“So,” continued Abhorsen. “We finally have the chance to finish Kerrigor once and for all. The Clayr will direct you to his body, you will destroy it, and then banish Kerrigor’s spirit form—which will be severely weakened. After that, you can get the surviving royal prince out of his suspended state, and with the aid of the Wallmaker relict, repair the Great CharterStones . . .”
“The surviving royal prince,” asked Sabriel, with a feeling of unlooked-for knowledge rising in her. “He wasn’t . . . ah . . . suspended as a figurehead in Holehallow, was he . . . and his spirit in Death?”
“A bastard son, actually, and possibly crazy,” Abhorsen said, without really listening. “But he has the blood. What? Oh, yes, yes he is . . . you said was . . . you mean—”
“Yes,” said Sabriel, unhappily. “He calls himself Touchstone. And he’s waiting in the reservoir. Near the Stones. With Mogget.”
Abhorsen paused for the first time, clearly taken aback.
“All our plans go astray, it seems,” he said somberly, sighing. “Kerrigor lured me to the reservoir to use my blood to break a Great Stone, but I managed to protect myself, so he contented himself with trapping me in Death. He thought you would be lured to my body, and he could use your blood—but I was not trapped as securely as he thought, and planned a reverse. But now, if the Prince is there, he has another source of blood to break the Great Charter—”
“He’s in the diamond of protection,” Sabriel said, suddenly feeling afraid for Touchstone.
“That may not suffice,” replied Abhorsen grimly. “Kerrigor grows stronger every day he spends in Life, taking the strength from living folk, and feeding off the broken Stones. He will soon be able to break even the strongest Charter Magic defenses. He may be strong enough now. But tell me of the Prince’s companion. Who is Mogget?”
“Mogget?” repeated Sabriel, surprised again. “But I met him at our House! He’s a Free Magic—something—wearing the shape of a white cat, with a red collar that carries a miniature Saraneth.”
“Mogget,” said Abhorsen, as if trying to get his mouth around an unpalatable morsel. “That is the Wallmaker relict, or their last creation, or their child—no one knows, possibly not even him. I wonder why he took the shape of a cat? He was always a sort of albino dwarf-boy to me, and he practically never left the House. I suppose he may be some sort of protection for the Prince. We must hurry.”
“I thought we were!” snapped Sabriel, as he started off again. She didn’t mean to be bad-tempered, but this was not her idea of a heartfelt reunion between father and daughter. He hardly seemed to notice her, except as a repository for numerous revelations and as an agent to deal with Kerrigor.
Abhorsen suddenly stopped, and gathered her into a quick, one-armed embrace. His grip felt strong, but Sabriel felt another reality there, as if his arm was a shadow, temporarily born of light, but doomed to fade at nightfall.
“I have not been an ideal parent, I know,” Abhorsen said quietly. “None of us ever are. When we become the Abhorsen, we lose much else. Responsibility to many people rides roughshod over personal responsibilities; difficulties and enemies crush out softness; our horizons narrow. You are my daughter, and I have always loved you. But now, I live again for only a short time—a hundred hundred heartbeats, no more—and I must win a battle against a terrible enemy. Our parts now—which perforce we must play—are not father and daughter, but one old Abhorsen, making way for the new. But behind this, there is always my love.”
“A hundred hundred heartbeats . . .” whispered Sabriel, tears falling down her face. She gently pushed herself out of his embrace, and they started forward together, towards the First Gate, the First Precinct, Life—and then, the reservoir.
Chapter 23
Touchstone could see the Dead now, and had no difficulty hearing them. They were chanting and clapping, decayed hands meeting together in a steady, slow rhythm that put all the hair on the back of his head on edge. A ghastly noise, hard sounds of bone on bone, or the liquid thumpings of decomposed, jellying flesh. The chanting was even worse, for very few of them had functioning mouths. Touchstone had never seen or heard a shipwreck—now he knew the sound of a thousand sailors drowning, all at once, in a quiet sea.
The lines of the Dead had marched out close to where Touchstone stood, forming a great mass of shifting shadow, spread like a choking fungus around the columns. Touchstone couldn’t make out what they were doing, till Mogget, with his night-sight, explained.
“They’re forming up into two lines, to make a corridor,” the little cat whispered, though the need for silence was long gone. “A corridor of Dead Hands, reaching from the northern stair to us.”
“Can you see the doorway of the stair?” Touchstone asked. He was no longer afraid, now he could see and smell the putrescent, stinking corpses lined up in mockery of a parade. I should have died in this reservoir long ago, he thought. There has just been a delay of two hundred years . . .
“Yes, I can,” continued Mogget, his eyes green with sparkling fire. “A tall beast has come, its flesh boiling with dirty flames. A Mordicant. It’s crouching in the water, looking back and up like a dog to its master. Fog is rolling down the stairs behind it—a Free Magic trick, that one. I wonder why he has such an urge to impress?”
“Rogir always was flamboyant,” Touchstone stated, as if he might be commenting on someone at a dinner party. “He liked everyone to be looking at him. He’s no different as Kerrigor, no different Dead.”
“Oh, but he is,” said Mogget. “Very different. He knows you’re here, and the fog’s for vanity. He must have been terribly rushed making the body he wears now. A vain man—even a Dead one—would not like this body looked at.”
Touchstone swallowed, trying not to think about that. He wondered if he could charge out of the diamond, flèche with his swords into that fog, a mad attack—but even if he got there, would his swords, Charter-spelled though they were, have any effect on the magical flesh Kerrigor now wore?
Something moved in the water, at the limits of his vision, and the Hands increased the tempo of their drumming, the frenzied gurgle-chanting rising in volume.
Touchstone squinted, confirming what he thought he’d seen—tendrils of fog, lazily drifting across the water between the lines of the Dead, keeping to the corridor they’d made.
“He’s playing with us,” gasped Touchstone, surprised by his own lack of breath for speech. He felt like he’d already sprinted a mile, his heart going thump-thump-thump-thump . . .
A terrible howl suddenly rose above the Dead drumming, and Touchstone leapt back, nearly dislodging Mogget. The howl rose and rose, becoming unbearable, and then a huge shape broke out of the fog and darkness, stampeding towards them with fearful power, great swaths of spray exploding around it as it ran.
Touchstone shouted, or screamed—he wasn’t sure—threw away his candle, drew his left sword and thrust both blades out, crouching to receive the charge, knees so bent he was chest-deep in the water.
“The Mordicant!” yelled Mogget, then he was gone, leaping from Touchstone to the still-frosted Sabriel.
Touchstone barely had time to absorb this information, and a split-second image of something like an enormous, flame-shrouded bear, howling like the final scream of a sacrifice—then the Mordicant collided with the diamond of protection, and Touchstone’s out-thrust swords.
Silver sparks exploded with a bang that drowned the howling, throwing both Touchstone and the Mordicant back several yards. Touchstone lost his footing, and went under, water bubbling into his nose and still-screaming mouth. He panicked, thinking the Mordicant would be on him in a second, and flipped himself back up with unnecessary force, savagely ripping his stomach muscles.
He almost flew out of the water, swords at guard again, but the diamond was intact, and the Mordicant retreating, backing away along the corridor of Hands. They’d stopped their noise, but there was something else—something Touchstone didn’t recognize, till the water drained out of his ears.
It was laughter, laughter echoing out of the fog, which now billowed across the water, coming closer and closer, till the retreating Mordicant was enveloped in it, and lost to sight.
“Did my hound scare you, little brother?” said a voice from within the fog.
“Ow!” exclaimed Sabriel, feeling Mogget’s claws on her physical body. Abhorsen looked at her, raising one silvery eyebrow questioningly.
“Something touched my body in Life,” she explained. “Mogget, I think. I wonder what’s happening?”
They stood at the very edge of Death, on the border with Life. No Dead had tried to stop them, and they’d passed easily through the First Gate. Perhaps any Dead would quail from the sight of two Abhorsens . . .
Now they waited. Sabriel didn’t know why. Somehow, Abhorsen seemed to be able to see into Life, or to work out what was happening. He stood like an eavesdropper, body slightly bent, ear cocked to a non-existent door.
Sabriel, on the other hand, stood like a soldier, keeping watch for the Dead. The broken stones made this part of Death an attractive high road into Life, and she had expected to find many Dead here, trying to take advantage of the “hole.” But it was not so. They seemed to be alone in the grey, featureless river, their only neighbors the swells and eddies of the water.
Abhorsen closed his eyes, concentrating even harder, then opened them to a wide-eyed stare and touched Sabriel lightly on the arm.
“It is almost time,” he said gently. “When we emerge, I want you to take . . . Touchstone . . . and run for the southern stairs. Do not stop for anything, anything at all. Once outside, climb up to the top of the Palace Hill, to the West Yard. It’s just an empty field now—Touchstone will know how to get there. If the Clayr are watching properly, and haven’t got their whens mixed up, there’ll be a Paperwing there—”
“A Paperwing!” interrupted Sabriel. “But I crashed it.”
“There are several around,” replied Abhorsen. “The Abhorsen who made it—the forty-sixth, I think—taught several others how to construct them. Anyway, it should be there. The Clayr will also be there, or a messenger, to tell you where to find Kerrigor’s body in Ancelstierre. Fly as close to the Wall as possible, cross, find the body—and destroy it!”
“What will you be doing?” whispered Sabriel.
“Here is Saraneth,” replied Abhorsen, not meeting her gaze. “Give me your sword, and . . . Astarael.”
The seventh bell. Astarael the Sorrowful. Weeper.
Sabriel didn’t move, made no motion to hand over bell or blade. Abhorsen pushed Saraneth into its pouch, and did up the strap. He started to undo the strap that held Astarael, but Sabriel’s hand closed on his, gripping it tightly.
“There must be another way,” she cried. “We can all escape together—”
“No,” said Abhorsen firmly. He gently pushed her hand away. Sabriel let go, and he took Astarael carefully from the bandolier, making sure it couldn’t sound. “Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?”
Numbly, Sabriel handed him her sword . . . his sword. Her empty hands hung open by her sides.
“I have walked in Death to the very precipice of the Ninth Gate,” Abhorsen said quietly. “I know the secrets and horrors of the Nine Precincts. I do not know what lies beyond, but everything that lives must go there, in the proper time. That is the rule that governs our work as the Abhorsen, but it also governs us. You are the fifty-third Abhorsen, Sabriel. I have not taught you as well as I should—let this be my final lesson. Everyone and everything has a time to die.”
He bent forward, and kissed her forehead, just under the rim of her helmet. For a moment, she stood like a stringed puppet at rest, then she flung herself against his chest, feeling the soft fabric of his surcoat. She seemed to diminish in size, till once again she was a little girl, running to his embrace at the school gates. As she could then, she heard the slow beating of his heart. Only now, she heard the beats as grains in a timepiece, counting his hard-won hundred hundreds, counting till it was time for him to die.
She hugged him tightly, her arms meeting around his back, his arms outstretched like a cross, sword in one hand, bell in the other. Then, she let go.
They turned together, and plunged out into Life.
Kerrigor laughed again, an obscene cackle that rose to a manic crescendo, before suddenly cutting to an ominous silence. The Dead resumed their drumming, softer now, and the fog drifted forward with horrible certainty. Touchstone, drenched and partly drowned, watched it with the taut nerves of a mouse captivated by a gliding snake. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he noted that it was easier to see the whiteness of the fog. Up above, the clouds had gone, and the edges of the reservoir were once again lit by filtered sunlight. But they were forty paces or more from the edge . . .
A cracking noise behind him made him start, and turn, a jolt of fear suddenly overlaid with relief. Sabriel, and her father, were returning to Life! Ice flakes fell from them in miniature flurries, and the layer of ice around Abhorsen’s middle broke into several small floes and drifted away.
Touchstone blinked as the frost fell away from their hands and faces. Now Sabriel was empty-handed, and Abhorsen wielded the sword and bell.
“Thank the Charter!” exclaimed Touchstone, as they opened their eyes and moved.
But no one heard him, for in that instant a terrible scream of rage and fury burst out of the fog, so loud the columns shivered, and ripples burst out across the water.