Sabriel (Abhorsen 1)

As Sabriel watched, the last of four boxes was thrust out to the first stepping-stone, spiked in place, and then chained to its three adjacent fellows. One slave, fastening the chain, overbalanced and went headfirst into the water, his shackle-mate following a second later. Their screams, if any, were drowned by the roar of the waterfall as its waters took their bodies. A few seconds later, Sabriel felt their lives snuffed out.

The other slaves at the river’s edge stopped working for a moment, either shocked at the sudden loss, or momentarily made more afraid of the river than their masters. But the Shadow Hand on the steps moved towards them, its legs like treacle, pouring down the slope, lapping over each step in turn. It gestured for some of the nearer slaves to walk across the earth-filled boxes to the stepping-stone. They did so, to cluster unhappily amid the spray.

The Shadow Hand hesitated then, but the Mordicant on the ledge above seemed to stir and rock forward a little, so the shadowy abomination gingerly trod on the boxes—and walked across to the stepping-stone, taking no scathe from the running water.

“Grave dirt,” commented Mogget, who obviously didn’t need the telescope. “Carted up by the villagers from Qyrre and Roble’s Town. I wonder if they’ve got enough to cross all the stones.”

“Grave dirt,” commented Sabriel bleakly, watching a fresh round of slaves arriving with buckets and more timber. “I had forgotten it could negate the running water. I thought . . . I thought I would be safe here, for a time.”

“Well, you are,” said Mogget. “It’ll take at least until tomorrow evening before their bridge is complete, particularly allowing for a couple of hours off around noon, when the Dead will have to hide if it isn’t overcast. But this shows planning, and that means a leader. Still, every Abhorsen has enemies. It may just be a petty necromancer with a better brain for strategy than most.”

“I slew a Dead thing at Cloven Crest,” Sabriel said slowly, thinking aloud. “It said it would have its revenge and spoke of telling the servants of Kerrigor. Do you know that name?”

“I know it,” spat Mogget, tail quivering straight out behind him. “But I cannot speak of it, except to say it is one of the Greater Dead, and your father’s most terrible enemy. Do not say it lives again!”

“I don’t know,” replied Sabriel, looking down at the cat, whose body seemed twisted, as if in turmoil between command and resistance. “Why can’t you tell me more? The binding?”

“A . . . a perversion of . . . the g . . . g . . . yes,” Mogget croaked out with effort. Though his green eyes seemed to grow luminous and fiery with anger at his own feeble explanation, he could say no more.

“Coils within coils,” remarked Sabriel thoughtfully. There seemed little doubt that some evil power was working against her, from the moment she’d crossed the Wall—or even before that, if her father’s disappearance was anything to go by.

She looked back through the telescope again and took some heart in the slowing of the work as the last light faded, though at the same time she felt a pang of sympathy for the poor people the Dead had enslaved. Many would probably freeze to death, or die of exhaustion, only to be brought back as dull-witted Hands. Only those who went over the waterfall would escape that fate. Truly, the Old Kingdom was a terrible place, when even death did not mean an end to slavery and despair.

“Is there another way out?” she asked, swivelling the telescope around 180 degrees to look at the northern bank. There were stepping-stones going there, too, and another door high on the riverbank, but there were also dark shapes clustered on the ledge by the door. Four or five Shadow Hands, too many for Sabriel to fight through alone.

“It seems not,” she answered herself grimly. “What of defenses, then? Can the sendings fight?”

“The sendings don’t need to fight,” replied Mogget. “For there is another defense, though it is a rather constrictive one. And there is one other way out, though you probably won’t like it.”

The sending next to her nodded and pantomimed something with its arm that looked like a snake wiggling through grass.

“What’s that?” asked Sabriel, fighting back a sudden urge to break into hysterical laughter. “The defense or the way out?”

“The defense,” replied Mogget. “The river itself. It can be invoked to rise almost to the height of the island walls—four times your height above the stepping-stones. Nothing can pass such a flood, in or out, till it subsides, in a matter of weeks.”

“So how would I get out?” asked Sabriel. “I can’t wait weeks!”

“One of your ancestors built a flying device. A Paperwing, she called it. You can use that, launched out over the waterfall.”

“Oh,” said Sabriel, in a little voice.

“If you do wish to raise the river,” Mogget continued, as if he hadn’t noticed Sabriel’s sudden silence, “then we must begin the ritual immediately. The flood comes from meltwater and the mountains are many leagues upstream. If we call the waters now, the flood will be on us by dusk tomorrow.”

chapter x

The arrival of the floodwaters was heralded by great chunks of ice that came battering against the wooden bridge of grave dirt boxes like storm-borne icebergs ramming anchored ships. Ice shattered, wood splintered; a regular drumming that beat out a warning, announcing the great wave that followed the outriding ice.

Dead Hands and living slaves scurried back along the coffin bridge, the Dead’s shadowy bodies losing shape as they ran, so they became like long, thick worms of black crepe, squirming and sliding over rocks and boxes, throwing human slaves aside without mercy, desperate to escape the destruction that came roaring down the river.

Sabriel, watching from the tower, felt the people die, convulsively swallowing as she sensed their last breaths gurgling, sucking water instead of air. Some of them, at least two pairs, had deliberately thrown themselves into the river, choosing a final death, rather than risk eternal bondage. Most had been knocked, pushed or simply scared aside by the Dead.

The wavefront of the flood came swiftly after the ice, shouting as it came, a higher, fiercer roar than the deep bellow of the waterfall. Sabriel heard it for several seconds before it rounded the last bend of the river, then suddenly, it was almost upon her. A huge, vertical wall of water, with chunks of ice on its crest like marble battlements and all the debris of four hundred miles swilling about in its muddy body. It looked enormous, far taller than the island’s walls, taller even than the tower where Sabriel stared, shocked at the power she had unleashed, a power she had hardly dreamed possible when she’d summoned it the night before.

It had been a simple enough summoning. Mogget had taken her to the cellar and then down a winding, narrow stair, that grew colder and colder as they descended. Finally, they reached a strange grotto, where icicles hung and Sabriel’s breath blew clouds of white, but it was no longer cold, or perhaps so cold she no longer felt it. A block of pure, blue-white ice stood upon a stone pedestal, both limned with Charter marks, marks strange and beautiful. Then, following Mogget’s instruction, she’d simply placed her hand on the ice, and said, “Abhorsen pays her respects to the Clayr, and requests the gift of water.” That was all. They’d gone back up the stairs, a sending locked the cellar door behind them, and another brought Sabriel a nightshirt and a cup of hot chocolate.

But that simple ceremony had summoned something that seemed totally out of control. Sabriel watched the wave racing towards them, trying to calm herself, but her breath raced in and out as quickly as her stomach flipped over. Just as the wave hit, she screamed and ducked under the telescope.

The whole tower shook, stones screeching as they moved, and for a moment, even the sound of the waterfall was lost in a crack that sounded as if the island had been leveled by the first shock of the wave.

But, after a few seconds, th

e floor stopped shaking, and the crash of the flood subsided to a controlled roar, like a shouting drunk made aware of company. Sabriel hauled herself up the tripod and opened her eyes.

The walls had held, and though now the wave was past, the river still raged a mere handspan below the island’s defenses and was almost up to the tunnel doors on either bank. There was no sign of the stepping-stones, the coffin bridge, the Dead, or any people—just a wide, brown rushing torrent, carrying debris of all descriptions. Trees, bushes, parts of buildings, livestock, chunks of ice—the flood had claimed its tribute from every riverbank for hundreds of miles.

Sabriel looked at this evidence of destruction and inwardly counted the number of villagers who had died on the grave boxes. Who knew how many other lives had been lost, or livelihoods threatened, upstream? Part of her tried to rationalize her use of the flood, telling her that she had to do it in order to fight on against the Dead. Another part said she had simply summoned the flood to save herself.

Mogget had no time for such introspection, mourning or pangs of responsibility. He left her watching, blank-eyed, for no more than a minute, before padding forward and delicately inserting his claws in Sabriel’s slippered foot.

“Ow! What did you—”

“There’s no time to waste sightseeing,” Mogget said. “The sendings are readying the Paperwing on the Eastern wall. And your clothing and gear have been ready for at least half an hour.”

“I’ve got all . . .” Sabriel began, then she remembered that her pack and skis lay at the bottom end of the entrance tunnel, probably as a pile of Mordicant-burned ash.