Sabriel (Old Kingdom Book 1) Read online

  It had been human once, or human-like at least, in the years it had lived under the sun. That humanity had been lost in the centuries the thing spent in the chill waters of Death, ferociously holding its own against the current, demonstrating an incredible will to live again. A will it didn’t know it possessed before a badly cast hunting spear bounced from a rock and clipped its throat, just enough for a last few minutes of frantic life.

  By sheer effort of will, it had held itself on the life side of the Fourth Gate for three hundred years, growing in power, learning the ways of Death. It preyed on lesser spirits, and served or avoided greater ones. Always, the thing held on to life. Its chance finally came when a mighty spirit erupted from beyond the Seventh Gate, smashing through each of the Upper Gates in turn, till it went ravening into Life. Hundreds of the Dead had followed, and this particular spirit had joined the throng. There had been terrible confusion and a mighty enemy at the very border between Life and Death, but, in the melee, it had managed to sneak around the edges and squirm triumphantly into Life.

  There were plenty of recently vacated bodies where it emerged, so the thing occupied one, animated it and ran away. Soon after, it found the caves it now inhabited. It even decided to give itself a name. Thralk. A simple name, not too difficult for a partially decomposed mouth to voice. A male name. Thralk could not remember what its original sex had been, those centuries before, but its new body was male.

  It was a name to instill fear in the few small settlements that still existed in this area of The Borderlands, settlements Thralk preyed upon, capturing and consuming the human life he needed to keep himself on the living side of Death.

  Charter Magic flared on Cloven Crest again, and Thralk sensed that it was strong and pure—but weakly cast. The strength of the magic scared him, but the lack of skill behind it was reassuring and strong magic meant a strong life. Thralk needed that life, needed it to shore up the body he used, needed it to replenish the leakage of his spirit back into Death. Greed won over fear. The Dead thing left the mouth of the cave and started climbing the hill, his lidless, rotting eyes fixed on the distant crest.

  Sabriel saw her guide, first as a tall, pale light drifting over the swirling water towards her, and then, as it stopped several yards away, as a blurred, glowing, human shape, its arms outstretched in welcome.

  “Sabriel.”

  The words were fuzzy and seemed to come from much farther away than where the shining figure stood, but Sabriel smiled as she felt the warmth in the greeting. Abhorsen had never explained who or what this luminous person was, but Sabriel thought she knew. She’d summoned this advisor only once before—when she’d first menstruated.

  There was minimal sex education at Wyverley College—none at all till you were fifteen. The older girls’ stories about menstruation were many, varied and often meant to scare. None of Sabriel’s friends had reached puberty before her, so in fear and desperation she had entered Death. Her father had told her that the one the paper boat summoned would answer any question and would protect her—and so it had. The glowing spirit answered all her questions and many more besides, till Sabriel was forced to return to Life.

  “Hello, Mother,” said Sabriel, sheathing her sword and carefully muffling Saraneth with her fingers inside the bell.

  The shining shape didn’t answer, but that wasn’t unexpected. Apart from her one-word greeting, she could only answer questions. Sabriel wasn’t really sure if the manifestation was the very unusual dead spirit of her mother, which was unlikely, or some residual protective magic left by her.

  “I don’t have much time,” Sabriel continued. “I’d love to ask about . . . oh, everything, I guess . . . but at the moment, I need to know how to get to Father’s house from Cloven Crest . . . I mean Barhedrin Ridge.”

  The sending nodded, and spoke. As Sabriel listened, she also saw pictures in her head of what the woman was describing; vivid images, like memories of a journey she’d taken herself.

  “Go to the northern side of the ridge. Follow the spur that begins there down till it reaches the valley floor. Look at the sky . . . there won’t be any cloud. Look to the bright red star, Uallus, near the horizon, three fingers east of north. Follow that star till you come to a road that runs from south-west to north-east. Take that road for a mile to the north-east, till you reach a mile marker and the Charter Stone behind it. A path behind the stone leads to the Long Cliffs immediately north. Take the path. It ends in a door in the Cliffs. The door will answer to Mosrael. Beyond the door is a tunnel, sloping sharply upwards. Beyond the tunnel lies Abhorsen’s Bridge. The house is over the bridge. Go with love—and do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens.”

  “Thank you,” Sabriel began, carefully filing the words away with the accompanying thoughts. “Could you also . . .”

  She stopped as the mother-sending in front of her suddenly raised both arms as if shocked, and shouted, “Go!”

  At the same time, Sabriel felt the diamond of protection around her physical body twinge in warning and she became aware that the North mark had failed. Instantly, she turned on her left heel and began racing back to the border with Life, drawing her sword. The current almost seemed to strengthen against her, twining around her legs, but then fell away before her urgency. Sabriel reached the border and, with a furious thrust of will, her spirit emerged back into Life.

  For a second, she was disoriented, suddenly freezing again and thick-witted. A grinning, corpse-like creature was just stepping through the failed North mark, its arms reaching to embrace her, carrion-breath misting out of a mouth unnaturally wide.

  Thralk had been pleased to find the Charter Mage’s spirit wandering and a broken diamond of protection. The sword had worried him a little, but it was frosted over and his shriveled eyes couldn’t see the Charter marks that danced beneath the rime. Similarly, the bell in Sabriel’s left hand looked like a lump of ice or snow, as if she’d caught a snowball. All in all, Thralk felt very fortunate, particularly as the life that blazed within this still victim was particularly young and strong. Thralk sidled closer still and his double-jointed arms reached to embrace Sabriel’s neck.

  Just as his slimy, corrupted fingers stretched forward, Sabriel opened her eyes and executed the stop-thrust that had earned her second place in Fighting Arts and, later, lost her the First. Her arm and sword straightened like one limb to their full extent and the sword-point ripped through Thralk’s neck, and into eight inches of air beyond.

  Thralk screamed, his reaching fingers gripping the sword to push himself free—only to scream again as Charter marks flared on the blade. White-hot sparks plumed between his knuckles and Thralk suddenly knew what he’d encountered.

  “Abhorsen!” he croaked, falling backwards as Sabriel twisted the blade free with one explosive jerk.

  Already, the sword was affecting the dead flesh Thralk inhabited, Charter Magic burning through reanimated nerves, freezing those all-too-fluid joints. Fire rose in Thralk’s throat, but he spoke, to distract this terrible opponent while his spirit tried to shuck the body, like a snake its skin, and retreat into the night.

  “Abhorsen! I will serve you, praise you, be your Hand . . . I know things, alive and dead . . . I will help lure others to you . . .”

  The clear, deep sound of Saraneth cut through the whining, broken voice like a foghorn booming above the shriek of seagulls. The chime vibrated on and on, echoing into the night, and Thralk felt it bind him even as his spirit leaked out of the body and made for flight. The bell bound him to paralyzed flesh, bound him to the will of the bell-ringer. Fury seethed in him, anger and fear fueling his struggle, but the sound was everywhere, all around him, all through him. He would never be free of it.

  Sabriel watched the misshapen shadow writhing, half out of the corpse, half in it, the body bleeding a pool of darkness. It was still trying to use the corpse’s mouth, but without success. She considered going with it into Death, where it would have a shape and she could make it answer with Dyr
im. But the broken Charter Stone loomed nearby and she felt it as an ever-present fear, like a cold jewel upon her breast. In her mind, she heard her mother-sending’s words, “Do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens.”

  Sabriel thrust her sword point-first into the snow, put Saraneth away and drew Kibeth from the bandolier, using both hands. Thralk sensed it and his fury gave way to pure, unadulterated fear. After all the centuries of struggle, he knew true death had come for him at last.

  Sabriel took up a careful stance, with the bell held in a curious two-handed grip. Kibeth seemed almost to twitch in her hands, but she controlled it, swinging it backwards, forwards, and then in a sort of odd figure eight. The sounds, all from the one bell, were very different to each other, but they made a little marching tune, a dancing song, a parade.

  Thralk heard them and felt forces grip him. Strange, inexorable powers that made him find the border, made him return to Death. Vainly, almost pathetically, he struggled against them, knowing he couldn’t break free. He knew that he would walk through every Gate, to fall at last through the Ninth. He gave up the struggle and used the last of his strength to form a semblance of a mouth in the middle of his shadow-stuff, a mouth with a writhing tongue of darkness.

  “Curse you!” he gurgled. “I will tell the Servants of Kerrigor! I will be revenged . . .”

  His grotesque, gulping voice was chopped off in mid-sentence, as Thralk lost free will. Saraneth had bound him, but Kibeth gripped him and Kibeth walked him, walked him so Thralk would be no more. The twisting shadow simply disappeared and there was only snow under a long-dead corpse.

  Even though the revenant was gone, his last words troubled Sabriel. The name Kerrigor, while not exactly familiar, touched some basic fear in her, some memory. Perhaps Abhorsen had spoken this name, which undoubtedly belonged to one of the Greater Dead. The name scared her in the same way the broken stone did, as if they were tangible symbols of a world gone wrong, a world where her father was lost, where she herself was terribly threatened.

  Sabriel coughed, feeling the cold in her lungs, and very carefully replaced Kibeth in the bandolier. Her sword seemed to have burned itself clean, but she ran a cloth over the blade before returning it to the scabbard. She felt very tired as she swung her pack back on, but there was no doubt in her mind that she must move on immediately. Her mother-spirit’s words kept echoing in her mind, and her own senses told her something was happening in Death, something powerful was moving towards Life, moving towards emergence at the broken stone.

  There had been too much death and too much Charter Magic on this hill, and the night was yet to reach its blackest. The wind was swinging around, the clouds regaining their superiority over sky. Soon, the stars would disappear and the young moon would be wrapped in white.

  Quickly, Sabriel scanned the heavens, looking for the three bright stars that marked the Buckle of the North Giant’s Belt. She found them, but then had to check the star map in her almanac, a handmade match stinking as it cast a yellow flicker on the pages, for she didn’t dare use any more Charter Magic till she was away from the broken stone. The almanac showed that she had remembered correctly: the Buckle was due north in the Old Kingdom; its other name was Mariner’s Cheat. In Ancelstierre, the Buckle was easily ten degrees west of north.

  North located, Sabriel started to make her way to that side of the crest, looking for the spur that slanted down to the valley lost in darkness below. The clouds were thickening and she wanted to reach level ground before the moonlight disappeared. At least the spur, when found, looked like easier going than the broken steps to the south, though its gentle slope proclaimed a long descent to the valley.

  In fact, it took several hours before Sabriel reached the valley floor, stumbling and shivering, a very pale Charter flame dancing a little ways in front of her. Too insubstantial to really ease her path, it had helped her avoid major disaster, and she hoped it was pallid enough to be taken for marsh-gas or chance reflection. In any case, it had proved essential when clouds closed the last remaining gap in the sky.

  So much for no cloud, Sabriel thought, as she looked towards what she guessed was still north, searching for the red star, Uallus. Her teeth were chattering and would not be stilled, and a shiver that had started with her ice-cold feet was repeating itself through every limb. If she didn’t keep moving, she’d simply freeze where she stood—particularly as the wind was rising once more . . .

  Sabriel laughed quietly, almost hysterically, and turned her face to feel the breeze. It was an easterly, gaining strength with the minute. Colder, yes, but it also cleared the cloud, sweeping it to the west—and there, in the first cleared broom-stroke of the wind, was Uallus gleaming red. Sabriel smiled, stared at it, took stock of the little she could see around her, and started off again, following the star, a whispering voice constant in the back of her mind.

  Do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens.

  The smile lasted as Sabriel found the road and, with a good cover of snow in each gutter, she skied, making good time.

  By the time Sabriel found the mile marker and the Charter Stone behind it, no trace of the smile could be seen on her pale face. It was snowing again, snowing sideways as the wind grew more frenzied, taking the snowflakes and whipping them into her eyes, now the only exposed portion of her entire body. Her boots were soaked too, despite the mutton fat she’d rubbed into them. Her feet, face and hands were freezing, and she was exhausted. She’d dutifully eaten a little every hour, but now, simply couldn’t open her frozen jaws.

  For a short time, at the intact Charter Stone that rose proudly behind the smaller mile-marker, Sabriel had made herself warm, invoking a Charter-spell for heat. But she’d grown too tired to maintain it without the assistance of the stone, and the spell dissipated almost as soon as she walked on. Only the mother-spirit’s warning kept her going. That, and the sensation that she was being followed.

  It was only a feeling, and in her tired, chilled state, Sabriel wondered if it was just imagination. But she wasn’t in any state to face up to anything that might not be imagined, so she forced herself to go on.

  Do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens.

  The path from the Charter Stone was better made than the one that climbed Cloven Crest, but steeper. The pathmakers here had to cut through a dense, greyish rock, which did not erode like granite, and they had built hundreds of wide, low steps, carved with intricate patterns. Whether these meant something, Sabriel didn’t know. They weren’t Charter marks, or symbols of any language that she knew, and she was too tired to speculate. She concentrated on one step at a time, using her hands to push down on her aching thighs, coughing and gasping, head down to avoid the flying snow.

  The path grew steeper still and Sabriel could see the cliff-face ahead, a huge, black, vertical mass, a much darker backdrop to the swirling snow than the clouded sky, palely backlit by the moon. But she didn’t seem to get any closer as the path switchbacked to and fro, rising further and further up from the valley below.

  Then, suddenly, Sabriel was there. The path turned again and her little will-o’-the-wisp light reflected back from a wall, a wall that stretched for miles to either side, and for hundreds of yards upwards. Clearly, these were the Long Cliffs, and the path had ended.

  Almost sobbing with relief, Sabriel pushed herself forward to the very base of the cliff, and the little light rose above her head to disclose grey, lichen-veined rock. But even with that light, there was no sign of a door—nothing but jagged, impervious rock, going up and out of her tiny circle of illumination. There was no path and nowhere else to go.

  Wearily, Sabriel knelt in a patch of snow and rubbed her hands together vigorously, trying to restore circulation, before drawing Mosrael from the bandolier. Mosrael, the Waker. Sabriel stilled it carefully and concentrated her senses, feeling for anything Dead that might be near and should not be woken. There was nothing close, but once again Sabriel felt something behind her, something following
her, far down on the path. Something Dead, something reeking of power. She tried to judge how distant the thing was, before forcing it from her thoughts. Whatever it might be, it was too far away to hear even Mosrael’s raucous voice. Sabriel stood up, and rang the bell.

  It made a sound like tens of parrots screeching, a noise that burst into the air and wove itself into the wind, echoing from the cliffs, multiplying into the scream of a thousand birds.

  Sabriel stilled the bell at once and put it away, but the echoes raced across the valley, and she knew the thing behind her had heard. She felt it fix its attention on where she was and she felt it quicken its pace, like watching the muscles on a racehorse going from the walk to a gallop. It was coming up the steps at least four or five at a time. She felt the rush of it in her head and the fear rising in her at equal pace, but she still went to the path and looked down, drawing her sword as she did so.

  There, between gusts of snow, she saw a figure leaping from step to step; impossible leaps, that ate up the distance between them with horrible appetite. It was manlike, more than man-high, and flames ran like burning oil on water where it trod. Sabriel cried out as she saw it, and felt the Dead spirit within. The Book of the Dead opened to fearful pages in her memory, and descriptions of evil poured into her head. It was a Mordicant that hunted her—a thing that could pass at will through Life and Death, its body of bog-clay and human blood molded and infused with Free Magic by a necromancer, and a Dead spirit placed inside as its guiding force.

  Sabriel had banished a Mordicant once, but that had been forty miles from the Wall, in Ancelstierre, and it had been weak, already fading. This one was strong, fiery, new-born. It would kill her, she suddenly knew, and subjugate her spirit. All her plans and dreams, her hopes and courage, fell out of her to be replaced by pure, unthinking panic. She turned to one side, then the other, like a rabbit running from a dog, but the only way down was the path and the Mordicant was only a hundred yards below, closing with every blink, with every falling snowflake. Flames were spewing from its mouth, and it thrust its pointed head back and howled as it ran, a howl like the last shout of someone falling to their death, underlaid with the squeal of fingernails on glass.