Sabriel (Old Kingdom Book 1)

by Garth Nix

  “And Wyverly College—it’s an old, solid building?”

  “More like a castle than anything,” replied Sabriel, seeing the way he was thinking. “Easier to defend than this hill.”

  “Running water . . . No? That would be too much to hope for. Right! Private Macking, run down to Major Tindall and tell him that I want his company ready to move in two minutes. We’re going back to the trucks, then on to Wyverley College—it’s on the map, about a mile . . .”

  “South-west,” Sabriel provided.

  “South-west. Repeat that back.”

  Private Macking repeated the message in a slow drawl, then ran off, clearly keen to get away from the cairn. Horyse turned to the long-service corporal and said, “Corporal Anshey. You look pretty fit. Do you think you could get a rope around that coffin?”

  “Reckon so, sir,” replied Corporal Anshey. He detached a coil of rope from his webbing as he spoke, and gestured with his hand to the other soldiers. “Come on you blokes, get yer ropes out.”

  Twenty minutes later, the sarcophagus was being lifted by shear-legs and rope aboard a horse-drawn wagon, appropriated from a local farmer. As Sabriel had expected, dragging it within twenty yards of the trucks stopped their engines, put out electric lights and disrupted the telephone.

  Curiously, the horse, a placid old mare, didn’t seem overly frightened by the gleaming sarcophagus, despite its bronze surface sluggishly crawling with stomach-churning perversions of Charter marks. She wasn’t a happy horse, but not a panicked one either.

  “We’ll have to drive the wagon,” Sabriel said to Touchstone, as the soldiers pushed the suspended coffin aboard with long poles, and collapsed the shear-legs. “I don’t think the Scouts can withstand the sickness much longer.”

  Touchstone shuddered. Like everyone else, he was pale, eyes red-rimmed, his nose dripping and teeth chattering. “I’m not sure I can, either.”

  Nevertheless, when the last rope was twitched off, and the soldiers hurried away, Touchstone climbed up to the driver’s seat and picked up the reins. Sabriel climbed up next to him, suppressing the feeling that her stomach was about to rise into her mouth. She didn’t look back at the sarcophagus.

  Touchstone said “tch-tch” to the horse, and flicked the reins. The mare’s ears went up, and she took up the load, pacing forwards. It was not a quick pace.

  “Is this as fast as . . .” Sabriel said anxiously. They had a mile to cover, and the sun was already bloody, a red disc balanced on the line of the horizon.

  “It’s a heavy load,” Touchstone answered slowly, quick breaths coming between his words, as if he found it difficult to speak. “We’ll be there before the light goes.”

  The sarcophagus seemed to buzz and chuckle behind them. Neither of them mentioned that Kerrigor might arrive, fog-wreathed, before the night did. Sabriel found herself looking behind every few seconds, back along the road. This meant catching glimpses of the vilely shifting surface of the coffin, but she couldn’t help it. The shadows were lengthening, and every time she caught a glimpse of some tree’s pale bark, or a whitewashed mile marker, fear twitched in her gut. Was that fog curling down the road?

  Wyverley College seemed much farther than a mile. The sun was only a three-quarter disc by the time they saw the trucks turn off the road, turning up the bricked drive that led to the wrought-iron gates of Wyverley College. Home, thought Sabriel for a moment. But that was no longer true. It had been home for the better part of her life, but that was past. It was the home of her childhood, when she was only Sabriel. Now, she was also Abhorsen. Now, her home lay in the Old Kingdom, as did her responsibilities. But like her, these traveled.

  Electric lights burned brightly in the two antique glass lanterns on either side of the gate, but they dimmed to mere sparks as the wagon and its strange cargo drove through. One of the gates was off its hinges, and Sabriel realized the soldiers must have forced their way through. It was unusual for the gates to be locked before full dark. They must have closed them when they heard the bells, Sabriel realized, and that alerted her to something else . . .

  “The bell in the village,” she exclaimed, as the wagon passed several parked trucks and wheeled around to stop near the huge, gate-like doors to the main building of the school. “The bell—it’s stopped.”

  Touchstone brought the wagon to a halt, and listened, cocking an ear towards the darkening sky. True enough, they could no longer hear the Wyverley village bell.

  “It is a mile,” he said, hesitantly. “Perhaps we’re too far, the wind . . .”

  “No,” said Sabriel. She felt the air, cool with evening, still on her face. There was no wind. “You could always hear it here. Kerrigor has reached the village. We need to get the sarcophagus inside, quickly!”

  She jumped down from the wagon, and ran over to Horyse, who was standing on the steps outside the partially open door, talking to an obscured figure within. As Sabriel got closer, edging through groups of waiting soldiers, she recognized the voice. It was Mrs. Umbrade, the headmistress.

  “How dare you barge in here!” she was pronouncing, very pompously. “I am a very close personal friend of Lieutenant-General Farnsley, I’ll have you know—Sabriel!”

  The sight of Sabriel in such strange garb and circumstance seemed to momentarily stun Mrs. Umbrade. In that second of fish-mouthed silence, Horyse motioned to his men. Before Mrs. Umbrade could protest, they’d pushed the door wide open, and streams of armed men rushed in, pouring around her startled figure like a flood around an island.

  “Mrs. Umbrade!” Sabriel shouted. “I need to talk to Miss Greenwood urgently, and the girls from the Senior Magic classes. You’d better get the rest of the girls and the staff up to the top floors of the North Tower.”

  Mrs. Umbrade stood, gulping like a goldfish, till Horyse suddenly loomed over her and snapped, “Move, woman!”

  Almost before his mouth closed, she was gone. Sabriel looked back to check that Touchstone was organizing the shifting of the sarcophagus, then followed her in.

  The entrance hall was already blocked by a conga line of soldiers, passing boxes in from the trucks outside, stacking them up all along the walls. Khaki-colored boxes marked “.303 Ball” or “B2E2 WP Grenade,” piled up beneath pictures of prizewinning hockey teams, or gilt-lettered boards of merit and scholastic brilliance. The soldiers had also thrown open the doors to the Great Hall, and were busy in there, closing shutters and piling pews up on their ends against the shuttered windows.

  Mrs. Umbrade was still in motion at the other end of the entrance hall, bustling along towards a knot of obviously nervous staff. Behind them, peering down from the main stair, was a solid rank of prefects. Behind them, higher up the stair, and just able to see, were several gaggles of non-prefectorial fifth and sixth formers. Sabriel didn’t doubt that the rest of the school would be lining the corridors behind them, all agog to hear what the commotion was all about.

  Just as Mrs. Umbrade reached her staff, all the lights went out. For a moment, there was total, shocked quiet, then the noise redoubled. Girls screaming, soldiers shouting, crashes and bangs as people ran into things and each other.

  Sabriel stood where she was, and conjured the Charter marks for light. They came easily, flowing down to her fingertips like cool water from a shower. She let them hang there for a moment, then cast them at the ceiling, drops of light that grew to the size of dinner plates and cast a steady yellow light all down the hall. Someone else was also casting similar lights down by Mrs. Umbrade, and Sabriel recognized the work of Magistrix Greenwood. She smiled at that recognition, a slight, upturning of just one side of her mouth. She knew the lights had gone out because Kerrigor had passed the electric sub-station, and that was halfway between the school and the village.

  As expected, Mrs. Umbrade wasn’t telling her teachers anything useful—just going on about rudeness and some General. Sabriel saw the Magistrix behind the tall, bent figure of the Senior Science Mistress, and waved.

  “And I w
as never more shocked to see one of our—” Mrs. Umbrade was saying, when Sabriel stepped up next to her and gently laid the marks of silence and immobility on the back of her neck.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Sabriel said, standing next to the temporarily frozen form of the Headmistress. “But this is an emergency. As you can see, the Army is temporarily taking over. I am assisting Colonel Horyse, who is in charge. Now, we need all the girls in the two Senior Magic classes to come down to the Great Hall—with you, Magistrix Greenwood, please. Everyone else—students, staff, gardeners, everyone—must go to the top floors of the North Tower and barricade yourselves in. Till dawn tomorrow.”

  “Why?” demanded Mrs. Pearch, the Mathematics Mistress. “What’s all this about?”

  “Something has come from the Old Kingdom,” Sabriel replied shortly, watching their faces change as she spoke. “We will shortly be attacked by the Dead.”

  “So there will be danger to my students?” Miss Greenwood spoke, pushing her way forward, between two frightened English teachers. She looked Sabriel in the face, as if in recognition, and then added, “Abhorsen.”

  “There will be danger to everyone,” Sabriel said bleakly. “But without the aid of the Charter Mages here, there isn’t even a chance . . .”

  “Well,” replied Miss Greenwood, with some decision. “We’d better get organized then. I’ll go and fetch Sulyn and Ellimere. I think they’re the only two Charter Mages among the Prefects—they can organize the others. Mrs. Pearch, you’d better take charge of the . . . ah . . . evacuation to the North Tower, as I imagine Mrs. Umbrade will be . . . err . . . deep in thought. Mrs. Swann, you’d best round up Cook and the maids—get some fresh water, food and candles too. Mr. Arkler, if you would be so kind as to fetch the swords from the gymnasium . . .”

  Seeing that all was under control, Sabriel sighed, and quickly walked back outside, past soldiers stringing oil lamps up in the corridor. Despite them, it was still lighter outside, the sky washed red and orange with the last sunlight of the day.

  Touchstone and the Scouts had the sarcophagus down, and roped up. It now seemed to glow with its own, ugly inner light, the flickering Free Magic marks floating on the surface like scum, or clots in blood. Apart from the Scouts pulling the ropes, no one went close to it. Soldiers were everywhere, coiling out barbed wire, filling sandbags from the rose gardens, preparing firing positions on the second floor, tying trip flares. But in all this commotion, there was an empty circle around the glistening coffin of Rogir.

  Sabriel walked towards Touchstone, feeling the reluctance in her legs, her body revolting at the thought of going any closer to the bloody luminescence of the sarcophagus. It seemed to radiate stronger waves of nausea now, now that the sun had almost fled. In the twilight, it looked larger, stronger, its magic more forceful and malign.

  “Pull!” shouted Touchstone, heaving on the ropes with the soldiers. “Pull!”

  Slowly, the sarcophagus slid across the old paving stones, inching towards the front steps, where other soldiers were hastily hammering a wooden ramp together, fitting it over the steps.

  Sabriel decided to leave Touchstone to it, and walked a little way down the drive, to where she could see out the iron gates. She stood there, watching, her hands nervously running over the handles of the bells. Six bells, now—all probably ineffective against the awful might of Kerrigor. And an unfamiliar sword, strange to her touch, even if it was forged by the Wallmaker.

  The Wallmaker. That reminded her of Mogget. Who knew what he had been, that strange combination of irascible companion to the Abhorsens and blazing Free Magic construct sworn to kill them. Gone now, swept away by the mournful call of Astarael . . .

  I left this place knowing almost nothing about the Old Kingdom, and I’ve come back with not much more, Sabriel thought. I am the most ignorant Abhorsen in centuries, and perhaps one of the most sorely tried . . .

  A clatter of shots interrupted her thoughts, followed by the zing of a rocket arcing up into the sky, its yellow trail reaching down towards the road. More shots followed. A rapid volley—then sudden silence. The rocket burst into a white parachute flare, that slowly descended. In its harsh, magnesium brilliance, Sabriel saw fog rolling up the road, thick and wet, stretching back into the dark as far as she could see.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  SABRIEL FORCED HERSELF to walk back to the main doors, rather than break into a screaming run. Lots of soldiers could see her—they were still placing lanterns out in lines, radiating out from the steps, and several soldiers were holding a coil of concertina wire, waiting to bounce it out. They looked anxiously at her as she passed.

  The sarcophagus was just slipping off the ramp into the corridor ahead of her. Sabriel could easily have pushed past it, but she waited outside, looking out. After a moment, she became aware that Horyse was standing next to her, his face half-lit by the lanterns, half in shadow.

  “The fog . . . the fog is almost at the gates,” she said, too quickly to be calm.

  “I know,” replied Horyse, steadily. “That firing was a picket. Six men and a corporal.”

  Sabriel nodded. She had felt their deaths, like slight punches in her stomach. Already she was hardening herself not to notice, to wilfully dull her senses. There would be many more deaths that night.

  Suddenly, she felt something that wasn’t a death, but things already dead. She stood bolt upright, and exclaimed, “Colonel! The sun is truly down—and something’s coming, coming ahead of the fog!”

  She drew her sword as she spoke, the Colonel’s blade flickering out a second later. The wiring party looked around, startled, then bolted for the steps and the corridor. On either side of the door, two-man teams cocked the heavy, tripod-mounted machine-guns, and laid their swords across the newly made sandbag walls.

  “Second floor, stand ready!” Horyse shouted, and above her head, Sabriel heard the bolts of fifty rifles working. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two of the Scouts step back outside, and take up position behind her, arrows nocked, bows ready. She knew they were ready to snatch her inside, if it came to that . . .

  In the expectant quiet, there were only the usual sounds of the night. Wind in the big trees out past the school wall, starting to rise as the sky darkened. Crickets beginning to chirp. Then Sabriel heard it—the massed grinding of Dead joints, no longer joined by gristle; the padding of Dead feet, bones like hobnails clicking through necrotic flesh.

  “Hands,” she said, nervously. “Hundreds of Hands.”

  Even as she spoke, a solid wall of Dead flesh hit the iron gates, throwing them over in a split second’s crash. Then vaguely human forms were everywhere, rushing towards them, Dead mouths gulping and hissing in a ghastly parody of a war cry.

  “Fire!”

  In the instant’s delay after this command, Sabriel felt the terrible fear that the guns wouldn’t work. Then rifles cracked, and the machine-guns beat out a terrible, barking roar, red tracer rounds flinging out, ricocheting from the paving in a crazy embroidery of terrible violence. Bullets tore Dead flesh, splintered bone, knocked the Hands down and over—but still they came, till they were literally torn apart, broken into pieces, hung up on the wire.

  The firing slowed, but before it could entirely cease, another wave of Hands came stumbling, crawling, running through the gateway, slipping, tumbling over the wall. Hundreds of them, so densely packed they crushed the wire and came on, till the last of them were mown down by the guns at the very foot of the front steps. Some, still with a slight vestige of human intelligence, retreated, only to be caught in great gouts of flame from white phosphorus grenades thrown out from the second floor.

  “Sabriel—get inside!” Horyse ordered, as the last of the Hands flopped and crawled in crazy circles, till more bullets thudded into them and made them still.

  “Yes,” replied Sabriel, looking out at the carpet of bodies, the flickering fires from the lanterns and lumps of phosphorus burning like candles in some ghastly charnel house.
The stench of cordite was in her nose, through her hair, on her clothes, the machine-gun’s barrels glowing an evil red to either side of her. The Hands were already dead, but even so, this mass destruction made her sicker than any Free Magic . . .

  She went inside, sheathing her sword. Only then did she remember the bells. Possibly, she could have quelled that vast mob of Hands, sent them peaceably back into Death, without—but it was too late. And what if she had been overmastered?

  Shadow Hands would be next, she knew, and they could not be stopped by physical force, or her bells, unless they came in small numbers . . . and that was as likely as an early dawn . . .

  There were more soldiers in the corridor, but these were mailed and helmed, with large shields and broad-headed spears streaked with silver and the simplest Charter marks, drawn in chalk and spit. They were smoking, and drinking tea from the school’s second-best china. Sabriel realized they were there to fight when the guns failed. There was an air of controlled nervousness about them—not bravado exactly, just a strange mixture of competence and cynicism. Whatever it was, it made Sabriel walk casually among them, as if she were in no hurry at all.

  “Evening, miss.”

  “Good to hear the guns, hey? Practically never work up north!”

  “Won’t need us at this rate.”

  “Not like the Perimeter, is it, ma’am?”

  “Good luck with the bloke in the metal cigar case, miss.”

  “Good luck to all of you,” replied Sabriel, trying to smile in answer to their grins. Then the firing started again, and she winced, losing the smile—but their attention was off her, focused back outside. They weren’t nearly as casual as they pretended, Sabriel thought as she edged through the side doors leading from the corridor into the Great Hall.

  Here, the mood was much more frightened. The sarcophagus was up the far end of the Hall, resting across the speaker’s dais. Everyone else was as far away as possible up at the other end. The Scouts were on one side, also drinking tea. Magistrix Greenwood was talking to Touchstone in the middle, and the thirty or so girls—young women, really—were lined up on the opposite wall to the soldiers. It was all rather like a bizarre parody of a school dance.