“He’ll be fine, Jacinth,” Sabriel replied wearily. “A scratch. It’s already closed up.”
Jacinth examined Bunny carefully, then looked up at Sabriel, the beginnings of a wriggling fear showing at the back of her eyes.
“There isn’t anything under the blood,” stammered Jacinth. “What did you . . .”
“I didn’t,” snapped Sabriel. “But perhaps you can tell me what you are doing out of bounds?”
“Chasing Bunny,” replied Jacinth, her eyes clearing as life reverted to a more normal situation. “You see . . .”
“No excuses,” recited Sabriel. “Remember what Mrs. Umbrade said at Assembly on Monday.”
“It’s not an excuse,” insisted Jacinth. “It’s a reason.”
“You can explain it to Mrs. Umbrade then.”
“Oh, Sabriel! You wouldn’t! You know I was only chasing Bunny. I’d never have come out—”
Sabriel held up her hands in mock defeat, and gestured back to the gates.
“If you’re back inside within three minutes, I won’t have seen you. And open the gate this time. They won’t be locked till I go back inside.”
Jacinth smiled, her whole face beaming, whirled around and sped back up the drive, Bunny clutched against her neck. Sabriel watched till she had gone through the gate, then let the tremors take her till she was bent over, shaking with cold. A moment of weakness and she had broken the promise she had made both to herself and her father. It was only a rabbit and Jacinth did love it so much—but what would that lead to? It was no great step from bringing back a rabbit to bringing back a person.
Worse, it had been so easy. She had caught the spirit right at the wellspring of the river, and had returned it with barely a gesture of power, patching the body with simple Charter symbols as they stepped from death to life. She hadn’t even needed bells, or the other apparatus of a necromancer. Only a whistle and her will.
Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.
It was Sabriel’s last term at Wyverley—the last three weeks, in fact. She had graduated already, coming first in English, equal first in Music, third in Mathematics, seventh in Science, second in Fighting Arts and fourth in Etiquette. She had also been a runaway first in Magic, but that wasn’t printed on the certificate. Magic only worked in those regions of Ancelstierre close to the Wall which marked the border with the Old Kingdom. Farther away, it was considered to be quite beyond the pale, if it existed at all, and persons of repute did not mention it. Wyverley College was only forty miles from the Wall, had a good all-round reputation, and taught Magic to those students who could obtain special permission from their parents.
Sabriel’s father had chosen it for that reason when he had emerged from the Old Kingdom with a five-year-old girl in tow to seek a boarding school. He had paid in advance for that first year, in Old Kingdom silver deniers that stood up to surreptitious touches with cold iron. Thereafter, he had come to visit his daughter twice a year, at Midsummer and Midwinter, staying for several days on each occasion and always bringing more silver.
Understandably, the Headmistress was very fond of Sabriel. Particularly since she never seemed troubled by her father’s rare visitations, as most other girls would be. Once Mrs. Umbrade had asked Sabriel if she minded, and had been troubled by the answer that Sabriel saw her father far more often than when he was actually there. Mrs. Umbrade didn’t teach Magic, and didn’t want to know any more about it other than the pleasant fact that some parents would pay considerable sums to have their daughters schooled in the basics of sorcery and enchantment.
Mrs. Umbrade certainly didn’t want to know how Sabriel saw her father. Sabriel, on the other hand, always looked forward to his unofficial visits and watched the moon, tracing its movements from the leather-bound almanac which listed the phases of the moon in both Kingdoms and gave valuable insights into the seasons, tides and other ephemerae that were never the same at any one time on both sides of the Wall. Abhorsen’s sending of himself always appeared at the dark of the moon.
On these nights, Sabriel would lock herself into her study (a privilege of the Sixth Form—previously she’d had to sneak into the library), put the kettle on the fire, drink tea and read a book until the characteristic wind rose up, extinguished the fire, put out the electric light and rattled the shutters—all necessary preparations, it seemed, for her father’s phosphorescent sending to appear in the spare armchair.
Sabriel was particularly looking forward to her father’s visit that November. It would be his last, because college was about to end and she wanted to discuss her future. Mrs. Umbrade wanted her to go to university, but that meant moving further away from the Old Kingdom. Her magic would wane and parental visitations would be limited to actual physical appearances, and those might well become even less frequent. On the other hand, going to university would mean staying with some of the friends she’d had virtually all her life, girls she’d started school with at the age of five. There would also be a much greater world of social interaction, particularly with young men, of which commodity there was a distinct shortage around Wyverley College.
And the disadvantage of losing her magic could possibly be offset by a lessening of her affinity for death and the dead . . .
Sabriel was thinking of this as she waited, book in hand, half-drunk cup of tea balanced precariously on the arm of her chair. It was almost midnight and Abhorsen hadn’t appeared. Sabriel had checked the almanac twice and had even opened the shutters to peer out through the glass at the sky. It was definitely the dark of the moon, but there was no sign of him. It was the first time in her life that he hadn’t appeared and she felt suddenly uneasy.
Sabriel rarely thought about what life was really like in the Old Kingdom, but now old stories came to mind and dim memories of when she’d lived there with the Travelers. Abhorsen was a powerful sorcerer, but even then . . .
“Sabriel! Sabriel!”
A high-pitched voice interrupted her thought, quickly followed by a hasty knock and a rattle of the doorknob. Sabriel sighed, pushed herself out of her chair, caught the teacup and unlocked the door.
A young girl stood on the other side, twisting her nightcap from side to side in trembling hands, her face white with fear.
“Olwyn!” exclaimed Sabriel. “What is it? Is Sussen sick again?”
“No,” sobbed the girl. “I heard noises behind the tower door, and I thought it was Rebece and Ila having a midnight feast without me, so I looked . . .”
“What!” exclaimed Sabriel, alarmed. No one opened outside doors in the middle of the night, not this close to the Old Kingdom.
“I’m sorry,” cried Olwyn. “I didn’t mean to. I don’t know why I did. It wasn’t Rebece and Ila—it was a black shape and it tried to get in. I slammed the door . . .”
Sabriel threw the teacup aside and pushed past Olwyn. She was already halfway down the corridor before she heard the porcelain smash behind her, and Olwyn’s horrified gasp at such cavalier treatment of good china. She ignored it and broke into a run, slapping on the light switches as she ran towards the open door of the west dormitory. As she reached it, screams broke out inside, rapidly crescendoing to an hysterical chorus. There were forty girls in the dormitory—most of the First Form, all under the age of eleven. Sabriel took a deep breath, and stepped into the doorway, fingers crooked in a spell-casting stance. Even before she looked, she felt the presence of death.
The dormitory was very long, and narrow, with a low roof and small windows. Beds and dressers lined each side. At the far end, a door led to the West Tower steps. It was supposed to be locked inside and out, but locks rarely prevailed against the powers of the Old Kingdom.
The door was open. An intensely dark shape stood there, as if someone had cut a man-shaped figure out of the night, carefully choosing a piece devoid of stars. It had no features at all, but the head quested from side to side, as if whatever senses it did possess worked in a narrow range. Curiously, it carried an absolutely mundane sack in one four-fingered hand, the rough-woven cloth in stark contrast to its own surreal flesh.
Sabriel’s hands moved in a complicated gesture, drawing the symbols of the Charter that intimated sleep, quiet and rest. With a flourish, she indicated both sides of the dormitory and drew one of the master symbols, drawing all together. Instantly, every girl in the room stopped screaming and slowly subsided back onto her bed.
The creature’s head stopped moving and Sabriel knew its attention was now centered on her. Slowly it moved, lifting one clumsy leg and swinging it forward, resting for a moment, then swinging the other a little past the first. A lumbering, rolling motion, that made an eerie, shuffling noise on the thin carpet. As it passed each bed, the electric lights above them flared once and went out.
Sabriel let her hands fall to her side and focused her eyes on the center of the creature’s torso, feeling the stuff of which it was made. She had come without any of her instruments or tools, but that led to only a moment’s hesitation before she let herself slip over the border into Death, her eyes still on the intruder.
The river flowed around her legs, cold as always. The light, grey and without warmth, still stretched to an entirely flat horizon. In the distance, she could hear the roar of the First Gate. She could see the creature’s true shape clearly now, not wrapped in the aura of death which it carried to the living world. It was an Old Kingdom denizen, vaguely humanoid, but more like an ape than a man and obviously only semi-intelligent. But there was more to it than that, and Sabriel felt the clutch of fear as she saw the black thread that came from the creature’s back and ran into the river. Somewhere, beyond the First Gate, or even further, that umbilical rested in the hands of an Adept. As long as the thread existed the creature would be totally under the control of its master, who could use its senses and spirit as it saw fit.
Something tugged at Sabriel’s physical body, and she reluctantly twitched her senses back to the living world, a slight feeling of nausea rising in her as a wave of warmth rushed over her death-chilled body.
“What is it?” said a calm voice, close to Sabriel’s ear. An old voice, tinged with the power of Charter Magic—Miss Greenwood, the Magistrix of the school.
“It’s a Dead servant—a spirit form,” replied Sabriel, her attention back on the creature. It was halfway down the dorm, still single-mindedly rolling one leg after the other. “Without free will. Something sent it back to the living world. It’s controlled from beyond the First Gate.”
“Why is it here?” asked the Magistrix. Her voice sounded calm, but Sabriel felt the Charter symbols gathering in her voice, forming on her tongue—symbols that would unleash lightning and flame, the destructive powers of the earth.
“It’s not obviously malign, nor has it attempted any actual harm . . .” replied Sabriel slowly, her mind working over the possibilities. She was used to explaining purely necromantic aspects of magic to Miss Greenwood. The Magistrix had taught her Charter Magic, but necromancy was definitely not on the syllabus. Sabriel had learned more than she wanted to know about necromancy from her father . . . and the Dead themselves. “Don’t do anything for a moment. I will attempt to speak with it.”
The cold washed over her again, biting into her, as the river gushed around her legs, eager to pull her over and carry her away. Sabriel exerted her will, and the cold became simply a sensation, without danger, the current merely a pleasing vibration about the feet.
The creature was close now, as it was in the living world. Sabriel held out both her hands, and clapped, the sharp sound echoing for longer than it would anywhere else. Before the echo died, Sabriel whistled several notes, and they echoed too, sweet sounds within the harshness of the handclap.
The thing flinched at the sound and stepped back, putting both hands to its ears. As it did so, it dropped the sack. Sabriel started in surprise. She hadn’t noticed the sack before, possibly because she hadn’t expected it to be there. Very few inanimate things existed in both realms, the living and the dead.
She was even more surprised as the creature suddenly bent forward and plunged into the water, hands searching for the sack. It found it almost at once, but not without losing its footing. As the sack surfaced, the current forced the creature under. Sabriel breathed a sigh of relief as she saw it slide away, then gasped as its head broke the surface and it cried out: “Sabriel! My messenger! Take the sack!” The voice was Abhorsen’s.
Sabriel ran forward and an arm pushed out towards her, the neck of the sack clutched in its fingers. She reached out, missed, then tried again. The sack was secure in her grasp, as the current took the creature completely under. Sabriel looked after it, hearing the roar of the First Gate suddenly increase as it always did when someone passed its falls. She turned and started to slog back against the current to a point where she could easily return to life. The sack in her hand was heavy and there was a leaden feeling in her stomach. If the messenger was truly Abhorsen’s, then he himself was unable to return to the realm of the living.
And that meant he was either dead, or trapped by something that should have passed beyond the final gate.
Once again, a wave of nausea overcame her and Sabriel fell to her knees, shaking. She could feel the Magistrix’s hand on her shoulder, but her attention was fastened on the sack she held in her hand. She didn’t need to look to know that the creature was gone. Its manifestation into the living world had ceased as its spirit had gone past the First Gate. Only a pile of grave mold would remain, to be swept aside in the morning.