Sabriel (Abhorsen 1)

The city’s main harbor was reached from the west. A wide, buoyed channel ran between two hulking defensive outworks, leading into a vast pool, easily as big as twenty or thirty playing fields. Wharves lined three sides of the pool, but most were deserted. To the north and south, warehouses rotted behind the empty wharves, broken walls and holed roofs testimony to long abandonment.

Only the eastern dock looked lively. There were none of the big trading vessels of bygone days, but many small coastal craft, loading and unloading. Derricks swung in and out; longshoremen humped packages along gangplanks; small children dived and swam in between the boats. No warehouses stood behind these wharves—instead, there were hundreds of open-topped booths, little more than brightly decorated frameworks delineating a patch of space, with tables for the wares, and stools for the vendors and favored customers. There seemed to be no shortage of customers in general, Sabriel noted, as Touchstone steered for a vacant berth. People were swarming everywhere, hurrying about as if their time was sadly limited.

Touchstone let the mainsheet go slack, and brought the boat into the wind just in time for them to lose way and glide at an oblique angle into the fenders that lined the wharf. Sabriel threw up a line, but before she could leap ashore and secure it to a bollard, a street urchin did it for her.

“Penny for the knot,” he cried, shrill voice piercing through the hubbub from the crowd. “Penny for the knot, lady?”

Sabriel smiled, with effort, and flicked a silver penny at the boy. He caught it, grinned and disappeared into the stream of people moving along the dock. Sabriel’s smile faded. She could feel many, many Dead here . . . or not precisely here, but further up in the city. Belisaere was built upon four low hills, surrounding a central valley, which lay open to the sea at this harbor. As far as Sabriel’s senses could tell, only the valley was free of the Dead—why, she didn’t know. The hills, which made up at least two-thirds of the city’s area, were infested with them.

This part of the city, on the other hand, could truly be said to be infested with life. Sabriel had forgotten how noisy a city could be. Even in Ancelstierre, she had rarely visited anything larger than Bain, a town of no more than ten thousand people. Of course, Belisaere wasn’t a big city by Ancelstierran standards, and it didn’t have the noisy omnibuses and private cars that had been significantly adding to Ancelstierran noise for the last ten years, but Belisaere made up for it with the people. People hurrying, arguing, shouting, selling, buying, singing . . .

“Was it like this before?” she shouted at Touchstone, as they climbed up onto the wharf, making sure they had all their possessions with them.

“Not really,” answered Touchstone. “The Pool was normally full, with bigger ships—and there were warehouses here, not a market. It was quieter, too, and people were in less of a rush.”

They stood on the edge of the dock, watching the stream of humanity and goods, hearing the tumult, and smelling all the new odors of the city replacing the freshness of the sea breeze. Cooking food, wood smoke, incense, oil, the occasional disgusting whiff of what could only be sewage . . .

“It was also a lot cleaner,” added Touchstone. “Look, I think we’d best find an inn or hostelry. Somewhere to stay for the night.”

“Yes,” replied Sabriel. She was reluctant to enter the human tide. There were no Dead among them, as far as she could sense, but they must have some kind of accommodation or agreement with the Dead and that stank to her far more than sewage.

Touchstone snagged a passing boy by the shoulder as Sabriel continued to eye the crowd, nose wrinkling. They spoke together for a moment, a silver penny changed hands, then the boy slid into the rush, Touchstone following. He looked back, saw Sabriel staring absently, and grabbed her by the hand, dragging both her and the lazy, fox-fur-positioned Mogget after him.

It was the first time Sabriel had touched him since he’d been revived and she was surprised by the shock it gave her. Certainly, her mind had been wandering, and it was a sudden grab . . . his hand felt larger than it should, and interestingly calloused and textured. Quickly, she slipped her hand out of his, and concentrated on following both him and the boy, weaving across the main direction of the crowd.

They went through the middle of the open-topped market, along one street of little booths—obviously the street of fish and fowl. The harbor end was alive with boxes and boxes of fresh-caught fish, clear-eyed and wriggling. Vendors yelled their prices, or their best buy, and buyers shouted offers or amazement at the price. Baskets, bags and boxes changed hands, empty ones to be filled with fish or lobster, squid or shellfish. Coins went from palm to palm, or, occasionally, whole purses disgorged their shining contents into the belt-pouches of the stallholders.

Towards the other end it grew a little quieter. The stalls here had cages upon cages of chickens, but their trade was slower, and many of the chickens looked old and stunted. Sabriel, seeing an expert knife-man beheading row after row of chickens and dropping them to flop headless in a box, concentrated on shutting out their bewildered featherbrained experience of death.

Beyond the market there was a wide swath of empty ground. It had obviously been intentionally cleared, first with fire, then with mattock, shovel and bar. Sabriel wondered why, till she saw the aqueduct that ran beyond and parallel to this strip of wasteland. The city folk who lived in the valley didn’t have an agreement with the Dead—their part of the city was bounded by aqueducts, and the Dead could no more walk under running water than over it.

The cleared ground was a precaution, allowing the aqueducts to be guarded—and sure enough, Sabriel saw a patrol of archers marching atop it, their regularly moving shapes silhouetted, shadow puppets against the sky. The boy was leading them to a central arch, which rose up through two of the aqueduct’s four tiers, and there were more archers there. Smaller arches continued on each side, supporting the aqueduct’s main channel, but these were heavily overgrown with thornbushes, to prevent unauthorized entry by the living, while the swift water overhead held back the Dead.

Sabriel drew her boat cloak tight as they passed under the arch, but the guards paid them no more attention than was required to extort a silver penny from Touchstone. They seemed very third-rate—even fourth-rate—soldiers, who were probably more constables and watchkeepers than anything else. None bore the Charter mark, or had any trace of Free Magic.

Beyond the aqueduct, streets wound chaotically from an unevenly paved square, complete with an eccentrically spouting fountain—the water jetted from the ears of a statue, a statue of an impressively crowned man.

“King Anstyr the Third,” said Touchstone, pointing at the fountain. “He had a strange sense of humor, by all accounts. I’m glad it’s still there.”

“Where are we going?” asked Sabriel. She felt better now that she knew the citizenry weren’t in league with the Dead.

“This boy says he knows a good inn,” replied Touchstone, indicating the ragged urchin who was grinning just out of reach of the always-expected blow.

“Sign of Three Lemons,” said the boy. “Best in the city, lord, lady.”

He had just turned back from them to go on, when a loud, badly cast bell sounded from somewhere towards the harbor. It rang three times, the sound sending pigeons racketing into flight from the square.

“What’s that?” asked Sabriel. The boy looked at her, open-mouthed. “The bell.”

“Sunfall,” replied the boy, once he knew what she was asking. He said it as if stating the blindingly obvious. “Early, I reckon. Must be cloud coming, or somefing.”

“Everyone comes in when the sunfall bell sounds?” asked Sabriel.

“Course!” snorted the boy. “Otherwise the haunts or the ghlims get you.”

“I see,” replied Sabriel. “Lead on.”

Surprisingly, the Sign of Three Lemons was quite a pleasant inn. A whitewashed building of four storys, it fronted onto a smaller square some two hundred yards from King Anstyr’s Fountain Square. There were three eno

rmous lemon trees in the middle of the square, somehow thick with pleasant-smelling leaves and copious amounts of fruit, despite the season. Charter Magic, thought Sabriel, and sure enough, there was a Charter Stone hidden amongst the trees, and a number of ancient spells of fertility, warmth and bountitude. Sabriel sniffed the lemon-scented air gratefully, thankful that her room had a window fronting the square.

Behind her, a maid was filling a tin bath with hot water. Several large buckets had already gone in—this would be the last. Sabriel closed the window and came over to look at the still-steaming water in anticipation.

“Will that be all, miss?” asked the maid, half-curtseying.

“Yes, thank you,” replied Sabriel. The maid edged out the door, and Sabriel slid the bar across, before divesting herself of her cloak, and then the stinking, sweat- and salt-encrusted armor and garments that had virtually stuck to her after almost a week at sea. Naked, she rested her sword against the bath’s rim—in easy reach—then sank gratefully into the water, taking up the lump of lemon-scented soap to begin removing the caked grime and sweat.

Through the wall, she could hear a man’s—Touchstone’s—voice. Then water gurgling, that maid giggling. Sabriel stopped soaping and concentrated on the sound. It was hard to hear, but there was more giggling, a deep, indistinct male voice, then a loud splash. Like two bodies in a bath rather than one.

There was silence for a while, then more splashing, gasps, giggles—was that Touchstone laughing? Then a series of short, sharp, moans. Womanly ones. Sabriel flushed and gritted her teeth at the same time, then quickly lowered her head into the water so she couldn’t hear, leaving only her nose and mouth exposed. Underwater, all was silent, save for the dull booming of her heart, echoing in her flooded ears.

What did it matter? She didn’t think of Touchstone in that way. Sex was the last thing on her mind. Just another complication—contraception—messiness—emotions. There were enough problems. Concentrate on planning. Think ahead. It was just because Touchstone was the first young man she’d met out of school, that was all. It was none of her business. She didn’t even know his real name . . .

A dull tapping noise on the side of the bath made her raise her head out of the water, just in time to hear a very self-satisfied, masculine and drawn-out moan from the other side of the wall. She was about to stick her head back under, when Mogget’s pink nose appeared on the rim. So she sat up, water cascading down her face, hiding the tears she told herself weren’t there. Angrily, she crossed her arms across her breasts and said, “What do you want?”