“What did you do?” asked the Magistrix, as Sabriel brushed her hands through her hair, ice crystals falling from her hands onto the sack that lay in front of her knees.
“It had a message for me,” replied Sabriel. “So I took it.”
She opened the sack, and reached inside. A sword hilt met her grasp, so she drew it out, still scabbarded, and put it to one side. She didn’t need to draw it to see the Charter symbols etched along its blade—the dull emerald in the pommel and the worn bronze-plated cross-guard were as familiar to her as the school’s uninspired cutlery. It was Abhorsen’s sword.
The leather bandolier she drew out next was an old brown belt, a hand’s-breadth wide, which always smelled faintly of beeswax. Seven tubular leather pouches hung from it, starting with one the size of a small pill bottle; growing larger, till the seventh was almost the size of a jar. The bandolier was designed to be worn across the chest, with the pouches hanging down. Sabriel opened the smallest and pulled out a tiny silver bell, with a dark, deeply polished mahogany handle. She held it gently, but the clapper still swung slightly, and the bell made a high, sweet note that somehow lingered in the mind, even after the sound was gone.
“Father’s instruments,” whispered Sabriel. “The tools of a necromancer.”
“But there are Charter marks engraved on the bell . . . and the handle!” interjected the Magistrix, who was looking down with fascination. “Necromancy is Free Magic, not governed by the Charter . . .”
“Father’s was different,” replied Sabriel distantly, still staring at the bell she held in her hand, thinking of her father’s brown, lined hands holding the bells. “Binding, not raising. He was a faithful servant of the Charter.”
“You’re going to be leaving us, aren’t you?” the Magistrix said suddenly, as Sabriel replaced the bell and stood up, sword in one hand, bandolier in the other. “I just saw it, in the reflection of the bell. You were crossing the Wall . . .”
“Yes. Into the Old Kingdom,” said Sabriel, with sudden realization. “Something has happened to Father . . . but I’ll find him . . . so I swear by the Charter I bear.”
She touched the Charter mark on her forehead, which glowed briefly, and then faded so that it might never have been. The Magistrix nodded and touched a hand to her own forehead, where a glowing mark suddenly obscured all the patterns of time. As it faded, rustling noises and faint whimpers began to sound along both sides of the dormitory.
“I’ll shut the door and explain to the girls,” the Magistrix said firmly. “You’d better go and . . . prepare for tomorrow.”
Sabriel nodded and left, trying to fix her mind on the practicalities of the journey, rather than on what could have happened to her father. She would take a cab as early as possible into Bain, the nearest town, and then a bus to the Ancelstierre perimeter that faced the Wall. With luck, she would be there by early afternoon . . .
Behind these plans, her thoughts kept jumping back to Abhorsen. What could have happened to trap him in Death? And what could she really hope to do about it, even if she did get to the Old Kingdom?
Chapter 2
The Perimeter in Ancelstierre ran from coast to coast, parallel to the Wall and perhaps half a mile from it. Concertina wire lay like worms impaled on rusting steel pickets; forward defenses for an interlocking network of trenches and concrete pillboxes. Many of these strong points were designed to control the ground behind them as well as in front, and almost as much barbed wire stretched behind the trenches, guarding the rear.
In fact, the Perimeter was much more successful at keeping people from Ancelstierre out of the Old Kingdom, than it was at preventing things from the Old Kingdom going the other way. Anything powerful enough to cross the Wall usually retained enough magic to assume the shape of a soldier; or to become invisible and simply go where it willed, regardless of barbed wire, bullets, hand grenades and mortar bombs—which often didn’t work at all, particularly when the wind was blowing from the North, out of the Old Kingdom.
Due to the unreliability of technology, the Ancelstierran soldiers of the Perimeter garrison wore mail over their khaki battledress, had nasal and neck bars on their helmets and carried extremely old-fashioned sword-bayonets in well-worn scabbards. Shields, or more correctly, “bucklers, small, Perimeter garrison only,” were carried on their backs, the factory khaki long since submerged under brightly painted regimental or personal signs. Camouflage was not considered an issue at this particular posting.
Sabriel watched a platoon of young soldiers march past the bus, while she waited for the tourists ahead of her to stampede out the front door, and wondered what they thought of their strange duties. Most would have to be conscripts from far to the south, where no magic crept over the Wall and widened the cracks in what they thought of as reality. Here, she could feel magic potential brewing, lurking in the atmosphere like charged air before a thunderstorm.
The Wall itself looked normal enough, past the wasteland of wire and trenches. Just like any other medieval remnant. It was stone and old, about forty feet high and crenellated. Nothing remarkable, until the realization set in that it was in a perfect state of preservation. And for those with the sight, the very stones crawled with Charter marks—marks in constant motion, twisting and turning, sliding and rearranging themselves under a skin of stone.
The final confirmation of strangeness lay beyond the Wall. It was clear and cool on the Ancelstierre side, and the sun was shining—but Sabriel could see snow falling steadily behind the Wall, and snow-heavy clouds clustered right up to the Wall, where they suddenly stopped, as if some mighty weather-knife had simply sheared through the sky.
Sabriel watched the snow fall, and gave thanks for her Almanac. Printed by letterpress, the type had left ridges in the thick, linen-rich paper, making the many handwritten annotations waver precariously between the lines. One spidery remark, written in a hand she knew wasn’t her father’s, gave the weather to be expected under the respective calendars for each country. Ancelstierre had “Autumn. Likely to be cool.” The Old Kingdom had “Winter. Bound to be snowing. Skis or snowshoes.”
The last tourist left, eager to reach the observation platform. Although the Army and the Government discouraged tourists, and there was no accommodation for them within twenty miles of the Wall, one busload a day was allowed to come and view the Wall from a tower located well behind the lines of the Perimeter. Even this concession was often cancelled, for when the wind blew from the north, the bus would inexplicably break down a few miles short of the tower, and the tourists would have to help push it back towards Bain—only to see it start again just as mysteriously as it stopped.
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.