Fourteen open-decked, single-masted longboats, their black sails set to catch a nonexistent wind, oars out to battle an imaginary tide. They flew many flags and standards, all limp against mast and rigging, but Sabriel didn’t need to see them unfurled to know what strange cargo these ships might bear. She’d heard of this place, as had every child in the Northern parts of Ancelstierre, close to the Old Kingdom. Hundreds of tales of treasure, adventure and romance were woven around this strange harbor.
“There is a little danger getting there—a trap and a few other oddments, but nothing that will harm you. As to the interesting part, you will have to see for yourself, Abhorsen.”
Curious, she dropped her pack by the little pool of bubbling water and walked around to the bow.
Inwardly cursing herself for stupidity, Sabriel looked down at her spirit burden. Sure enough, she could just make out a very thin black line, fine as cotton thread, running from his arm into the water—and thence to the deeper, darker regions of Death. Not a controlling thread, but one that would let some distant Adept know the spirit had been moved. Fortunately, sounding Ranna would have slowed the message, but was she close enough to Life . . .
She had further confirmation that this was so, for there were binding spells woven into the very dirt her feet scuffed at the tunnel entrance, spells of final death that could only have been laid by an Abhorsen. No necromancer would ever raise any of the ancient rulers of the Old Kingdom.
That last question seemed to make her duty clear. Sabriel felt sure her father would free the man. That’s what he did, that was what he lived for. The duty of an Abhorsen was to remedy unnatural necromancy and Free Magic sorcery.
Sabriel hesitated, then walked towards it, carefully feeling her way, making sure of every footfall, guarding against the gripping current. There was definitely something odd out there. She could feel it quite strongly—it had to be the trapped spirit. She ignored the little voice at the back of her mind that suggested it was a fiercely devious Dead creature, strong enough to hold its own against the race of the river . . .
“No. I’ll get it. And my spare shirt, I suppose.
There were magical wardings too. Old, inimical spells lay like moths in the corners of the tunnel, waiting to fly up at her, to surround and choke her with power—but something checked their first reaction and they settled again. A few times, Sabriel experienced a ghostly touch, like a hand reaching out to brush the Charter mark on her forehead, and almost at the end of the tunnel, she saw two guard sendings melting into the rock, the tips of their halberds glinting in her candlelight before they, too, merged into stone.
Hopefully, he would wake up if any physical danger threatened—not that this was likely, given the wards and guards on the sinkhole.
Cold hit her, and the relentless current, but she stood where she was, still feeling the warmth of Life on her back. This was the very interface between the two realms, where she would normally plunge ahead. This time, she planted her feet against the current, and used her continuing slight contact with Life as an anchor to hold her own against the waters of Death.
The climate was mitigated by proximity to the ocean, and an altitude that could easily be sealevel or below, for in daylight Sabriel could see that the sinkhole was at least a hundred yards deep.
If there was a Dead thing there, Sabriel reasoned, it would now be quiescent. She put her sword and bell away, edged forward to a good position, and reached down into the water.
“Thank you,” he said, almost drunkenly, the words terribly slurred. He seemed to focus on her—or her surcoat—for the first time, and added, “Abhorsen.”
“A kiss,” said Mogget sleepily. “Actually, just a breath would do. But you have to start kissing someone sometime, I suppose.”
“How far away?” asked Sabriel, all too aware of her bruise-limited mobility. “And what does interesting mean? Dangerous?”
But he seemed sober enough, and serious.
Some slight sense of caution remained with her, so she went and picked up Mogget, placing the dozing cat near the feet of the figurehead.
There were even barriers that would make it difficult to cross into Death, and more than difficult for something Dead to follow her back. All in all, it seemed like the perfect place to undertake a minor rescue.
A small sound interrupted her. A small, wheezing sound, that didn’t come from her or Mogget.
Sabriel staggered backwards, and the river, evereager, wrapped her legs with tricksome eddies— but she steadied herself before it could drag her down.
Then he went to sleep, mouth curling up at the corners, frown dissolving. He looked younger than he did as a fixed-expression figurehead.
Nevertheless, when she was a few paces back from whatever it was, Sabriel let Ranna sound— a muffled, sleepy peal that carried the sensation of a yawn, a sigh, a head falling forward, eyes heavy—a call to sleep.
“It is where the First Blood . . . ach . . .”
Mogget watched her hobble off, then turned back to the sleeping man. Silently, the cat padded over and touched his pink tongue to the Charter mark on the man’s forehead. The mark flared, but Mogget didn’t flinch, till it grew dull again.
Two steps. Sabriel shifted her grip again, wrapping her left arm completely around the spirit’s chest and balancing the weight on her hip, freeing her right arm, but she still couldn’t draw her sword, or clear the bells.
“Perhaps. Interesting, certainly. Water? Yes.”
Sabriel tried to identify it, while she looked over the figurehead again, carefully examining him from every angle. The man’s body was an intellectual problem now, so she looked without embarrassment, studying his fingers, fingernails and skin, noting how perfectly they were carved, right down to the tiny scars on his hands, the product of sword and dagger practice. There was also the faint sign of a baptismal Charter mark on his forehead, and the pale trace of veins on his eyelids.
This sinkhole was much wider than the first— perhaps a mile across, and deeper, say six or seven hundred feet. Despite its size, the entire vast pit was sealed off from the upper air by a gleaming, web-thin net, which seemed to merge into the rim wall about a quarter of the way down from the surface. Sunlight had given it away, but even so, Sabriel had to use her telescope to see the delicate diamond-pattern weave clearly. It looked flimsy, but the presence of several dessicated bird-corpses indicated considerable strength. Sabriel guessed the unfortunate birds had dived into the net, eyes greedily intent on food below.
Everything seemed quiet, save for the constant gurgling of the water about her feet, and the faroff crash of the First Gate. Nothing stirred, no shapes loomed up in the grey light. Cautiously, Sabriel used her sense of the Dead to feel out anything that might be lurking, to feel the slight spark of the trapped, but living, spirit of the young man. Back in Life, she was physically close to him, so she should be near his spirit here.
The current seemed far too strong for this side of the First Gate, and the crystallized spirit—or whatever it was—was much, much heavier than any spirit should be.
The figurehead was breathing, air whistling between carved wooden lips like the issue from an aged, underworked bellows.
Sabriel realized she really was staring, and looked away.
Second thoughts brushed at her like doubting fingers, but she ignored them. She felt confident, ready for what would only be a minor stroll in Death, amply safeguarded by the protections of this royal necropolis. Sword in one hand, bell in the other, she crossed into Death.
“Not far, by this tunnel,” replied Mogget.
Even so, when the sun had risen to become a little disc surrounded by the greater circumference of the sinkhole’s rim, she started to wonder why he hadn’t come back. Levering herself up, she limped over to the tunnel he’d chosen, using her sword as a walking stick and complaining quietly as every bruise reminded her of its location.
“I can get a blanket if you want to keep staring at him,” Mogget said slyly, twining himself around her ankles in a sensuous pavane.
That inspection led her to certainty about what she’d detected, but she hesitated about the action that should be taken, and went in search of Mogget. Not that she put a lot of faith in advice or answers from that quarter, given his present propensity towards behaving as a fairly silly cat—though perhaps this was a reaction to his brief experience of being a Free Magic beast again, something that might not have happened for a millennium. The cat form was probably a welcome relief.
Sabriel gripped the spirit-form under the arms and pulled. It rose up out of the water like a killer whale, pallid white and rigid as a statue.
Four steps to Life—then three. The thing was closing now—Sabriel could see it, low in the water, still creeping, but faster now. It was obviously a denizen of the Third, or even some later Gate, for she couldn’t identify what it once had been. Now it looked like a cross between a hog and a segmented worm, and it moved in a series of scuttles and sinuous wriggles.
It was a responsible visage, with the shocked expression of someone who has been betrayed and only just realized it. There was fear there, too, and something like hatred. He looked more than a little mad. His expression troubled her, for it seemed too human to be the result of a woodcarver’s skill, no matter how talented.
She lowered him hastily to the ground, all too aware that she was embracing a naked young man—in circumstances considerably different than the various scenarios she’d imagined with her friends at school, or heard about from the earthier and more privileged day-girls.
Sabriel found herself facedown on the ground, hands empty, ice crystals crunching as they fell from her frosted body. Turning her head, she met the gaze of Mogget. He stared at her, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
This was different too, for the figurehead was a young man—a naked young man, carved in perfect detail.
Not that the sinkhole was much larger than that—perhaps a hundred yards in diameter, not the fifty she’d guessed at when she was coming down. The entire floor of it was paved, with a circular drain in the middle, and there were several tunnel entrances into the sheer rock walls—tunnels which Sabriel knew she would eventually have to take, as there was no water in the sinkhole. There seemed little chance of rain, either. It was cool, but nowhere near as cold as the plateau near Abhorsen’s House.
It hadn’t changed at all to outward sight, though Sabriel could now feel the living spirit in it.
As Mogget had promised, the tunnel wasn’t long, and its well-made steps and cross-hatched floor made passage easy, save for the part where Sabriel had to follow the little cat exactly across the stones, to avoid a cleverly concealed pit.
“Catbalm!” exclaimed Sabriel, looking at Mogget. “You shouldn’t—”
“I suppose I’d better get him a blanket,” she said reluctantly, as she wondered what on earth had possessed her to add this complication to her already confusing and difficult circumstances.
“Where are we going?” she whispered, nervously, as the door in front of them slowly creaked open—without visible means of propulsion.
Or so she thought, till she saw the figurehead.
The breeches might fit him with a bit of work, I guess—we’d be much the same height. Keep watch, Mogget. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“What do you mean—” Sabriel began, but she fell silent as they passed the doorway, magical force suddenly tugging at her hair, her hands, her surcoat, the hilt of her sword. Mogget’s fur stood on end, and his collar rotated halfway around of its own accord, till the Charter marks of binding were uppermost and clearly readable, bright against the leather.
As she’d expected, dawn had brought some light to the sinkhole, and as the day progressed, this had grown to a level approximating twilight.
Sabriel quickened her pace a little more, adrenaline and suspense feeding her strength. If it rushed her, she would have to drop the spirit— and he would be carried away, lost forever.
Then they were out, standing at the bottom of another sinkhole, in a premature twilight, for the sun was already slipping over the circumscribed horizon of the sinkhole rim.
Your spirit lies neither in Life nor Death, but somewhere in between. I could cross into Death, and find you near the border, I’m sure—but I could find a lot of trouble as well. Trouble I can’t deal with in my current pathetic state. So what can I do? What would Father—Abhorsen . . . or any Abhorsen—do in my place?”
Whatever it was, it seemed quite reluctant to close in on her.
She heard, and listening carefully, caught the soft slosh-slosh of something half-wading, halfcreeping, moving as quietly as it could against the current. Moving towards her. Something Dead was hoping to catch her unawares.
Finally, he shot off into the trees.
She flinched back, then reached down again, till her hands found something that was clearly a shoulder. She followedthis up to a head, and traced the features. Sometimes a spirit bore little relation to the physical body, and sometimes living spirits became warped if they spent too long in Death, but this one was clearly the counterpart of the figurehead. It lived too, somehow encased and protected from Death, as the living body was preserved in wood.
“Like this?” She took a deep breath, leaned forward, exhaled a few inches from his nose and mouth, then stepped back to see what would happen—if anything.
Obviously, some alarm or summons had gone out beyond the First Gate, and whatever was stalking towards her had come in answer to it.
She didn’t think further than that, perhaps due to the injudicious sniffing of the catbalm. She didn’t even consider that her father would probably have waited until he was fitter—perhaps till the next day. After all, this young man must have been incarcerated for many years, his physical body transformed into wood, and his spirit somehow trapped in Death. A few days would make no difference to him. An Abhorsen didn’t have to immediately take on any duty that presented itself . . .
They passed close by two of the ships on their way to the spring. Mogget led her a merry dance around both of them, in a mad circumnavigation of twists, leaps and bounds, but the sides were too high to look in and she didn’t feel like shinning up an oar. She did pause to look at the figureheads— imposing men, one in his forties, the other somewhat older. Both were bearded, had the same imperious eyes, and wore armor similar to Sabriel’s, heavily festooned with medallions, chains and other decorations. Each held a sword in his right hand, and an unfurling scroll that turned back on itself in their left—the heraldic representation of the Charter.
Her nose was a different matter when it came to treatment. It wasn’t broken—merely hideous, swollen and encrusted with dried blood, which hurt too much to clean off completely.
“Useful?” mused Mogget, rubbing his chin back along his two outstretched front legs.
She thought about it for a while, pacing backwards and forwards, bruises temporarily forgotten.
He danced around Sabriel’s feet, then stood on his hind legs and made expansive gestures, like a circus impresario in white fur.
This time, it was Ranna she freed from its leather case. It was the least noticeable of the bells, its very nature lulling listeners, beguiling them to sleep or inattention.
Sabriel looked at the cat, wondering if this was the latest symptom of catbalm-induced lunacy.
His eyes opened and met Sabriel’s. Fine grey eyes, but muzzy and unfocused. He didn’t seem to see her. His fingers clenched and unclenched, and his feet shuffled, as if he were running in place. Finally, his back peeled away from the ship’s hull. He took one step forward, and fell into Sabriel’s arms.
Puzzled, she touched his immobile face, fingers tracing the grain of the wood.
She supposed she would have to get him to safety and civilization, at the very least—if there was any to be found.
“Who else?” replied Sabriel. “Have you found anything? Anything useful, I mean. Water, for instance.”
The third ship was different. It seemed shorter and less ornate, with a bare mast devoid of black sails. No oars sprang from its sides, and as Sabriel reached the spring that lay under its stern, she saw uncaulked seams between the planking, and realized that it was incomplete.
“Another sinkhole,” Mogget said, matter-offactly.
Sabriel blushed a little, for it was an exact likeness, as if a young man had been transformed from flesh to wood, and her only prior experience of naked men was in clinical cross-sections from biology textbooks. His muscles were lean and well-formed, his hair short and tightly curled against his head. His hands, well-shaped and elegant, were partly raised, as if to ward off some evil.
The hog-thing began to grunt and hiss, breaking into a diving, rushing gallop, its long, yellowcrusted tusks surfing through the water, its long body undulating along behind.
But for the first time since she’d crossed the Wall, Sabriel felt there was a clear-cut problem for her to solve. An injustice to be righted and one that should involve little more than a few minutes on the very border of Death.
Her hands touched something as cold and hard as ice, something totally unidentifiable.
“A breath?” she asked. She didn’t want to kiss just any wooden man. He looked nice enough, but he might not be like his looks. A kiss seemed very forward. He might remember it, and make assumptions.
ckkk . . . the Kings and Queens of the Old Kingdom,” pronounced Mogget, after some difficulty.
Without Mogget’s guidance, Sabriel knew she would have fallen in.
He choked, hissed, and then rephrased his sentence rather drably, with “It is interesting.”
Once more, she checked the bells, running her hands over the smooth wood of the handles, feeling their voices within, eagerly awaiting release.
“Too life-like,” Sabriel muttered, stepping back from the figurehead, hand falling to the hilt of her sword, her magical senses reaching out, seeking some trap or deception.
With nearly all her concentration bent on staying upright and heading in the right direction, Sabriel almost didn’t notice the sudden cessation of noise that marked the passage of something through the First Gate. But she’d learned to be wary over the last few days, and her conscious fears had become enshrined in subconscious caution.
Shrill squealing followed her, but nothing else.
The detail even extended to a circumcised penis, which Sabriel glanced at in an embarrassed way, before looking back at his face. He was not exactly handsome, but not displeasing.
Neither Sabriel nor Mogget mentioned the happenings of the previous night when they awoke. Sabriel, bathing her seriously swollen nose in an inch of water from her canteen, found that she didn’t particularly want to remember a waking nightmare, and Mogget was quiet, in an apologetic way. Despite what happened later, freeing Mogget’s alter ego, or whatever it was, had saved them from certain destruction by the wind.
There was no trap, but Sabriel did feel something in or around the figurehead. A feeling similar to that of a Dead revenant, but not the same— a niggling sensation that she couldn’t place.
A Mordicant, Shadow Hands, gore crows—it was now all too clear that some terrible enemy was arrayed against both father and daughter.
In fact, no advice at all could be had from Mogget. Sabriel found him asleep in a field of flowers near the spring, his tail and paddy-paws twitching to a dream of dancing mice. Sabriel looked at the straw-yellow flowers, sniffed one, scratched Mogget behind the ears, then went back to the figurehead. The flowers were catbalm, explaining both Mogget’s previous mood and his current somnolence. She would have to make up her own mind.
Sabriel rolled over, and got to her feet, very, very slowly. She felt all her pains come back and wondered why she’d been so hasty to perform deeds of derring-do and rescue. Still, she had managed it. The man’s spirit was back where it belonged, back in Life.
She increased her speed a little, but not too much, pretending she hadn’t noticed the hunter.
In the sinkhole itself, there was considerable, if uninspiring vegetation—mostly stunted trees and malformed bushes. But Sabriel had little attention to spare for the trees, for in between each of these straggling patches of greenery, there were paved areas—and on each of these paved areas rested a ship.
Still, with a half-full canteen of water gurgling by her side, Sabriel was quite content to slouch upon her slightly scorched pack and apply herbal creams to her bruises, and a poultice of evilsmelling tanmaril leaves to her strange sunburn.
Sabriel looked down at him, trying to ignore curiously fond feelings that had appeared from somewhere. Feelings similar to those that had made her bring back Jacinth’s rabbit.
“The famous burial ground of the First . . .
The breathing grew stronger, and with it, color began to flow through the carving, dull wood giving way to the luster of flesh. He coughed, and the carven chest became flexible, suddenly rising and falling as he began to pant like a recovering sprinter.
Sabriel followed at a slower pace, shaking her head and wondering what had happened to make Mogget so cheerful. She felt bruised, tired and depressed, shaken by the Free Magic monster, and sad about the Paperwing.
Sabriel stepped back, turned, and threw herself and her precious cargo headfirst into Life, using all her will to force them through the wards on the sinkhole. For an instant, it seemed that they would be repulsed, then, like a pin pushing through a rubber band, they were through.
“Funerary ships,” said Sabriel. “Royal ships.”
“Come on—there’s a spring, spring, spring!” he caroled, as he leaped up and down in time with his words.
There was something, but it seemed further into Death than Sabriel expected. She tried to see it, squinting into the curious greyness that made distance impossible to judge, but nothing was visible. Whatever was there lurked beneath the surface of the water.
“So,” she said, addressing the figurehead like a lawyer before a court. “You are the victim of some Free Magic spell and necromantic trickery.
Changing her hold a little, Sabriel began to drag the spirit-form back towards Life. It was hard going, much harder than she’d expected.
Whatever magic had preserved his living spirit here on the boundary couldn’t possibly prevail if he went past the First Gate. If that happened, Sabriel thought, she would have precipitated a murder rather than a rescue.
Nothing did.
“Looking for me?” he mewed, innocently.
Mogget, after an hour or so of sheepish silence, sauntered off to explore, refusing Sabriel’s offer of hard cakes and dried meat for breakfast. She expected he’d find a rat, or something equally appetizing, instead. In a way, she was quite pleased he was gone. The memory of the Free Magic beast that lay within the little white cat was still disturbing.
That enemy had already trapped her father, so it had to be a very powerful necromancer, or some Greater Dead creature. Perhaps this Kerrigor . . .
“So,” muttered Mogget, tasting his own tongue by curling it back on itself. He seemed somewhat surprised, and more than a little angry. He tasted the mark again, and then shook his head in distaste, the miniature Saraneth on his collar ringing a little peal that was not of celebration.
“Sabriel,” said Sabriel automatically, as she tried to think ahead. She needed at least two days’ rest, but no more than that. Every day lost before she found her father’s corporeal body might mean disaster. She simply had to find him soon.
Sabriel could read and see things close by quite clearly, but they merged into indistinct gloom twenty or thirty yards away.
Of course, just as she was lighting a candle at the tunnel entrance Mogget reappeared behind her.
“I’ll get my pack,” she decided, trudging back, Mogget slipping backwards and forwards across her path like a kitten, almost tripping her, but always just getting out of the way. Sabriel put this down to inexplicable catness, and didn’t comment.
