Sabriel

by Garth Nix

  That done, she started to pick her way down the center of the road, keeping away from the gutter drifts. She’d have to leave the road fairly soon, but it looked like there was little snow on the steep, rocky slopes of Cloven Crest.

  As a final precaution, she drew Abhorsen’s sword, then resheathed it, so an inch of blade was free of the scabbard. It would draw fast and easily when she needed it.

  Sabriel expected to find the bodies on the road, or near it, but they lay further on. There were many footprints, and churned-up snow, leading from the road towards the path to Cloven Crest. That path ran between the bluffs, following a route gouged out by a stream falling from some deep spring higher up the hill. The path crossed the stream several times, with stepping-stones or tree trunks across the water to save walkers from wet feet. Halfway up, where the bluffs almost ground together, the stream had dug itself a short gorge, about twelve feet wide, thirty feet long and deep. Here, the pathmakers had been forced to build a bridge along the stream, rather than across it.

  Sabriel found the rest of the Ancelstierran patrol here, tumbled on the dark olive-black wood of the bridge, with the water murmuring beneath and the red stone arching overhead. There were seven of them along the bridge’s length. Unlike the first soldier, it was quite clear what had killed them. They had been hacked apart and, as Sabriel edged closer, she realized they had been beheaded. Worse than that, whoever . . . whatever . . . had killed them had taken their heads away—almost a guarantee that their spirits would return.

  Her sword did draw easily. Gingerly, her right hand almost glued to the sword hilt, Sabriel stepped around the first of the splayed-out bodies and onto the bridge. The water beneath was partly iced over, shallow and sluggish, but it was clear the soldiers had sought refuge over it. Running water was a good protection from dead creatures or things of Free Magic, but this torpid stream would not have dismayed even one of the Lesser Dead. In Spring, fed with melted snow, the stream would burst between the bluffs, and the bridge would be knee-deep in clear, swift water. The soldiers would probably have survived at that time of year.

  Sabriel sighed quietly, thinking of how easily seven people could be alive in one instant, and then, despite everything they could do, despite their last hope, they could be dead in just another. Once again, she felt the temptation of the necromancer, to take the cards nature had dealt, to reshuffle them and deal again. She had the power to make these men live again, laugh again, love again . . .

  But without their heads she could only bring them back as “Hands,” a derogatory term that Free Magic necromancers used for their lackluster revenants, who retained little of their original intelligence and none of their initiative. They made useful servants, though, either as reanimated corpses or the more difficult Shadow Hands, where only the spirit was brought back.

  Sabriel grimaced as she thought of Shadow Hands. A skilled necromancer could easily raise Shadow Hands from the heads of the newly dead. Similarly, without the heads, she couldn’t give them the final rites and free their spirits. All she could do was treat the bodies with some respect and, in the process, clear the bridge. It was near to dusk, and dark already in the shadow of the gorge, but she ignored the little voice inside her that was urging her to leave the bodies and run for the open space of the hilltop.

  By the time she finished dragging the bodies back down the path a way, laying them out with their swords plunged in the earth next to their headless bodies, it was dark outside the gorge too. So dark, she had to risk a faint, Charter-conjured light, that hung like a pale star above her head, showing the path before dying out.

  A slight magic, but one with unexpected consequences, for, as she left the bodies behind, an answering light burned into brilliance on the upper post of the bridge. It faded into red embers almost immediately, but left three glowing Charter marks. One was strange to Sabriel, but, from the other two, she guessed its meaning. Together, they held a message.

  Three of the dead soldiers had the feel of Charter Magic about them, and Sabriel guessed that they were Charter Mages. They would have had the Charter mark on their foreheads. The very last body on the bridge had been one of these men and Sabriel remembered that he had been the only one not holding a weapon—his hands had been clasped around the bridge post. These marks would certainly hold his message.

  Sabriel touched her own forehead Charter mark and then the bridge post. The marks flared again, then went dark. A voice came from nowhere, close to Sabriel’s ear. A man’s voice, husky with fear, backed by the sound of clashing weapons, screaming and total panic.

  “One of the Greater Dead! It came behind us, almost from the Wall. We couldn’t turn back. It has servants, Hands, a Mordicant! This is Sergeant Gerren. Tell Colonel . . .”

  Whatever he wanted to tell Colonel Horyse was lost in the moment of his own death. Sabriel stood still, listening, as if there might be more. She felt ill, nauseous, and took several deep breaths. She had forgotten that for all her familiarity with death and the dead, she had never seen or heard anyone actually die. The aftermath she had learnt to deal with . . . but not the event.

  She touched the bridge post again, just with one finger, and felt the Charter marks twisting through the grain of the wood. Sergeant Gerren’s message would be there forever for any Charter Mage to hear, till time did its work, and bridge post and bridge rotted or were swept away by flood.

  Sabriel took a few more breaths, stilled her stomach, and forced herself to listen once more.

  One of the Greater Dead was back in Life, and that was something her father was sworn to stop. It was almost certain that this emergence and Abhorsen’s disappearance were connected.

  Once again, the message came, and Sabriel listened. Then, brushing back her starting tears, she walked on, up the path, away from the bridge and the dead, up towards Cloven Crest and the broken Charter Stone.

  The bluffs parted and, in the sky above, stars started to twinkle, as the wind grew braver and swept the snow clouds before it into the west. The new moon unveiled itself and swelled in brightness, till it cast shadows on the snow-flecked ground.

  chapter v

  It was no more than a half-hour’s steady climb to the flat top of Cloven Crest, though the path grew steeper and more difficult. The wind was strong now and had cleared the sky, the moonlight giving form to the landscape. But without the clouds, it had grown much colder.

  Sabriel considered a Charter-spell for warmth, but she was tired, and the effort of the spell might cost more than the gain in warmth. She stopped instead and shrugged on a fleece-lined oilskin that had been handed down from her father. It was a bit worn and too large, needing severe buckling-in with her sword-belt and the baldric that held the bells, but it was certainly windproof.

  Feeling relatively warmer, Sabriel resumed climbing up the last, winding portion of the path, where the incline was so steep the pathmakers had resorted to cutting steps out of the granite—steps now worn and crumbling, prone to sliding away underfoot.

  So prone to sliding, that Sabriel reached the top without realizing it, head down, her eyes searching in the moonlight for the solid part of the next step. Her foot was actually halfway up in the air before she realized that there wasn’t a next step.

  Cloven Crest lay before her. A narrow ridge where several slopes of the hill met to form a miniature plateau, with a slight depression in the middle. Snow lay in this depression, a fat, cigar-shaped drift, bright in the moonlight, stark white against the red granite. There were no trees, no vegetation at all, but in the very center of the drift, a dark grey stone cast a long moonshadow. It was twice Sabriel’s girth and three times her height, and looked whole till she walked closer and saw the zigzag crack that cut it down the middle.

  Sabriel had never seen a true Charter Stone before, but she knew they were supposed to be like the Wall, with Charter marks running like quicksilver through the stone, forming and dissolving, only to re-form again, in a never-ending story that told of the making of the world.
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  There were Charter marks on this stone, but they were still, as frozen as the snow. Dead marks, nothing more than meaningless inscriptions, carved into a sculptured stone.

  It wasn’t what Sabriel had expected, though she now realized that she hadn’t thought about it properly. She’d thought of lightning or suchlike as the splitter of the stone, but forgotten lessons remembered too late told her that wasn’t so. Only some terrible power of Free Magic could split a Charter Stone.

  She walked closer to the stone, fear rising in her like a toothache in its first growth, signaling worse to come. The wind was stronger and colder, too, out on the ridge, and the oilskin seemed less comforting, as its memories of her father brought back remembrance of certain pages of The Book of the Dead and tales of horror told by little girls in the darkness of their dormitory, far from the Old Kingdom. Fears came with these memories, till Sabriel wrestled them to the back of her mind, and forced herself closer to the stone.

  Dark patches of . . . something . . . obscured some of the marks, but it wasn’t until Sabriel pushed her face almost to the stone that she could make out what they were, so dull and black in the moonlight.

  When she did see, her head snapped up, and she stumbled backwards, almost overbalancing into the snow. The patches were dried blood, and when she saw them, Sabriel knew how the stone had been broken, and why the blood hadn’t been cleaned away by rain or snow . . . why the stone never would be clean.

  A Charter Mage had been sacrificed on the stone. Sacrificed by a necromancer to gain access to Death, or to help a Dead spirit break through into Life.

  Sabriel bit her lower lip till it hurt and her hands, almost unconsciously, fidgeted, half-drawing Charter marks in nervousness and fear. The spell for that sort of sacrifice was in the last chapter of The Book of the Dead. She remembered it now, in sickening detail. It was one of the many things she seemed to have forgotten from that green-bound book—or had been made to forget. Only a very powerful necromancer could use that spell. Only a totally evil one would want to. And evil breeds evil, evil taints places and makes them attractive to further acts of . . .

  “Stop it!” whispered Sabriel aloud, to still her mind of its imaginings. It was dark, windy and getting colder by the minute. She had to make a decision: to camp and call her guide, or to move on immediately in some random direction in the hope that she would be able to summon her guide from somewhere else.

  The worst part of it all was that her guide was dead. Sabriel had to enter Death, albeit briefly, to call and converse with the guide. It would be easy to do so here, for the sacrifice had created a semi-permanent entry, as if a door had been wedged ajar. But who knew what might be lurking, watching, in the cold river beyond.

  Sabriel stood for a minute, shivering, listening, every sense concentrated, like some small animal that knows a predator hunts nearby. Her mind ran through the pages of The Book of the Dead, and through the many hours she had spent learning Charter Magic from Magistrix Greenwood in the sunny North Tower of Wyverley College.

  At the end of the minute, she knew that camping was out of the question. She was simply too frightened to sleep anywhere near the ruined Charter Stone. But it would be quicker to call her guide here—and the quicker she got to her father’s house, the sooner she could do something to help him, so a compromise was called for. She would protect herself with Charter Magic as best she could, enter Death with all precaution, summon her guide, get directions and get out as quickly as possible. Quicker, even.

  With decision came action. Sabriel dropped her skis and pack, stuffed some dried fruit and homemade toffee in her mouth for quick energy, and adopted the meditative pose that made Charter Magic easier.

  After bit of trouble with the toffee and her teeth, she began. Symbols formed in her mind—the four cardinal Charter marks that were the poles of a diamond that would protect her from both physical harm and Free Magic. Sabriel held them in her mind, fixed them in time, and pulled them out of the flow of the never-ending Charter. Then, drawing her sword, she traced rough outlines in the snow around her, one mark at each cardinal point of the compass. As she finished each mark, she let the one in her mind run from her head to her hand, down the sword and into the snow. There, they ran like lines of golden fire and the marks became alive, burning on the ground.

  The last mark was the North mark, the one closest to the destroyed stone, and it almost failed. Sabriel had to close her eyes and use all her will to force it to leave the sword. Even then, it was only a pallid imitation of the other three, burning so weakly it hardly melted the snow.

  Sabriel ignored it, quelling the nausea that had brought bile to the back of her mouth, her body reacting to the struggle with the Charter mark. She knew the North mark was weak, but golden lines had run between all four points and the diamond was complete, if shaky. In any case, it was the best she could do. She sheathed her sword, took off her gloves, and fumbled with her bell-bandolier, cold fingers counting the bells.

  “Ranna,” she said aloud, touching the first, the smallest bell. Ranna the sleepbringer, the sweet, low sound that brought silence in its wake.

  “Mosrael.” The second bell, a harsh, rowdy bell. Mosrael was the waker, the bell Sabriel should never use, the bell whose sound was a seesaw, throwing the ringer further into Death, as it brought the listener into Life.

  “Kibeth.” Kibeth, the walker. A bell of several sounds, a difficult and contrary bell. It could give freedom of movement to one of the Dead, or walk them through the next gate. Many a necromancer had stumbled with Kibeth and walked where they would not.

  “Dyrim.” A musical bell, of clear and pretty tone. Dyrim was the voice that the Dead so often lost. But Dyrim could also still a tongue that moved too freely.

  “Belgaer.” Another tricksome bell, that sought to ring of its own accord. Belgaer was the thinking bell, the bell most necromancers scorned to use. It could restore independent thought, memory and all the patterns of a living person. Or, slipping in a careless hand, erase them.

  “Saraneth.” The deepest, lowest bell. The sound of strength. Saraneth was the binder, the bell that shackled the Dead to the wielder’s will.

  And last, the largest bell, the one Sabriel’s cold fingers found colder still, even in the leather case that kept it silent.

  “Astarael, the Sorrowful,” whispered Sabriel. Astarael was the banisher, the final bell. Properly rung, it cast everyone who heard it far into Death. Everyone, including the ringer.

  Sabriel’s hand hovered, touched on Ranna, and then settled on Saraneth. Carefully, she undid the strap and withdrew the bell. Its clapper, freed of the mask, rang slightly, like the growl of a waking bear.

  Sabriel stilled it, holding the clapper with her palm inside the bell, ignoring the handle. With her right hand, she drew her sword and raised it to the guard position. Charter marks along the blade caught the moonlight and flickered into life. Sabriel watched them for a moment, as portents could sometimes be seen in such things. Strange marks raced across the blade, before transmuting into the more usual inscription, one that Sabriel knew well. She bowed her head, and prepared to enter into Death.

  Unseen by Sabriel, the inscription began again, but parts of it were not the same. “I was made for Abhorsen, to slay those already Dead,” was what it usually said. Now it continued, “The Clayr saw me, the Wallmaker made me, the King quenched me, Abhorsen wields me.”

  Sabriel, eyes closed now, felt the boundary between Life and Death appear. On her back, she felt the wind, now curiously warm, and the moonlight, bright and hot like sunshine. On her face, she felt the ultimate cold and, opening her eyes, saw the grey light of Death.

  With an effort of will, her spirit stepped through, sword and bell prepared. Inside the diamond her body stiffened, and fog blew up in eddies around her feet, twining up her legs. Frost rimed her face and hands and the Charter marks flared at each apex of the diamond. Three steadied again, but the North mark blazed brighter still—and went out.

  T
he river ran swiftly, but Sabriel set her feet against the current and ignored both it and the cold, concentrating on looking around, alert for a trap or ambush. It was quiet at this particular entry point to Death. She could hear the water tumbling through the Second Gate, but nothing else. No splashing, or gurgling, or strange mewlings. No dark, formless shapes or grim silhouettes, shadowy in this grey light.

  Carefully holding her position, Sabriel looked all around her again, before sheathing her sword and reaching into one of the thigh pockets in her woollen knickerbockers. The bell, Saraneth, stayed ready in her left hand. With her right, she drew out a paper boat and, still one-handed, opened it out to its proper shape. Beautifully white, almost luminous in this light, it had one small, perfectly round stain at its bow, where Sabriel had carefully blotted a drop of blood from her finger.

  Sabriel laid it flat on her hand, lifted it to her lips, and blew on it as if she were launching a feather. Like a glider, it flew from her hand into the river. Sabriel held that launching breath as the boat was almost swamped, only to breathe in with relief as it breasted a ripple, righted itself and surged away with the current. In a few seconds it was out of sight, heading for the Second Gate.

  It was the second time in her life that Sabriel had launched just such a paper boat. Her father had shown her how to make them, but had impressed on her to use them sparingly. No more than thrice every seven years, he had said, or a price would have to be paid, a price much greater than a drop of blood.

  As events should follow as they had the first time, Sabriel knew what to expect. Still, when the noise of the Second Gate stilled for a moment some ten or twenty, or forty, minutes later—time being slippery in Death—she drew her sword and Saraneth hung down in her hand, its clapper free, waiting to be heard. The Gate had stilled because someone . . . something . . . was coming back from the deeper realms of Death.