chapter III

“I am not one to blame a messenger for her tidings,” said Horyse, as he handed a cup of tea over to Sabriel, who was sitting on what looked like the only comfortable chair in the dugout which was the Colonel’s headquarters, “but you bring the worst news I have heard for many years.”

“At least I am a living messenger . . . and a friendly one,” Sabriel said quietly. She hadn’t really thought beyond her own concern for her father. Now, she was beginning to expand her knowledge of him, to understand that he was more than just her father, that he was many different things to different people. Her simple image of him—relaxing in the armchair of her study at Wyverley College, chatting about her schoolwork, Ancelstierre technology, Charter Magic and necromancy—was a limited view, like a painting that only captured one dimension of the man.

“How long do we have until Abhorsen’s bindings are broken?” asked Horyse, breaking into Sabriel’s remembrance of her father. The image she had of her father reaching for a teacup in her study disappeared, banished by real tea slopping over in her enamel mug and burning her fingers.

“Oh! Excuse me. I wasn’t thinking . . . how long till what?”

“The binding of the dead,” the Colonel reiterated, patiently. “How long till the bindings fail, and the dead are free?”

Sabriel thought back to her father’s lessons, and the ancient grimoire she’d spent every holiday slowly memorizing. The Book of the Dead it was called and parts of it still made her shudder.

It looked innocuous enough, bound in green leather, with tarnished silver clasps. But if you looked closely, both leather and silver were etched with Charter marks. Marks of binding and blinding, closing and imprisonment. Only a trained necromancer could open that book . . .

and only an uncorrupted Charter Mage could close it. Her father had brought it with him on his visits, and always took it away again at the end.

“It depends,” she said slowly, forcing herself to consider the question objectively, without letting emotion interfere. She tried to recall the pages that showed the carving of the wind flutes, the chapters on music and the nature of sound in the binding of the dead. “If Father . . . if Abhorsen is . . . truly dead, the wind flutes will simply fall apart under the light of the next full moon. If he is trapped before the Ninth Gate, the binding will continue until the full moon after he passes beyond, or a particularly strong spirit breaks the weakened bonds.”

“So the moon will tell, in time,” said Horyse.

“We have fourteen days till it is full.”

“It is possible I could bind the dead anew,”

Sabriel said cautiously. “I mean, I haven’t done it on this sort of scale. But I know how. The only thing is, if Father isn’t . . . isn’t beyond the Ninth Gate, then I need to help him as soon as I can. And before I can do that, I must get to his house and gather a few things . . . check some references.”

“How far is this house beyond the Wall?” asked Horyse, a calculating look on his face.

“I don’t know,” replied Sabriel.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been there since I was about four. I think it’s supposed to be a secret.

Father had many enemies, not just among the dead. Petty necromancers, Free Magic sorcerers, witches—”

“You don’t seem disturbed by your lack of directions,” interrupted the Colonel dryly. For the first time, a hint of doubt, even fatherly condescension, had crept into his voice, as if Sabriel’s youth undermined the respect due to her as both a Charter Mage and necromancer.

“Father taught me to how to call a guide who will give me directions,” replied Sabriel coolly.

“And I know it’s less than four days’ travel away.”

That silenced Horyse, at least for the moment.

He nodded and, standing cautiously, so his head didn’t hit the exposed beams of the dugout, he walked over to a steel filing cabinet that was rusting from the dark brown mud that oozed between the pale planks of the revetment.

Opening the cabinet with a practiced heave of considerable force, he found a mimeographed map and rolled it out on the table.

“We’ve never been able to get our hands on a genuine Old Kingdom map. Your father had one, but he was the only person who could see anything on it—it just looked like a square of calfskin to me. A small magic, he said, but since he couldn’t teach it, perhaps not so small . . .

Anyway, this map is a copy of the latest version of our patrol map, so it only goes out about ten miles from the crossing point. The garrison standing orders strictly forbid us to go further.

Patrols tend not to come back beyond that distance.

Maybe they desert, or maybe . . .”

His tone of voice suggested that even nastier things happened to the patrols, but Sabriel didn’t question him. A small portion of the Old Kingdom lay spread out on the table and, once again, excitement stirred up within her.

“We generally go out along the Old North Road,” said Horyse, tracing it with one hand, the sword calluses on his fingers rasping across the map, like the soft sandpapering of a master craftsman. “Then the patrols sweep back, either south-east or south-west, till they hit the Wall.

Then they follow that back to the gate.”

“What does this symbol mean?” asked Sabriel, pointing to a blacked-in square atop one of the farther hills.

“That’s a Charter Stone,” replied the Colonel.

“Or part of one now. It was riven in two, as if struck by lightning, a month or so ago. The patrols have started to call it Cloven Crest, and they avoid it if possible. Its true name is Barhedrin Hill and the stone once carried the Charter for a village of the same name. Before my time, anyway. If the village still exists it must be further north, beyond the reach of our patrols. We’ve never had any reports of inhabitants from it coming south to Cloven Crest. The fact is, we have few reports of people, fullstop.

The Garrison Log used to show considerable interaction with Old Kingdom people—farmers, merchants, travelers and so on—but encounters have become rarer over the last hundred years, and very rare in the last twenty. The patrols would be lucky to see even two or three people a year now. Real people that is, not creatures or Free Magic constructs, or the Dead. We see far too many of those.”

“I don’t understand,” muttered Sabriel. “Father often used to talk of villages and towns . . . even cities, in the Old Kingdom. I remember some of them from my childhood . . . well, I sort of remember . . . I think.”

“Further into the Old Kingdom, certainly,”

replied the Colonel. “The records mention quite a few names of towns and cities. We know that the people up there call the area around the Wall ‘the Borderlands.’ And they don’t say it with any fondness.”

Sabriel didn’t answer, bending her head lower over the map, thinking about the journey that lay ahead of her. Cloven Crest might be a good waypoint. It was no more than eight miles away, so she should be able to ski there before nightfall if she left fairly soon, and if it wasn’t snowing too hard across the Wall. A broken Charter Stone did not bode well, but there would be some magic there and the path into Death would be easier to tread. Charter Stones were often erected where Free Magic flowed and crossroads of the Free Magic currents were often natural doorways into the realm of death. Sabriel felt a shiver inch up her spine at the thought of what might use such a doorway and the tremor passed through to her fingers on the map.

She looked up suddenly, and saw Colonel Horyse looking at her long, pale hands, the heavy paper of the map still shuddering at her touch. With an effort of will, she stilled the movement.

“I have a daughter almost your age,” he said quietly. “Back in Corvere, with my wife. I would not let her cross into the Old Kingdom.”

Sabriel met his gaze, and her eyes were not the uncertain, flickering beacons of adolescence.

“I am only eighteen years old on the outside,”

she said, touching her palm against her breast with an almost wistful motion. “But I first walked in Death when I was twelve. I encountered a Fifth Gate Rester when I was fourteen, and banished it beyond the Ninth Gate. When I was sixteen I stalked and banished a Mordicant that came near the school. A weakened Mordicant, but still . . . A year ago, I turned the final page of The Book of the Dead. I don’t feel young anymore.”

“I am sorry for that,” said the Colonel, then, almost as if he had surprised himself, he added, “Ah, I mean that I wish you some of the foolish joys my daughter has—some of the lightness, the lack of responsibility that goes with youth. But I don’t wish it if it will weaken you in the times ahead. You have chosen a difficult path.”

“‘Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?’” Sabriel quoted, the words, redolent with echoes of Charter Magic, twining around her tongue like some lingering spice. Those words were the dedication in the front of her almanac.

They were also the very last words, all alone on the last page, of The Book of the Dead.

“I’ve heard that before,” remarked Horyse.

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Sabriel.

“It holds power when you say it,” added the Colonel slowly. He swallowed, open-mouthed, as if the taste of the Charter marks was still in the air. “If I spoke those words, that’s all they would be. Just words.”

“I can’t explain it.” Sabriel shrugged, and attempted a smile. “But I do know other sayings that are more to the point at the moment, like: ‘Traveler, embrace the morning light, but do not take the hand of night.’ I must be on my way.”

Horyse smiled at the old rhyme, so beloved of grandmothers and nannies, but it was an empty smile. His eyes slid a little away from Sabriel’s and she knew that he was thinking about refusing to let her cross the Wall. Then he sighed, the short, huffy sigh of a man who is forced into a course of action through lack of alternatives.

“Your papers are in order,” he said, meeting her gaze once again. “And you are the daughter of Abhorsen. I cannot do other than let you pass.

But I can’t help feeling that I am thrusting you out to meet some terrible danger. I can’t even send a patrol out with you, since we have five full patrols already out there.”

“I expected to go alone,” replied Sabriel. She had expected that, but felt a tinge of regret. A protective group of soldiers would be quite a comfort. The fear of being alone in a strange and dangerous land, even if it was her homeland, was only just below the level of her excitement.

It wouldn’t take much for the fear to rise over it.

And always, there was the picture of her father in her mind. Her father in trouble, trapped and alone in the chill waters of Death . . .

“Very well,” said Horyse. “Sergeant!”

A helmeted head appeared suddenly around the doorway, and Sabriel realized two soldiers must have been standing on guard outside the dugout, on the steps up into the communication trench. She wondered if they’d heard.

“Prepare a crossing party,” snapped Horyse.

“A single person to cross. Miss Abhorsen, here.

And Sergeant, if you or Private Rahise so much as talk in your sleep about what you may have heard here, then you’ll be on gravedigging fatigues for the rest of your lives!”

“Yes, sir!” came the sharp reply, echoed by the unfortunate Private Rahise, who, Sabriel noted, did seem half-asleep.

“After you, please,” continued Horyse, gesturing towards the door. “May I carry your skis again?”

The Army took no chances when it came to crossing the Wall. Sabriel stood alone under the great arch of the gate that pierced the Wall, but archers stood or knelt in a reverse arrowhead formation around the gate, and a dozen swordsmen had gone ahead with Colonel Horyse. A hundred yards behind her, past a zigzagged lane of barbed wire, two Lewyn machine-gunners watched from a forward emplacement—though Sabriel noted they had drawn their swordbayonets and thrust them, ready for use, in the sandbags, showing little faith in their air-cooled -rounds-per-minute tools of destruction.

There was no actual gate in the archway, though rusting hinges swung like mechanical hands on either side and sharp shards of oak thrust out of the ground, like teeth in a broken jaw, testimony to some explosion of modern chemistry or magical force.

It was snowing lightly on the Old Kingdom side, and the wind channeled occasional snowflakes through the gate into Ancelstierre, where they melted on the warmer ground of the south.

One caught in Sabriel’s hair. She brushed at it lightly, till it slid down her face and was captured by her tongue.

The cold water was refreshing and, though it tasted no different from any other melted snow she’d drunk, it marked her first taste of the Old Kingdom in thirteen years. Dimly, she remembered it had been snowing then. Her father had carried her through, when he first brought her south into Ancelstierre.

A whistle alerted her, and she saw a figure appear out of the snow, flanked by twelve others, who drew up in two lines leading out from the gate. They faced outwards, their swords shining, blades reflecting the light that was itself reflected from the snow. Only Horyse looked inwards, waiting for her.

With her skis over her shoulder, Sabriel picked her way among the broken timbers of the gate.

Going through the arch, from mud into snow, from bright sun into the pallid luminescence of a snowfall, from her past into her future.

The stones of the Wall on either side, and above her head, seemed to call a welcome home, and rivulets of Charter marks ran through the stones like rain through dust.

“The Old Kingdom welcomes you,” said Horyse, but he was watching the Charter marks run on the stones, not looking at Sabriel.

Sabriel stepped out of the shadow of the gate and pulled her cap down, so the peak shielded her face against the snow.

“I wish your mission every success, Sabriel,”

continued Horyse, looking back at her. “I hope . . . hope I see both you and your father before too long.”

He saluted, turned smartly to his left, and was gone, wheeling around her and marching back through the gate. His men peeled off from the line and followed. Sabriel bent down as they marched past, slid her skis back and forth in the snow, then slipped her boots into the bindings.

The snow was falling steadily, but it was only a light fall and the cover was patchy. She could still easily make out the Old North Road.

Fortunately, the snow had banked up in the gutters to either side of the road, and she could make good time if she kept to these narrow snow-ways. Even though it seemed to be several hours later in the Old Kingdom than it was in Ancelstierre, she expected to reach Cloven Crest before dusk.

Taking up her poles, Sabriel checked that her father’s sword was easy in its scabbard, and the bells hung properly from their baldric. She considered a quick Charter-spell for warmth, but decided against it. The road had a slight uphill gradient, so the skiing would be quite hard work. In her handknitted, greasy wool shirt, leather jerkin and thick, double padded skiing knickerbockers, she would probably be too warm once she got going.

With a practiced motion, she pushed one ski ahead, the opposite arm reaching forward with her pole, and slid forward, just as the last swordsman passed her on his way back through the gate. He grinned as he passed by, but she didn’t notice, concentrating on building up the rhythm of her skis and poles. Within minutes, she was practically flying up the road, a slim, dark figure against the white of the ground.