“Kibeth.” Kibeth, the walker. A bell of several sounds, a difficult and contrary bell. It could give freedom of movement to one of the Dead, or walk them through the next gate. Many a necromancer had stumbled with Kibeth and walked where they would not.
“Dyrim.” A musical bell, of clear and pretty tone. Dyrim was the voice that the Dead so often lost. But Dyrim could also still a tongue that moved too freely.
“Belgaer.” Another tricksome bell, that sought to ring of its own accord. Belgaer was the thinking bell, the bell most necromancers scorned to use. It could restore independent thought, memory and all the patterns of a living person. Or, slipping in a careless hand, erase them.
“Saraneth.” The deepest, lowest bell. The sound of strength. Saraneth was the binder, the bell that shackled the Dead to the wielder’s will.
And last, the largest bell, the one Sabriel’s cold fingers found colder still, even in the leather case that kept it silent.
“Astarael, the Sorrowful,” whispered Sabriel. Astarael was the banisher, the final bell. Properly rung, it cast everyone who heard it far into Death. Everyone, including the ringer.
Sabriel’s hand hovered, touched on Ranna, and then settled on Saraneth. Carefully, she undid the strap and withdrew the bell. Its clapper, freed of the mask, rang slightly, like the growl of a waking bear.
Sabriel stilled it, holding the clapper with her palm inside the bell, ignoring the handle. With her right hand, she drew her sword and raised it to the guard position. Charter marks along the blade caught the moonlight and flickered into life. Sabriel watched them for a moment, as portents could sometimes be seen in such things. Strange marks raced across the blade, before transmuting into the more usual inscription, one that Sabriel knew well. She bowed her head, and prepared to enter into Death.
Unseen by Sabriel, the inscription began again, but parts of it were not the same. “I was made for Abhorsen, to slay those already Dead,” was what it usually said. Now it continued, “The Clayr saw me, the Wallmaker made me, the King quenched me, Abhorsen wields me.”
Sabriel, eyes closed now, felt the boundary between Life and Death appear. On her back, she felt the wind, now curiously warm, and the moonlight, bright and hot like sunshine. On her face, she felt the ultimate cold and, opening her eyes, saw the grey light of Death.
With an effort of will, her spirit stepped through, sword and bell prepared. Inside the diamond her body stiffened, and fog blew up in eddies around her feet, twining up her legs. Frost rimed her face and hands and the Charter marks flared at each apex of the diamond. Three steadied again, but the North mark blazed brighter still—and went out.
The river ran swiftly, but Sabriel set her feet against the current and ignored both it and the cold, concentrating on looking around, alert for a trap or ambush. It was quiet at this particular entry point to Death. She could hear the water tumbling through the Second Gate, but nothing else. No splashing, or gurgling, or strange mewlings. No dark, formless shapes or grim silhouettes, shadowy in this grey light.
Carefully holding her position, Sabriel looked all around her again, before sheathing her sword and reaching into one of the thigh pockets in her woollen knickerbockers. The bell, Saraneth, stayed ready in her left hand. With her right, she drew out a paper boat and, still one-handed, opened it out to its proper shape. Beautifully white, almost luminous in this light, it had one small, perfectly round stain at its bow, where Sabriel had carefully blotted a drop of blood from her finger.
Sabriel laid it flat on her hand, lifted it to her lips, and blew on it as if she were launching a feather. Like a glider, it flew from her hand into the river. Sabriel held that launching breath as the boat was almost swamped, only to breathe in with relief as it breasted a ripple, righted itself and surged away with the current. In a few seconds it was out of sight, heading for the Second Gate.
It was the second time in her life that Sabriel had launched just such a paper boat. Her father had shown her how to make them, but had impressed on her to use them sparingly. No more than thrice every seven years, he had said, or a price would have to be paid, a price much greater than a drop of blood.
As events should follow as they had the first time, Sabriel knew what to expect. Still, when the noise of the Second Gate stilled for a moment some ten or twenty, or forty, minutes later—time being slippery in Death—she drew her sword and Saraneth hung down in her hand, its clapper free, waiting to be heard. The Gate had stilled because someone . . . something . . . was coming back from the deeper realms of Death.
Sabriel hoped it was the one she had invited with the paper boat.
Chapter 6
Charter Magic on Cloven Crest. It was like a scent on the wind to the thing that lurked in the caves below the hill, some mile or more to the west of the broken Charter Stone.
It had been human once, or human-like at least, in the years it had lived under the sun. That humanity had been lost in the centuries the thing spent in the chill waters of Death, ferociously holding its own against the current, demonstrating an incredible will to live again. A will it didn’t know it possessed before a badly cast hunting spear bounced from a rock and clipped its throat, just enough for a last few minutes of frantic life.
By sheer effort of will, it had held itself on the life side of the Fourth Gate for three hundred years, growing in power, learning the ways of Death. It preyed on lesser spirits, and served or avoided greater ones. Always, the thing held on to life. Its chance finally came when a mighty spirit erupted from beyond the Seventh Gate, smashing through each of the Upper Gates in turn, till it went ravening into Life. Hundreds of the Dead had followed, and this particular spirit had joined the throng. There had been terrible confusion and a mighty enemy at the very border between Life and Death, but, in the melee, it had managed to sneak around the edges and squirm triumphantly into Life.
There were plenty of recently vacated bodies where it emerged, so the thing occupied one, animated it and ran away. Soon after, it found the caves it now inhabited. It even decided to give itself a name. Thralk. A simple name, not too difficult for a partially decomposed mouth to voice. A male name. Thralk could not remember what its original sex had been, those centuries before, but its new body was male.
It was a name to instill fear in the few small settlements that still existed in this area of The Borderlands, settlements Thralk preyed upon, capturing and consuming the human life he needed to keep himself on the living side of Death.
Charter Magic flared on Cloven Crest again, and Thralk sensed that it was strong and pure—but weakly cast. The strength of the magic scared him, but the lack of skill behind it was reassuring and strong magic meant a strong life. Thralk needed that life, needed it to shore up the body he used, needed it to replenish the leakage of hisspirit back into Death. Greed won over fear. The Dead thing left the mouth of the cave and started climbing the hill, his lidless, rotting eyes fixed on the distant crest.
Sabriel saw her guide, first as a tall, pale light drifting over the swirling water towards her, and then, as it stopped several yards away, as a blurred, glowing, human shape, its arms outstretched in welcome.
“Sabriel.”
The words were fuzzy and seemed to come from much farther away than where the shining figure stood, but Sabriel smiled as she felt the warmth in the greeting. Abhorsen had never explained who or what this luminous person was, but Sabriel thought she knew. She’d summoned this advisor only once before—when she’d first menstruated.
There was minimal sex education at Wyverley College—none at all till you were fifteen. The older girls’ stories about menstruation were many, varied and often meant to scare. None of Sabriel’s friends had reached puberty before her, so in fear and desperation she had entered Death. Her father had told her that the one the paper boat summoned would answer any question and would protect her—and so it had. The glowing spirit answered all her questions and many more besides, till Sabriel was forced to return to Life.
“Hello, Mother,” said Sabriel, sheathing her sword and carefully muffling Saraneth with her fingers inside the bell.
The shining shape didn’t answer, but that wasn’t unexpected. Apart from her one-word greeting, she could only answer questions. Sabriel wasn’t really sure if the manifestation was the very unusual dead spirit of her mother, which was unlikely, or some residual protective magic left by her.
“I don’t have much time,” Sabriel continued. “I’d love to ask about . . . oh, everything, I guess . . . but at the moment, I need to know how to get to Father’s house from Cloven Crest . . . I mean Barhedrin Ridge.”
The sending nodded, and spoke. As Sabriel listened, she also saw pictures in her head of what the woman was describing; vivid images, like memories of a journey she’d taken herself.
“Go to the northern side of the ridge. Follow the spur that begins there down till it reaches the valley floor. Look at the sky . . . there won’t be any cloud. Look to the bright red star, Uallus, near the horizon, three fingers east of north. Follow that star till you come to a road that runs from south-west to north-east. Take that road for a mile to the north-east, till you reach a mile marker and the Charter Stone behind it. A path behind the stone leads to the Long Cliffs immediately north. Take the path. It ends in a door in the Cliffs. The door will answer to Mosrael. Beyond the door is a tunnel, sloping sharply upwards. Beyond the tunnel lies Abhorsen’s Bridge. The house is over the bridge. Go with love—and do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens.”
“Thank you,” Sabriel began, carefully filing the words away with the accompanying thoughts. “Could you also . . .”
She stopped as the mother-sending in front of her suddenly raised both arms as if shocked, and shouted, “Go!”
At the same time, Sabriel felt the diamond of protection around her physical body twinge in warning and she became aware that the North mark had failed. Instantly, she turned on her left heel and began racing back to the border with Life, drawing her sword. The current almost seemed to strengthen against her, twining around her legs, but then fell away before her urgency. Sabriel reached the border and, with a furious thrust of will, her spirit emerged back into Life.
For a second, she was disoriented, suddenly freezing again and thick-witted. A grinning, corpse-like creature was just stepping through the failed North mark, its arms reaching to embrace her, carrion-breath misting out of a mouth unnaturally wide.
Thralk had been pleased to find the Charter Mage’s spirit wandering and a broken diamond of protection. The sword had worried him a little, but it was frosted over and his shriveled eyes couldn’t see the Charter marks that danced beneath the rime. Similarly, the bell in Sabriel’s left hand looked like a lump of ice or snow, as if she’d caught a snowball. All in all, Thralk felt very fortunate, particularly as the life that blazed within this still victim was particularly young and strong. Thralk sidled closer still and his double-jointed arms reached to embrace Sabriel’s neck.
Just as his slimy, corrupted fingers stretched forward, Sabriel opened her eyes and executed the stop-thrust that had earned her second place in Fighting Arts and, later, lost her the First. Her arm and sword straightened like one limb to their full extent and the sword-point ripped through Thralk’s neck, and into eight inches of air beyond.
Thralk screamed, his reaching fingers gripping the sword to push himself free—only to scream again as Charter marks flared on the blade. White-hot sparks plumed between his knuckles and Thralk suddenly knew what he’d encountered.
“Abhorsen!” he croaked, falling backwards as Sabriel twisted the blade free with one explosive jerk.
Already, the sword was affecting the dead flesh Thralk inhabited, Charter Magic burning through reanimated nerves, freezing those all-too-fluid joints. Fire rose in Thralk’s throat, but he spoke, to distract this terrible opponent while his spirit tried to shuck the body, like a snake its skin, and retreat into the night.
“Abhorsen! I will serve you, praise you, be your Hand . . . I know things, alive and dead . . . I will help lure others to you . . .”
The clear, deep sound of Saraneth cut through the whining, broken voice like a foghorn booming above the shriek of seagulls. The chime vibrated on and on, echoing into the night, and Thralk felt it bind him even as his spirit leaked out of the body and made for flight. The bell bound him to paralyzed flesh, bound him to the will of the bell-ringer. Fury seethed in him, anger and fear fueling his struggle, but the sound was everywhere, all around him, all through him. He would never be free of it.
Sabriel watched the misshapen shadow writhing, half out of the corpse, half in it, the body bleeding a pool of darkness. It was still trying to use the corpse’s mouth, but without success. She considered going with it into Death, where it would have a shape and she could make it answer with Dyrim. But the broken Charter Stone loomed nearby and she felt it as an ever-present fear, like a cold jewel upon her breast. In her mind, she heard her mother-sending’s words, “Do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens.”
Sabriel thrust her sword point-first into the snow, put Saraneth away and drew Kibeth from the bandolier, using both hands. Thralk sensed it and his fury gave way to pure, unadulterated fear. After all the centuries of struggle, he knew true death had come for him at last.
Sabriel took up a careful stance, with the bell held in a curious two-handed grip. Kibeth seemed almost to twitch in her hands, but she controlled it, swinging it backwards, forwards, and then in a sort of odd figure eight. The sounds, all from the one bell, were very different to each other, but they made a little marching tune, a dancing song, a parade.
Thralk heard them and felt forces grip him. Strange, inexorable powers that made him find the border, made him return to Death. Vainly, almost pathetically, he struggled against them, knowing he couldn’t break free. He knew that he would walk through every Gate, to fall at last through the Ninth. He gave up the struggle and used the last of his strength to form a semblance of a mouth in the middle of his shadow-stuff, a mouth with a writhing tongue of darkness.