out across the water.
Touchstone turned again, and the fog was flying away in shreds, revealing the Mordicant crouched low, only its eyes and long mouth, bubbling with oily flames, visible above the water. Behind it, with one elongated hand upon its bog-clay head, stood something that might be thought of as a man.
Staring, Touchstone saw that Kerrigor had tried to make the body he currently inhabited look like the Rogir of old, but either his skills, memory or taste were sadly lacking. Kerrigor stood at least seven feet tall, his body impossibly deep-chested and narrow-waisted. His head was too thin, and too long, and his mouth spread from ear to ear. His eyes did not bear looking at, for they were thin slits burning with Free Magic fires—not eyes at all.
But somehow, even so warped, he did have a little of the look of Rogir. Take a man, make him malleable, stretch and twist . . .
The hideous mouth opened, yawning wider and wider, then Kerrigor laughed, a short laugh, punctuated by the snap of his closing jaws. Then he spoke, and his voice was as warped and twisted as his body.
“I am fortunate. Three bearers of blood—blood for the breaking! Three!”
Touchstone kept staring, hearing Kerrigor’s voice, still somewhat like Rogir’s, rich but rotten, wet like worm-ridden fruit. He saw both the new, twisted Kerrigor and the other, better-fashioned body he’d known as Rogir. He saw the dagger again, slashing across the Queen’s throat, the blood cascading out, the golden cup . . .
A hand grabbed him, turned him around, took his left sword from his grasp. He suddenly refocused, gasping for air again, and saw Sabriel. She had his left sword in her right hand, and now took his open palm in her left, dragging him towards the south. He let her pull, following in a splashing, loose-limbed run. Everything seemed to close in then, his vision narrowing, like a half-remembered dream.
He saw Sabriel’s father—the Abhorsen—for the first time devoid of frost. He looked hard, determined, but he smiled, and bowed his head a fraction as they passed. Touchstone wondered why he was going the wrong way . . . towards Kerrigor, towards the dagger and the catching cup. Mogget was on his shoulder too, and that was unlike Mogget, going into danger . . . there was something else peculiar about Mogget too . . . yes, his collar was gone . . . maybe he should turn and go back, put Mogget’s collar back on, try and fight Kerrigor . . .
“Run! Damn you! Run!” screamed Sabriel, as he half-turned. Her voice snapped him out of whatever trance he’d been in. Nausea hit, for they’d left the diamond of protection. Unwarned, he threw up immediately, turning his head as they ran. He realized he was dragging on Sabriel’s hand, and forced himself to run faster, though his legs felt dead, numbed by savage pins and needles. He could hear the Dead again now, chanting, and drumming, drumming fast. There were voices too, raised loud, echoing in the vast cavern. The howl of the Mordicant, and a strange buzzing, crackling sound that he felt rather than heard.
They reached the southern stair, but Sabriel didn’t slacken her pace, jumping up and off, out of the twilight of the reservoir into total darkness. Touchstone lost her hand, then found it again, and they stumbled up the steps together, swords held dangerously ahead and behind, striking sparks from the stone. Still they heard the tumult from behind, the howling, drumming, shouting, all magnified
by the water and the vastness of the reservoir. Then another sound began, cutting through the noise with the clarity of perfection.
It started softly, like a tuning fork lightly struck, but grew, a pure note, blown by a trumpeter of inexhaustible breath, till there was nothing but the sound. The sound of Astarael.
Sabriel and Touchstone both stopped, almost in mid-stride. They felt a terrible urge to leave their bodies, to shuck them off as so much worn-out baggage. Their spirits—their essential selves—wanted to go, to go into Death and plunge joyfully into the strongest current, to be carried to the very end.
“Think of Life!” screamed Sabriel, her voice only just audible through the pure note. She could feel Touchstone dying, his will insufficient to hold him in Life. He seemed almost to expect this sudden summons into Death.
“Fight it!” she screamed again, dropping her sword to slap him across the face. “Live!”
Still he slipped away. Desperate, she grabbed him by the ears, and kissed him savagely, biting his lip, the salty blood filling both their mouths. His eyes cleared, and she felt him concentrate again, concentrate on Life, on living. His sword fell, and he brought his arms up around her and returned her kiss. Then he put his head on her shoulder, and she on his, and they held each other tightly till the single note of Astarael slowly died.
Silence came at last. Gingerly, they let each other go. Touchstone shakily groped around for his sword, but Sabriel lit a candle before he could cut his fingers in the dark. They looked at each other in the flickering light. Sabriel’s eyes were wet, Touchstone’s mouth bloody.
“What was that?” Touchstone asked huskily.
“Astarael,” replied Sabriel. “The final bell. It calls everyone who hears it into Death.”
“Kerrigor . . .”
“He’ll come back,” whispered Sabriel. “He’ll always come back, till his real body’s destroyed.”
“Your father?” Touchstone mumbled. “Mogget?”
“Dad’s dead,” said Sabriel. Her face was composed, but her eyes overflowed into tears. “He’ll go quickly beyond the Final Gate. Mogget—I don’t know.”
She fingered the silver ring on her hand, frowned, and bent to pick up the sword she’d taken from Touchstone.
“Come on,” she ordered. “We have to get up to the West Yard. Quickly.”
“The West Yard?” asked Touchstone, retrieving his own sword. He was confused and sick, but he forced himself up. “Of the Palace?”
“Yes,” replied Sabriel. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE SUNSHINE WAS harsh to their eyes, for it was surprisingly only a little past noon. They stumbled out onto the marble steps of the cave, blinking like nocturnal animals prematurely flushed out of an underground warren.
Sabriel looked around at the quiet, sunlit trees, the placid expanse of grass, the clogged fountain. Everything seemed so normal, so far removed from the crazed and twisted chamber of horrors that was the reservoir, deep beneath their feet.
She looked at the sky too, losing focus in the blue, retreating lines of clouds just edging about the fuzzy periphery of her vision. My father is dead, she thought. Gone forever . . .
“The road winds around the south-western part of Palace Hill,” a voice said, somewhere near her, beyond the blueness.
“What?”
“The road. Up to the West Yard.”
It was Touchstone talking. Sabriel closed her eyes, told herself to concentrate, to get a grip on the here and now. She opened her eyes and looked at Touchstone.
He was a mess. Face blood-streaked from his bleeding lip, hair wet, plastered flat, armor and clothes darkly sodden. Water dripped down the sword he still held out, angled to the ground.
“You didn’t tell me you were a Prince,” Sabriel said, in a conversational tone. She might have been commenting on the weather. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, but she didn’t have the energy to do anything about it.
“I’m not,” Touchstone replied, shrugging. He looked up at the sky while he spoke. “The Queen was my mother, but my father was an obscure northern noble, who ‘took up with her’ a few years after her consort’s death. He was killed in a hunting accident before I was born . . . Look, shouldn’t we be going? To the West Yard?”
“I suppose so,” Sabriel said dully. “Father said there will be a Paperwing waiting for us there, and the Clayr, to tell us where to go.”
“I see,” said Touchstone. He came closer, and peered at Sabriel’s vacant eyes, then took her unresisting and oddly floppy arm, and steered her towards the line of beech trees that marked a path to the western end of the park. Sabriel walked obediently, increasing her pace as Touchstone sped up, till they were practically jogging. Touchstone was pushing on her arm, with many backward glances; Sabriel moving with a sleepwalker’s jerky animation.
A few hundred yards from the ornamental caves, the beeches gave way to more lawn, and a road started up the side of Palace Hill, switchbacking twice to the top.
The road was well-paved, but the flagstones had pushed up, or sunk down, over two decades without maintenance, and there were some quite deep ruts and holes. Sabriel caught her foot in one and she almost fell, Touchstone just catching her. But this small shock seemed to break her from the effects of the larger shock, and she found a new alertness cutting through her dumb despair.
“Why are we running?”
“Those scavengers are following us,” Touchstone replied shortly, pointing back through the park. “The ones who had the children at the gate.”
Sabriel looked where he pointed and, sure enough, there were figures slowly moving through the beech-lined path. All nine were there, close together, laughing and talking. They seemed confident Sabriel and Touchstone could not escape them, and their mood looked to be that of casual beaters, easily driving their stupid prey to a definite end. One of them saw Sabriel and Touchstone watching and used a gesture that distance made unclear, but was probably obscene. Laughter carried to them, borne by the breeze. The men’s intentions were clear. Hostile.
“I wonder if they deal with the Dead,” Sabriel said bleakly, revulsion in those words. “To do their deeds when sunlight lends its aid to the living . . .”
“They mean no good, anyway,” said Touchstone, as they set off again, building up from a fast walk to a jog. “They have bows and I bet they can shoot, unlike the villagers of Nestowe.”
“Yes,” replied Sabriel. “I hope there is a Paperwing up there . . .”
She didn’t need to expand upon what would happen if it wasn’t. Neither of them were in any shape for fighting, or much Charter Magic, and nine bowmen could easily finish them off—or capture them. If the men were working for Kerrigor, it would be capture, and the knife, down in the dark of the reservoir . . .
The road grew steeper, and they jogged in silence, breath coming fast and ragged, with none to spare for words. Touchstone coughed, and Sabriel looked at him with concern, till she realized she was coughing too. The shape they were in, it might not take an arrow to finish matters. The hill would do it anyway.
“Not . . . much . . . farther,” Touchstone gasped as they turned at the switchback, tired legs gaining a few seconds of relief on the flat, before starting the next incline.
Sabriel started to laugh, a bitter, coughing laugh, because it was still a lot farther. The laugh became a shocked cry as something struck her in the ribs like a sucker punch. She fell sideways, into Touchstone, carrying both of them down onto the hard flagstones. A long-shot arrow had found its mark.
“Sabriel!” Touchstone shouted, voice high with fear and anger. He shouted her name again, and then Sabriel suddenly felt Charter Magic explode into life within him. As it grew, he leapt up, and thrust his arms out and down towards the enemy, towards that over-gifted marksman. Eight small suns flowered at his fingertips, grew to the size of his clenched fists, and shot out, leaving white trails of after-image in the air. A split second later, a scream from below testified to th
eir finding at least one target.
Numbly, Sabriel wondered how Touchstone could possibly still have the strength for such a spell. Wonder became surprise as he suddenly bent and lifted her up, pack and all, cradling her in his arms—all in one easy motion. She screamed a little as the arrow shifted in her side, but Touchstone didn’t seem to notice. He threw his head back, roared out an animal-like challenge, and started to run up the road, gathering speed from an ungainly lurch to an inhuman sprint. Froth burst from his lips, blowing out over his chin and onto Sabriel. Every vein and muscle in his neck and face corded out, and his eyes went wild with unseeing energy.
He was berserk, and nothing could stop him now, save total dismemberment. Sabriel shivered in his grasp and turned her face into his chest, too disturbed to look on the savage, snorting face that bore so little resemblance to the Touchstone she knew. But at least he was running away from the enemy . . .
On he ran, leaving the road, climbing over the tumbled stones of what had once been a gateway, hardly pausing, jumping from one rock to another with goat-like precision. His face was as bright red as a fire engine now, the pulse in his neck beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. Sabriel, forgetting her own wound in sudden fear that his heart would burst, started shouting at him, begging him to come out of the rage.
“Touchstone! We’re safe! Put me down! Stop! Please, stop!”
He didn’t hear her, his whole concentration bent on their path. Through the ruined gateway he ran, on along a walled path, nostrils wide, head darting from side to side like a scent-following hound.
“Touchstone! Touchstone!” Sabriel sobbed, beating on his chest with her hands. “We’ve got away! I’m all right! Stop! Stop!”
Still he ran, through another arch; along a raised way, the stones falling away under his feet; down a short stair, jumping gaping holes. A closed door halted him for a moment, and Sabriel breathed a sigh of relief, but he kicked at it viciously, till the rotten wood collapsed and he could back through, carefully shielding Sabriel from splinters.
