“A memory, now purged,” it added, as Sabriel staggered back from a second attack, sword flashing across to parry. Unlike the silver spell darts, the Charter-etched blade did connect with the unnatural flesh of the creature, but had no effect apart from jarring Sabriel’s arm.
Her nose was bleeding too, a warm and salty flow, stinging her wind-chafed lips. She tried to ignore it, tried to use the pain of what was probably a broken nose to get her mind back to full operational speed.
“Memories, yes, many memories,” continued the creature. It was circling around her now, pushing her back the way they’d come, back towards the fading fire of the Paperwing. That would burn out soon, and then there would only be darkness, for Sabriel’s candle was now a lump of blown-out wax, falling forgotten from her hand.
“Millenia of servitude, Abhorsen. Chained by trickery, treachery . . . captive in a repulsive, fixed-flesh shape . . . but there will be payment, slow payment—not quick, not quick at all!”
A tendril lashed out, low this time, trying to trip her. Sabriel leapt over it, blade extended, lunging for the creature’s chest. But it shimmied aside, extruding extra arms as she tried to jump back, catching her in mid-leap, drawing her close.
Sword-arm pinioned at her side, it tightened its grip, till she was close against its chest, her face a finger-width from its boiling, constantly moving flesh, as if a billion tiny insects buzzed behind a membrane of utter darkness.
Another arm gripped the back of her helmet, forcing her to look up, till she saw its head, directly above her. A thing of most basic anatomy, its eyes were like the sinkhole, deep pits without apparent bottom. It had no nose, but a mouth that split the horrid face in two, a mouth slightly parted to reveal the burning blue-white glare that it had first used as flesh.
All Charter Magic had fled from Sabriel’s mind. Her sword was trapped, the bells likewise, and even if they weren’t, she didn’t know how to use them properly against things not Dead. She ran over them mentally anyway, in a frantic, lightning inventory of anything that might help.
It was then her tired, concussed mind remembered the ring. It was on her left hand, her free hand, cool silver on the index finger.
But she didn’t know what to do with it—and the creature’s head was bowing down towards her own, its neck stretching impossibly long, till it was like a snake’s head rearing above her, the mouth opening wider, growing brighter, fizzing with white-hot sparks that fell upon her helmet and face, burning cloth and skin, leaving tiny, tattoo-like scars. The ring felt loose on her finger. Sabriel instinctively curled her hand, and the ring felt looser still, slipping down her finger, expanding, growing, till without looking, Sabriel knew she held a silver hoop as wide or wider than the creature’s slender head. And she suddenly knew what to do.
“First, the plucking of an eye,” said the thing, breath as hot as the falling sparks, scorching her face with instant sunburn. It tilted its head sideways and opened its mouth still wider, lower jaw dislocating out.
Sabriel took one last, careful look, screwed her eyes tight against the terrible glare, and flipped the silver hoop up, and she hoped, over the thing’s neck.
For a second, as the heat increased and she felt a terrible burning pain against her eye, Sabriel thought she’d missed. Then the hoop was wrenched from her hand and she was thrown away, hurled out like an angry fisherman’s rejected minnow.
On the cool flagstones again, she opened her eyes, the left one blurry, sore and swimming with tears—but still there and still working.
She had put the silver hoop over the thing’s head, and it was slowly sliding down that long, sinuous neck. The ring was shrinking again as it slid, impervious to the creature’s desperate attempts to get it off. It had six or seven hands now, formed directly from its shoulders, all squirming about, trying to force fingers under the ring. But the metal seemed inimical to the creature’s substance, like a hot pan to human fingers, for the fingers flinched and danced around it, but could not take hold for longer than a second.
The darkness that stained it was ebbing too, draining down through its thrashing, twisting support, leaving glowing whiteness behind. Still the creature fought with the ring, blazing hands forming and re-forming, body twisting and turning, even bucking, as if it could throw the ring like a rider from a horse.
Finally, it gave up and turned towards Sabriel, screaming and crackling. Two long arms sprang out from it, reaching towards Sabriel’s sprawling body, talons growing from the hands, raking the stone with deep gouges as they scrabbled towards her, like spiders scuttling to their prey—only to fall short by a yard or more.
“No!” howled the thing, and its whole twisting, coiling body lurched forward, killing arms outstretched. Again, the talons fell short, as Sabriel crawled, rolled and pushed herself away.
Then the silver ring contracted once more, and a terrible shout of anguish, rage and despair came from the very center of the white-flaming thing. Its arms suddenly shrank back to its torso; the head fell into the shoulders, and the whole body sank into an amorphous blob of shimmering white, with a single, still-large silver band around the middle, the ruby glittering like a drop of blood.
Sabriel stared at it, unable to look aside, or do anything else, even quell the flow from her bleeding nose, which now covered half her face and chin, her mouth glued shut with dried and clotting blood. It seemed to her that something was left undone, something that she had to provide.
Nervously crawling closer, she saw that there were now marks on the ring, Charter marks that told her what she must do. Wearily, she got up on her knees and fumbled with the bell-bandolier. Saraneth was heavy, almost beyond her strength, but she managed to draw it out, and the deep, compelling voice rang through the sinkhole, seeming to pierce the glowing, silver-bound mass.
The ring hummed in answer to the bell and exuded a pear-shaped drop of its own metal, which cooled to become a miniature Saraneth. At the same time, the ring changed color and consistency. The ruby’s color seemed to run, and a red wash spread through the silver. It was now dull and ordinary, no longer a silver band, but a red leather collar, with a miniature silver bell.
With this change, the white mass quivered, and shone bright again, till Sabriel had to shield her eyes once more. When the shadows grew together again, she looked back, and there was Mogget, collared in red leather, sitting up and looking like he was about to throw up a hairball.
It wasn’t a hairball, but a silver ring, the ruby reflecting Mogget’s internal light. It rolled to Sabriel, tinkling across the stone. She picked it up and slid it back on her finger.
Mogget’s glow faded, and the burning Paperwing was now only faint embers, sad memories and ash. Darkness returned, cloaking Sabriel, wrapping her up with all her hurts and fears. She sat, silent, not even thinking.
A little later, she felt a soft cat nose against her folded hands, and a candle, damp from Mogget’s mouth.
“Your nose is still bleeding,” said a familiar, didactic voice. “Light the candle, pinch your nose, and get some blankets out for us to sleep. It’s getting cold.”
“Welcome back, Mogget,” whispered Sabriel.
chapter xiii
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.
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 could read and see things close by quite clearly, but they merged into indistinct gloom twenty or thirty yards away.
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 wa
s 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. The climate was mitigated by proximity to the ocean, and an altitude that could easily be sea-level or below, for in daylight Sabriel could see that the sinkhole was at least a hundred yards deep.
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 evil-smelling tanmaril leaves to her strange sunburn. 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.
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.
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.