Sabriel (Abhorsen 1)

“There was terrible wrong down there, but it was Rogir’s doing, not his discovery. There are six Great Stones and two were just being broken, broken with the blood of his own sisters, sacrificed by his Free Magic minions as we approached. I saw their last seconds, the faint hope in their clouding eyes, as the Queen’s barge came floating across the water. I felt the shock of the Stones breaking and I remember Rogir, stepping up behind the Queen, a saw-edged dagger striking so swiftly across her throat. He had a cup, a golden cup, one of the Queen’s own, to catch the blood, but I was too slow, too slow . . .”

“So the story you told me at Holehallow wasn’t true,” Sabriel whispered, as Touchstone’s voice cracked and faded, and the tears rolled down his face. “The Queen didn’t survive . . .”

“No,” mumbled Touchstone. “But I didn’t mean to lie. It was all jumbled up in my head.”

“What did happen?”

“The other two guards were Rogir’s men,” Touchstone continued, his voice wet with tears, muffled with sorrow. “They attacked me, but Vlare—one of the ladies-in-waiting—threw herself across them. I went mad, battle-mad, berserk. I killed both guards. Rogir had jumped from the barge and was wading to the Stones, holding the cup. His four sorcerers were waiting, dark-cowled, around the third stone, the next to be broken. I couldn’t reach him in time, I knew. I threw my sword. It flew straight and true, taking him just above the heart. He screamed, the echo going on and on and he turned back towards me! Transfixed by my sword, but still walking, holding that vile cup of blood up, as if offering me a drink.

“’You may tear this body,’ he said, as he walked. ‘Rip it, like some poor-made costume. But I cannot die.’

“He came within an arm’s length of me, and I could only look into his face, look at the evil that lay so close behind those familiar features . . . then there was blinding white light, the sound of bells—bells like yours, Sabriel—and voices, harsh voices . . . Rogir flinching back, the cup dropped, blood floating on the water like oil. I turned, saw guardsmen on the stairs; a burning, twisting column of white fire; a man with sword and bells . . . then I fainted, or was knocked unconscious. When I came to, I was in Holehallow, seeing your face. I don’t know how I got there, who put me there . . . I still only remember in shreds and patches.”

“You should have told me,” Sabriel said, trying to put as much compassion in her voice as she could. “But perhaps it had to wait for the sea’s freeing of that binding spell. Tell me, the man with the sword and bells, was it the Abhorsen?”

“I don’t know,” replied Touchstone. “Probably.”

“Almost definitely, I would say,” added Sabriel. She looked at Mogget, thinking of that column of twisting fire. “You were there too, weren’t you, Mogget? Unbound, in your other form.”

“Yes, I was there,” said the cat. “With the Abhorsen of that time. A very powerful Charter Mage, and a master of the bells, but a little too good-hearted to deal with treachery. I had terrible trouble getting him to Belisaere, and in the end, we were not timely enough to save the Queen or her daughters.”

“What happened?” whispered Touchstone. “What happened?”

“Rogir was already one of the Dead when he came back to Belisaere,” Mogget said wearily, as if he were telling a cynical yarn to a crew of hard-bitten cronies. “But only an Abhorsen would have known it, and he wasn’t there. Rogir’s real body was hidden somewhere . . . is hidden somewhere . . . and he wore a Free Magic construct for his physical form.

“Somewhere along the path of his studies, he’d swapped real Life for power and, like all the Dead, he needed to take life all the time to stay out of Death. But the Charter made it very difficult for him to do that anywhere in the Kingdom. So he decided to break the Charter. He could have confined himself to breaking a few of the lesser stones, somewhere far away, but that would only give him a tiny area to prey on, and the Abhorsen would soon hunt him down. So he decided to break the Great Stones, and for that he needed royal blood—his own family’s blood. Or Abhorsen’s, or the Clayr’s, of course, but that would be much harder to get.

“Because he was the Queen’s son, clever, and very powerful, he almost achieved his aims. Two of the six Great Stones were broken. The Queen and her daughters were killed. Abhorsen intervened a little too late. True, he did manage to drive him deep into Death—but since his true body has never been found, Rogir has continued to exist. Even from Death, he has overseen the dissolution of the Kingdom—a kingdom without a royal family, with one of the Great Charters crippled, corrupting and weakening all the others. He wasn’t really beaten that night, in the reservoir. Just delayed, and for two hundred years he’s been trying to come back, trying to re-enter Life—”

“He’s succeeded, hasn’t he?” interrupted Sabriel. “He’s the thing called Kerrigor, the one Abhorsens have been fighting for generations, trying to keep in Death. He is the one who came back, the Greater Dead who murdered the patrol near Cloven Crest, the master of the Mordicant.”

“I do not know,” replied Mogget. “Your father thought so.”

“It is him,” Touchstone said, distantly. “Kerrigor was Rogir’s childhood nickname. I made it up, on the day we had the mud fight. His full ceremonial name was Rogirek.”

“He—or his servants—must have lured my father to Belisaere just before he emerged from Death,” Sabriel thought aloud. “I wonder why he came out into Life so near the Wall?”

“His body must be near the Wall. He would need to be close to it,” Mogget said. “You should know that. To renew the master spell that prevents him from ever passing beyond the Final Gate.”

“Yes,” replied Sabriel, remembering the passages from The Book of the Dead. She shivered, but suppressed it, before it became a racking sob. Inside, she felt like screaming, crying. She wanted to flee back to Ancelstierre, cross the Wall, leave the Dead and magic behind, go as far south as possible. But she quelled these feelings, and said, “An Abhorsen defeated him once. I can do so again. But first, we must find my father’s body.”

There was silence for a moment, save for the wind in the canvas and the quiet hum of the rigging. Touchstone wiped his hand across his eyes and looked at Mogget.

“There is one thing I would like to ask. Who put my spirit in Death, and made my body the figurehead?”

“I never knew what happened to you,” replied Mogget. His green eyes met Touchstone’s gaze, and it wasn’t the cat who blinked. “But it must have been Abhorsen. You were insane when we got you out of the reservoir. Driven mad, probably by the breaking of the Great Stones. No memory, nothing. It seems two hundred years is not too long for a rest cure. He must have seen something in you—or the Clayr saw something in the ice . . . ah, that was hard to say. We must be nearing the city, and the sea’s influence lessens. The binding resum

es . . .”

“No, Mogget!” exclaimed Sabriel. “I want to know, I need to know, who you are. What’s your connection with the Great . . .”

Her voice locked up in her throat and a startled gargle was the only thing that came out.

“Too late,” said Mogget. He started cleaning his fur, pink tongue darting out, bright color against white fur.

Sabriel sighed, and looked out at the turquoise sea, then up at the sun, yellow disc on a field of white-streaked blue. A light breeze filled the sail above her, ruffling her hair in passing. Gulls rode it on ahead, to join a squawking mass of their brethren, feeding from a school of fish, sharp silver bursting near the surface.

Everything was alive, colorful, full of the joy of living. Even the salt tang on her skin, the stink of fish and her own unwashed body, was somehow rich and lively. Far, far removed from Touchstone’s grim past, the threat of Rogir/Kerrigor and the chilling greyness of Death.

“We shall have to be very careful,” Sabriel said at last, “and hope that . . . what was it you said to the Elder of Nestowe, Touchstone?”

He knew immediately what she meant.

“Hope that the Charter preserves us all.”

chapter xix

Sabriel had expected Belisaere to be a ruined city, devoid of life, but it was not so. By the time they saw its towers, and the truly impressive walls that ringed the peninsula on which the city stood, they also saw fishing boats, of a size with their own. People were fishing from them—normal, friendly people, who waved and shouted as they passed. Only their greeting was telling of how things might be in Belisaere. “Good sun and swift water” was not the typical greeting in Touchstone’s time.