Sabriel

by Garth Nix

  “I heard of this too,” muttered Touchstone, moving up closer to Sabriel, his hands falling on his sword hilts. “But I thought it was a beer story. The scavengers use children—slaves—as decoys, or bait, for the Dead. They leave them in one area, to draw the Dead away from where they intend to search.”

  “This is . . . disgusting!” raged Sabriel. “Immoral! They’re slavers, not scavengers! We have to stop it!”

  She started forward, mind already forming a Charter-spell to blind and confuse the scavengers, but a sharp pain in her neck halted her. Mogget, riding on her shoulders, had dug his claws in just under her chin. Blood trickled down in hairline traces, as he hissed close to her ear.

  “Wait! There are nine scavengers and six guards, with more close by. What will it profit these children, and all the others who may come, if you are slain? It is the Dead who are at the root of this evil, and Abhorsen’s business is with the Dead!”

  Sabriel stood still, shuddering, tears of rage and anger welling up in the corners of her eyes. But she didn’t attack. Just stood, watching the children. They seemed resigned to their fate, silent, without hope. They didn’t even fidget in their chains, standing still, heads bowed, till the scavengers whipped them up again and they broke into a dispirited shuffle towards the archway.

  Soon, they were beyond the arch, heading up the ruined street, the scavenging team walking slowly behind them. The sun shone bright on the cobbled street and reflected from armor and weapons—and, briefly, from a little boy’s blond head. Then they were gone, turning right, taking the way towards Coiner’s Hill.

  Sabriel, Touchstone and Mogget followed after ten minutes spent negotiating with the guards. At first, the leader, a large man in a gravy-stained leather cuirass, wanted to see an “official scavenger’s license,” but this was soon translated as a request for bribes. Then it was merely a matter of bargaining, down to the final price of three silver pennies each for Sabriel and Touchstone, and one for the cat. Strange accounting, Sabriel thought, but she was glad Mogget stayed silent, not voicing the opinion that he was being undervalued.

  Past the aqueduct, and the soothing barrier of running water, Sabriel felt the immediate presence of the Dead. They were all around, in the ruined houses, in cellars and drains, lurking anywhere the light didn’t reach. Dormant. Waiting for the night, while the sun shone.

  In many ways, the Dead of Belisaere were direct counterparts of the scavengers. Hiding by day, they took what they could by night. There were many, many Dead in Belisaere, but they were weak, cowardly and jealous. Their combined appetite was enormous, but the supply of victims sadly limited. Every morning saw scores of them lose their hold on Life, to fall back into Death. But more always came . . .

  “There are thousands of Dead here,” Sabriel said, eyes darting from side to side. “They’re weak, for the most part—but so many!”

  “Do we go straight on to the reservoir?” Touchstone asked. There was an unspoken question there, Sabriel knew. Should they—could they—save the children first?

  She looked at the sky, and the sun, before answering. They had about four hours of strong sunlight, if no clouds intervened. Little enough time, anyway. Assuming that they could defeat the scavengers, could they leave finding her father till tomorrow? Every day made it less likely his spirit and body could be brought back together. Without him, they couldn’t defeat Kerrigor—and Kerrigor had to be defeated for them to have any hope of repairing the stones of the Great Charter—banishing the Dead across the Kingdom . . .

  “We’ll go straight to the reservoir,” Sabriel said, heavily, trying to blank out a sudden fragment of visual memory; sunlight on that little boy’s head, the trudging feet . . .

  “Perhaps we . . . perhaps we will be able to rescue the children on the way back.”

  Touchstone led the way with confidence, keeping to the middle of the streets, where the sun was bright. For almost an hour, they strode up empty, deserted streets, the only sound the clacking of their boot-nails on the cobbles. There were no birds, or animals. Not even insects. Just ruin and decay.

  Finally, they reached an iron-fenced park that ran around the base of Palace Hill. Atop the hill, blackened, burnt-out shells of tumbled stone and timber were all that remained of the Royal Palace.

  “The last Regent burned it,” said Mogget, as all three stopped to look up. “About twenty years ago. It was becoming infested with the Dead, despite all the guards and wards that various visiting Abhorsens put up. They say the Regent went mad and tried to burn them out.”

  “What happened to him?” asked Sabriel.

  “Her, actually,” replied Mogget. “She died in the fire—or the Dead took her. And that marked the end of any attempt at governing the Kingdom.”

  “It was a beautiful building,” Touchstone reminisced. “You could see out over the Saere. It had high ceilings, and a clever system of vents and shafts to catch the light and the sea breeze. There was always music and dancing somewhere in the Palace, and Midsummer dinner on the garden roof, with a thousand scented candles burning . . .”

  He sighed, and pointed at a hole in the park fence.

  “We might as well go through here. There’s an entrance to the reservoir in one of the ornamental caves in the park. Only fifty steps down to the water, rather than the hundred and fifty from the Palace proper.”

  “One hundred and fifty-six,” said Mogget. “As I recall.”

  Touchstone shrugged, and climbed through the hole, onto the springy turf of the park. There was no one—and no thing—in sight, but he drew his swords anyway. There were large trees nearby, and accordingly, shadows.

  Sabriel followed, Mogget jumping down from her shoulders to saunter forward and sniff the air. Sabriel drew her sword too, but left the bells. There were Dead about, but none close. The park was too open in daylight.

  The ornamental caves were only five minutes’ walk away, past a fetid pond that had once boasted seven water-spouting statues of bearded tritons. Now their mouths were clogged with rotten leaves, and the pond was almost solid with yellow-green slime.

  There were three cave entrances, side by side. Touchstone led them to the largest, central entrance. Marble steps led down the first three or four feet, and marble pillars supported the entrance ceiling.

  “It only goes back about forty paces into the hill,” Touchstone explained, as they lit their candles by the entrance, sulphur matches adding their own noisome stench to the dank air of the cave. “They were built for picnics in high summer. There is a door at the back of this one. It may be locked, but should yield to a Charter-spell. The steps are directly behind, and pretty straight, but there are no light shafts. And it’s narrow.”

  “I’ll go first then,” said Sabriel, with a firmness that belied the weakness in her legs and the fluttering in her stomach. “I can’t sense any Dead, but they could be there . . .”

  “Very well,” said Touchstone, after a moment’s hesitation.

  “You don’t have to come, you know,” Sabriel suddenly burst out, as they stood in front of the cave, candles flickering foolishly in the sunshine. She suddenly felt awfully responsible for him. He looked scared, much whiter than he should, almost as pale as a Death-leeched necromancer. He’d seen terrible things in the reservoir, things that had once driven him mad, and despite his self-accusation, Sabriel didn’t believe it was his fault. It wasn’t his father down there. He wasn’t an Abhorsen.

  “I do have to,” Touchstone replied. He bit his lower lip nervously. “I have to. I’ll never be free of my memories, otherwise. I have to do something, make new memories, better ones. I need to . . . seek redemption. Besides, I am still a member of the Royal Guard. It is my duty.”

  “So be it,” said Sabriel. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I am too—in a strange sort of way,” said Touchstone, and he almost, but not quite, smiled.

  “I’m not,” interrupted Mogget, decidedly. “Let’s get on with it. We’re wasting sunlight.”
>
  The door was locked, but opened easily to Sabriel’s spell, the simple Charter symbols of unlocking and opening flowing from her mind through to her index finger, which lay against the keyhole. But though the spell was successful, it had been difficult to cast. Even up here, the broken stones of the Great Charter exerted an influence that disrupted Charter Magic.

  The faint candlelight showed damp, crumbly steps, leading straight down. No curves or turns, just a straight stair leading into darkness.

  Sabriel trod gingerly, feeling the soft stone crumble under her heavy boots, so she had to keep her heels well back on each step. This made for slow progress, with Touchstone close behind her, the light from his candle casting Sabriel’s shadow down the steps in front, so she saw herself elongated and distorted, sliding into the dark beyond the light.

  She smelled the reservoir before she saw it, somewhere around the thirty-ninth step. A chill, damp smell that cut into her nose and lungs, and filled her with the impression of a cold expanse.

  Then the steps ended in a doorway on the edge of a vast, rectangular hall—a giant chamber where stone columns rose up like a forest to support a roof sixty feet above her head, and the floor before her wasn’t stone, but water as cold and still as stone. Around the walls, pallid shafts of sunlight thrust down in counterpoint to the supporting columns, leaving discs of light on the water. These made the rim of the reservoir a complex study of light and shade, but the center remained unknown, cloaked in heavy darkness.

  Sabriel felt Touchstone touch her shoulder, then she heard his whisper.

  “It’s about waist-deep. Try and slip in as quietly as possible. Here—I’ll take your candle.”

  Sabriel nodded, passed the candle back, sheathed her sword, and sat down on the last step, before slowly easing herself into the water.

  It was cold, but not unbearable. Despite Sabriel’s care, ripples spread out from her, silver on the dark water, and there had been the tiniest splash. Her feet touched the bottom, and she only half stifled a gasp. Not from the cold, but from the sudden awareness of the two broken stones of the Great Charter. It hit her like the savage onset of gastric flu, bringing stomach cramps, sudden sweat and dizziness. Bent over, she clutched at the step, till the first pains subsided to a dull ache. It was much worse than the lesser stones, broken at Cloven Crest and Nestowe.

  “What is it?” whispered Touchstone.

  “Ah . . . the broken stones,” Sabriel muttered. She took a deep breath, willing the pain and discomfort away. “I can stand it. Be careful when you get in.”

  She drew her sword, and took her candle back from Touchstone, who prepared to enter the water. Even forewarned, she saw him flinch as his feet touched the bottom, and sweat broke out in lines on his forehead, mirroring the ripples that spread from his entry.

  Sabriel expected Mogget to jump up on her shoulder, given his apparent dislike for Touchstone, but he surprised her, leaping to the man. Touchstone was clearly startled too, but recovered well. Mogget draped himself around the back of Touchstone’s neck, and mewed softly.

  “Keep to the edges, if you can. The corruption—the break—will have even more unpleasant effects near the center.”

  Sabriel raised her sword in assent and led off, following the left wall, trying to break the surface tension of the water as little as possible. But the quiet slosh-slosh of their wading seemed very loud, echoing and spreading up and out through the cistern, adding to the only other noise—the regular dripping of water, plopping loudly from the roof, or more sedately sliding down the columns.

  She couldn’t sense any Dead, but she wasn’t sure how much that was due to the broken stones. They made her head hurt, like a constant, too-loud noise; her stomach cramped; her mouth was full of the acrid taste of bile.

  They had just reached the north-western corner, directly under one of the light shafts, when the light suddenly dimmed, and the reservoir grew dark in an instant, save for the tiny, soft glow of the candles.

  “A cloud,” whispered Touchstone. “It will pass.”

  They held their breath, looking up, up to the tiny outline of light above, and were rewarded when sunlight came pouring back down. Relieved, they began to wade again, following the long west-east wall. But it was short-lived relief. Another cloud crossed the sun, somewhere in that fresh air so high above them, and darkness returned. More clouds followed, till there were only brief moments of light interspersed by long stretches of total dark.

  The reservoir seemed colder without the sun, even a sun diluted by passage down long shafts through the earth. Sabriel felt the cold now, accompanied by the sudden, irrational fear that they had stayed too long, and would emerge to a night full of waiting, life-hungry Dead. Touchstone felt the chill too, made more bitter by his memories of two hundred years past, when he’d waded in this same water, and seen the Queen and her two daughters sacrificed and the Great Stones broken. There had been blood on the water then, and he still saw it—a single frozen moment of time that would not get out of his head.

  Despite these fears, it was the darkness that helped them. Sabriel saw a glow, a faint luminescence off to her right, somewhere towards the center. Shielding her eyes from the candle’s glare, she pointed it out to Touchstone.

  “There’s something there,” he agreed, his voice so low Sabriel barely heard it. “But it’s at least forty paces towards the center.”

  Sabriel didn’t answer. She’d felt something from that faint light, something like the slight sensation across the back of her neck that came when her father’s sending visited her at school. Leaving the wall, she pushed out through the water, a V-line of ripples behind her. Touchstone looked again, then followed, fighting the nausea that rose in him, coming in waves like repeated doses of an emetic. He was dizzy too, and could no longer properly feel his feet.

  They went about thirty paces out, the pain and the nausea growing steadily worse. Then Sabriel suddenly stopped, Touchstone lifting his sword and candle, eyes searching for an attack. But there was no enemy present. The luminous light came from a diamond of protection, the four cardinal marks glowing under the water, lines of force sparkling between them.

  In the middle of the diamond, a man-shaped figure stood, empty hands outstretched, as if he had once held weapons. Frost rimed his clothes and face, obscuring his features, and ice girdled the water around his middle. But Sabriel had no doubt about who it was.

  “Father,” she whispered, the whisper echoing across the dark water, to join the faint sounds of the ever-present dripping.

  chapter xxi

  “The diamond is complete,” said Touchstone. “We won’t be able to move him.”

  “Yes. I know,” replied Sabriel. The relief that had soared inside her at the sight of her father was ebbing, giving way to the sickness caused by the broken stones. “I think . . . I think I’ll have to go into Death from here, and fetch his spirit back.”

  “What!” exclaimed Touchstone. Then, quieter, as the echoes rang, “Here?”

  “If we cast our own diamond of protection . . .” Sabriel continued, thinking aloud. “A large one, around both of us and Father’s diamond—that will keep most danger at bay.”

  “Most danger,” Touchstone said grimly, looking around, trying to peer past the tight confines of their candle’s little globe of light. “It will also trap us here—even if we can cast it, so close to the broken stones. I know that I couldn’t do it alone, at this point.”

  “We should be able to combine our strengths. Then, if you and Mogget keep watch while I am in Death, we should manage.”

  “What do you think, Mogget?” asked Touchstone, turning his head, so his cheek brushed against the little animal on his shoulder.

  “I have my own troubles,” grumbled Mogget. “And I think this is probably a trap. But since we’re here, and the—Abhorsen Emeritus, shall we say, does seem to be alive, I suppose there’s nothing else to be done.”

  “I don’t like it,” whispered Touchstone. Just standing this clo
se to the broken stones took most of his strength. For Sabriel to enter Death seemed madness, tempting fate. Who knew what might be lurking in Death, close by the easy portal made by the broken stones? For that matter, who knew what was lurking in or around the reservoir?

  Sabriel didn’t answer. She moved closer to her father’s diamond of protection, studying the cardinal marks under the water. Touchstone followed reluctantly, forcing his legs to move in short steps, minimizing the splash and ripple of his wake.

  Sabriel snuffed out her candle, thrust it through her belt, then held out her open palm.

  “Put your sword away and give me your hand,” she said, in a tone that did not invite conversation or argument. Touchstone hesitated—his left hand held only a candle, and he didn’t want both his swords scabbarded—then he complied. Her hand was cold, colder than the water. Instinctively, he gripped a little tighter, to give her some of his warmth.

  “Mogget—keep watch,” Sabriel instructed.

  She closed her eyes, and began to visualize the East mark, the first of the four cardinal wards. Touchstone took a quick look around, then closed his eyes too, drawn in by the force of Sabriel’s conjuration.

  Pain shot through his hand and arm, as he added his will to Sabriel’s. The mark seemed blurry in his head, and impossible to focus. The pins and needles that had already plagued his feet spread up above his knees, shooting them through with rheumatic pains. But he blocked off the pain, narrowing his consciousness to just one thing: the creation of a diamond of protection.

  Finally, the East mark flowed down Sabriel’s blade and took root in the reservoir floor. Without opening their eyes, the duo shuffled around to face the south, and the next mark.

  This was harder still, and both of them were sweating and shaking when it finally began its glowing existence. Sabriel’s hand was hot and feverish now, and Touchstone’s fleshricocheted violently between sweating heat and shivering cold. A terrible wave of nausea hit him, and he would have been sick, but Sabriel gripped his hand, like a falcon its prey, and lent him strength. He gagged, dry-retched once, then recovered.