“Second floor, stand ready!” Horyse shouted, and above her head, Sabriel heard the bolts of fifty rifles working. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two of the Scouts step back outside, and take up position behind her, arrows nocked, bows ready. She knew they were ready to snatch her inside, if it came to that . . .
In the expectant quiet, there were only the usual sounds of the night. Wind in the big trees out past the school wall, starting to rise as the sky darkened. Crickets beginning to chirp. Then Sabriel heard it—the massed grinding of Dead joints, no longer joined by gristle; the padding of Dead feet, bones like hobnails clicking through necrotic flesh.
“Hands,” she said, nervously. “Hundreds of Hands.”
Even as she spoke, a solid wall of Dead flesh hit the iron gates, throwing them over in a split second’s crash. Then vaguely human forms were everywhere, rushing towards them, Dead mouths gulping and hissing in a ghastly parody of a war cry.
“Fire!”
In the instant’s delay after this command, Sabriel felt the terrible fear that the guns wouldn’t work. Then rifles cracked, and the machine-guns beat out a terrible, barking roar, red tracer rounds flinging out, ricocheting from the paving in a crazy embroidery of terrible violence. Bullets tore Dead flesh, splintered bone, knocked the Hands down and over—but still they came, till they were literally torn apart, broken into pieces, hung up on the wire.
The firing slowed, but before it could entirely cease, another wave of Hands came stumbling, crawling, running through the gateway, slipping, tumbling over the wall. Hundreds of them, so densely packed they crushed the wire and came on, till the last of them were mown down by the guns at the very foot of the front steps. Some, still with a slight vestige of human intelligence, retreated, only to be caught in great gouts of flame from white phosphorus grenades thrown out from the second floor.
“Sabriel—get inside!” Horyse ordered, as the last of the Hands flopped and crawled in crazy circles, till more bullets thudded into them and made them still.
“Yes,” replied Sabriel, looking out at the carpet of bodies, the flickering fires from the lanterns and lumps of phosphorus burning like candles in some ghastly charnel house. The stench of cordite was in her nose, through her hair, on her clothes, the machine-gun’s barrels glowing an evil red to either side of her. The Hands were already dead, but even so, this mass destruction made her sicker than any Free Magic . . .
She went inside, sheathing her sword. Only then did she remember the bells. Possibly, she could have quelled that vast mob of Hands, sent them peaceably back into Death, without—but it was too late. And what if she had been overmastered?
Shadow Hands would be next, she knew, and they could not be stopped by physical force, or her bells, unless they came in small numbers . . . and that was as likely as an early dawn . . .
There were more soldiers in the corridor, but these were mailed and helmed, with large shields and broad-headed spears streaked with silver and the simplest Charter marks, drawn in chalk and spit. They were smoking, and drinking tea from the school’s second-best china. Sabriel realized they were there to fight when the guns failed. There was an air of controlled nervousness about them—not bravado exactly, just a strange mixture of competence and cynicism. Whatever it was, it made Sabriel walk casually among them, as if she were in no hurry at all.
“Evening, miss.”
“Good to hear the guns, hey? Practically never work up north!”
“Won’t need us at this rate.”
“Not like the Perimeter, is it, ma’am?”
“Good luck with the bloke in the metal cigar case, miss.”
“Good luck to all of you,” replied Sabriel, trying to smile in answer to their grins. Then the firing started again, and she winced, losing the smile—but their attention was off her, focused back outside. They weren’t nearly as casual as they pretended, Sabriel thought as she edged through the side doors leading from the corridor into the Great Hall.
Here, the mood was much more frightened. The sarcophagus was up the far end of the Hall, resting across the speaker’s dais. Everyone else was as far away as possible up at the other end. The Scouts were on one side, also drinking tea. Magistrix Greenwood was talking to Touchstone in the middle, and the thirty or so girls—young women, really—were lined up on the opposite wall to the soldiers. It was all rather like a bizarre parody of a school dance.
Behind the thick stone walls and shuttered windows of the Great Hall, the gunfire could almost be mistaken for extremely heavy hail, with grenades for thunderclaps, but not if you knew what it was. Sabriel walked into the center of the Hall, and shouted.
“Charter Mages! Please come here.”
They came, the young women quicker than the soldiers, who were showing the weariness of the day’s work, and proximity to the sarcophagus. Sabriel looked at the students, their faces bright and open, a thin layer of fear laid over excitement at the spice of the unknown. Two of her best schoolfriends, Sulyn and Ellimere, were among the crowd, but she felt far distant from them now. She probably looked it too, she thought, seeing respect and something like wonder in their eyes. Even the Charter marks on their foreheads looked like fragile cosmetic replicas, though she knew they were real. It was so unfair that they had to be caught up in this . . .
Sabriel opened her mouth to speak, and the noise of gunfire suddenly ceased, almost on cue. In the silence, one of the girls giggled nervously. Sabriel, however, suddenly felt many deaths come at once, and a familiar dread touched her spine with cold fingers. Kerrigor was closing in. It was his power that had stilled the guns, not a lessening of the assault. Faintly, she could hear shouts and even . . . screams . . . from outside. They would be fighting with older weapons now.
“Quickly,” she said, walking towards the sarcophagus as she spoke. “We must make a handfast ring around the sarcophagus. Magistrix, if you would place everyone—Lieutenant, please put your men in among the girls . . .”
Anywhere else, at any other time, there would have been ribald jokes and giggles about that. Here, with the Dead about the building, and the sarcophagus brooding in their midst, it was simply an instruction. Men moved quickly to their places, the young women took their hands purposefully. In a few seconds, the sarcophagus was ringed by Charter Mages.
Linked by touch now, Sabriel didn’t need to speak. She could feel everyone in the ring. Touchstone, to her right, a familiar and powerful warmth. Miss Greenwood, to her left, less powerful, but not without skill—and so on, right around the ring.
Slowly, Sabriel brought the Charter marks of opening to the forefront of her mind. The marks grew, power flowing round and round the ring, growing in force till it started to project inwards, like the narrowing vortex of a whirlpool. Golden light began to stream about the sarcophagus, visible streaks rotating clockwise around it, with greater and greater speed.
Still Sabriel kept the power of the Charter Magic flowing into the center, drawing on everything the Charter Mages could produce. Soldiers and schoolgirls wavered, and some fell to their knees, but the hands stayed linked, the circle complete.
Slowly, the sarcophagus itself began turning on the platform, with a hideous shrieking noise, like an enormous unoiled hinge. Steam jetted forth from under its lid, but the golden light whisked it away. Still shrieking, the sarcophagus began to spin faster and faster, till it was a blur of bronze, white steam and yolk-yellow light. Then, with a scream more piercing than any before, it suddenly stopped, the lid flying off to hurtle over the Charter Mages’ heads, smashing into the floor a good thirty paces away.
The Charter Magic went too, as if earthed by its success, and the ring collapsed with fewer than half the participants still on their feet.
Wavering, her hands still tightly gripped by Touchstone and the Magistrix, Sabriel tottered over to the sarcophagus and looked in.
“Why,” said Miss Greenwood, with a startled glance back up at Touchstone, “he looks just like you!”
Before Touchstone could answer, steel clashed outside in the corridor, and the shouting grew louder. Those Scouts still standing drew their swords and rushed to the doors—but before they could reach them, other soldiers were pouring in, bloodied, terrified soldiers, who ran to the corners, or threw themselves down, and sobbed, or laughed, or shook in silence.
Behind this rush came some of the heavily armored soldiery of the corridor. These men still had some semblance of control. Instead of running on, they hurled themselves back against the doors, and dropped the bar in place.
“He’s inside the main doors!” one of them shouted back towards Sabriel, his face white with terror. There was no doubt about who “he” was.
“Quick, the final rites!” Sabriel snapped. She drew her hands from the others’ grasp, and held them out over the body, forming the marks for fire, cleansing and peace in her mind. She didn’t look too closely at the body. Rogir did look very much like a sleeping, defenseless Touchstone.
She was tired, and there were still Free Magic protections around the body, but the first mark soon lingered in the air. Touchstone had transferred his hand to her shoulder, pouring power into her. Others of the circle had crept up and linked hands again—and suddenly Sabriel felt a stirring of relief. They were going to make it—Kerrigor’s human body would be destroyed, and the greater part of his power with it . . .
Then the whole of the northern wall exploded, bricks cascading out, red dust blowing in like a solid wave, knocking everyone down in blinding, choking ruin.
Sabriel lay on the floor, coughing, hands pushing feebly on the floor, knees scrabbling as she tried to get up. There was dust and grit in her eyes, and the lanterns had all gone out. Blind, she felt around her, but there was only the still-scalding bronze of the sarcophagus.
“The blood price must be paid,” said a crackling, inhuman voice. A familiar voice, though not the liquid, ruined tones of Kerrigor . . . but the terrible speech of the night in Holehallow, when the Paperwing burned.
Blinking furiously, Sabriel crawled away from the sound, around the sarcophagus. It didn’t speak again immediately, but she could hear it closing in, the air crackling and buzzing at its passage.
“I must deliver my last burden,” the creature said. “Then the bargain is done, and I may turn to retribution.”
Sabriel blinked again, tears streaming down her face. Vision slowly came back, a picture woven with tears and the first rays of moonlight streaming through the shattered wall, a picture blurred with the red dust of pulverized bricks.
All Sabriel’s senses were screaming inside her. Free Magic, the Dead, danger all around . . .
The creature that had once been Mogget blazed a little more than five yards away. It was squatter than it had appeared previously, but equally misshapen, a lumpy body slowly drifting towards her atop a column of twisting, whirling energies.
A soldier suddenly leapt up behind it, driving a sword deep into its back. It hardly noticed, but the man screamed and burst into white flames. Within a second, he was consumed, his sword a molten lump of metal, scorching the thick oak planks of the floor.
“I bring you Abhorsen’s sword,” the creature said, dropping a long, dimly seen object to one side. “And the bell called Astarael.”
That, it laid carefully down, the silver glinting momentarily before it was lowered into the sea of dust.
“Come forward, Abhorsen. It is long since time that we begun.”
The thing laughed then, a sound like a match igniting, and it started to move around the sarcophagus. Sabriel loosened the ring on her finger, and edged away, keeping the sarcophagus between them, her thoughts racing. Kerrigor was very near, but there still might be time to turn this creature back into Mogget, and complete the final rites . . .
“Stop!”
The word was like a foul lick across the face by a reptilian tongue, but there was power behind it. Sabriel stood still, against her own desire, as did the blazing thing. Sabriel tried looking past it, lidding her eyes against the light, trying to puzzle out what was happening at the other end of the Hall. Not that she really needed to see.
It was Kerrigor. The soldiers who’d barred the door lay dead around him, pale flesh islands about a sea of darkness. He had no shape now, but there were semi-human features in the great ink-splash of his presence. Eyes of white fire, and a yawning mouth that was lined with flickering coals of a red as dark as drying blood.
“Abhorsen is mine,” croaked Kerrigor, his voice deep and somehow liquid, as if his words came bubbling out like lava mixed with spittle. “You will leave her to me.”
The Mogget-thing crackled, and moved again, white sparks falling like tiny stars in its wake.
“I have waited too long to allow my revenge to be taken by another!” it hissed, ending on a high-pitched yowl that still had something of the cat. Then it flew at Kerrigor, a shining electric comet hurtling into the darkness of his body, smashing into his shadowy substance like a hammer tenderizing meat.
For a moment, no one moved, shocked by the suddenness of the attack. Then, Kerrigor’s dark shape slowly recongealed, long tendrils of bitter night wrapping around his brilliant attacker, choking and absorbing it with the implacable voracity of an octopus strangling a bright-shelled turtle.
Desperately, Sabriel looked around for Touchstone and Magistrix Greenwood. Brick dust was still falling slowly through the moonlit air, like some deadly rust-colored gas, the bodies lying around seemingly victims of its choking poison. But they had been struck by bricks, or wooden splinters from the smashing of the pews.
Sabriel saw the Magistrix first, lying a little away, curled up on her side. Anyone else might have thought her merely unconscious, but Sabriel knew she was dead, struck by a long, stiletto-like splinter from a shattered pew. The iron-hard wood had driven right through her.