Sabriel (Abhorsen 1)

The authorities also made some slight allowance for the few people authorized to travel from Ancelstierre to the Old Kingdom, as Sabriel saw after she had successfully negotiated the bus’s steps with her backpack, cross-country skis, stocks and sword, all threatening to go in different directions. A large sign next to the bus stop proclaimed:

PERIMETER COMMAND

NORTHERN ARMY GROUP

Unauthorized egress from the Perimeter Zone is strictly forbidden.

Anyone attempting to cross the Perimeter Zone will be shot without warning.

Authorized travelers must report to the Perimeter Command H.Q.

REMEMBER—

NO WARNING WILL BE MADE

Sabriel read the note with interest, and felt a quickening sense of excitement start within her. Her memories of the Old Kingdom were dim, from the perspective of a child, but she felt a sense of mystery and wonder kindle with the force of the Charter Magic she felt around her—a sense of something so much more alive than the bitumened parade ground, and the scarlet warning sign. And much more freedom than Wyverley College.

But that feeling of wonder and excitement came laced with a dread that she couldn’t shake, a dread made up of fear for what might be happening to her father . . . what might have already happened . . .

The arrow on the sign indicating where authorized travelers should go seemed to point in the direction of a bitumen parade ground, lined with white-painted rocks, and a number of unprepossessing wooden buildings. Other than that, there were simply the beginnings of the communication trenches that sank into the ground and then zigzagged their way to the double line of trenches, blockhouses and fortifications that confronted the Wall.

Sabriel studied them for a while, and saw the flash of color as several soldiers hopped out of one trench and went forward to the wire. They seemed to be carrying spears rather than rifles and she wondered why the Perimeter was built for modern war, but manned by people expecting something rather more medieval. Then she remembered a conversation with her father and his comment that the Perimeter had been designed far away in the South, where they refused to admit that this perimeter was different from any other contested border. Up until a century or so ago, there had also been a wall on the Ancelstierre side. A lowish wall, made of rammed earth and peat, but a successful one.

Recalling that conversation, her eyes made out a low rise of scarred earth in the middle of the desolation of wire, and she realized that was where the southern wall had been. Peering at it, she also realized that what she had taken to be loose pickets between lines of concertina wire were something different—tall constructs more like the trunks of small trees stripped of every branch. They seemed familiar to her, but she couldn’t place what they were.

Sabriel was still staring at them, thinking, when a loud and not very pleasant voice erupted a little way behind her right ear.

“What do you think you’re doing, Miss? You can’t loiter about here. On the bus, or up to the Tower!”

Sabriel winced and turned as quickly as she could, skis sliding one way and stocks the other, framing her head in a St. Andrew’s Cross. The voice belonged to a large but fairly young soldier, whose bristling mustaches were more evidence of martial ambition than proof of them. He had two gilded bands on his sleeve, but didn’t wear the mail hauberk and helmet Sabriel had seen on the other soldiers. He smelled of shaving cream and talc, and was so clean, polished and full of himself that Sabriel immediately catalogued him as some sort of natural bureaucrat currently disguised as a soldier.

“I am a citizen of the Old Kingdom,” she replied quietly, staring back into his red flushed face and piggy eyes in the manner which Miss Prionte had taught her girls to instruct lesser domestic servants in Etiquette IV. “I am returning there.”

“Papers!” demanded the soldier, after a moment’s hesitation at the words “Old Kingdom.”

Sabriel gave a frosty smile (also part of Miss Prionte’s curriculum) and made a ritual movement with the tips of her fingers—the symbol of disclosing, of things hidden becoming seen, of unfolding. As her fingers sketched, she formed the symbol in her mind, linking it with the papers she carried in the inner pocket of her leather tunic. Finger-sketched and mind-drawn symbol merged, and the papers were in her hand. An Ancelstierre passport, as well as the much rarer document the Ancelstierre Perimeter Command issued to people who had traffic in both countries: a hand-bound document printed by letterpress on handmade paper, with an artist’s sketch instead of a photograph and prints from thumbs and toes in a purple ink.

The soldier blinked, but said nothing. Perhaps, thought Sabriel, as he took the proffered documents, the man thought it was a parlor trick. Or perhaps he just didn’t notice. Maybe Charter Magic was common here, so close to the Wall.

The man looked through her documents carefully, but without real interest. Sabriel now felt certain that he was no one important from the way he pawed through her special passport. He’d obviously never seen one before. Mischievously, she started to weave the Charter mark for a snatch, or catch, to flick the papers out of his hands and back into her pocket before his piggy eyes worked out what was going on.

But, in the first second of motion, she felt the flare of other Charter Magic to either side and behind her—and heard the clattering of hobnails on the bitumen. Her head snapped back from the papers, and she felt her hair whisk across her forehead as she looked from side to side. Soldiers were pouring out of the huts and out of the trenches, sword-bayonets in their hands and rifles at the shoulder. Several of them wore badges that she realized marked them as Charter Mages. Their fingers were weaving warding symbols, and barriers that would lock Sabriel into her footsteps, tie her to her shadow. Crude magic, but strongly cast.

Instinctively, Sabriel’s mind and hands flashed into the sequence of symbols that would wipe clean these bonds, but her skis shifted and fell into the crook of her elbow, and she winced at the blow.

At the same time, a soldier ran ahead of the others, sunlight glinting on the silver stars on his helmet.

“Stop!” he shouted. “Corporal, step back from her!”

The corporal, deaf to the hum of Charter Magic, blind to the flare of half-wrought signs, looked up from her papers and gaped for a second, fear erasing his features. He dropped the passports, and stumbled back.

In his face, Sabriel suddenly realized what it meant to use magic on the Perimeter, and she held herself absolutely still, blanking out the partly made signs in her mind. Her skis slipped further down her arm, the bindings catching for a moment before tearing loose and clattering onto the ground. Soldiers rushed forward and, in seconds, formed a ring around her, swords angled towards her throat. She saw streaks of silver, plated onto the blades, and crudely written Charter symbols, and understood. These weapons were made to kill things that were already dead—inferior versions of the sword she wore at her own side.

The man who’d shouted—an officer, Sabriel realized—bent down and picked up her passports. He studied them for a moment, then looked up at Sabriel. His eyes were pale blue and held a mixture of harshness and compassion that Sabriel found familiar, though she couldn’t place it—till she remembered her father’s eyes. Abhorsen’s eyes were so dark brown they seemed black, but they held a similar feeling.

The officer closed the passport, tucked it in his belt and tilted his helmet back with two fingers, revealing a Charter mark still glowing with some residual charm of warding. Cautiously, Sabriel lifted her hand, and then, as he didn’t dissuade her, reached out with two fingers to touch the mark. As she did so, he reached forward and touched her own—Sabriel felt the familiar swirl of energy, and the feeling of falling into some endless galaxy of stars. But the stars here were Charter symbols, linked in some great dance that had no beginning or end, but contained and described the world in its movement. Sabriel knew only a small fraction of the symbols, but she knew what they danced, and she felt the purity of the Charter wash over her.

“An unsullied

Charter mark,” the officer pronounced loudly, as their fingers fell back to their sides. “She is no creature or sending.”

The soldiers fell back, sheathing swords and clicking on safety catches. Only the red-faced corporal didn’t move, his eyes still staring at Sabriel, as if he was unsure what he was looking at.

“Show’s over, Corporal,” said the officer, his voice and eyes now harsh. “Get back to the pay office. You’ll see stranger happenings than this in your time here—stay clear of them and you might stay alive!

“So,” he said, taking the documents from his belt and handing them back to Sabriel. “You are the daughter of Abhorsen. I am Colonel Horyse, the commander of a small part of the garrison here—a unit the Army likes to call the Northern Perimeter Reconaissance Unit and everyone else calls the Crossing Point Scouts—a somewhat motley collection of Ancelstierrans who’ve managed to gain a Charter mark and some small knowledge of magic.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” popped out of Sabriel’s school-trained mouth, before she could stifle it. A schoolgirl’s answer, she knew, and felt a blush rise in her pale cheeks.

“Likewise,” said the Colonel, bending down. “May I take your skis?”