They ran before the wave, with hands inside the bells, faster and faster, till Sabriel thought her legs would seize up and she’d tumble head over heels, around and around and around, finally clattering to a halt in a tangle of sword and bells.
But she made it somehow, Abhorsen chanting the spell that would open the base of the Second Gate, so they could ascend through the whirlpool.
“As I was saying,” Abhorsen continued, taking these steps two at a time as well, speaking as swiftly as he climbed. “Kerrigor could never be properly dealt with till an Abhorsen found the body. All of us pushed him back at various times, as far back as the Seventh Gate, but that was merely postponing the problem. He grew stronger all the time, as lesser Charter Stones were broken, and the Kingdom deteriorated—and we grew weaker.”
“Who’s we?” asked Sabriel. All this information was coming too quickly, particularly when given at the run.
“The Great Charter bloodlines,” replied Abhorsen. “Which to all intents and purposes means Abhorsens and the Clayr, since the royal line is all but extinct. And there is, of course, the relict of the Wallmakers, a sort of construct left over after they put their powers in the Wall and the Great Stones.”
He left the rim of the whirlpool, and strode confidently out into the Second Precinct, Sabriel close at his heels. Unlike her earlier halting, probing advance, Abhorsen practically jogged along, obviously following a familiar route. How he could tell, without landmarks or any obvious signs, Sabriel had no idea. Perhaps, when she had spent thirty-odd years traversing Death, she would find it as easy.
“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 xxiii
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.