by Garth Nix
“What is this? Some relic of . . .”
The ring constricted, cutting through the pulpy flesh of his neck, revealing the solid darkness within. That too was compressed, forced inwards, pulsating as it tried to escape. Two flaming eyes looked down in disbelief.
“Impossible,” croaked Kerrigor. Snarling, he pushed Sabriel away, throwing her to the floor. In the same motion he drew the sword from his chest, the blade slowly coming free with a sound like a rasp on hardwood.
Swiftly as a snake, arm and sword went out, striking through Sabriel, through armor and flesh and deep into the wooden floor beyond. Pain exploded, and Sabriel screamed, body convulsing around the blade in one awful reflexive curve.
Kerrigor left her there, impaled like a bug in a collection, and advanced upon Touchstone. Sabriel, through eyes fogged with pain, saw Kerrigor look down and rip a long, jagged splinter from one of the pews.
“Rogir,” Touchstone said. “Rogir . . .”
The splinter came down with a strangled shriek of rage. Sabriel closed her eyes and looked away, slipping into a world of her own, a world of pain. She knew she should do something about the blood pouring out of her stomach, but now—with Touchstone dead—she just lay where she was, and let it bleed.
Then Sabriel realized she hadn’t felt Touchstone die.
She looked again. The splinter had broken on his armored coat. Kerrigor was reaching out for another splinter—but the silver ring had slipped down to his shoulders now, shredding the flesh away as it fell, like an apple corer punching the Dead spirit out of the rotting corpse.
Kerrigor struggled and shrieked, but the ring bound his arms. Capering madly, he threw himself from side to side, seeking to cast off the silver band that held him—only causing yet more flesh to fall away, till no flesh remained, nothing but a raging column of darkness, constrained by a silver ring.
Then the column collapsed upon itself like a demolished building, to become a mound of rippling shadow, the silver ring shining like a ribbon. A gleaming red eye shone amidst the silver—but that was only the ruby, grown to match the metal.
There were Charter marks on the ring again, but Sabriel couldn’t read them. Her eyes wouldn’t focus, and it was too dark. The moonlight seemed to have gone. Still, she knew what must be done. Saraneth—her hand crept to the bandolier, but the sixth bell wasn’t there—or the seventh, or the third. Careless of me, thought Sabriel, careless—but I must complete the binding. Her hand fell on Belgaer for a moment, and almost drew it—but no, that would be release . . . Finally, she drew Ranna, whimpering with the pain of even that small movement.
Ranna was unusually heavy, for so slight a bell. Sabriel rested it against her chest for a moment, gathering strength. Then, lying on her back, transfixed with her own sword, she rang the bell.
Ranna sounded sweet, and felt comforting, like a long-expected bed. The sound echoed through the Hall, and out, to where a few men still battled with the Dead. All who heard it ceased their struggles, and lay themselves down. The badly wounded slipped easily into Death, joining the Dead who had followed Kerrigor; those less hurt fell into a healing sleep.
The mound of darkness that had been Kerrigor split into two distinct hemispheres, bounded by an equatorial ring of silver. One hemisphere was as black as coal; the other a gleaming white. Gradually, they melted into two distinct forms—two cats, joined at the throat like Siamese twins. Then the silver ring split in two, a ring around each neck, and the cats separated. The rings lost their brilliance, slowly changing color and texture till they were red leather bands, each supporting a miniature bell, a miniature Ranna.
Two small cats sat side by side. One black, one white. Both leaned forward, throats moving, and each spat up a silver ring. The cats yawned as the rings rolled towards Sabriel, then curled up and went to sleep.
Touchstone watched the rings roll through the dust, silver flashing in the moonlight. They hit Sabriel’s side, but she didn’t pick them up. Both her hands still clutched Ranna, but it was silent, resting below her breasts. Her sword loomed above her, blade and hilt casting the moonshadow of a cross upon her face.
Something from his childhood memory flashed through Touchstone’s mind. A voice, a messenger’s voice, speaking to his mother.
“Highness, we bring sorrowful tidings. The Abhorsen is dead.”
Epilogue
Death seemed colder than ever before, Sabriel thought, and wondered why, till she realized she was still lying down. In the water, being carried along by the current. For a moment, she started to struggle, then she relaxed.
“Everyone and everything has a time to die . . .” she whispered. The living world and its cares seemed far away. Touchstone lived, and that made her glad, inasmuch as she could feel anything. Kerrigor was defeated, imprisoned if not made truly dead. Her work was done. Soon she would pass beyond the Ninth Gate, and rest forever . . .
Something grabbed her arms and legs, picked her up out of the water and set her down on her feet.
“This is not your time,” said a voice, a voice echoed by half a hundred others.
Sabriel blinked, for there were many shining human shapes around her, hovering above the water. More than she could count. Not Dead spirits, but something else, like the mother-sending called by the paper boat. Their shapes were vague, but instantly recognizable, for all wore the deep blue with the silver keys. Every one was an Abhorsen.
“Go back,” they chorused. “Go back.”
“I can’t,” sobbed Sabriel. “I’m dead! I haven’t the strength . . .”
“You are the last Abhorsen,” the voices whispered, the shining shapes closing in. “You cannot pass this way until there is another. You do have the strength within you. Live, Abhorsen, live . . .”
Suddenly, she did have the strength. Enough to crawl, wade and fall back up the river, and gingerly edge back into Life, her shining escort dropping back at the very last. One of them—perhaps her father—lightly touched her hand in the instant before she left the realm of Death behind.
A face swam into view—Touchstone’s, staring down at her. Sound hit her ears, distant, raucous bells that seemed out of place, till she realized they were ambulance bells, ambulances racing in from the town. She could sense no Dead at all, nor feel any great magic, Free or Charter. But then, Kerrigor was gone, and they were nearly forty miles from the Wall . . .
“Live, Sabriel, live,” Touchstone was muttering, holding her icy hands, his own eyes so clouded with tears he hadn’t noticed hers opening. Sabriel smiled, then grimaced as the pain came back. She looked from side to side, wondering how long it would take Touchstone to realize.
The electric lights had come back on in parts of the Hall, and soldiers were placing lanterns out again. There were more survivors than she’d expected, tending to the wounded, propping up dangerous brickwork, even sweeping up the brick-dust and grave mold.
There were also many dead, and Sabriel sighed as she let her senses roam. Colonel Horyse, killed outside on the steps; Magistrix Greenwood; her innocent schoolfriend Ellimere; six other girls; at least half the soldiers . . .
Her eyes wandered to closer regions, to the two sleeping cats, the two silver rings next to her on the floor.
“Sabriel!”
Touchstone had finally noticed. Sabriel turned her gaze back to him, and lifted her head cautiously. He’d removed her sword, she saw, and several of her schoolfriends had cast a healing spell, good enough for the moment. Typically, Touchstone had done nothing for his own leg.
“Sabriel,” he said again. “You’re alive!”
“Yes,” said Sabriel, with some surprise. “I am.”
Celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Sabriel
with Exclusive Bonus Content
The Writing of Sabriel
The Notebooks
Typescript of Page One
One Wyverley Summer
Excerpt from Lirael
Excerpt from Terciel and Elinor
Prologue
&nb
sp; Chapter One
The Writing of Sabriel
Dear Reader,
The following pages illustrate aspects of my writing process with Sabriel, showing you my favorite black-and-red manuscript notebooks, my self-motivational word-count tally, some of my chapter outlining, the first written text, and then the typescript I actually submitted to publishers.
What it doesn’t show is an important part of the process: the thinking that went on before I put anything to paper at all. This is an essential part of making up stories and proves that daydreaming isn’t actually a waste of time at all (though you do later have to do something with these musings).
At some part of the daydreaming stage, I wrote the prologue for Sabriel. I didn’t know very much about the characters or the story at this point. I did have a basic idea about the setting, partially inspired by a photograph I’d kept from a picture library that was being thrown out at the publishing house where I worked. This large-format transparency showed Hadrian’s Wall, but the foreground (in the south) was all green grass, whereas the other side of the wall was covered in snow. It looked like it was summer on one side and winter on the other. From this single image came the idea that the wall divided two very different countries, one with magic and one with technology.
The prologue was written, but as is usually the case with me, I didn’t know if it was going to be the prologue, a first chapter, or some other part of the story. I often write these test passages to discover for myself the tone and feel of a story, and later work out what to do with them. Sometimes they don’t even end up in the book, though they are always helpful to write.
In the case of Sabriel, after writing the prologue I realized I wanted to write a novel about her rather than her father, as I had thought when I started. Again, as per usual for me, after getting the prologue done, I didn’t do anything more for quite a long time. I think in this case it was about a year. A year spent thinking about the characters and the setting and the story, letting everything percolate inside my head. Eventually, I wrote some notes, a chapter outline of sorts (with more outlines to be written along the way), and then the first chapter.
Reading the outline, you will see headings that do relate to some of the content in the finished book (not in the order in which they ended up being used), and others that seem to bear no relation. I often write several outlines as I go along, but I don’t strictly follow them. To a large degree the outlines are simply a mechanism for me to get ideas down that I may or may not follow or develop. For some of my books the outlines bear very little resemblance to the final story. The one here does have many of the final elements but does not accurately reflect the plot. I updated it several times, as you can see from the three later outlines in the picture of all the five notebooks open together.
Looking at the inside cover of that first manuscript book, the eagle-eyed will note that while I wrote the word count for each chapter down, I didn’t write the date or the cumulative word count until Chapter Five. I can’t recall why not, I’m afraid! But I do know that keeping a cumulative word count is a useful incentive for me, particularly as the total begins to increase and I know I am getting closer and closer to having completed a novel. I had written one novel before Sabriel—The Ragwitch—where I didn’t do chapter word counts and a running total, and that one took me much longer, so I think it must work!
My method back then was to write a chapter longhand and then type it up (on a Macintosh Plus in MacWrite for Sabriel), changing and editing as I typed, so the first typescript was basically a second draft, and I could also use the computer to do a word count, so the dates written reflect when the chapters were typed, not first written down.
After typing up the chapter, I would print it out and make revisions on the paper copy, take in those corrections on the computer, and then handwrite the next chapter and continue the process. Every now and then I would also print out everything I had written to that point and do an editing pass through a significant portion of the manuscript, and of course, when it was all done, I also printed out the complete manuscript and went through the whole thing several times, making small tweaks and corrections.
The typescript pages you can see here are the final result of this whole process. This is what I submitted to publishers, so there were still more changes to come, going through the publisher’s editorial processes. If you’re really interested, you can compare the sample pages shown here of the handwritten manuscript, the typescript, and the final printed pages, all in this one book.
While some of my other books have had major changes in response to what is called structural editing from the publisher’s editor, where entire story lines and characters and chapters may be deleted, moved, changed enormously, and so on, Sabriel stayed pretty much as written, while benefiting from the important small editorial changes that came in the publication process.
It’s hard to believe I was writing this book so long ago, and that it has continued to find new readers. One of the reasons Sabriel has lasted so long is because of the support, encouragement, and expertise of so many wonderful publishing and bookselling people involved in the numerous different editions in many different countries over the last quarter century and more.
I am very grateful to them all, and to the readers who have loved the book and passed on their love to family and friends and even complete strangers, because this word of mouth is the animating spirit that keeps a book going.
Thank you, everyone.
Garth Nix
The Notebooks
Typescript of Page One
One Wyverley Summer
A Short Story
“IT’S NOT TOO late to change your mind, Sabriel,” said Ellimere. “But it is almost too late. The charabanc to the station goes in ten minutes.”
“I know,” said Sabriel. She sat dolefully on her bed, gazing at Ellimere’s stripped bed opposite and the newly spartan side of their shared Fifth Form room, all the books and personal touches packed away, all personality removed.
She looked at Ellimere too, approvingly. Her best friend was like a newly born butterfly in her daring just-below-the-knee white skirt, crisp white shirt, and bright primrose jacket, topped with a dove-grey cloche hat drawn down so as to allow one artful curl to escape.
Sabriel, on the other hand, was still in the pre-butterfly grub state otherwise known as the school uniform of Wyverley College. An almost ankle-length navy-blue skirt of wool that had been too hot in spring—let alone the summer, which was brightening the world around them with increasingly warm days and long evenings—topped by an only slightly less dark blue and less heavy wool blouse. All on top of flannel undergarments that had apparently been designed for use on some permanently freezing mountaintop but had entered general use for those under authority, like prisoners and schoolgirls. At least she was spared the heavy blazer, even the hidebound school authorities recognizing this as too much once the summer properly heated up.
“My cousins will be coming for the first month,” said Ellimere. “And bringing their friends. Eight highly eligible young men, of which I personally know three at least aren’t boring.”
Sabriel shrugged. She was not particularly interested in young men, or rather not in the ones she typically encountered at the heavily supervised social events of the Wyverley College calendar, with boys bused in from some of the closer schools, nor the selection of young male relatives who called to see their sisters or cousins from time to time. They were never serious, it seemed to her, perpetual children who were shielded from the realities of life. And death—something Sabriel knew all too well.
They were also not part of the Charter, lacking the baptismal Charter mark on their foreheads. Sabriel did not think she could ever find anything approaching a true love if they did not bear the mark and know what it was to be part of the Charter, which described and encompassed all things. Unlike Ellimere, who was an accomplished flirt and far more sensual than her teachers would ever guess, Sabriel seemed constitutionall
y unable to engage in solely physical engagement with the young men who crossed her path.
“How do you cope with losing the Charter?” she asked suddenly. Ellimere bore the mark too, and was proficient in basic Charter Magic. Her home, though, was far enough to the south that the Charter would be entirely inaccessible.
It was Ellimere’s turn to shrug.
“I’ve got used to it, I guess. Going backward and forward all these years. I remember when I first felt the Charter strongly, though. It’s about all I remember from when I was five. Oh, and meeting you. You pushed me over in the sandpit, remember?”
“I did?” asked Sabriel.
“It was because you wanted me to play with you,” said Ellimere, “but didn’t know how to ask.”
“I hadn’t met any other children, I think,” said Sabriel. “I don’t remember pushing you, though. I don’t remember much from those first few months here. Or earlier.”
“What are you going to do with everyone gone?” asked Ellimere.
“Study,” replied Sabriel. “And I’ll walk, and go fishing. Magistrix Greenwood isn’t going away, so we’ll work together.”
“That is no way to spend the summer,” said Ellimere with a sigh. “Are you absolutely sure you won’t come with me? My parents love you; you’re welcome anytime. If you change your mind, just write or wire—”
“I won’t change my mind,” said Sabriel. She got up and gave Ellimere a quick hug. “Off you go! See you next term.”
“Sixth Form,” said Ellimere, looking around the room. Sabriel’s half of the small room was crammed with stuff. The desk was piled high with books and papers; while the bookcase was not packed tight, there were also teetering piles of books on top. Several practice swords leaned against the wall in the corner, and a longbow and quiver against the wardrobe, which had a door that wouldn’t shut and a mirror on it that had rusted the corners into darkness. “We won’t be sharing anymore.”