chapter xiv

Grey mist coiling upwards, twining around him like a clinging vine, gripping arms and legs, immobilizing, strangling, merciless. So firmly grown about his body there was no possibility of escape, so tight his muscles couldn’t even flex under skin, his eyelids couldn’t blink. And nothing to see but patches of darker grey, crisscrossing his vision like windblown scum upon a fetid pool.

Then, suddenly, fierce red light, pain exploding everywhere, rocketing from toes to brain and back again. The grey mist clearing, mobility returning. No more grey patches, but blurry colors, slowly twisting into focus. A woman, looking down at him, a young woman, armed and armored, her face . . . battered. No, not a woman. The Abhorsen, for she wore the blazon and the bells. But she was too young, not the Abhorsen he knew, or any of the family . . .

“Thank you,” he said, the words coming out like a mouse creeping from a dusty larder.

“Abhorsen.”

Then he fainted, his body rushing gladly to welcome real sleep, true unconsciousness and sanity-restoring rest.

He awoke under a blanket, and felt a moment’s panic when the thick grey wool pressed upon his mouth and eyes. He struggled with it, threw it back with a gasp, and relaxed as he felt fresh air on his face and dim sunlight filtering down from above. He looked up and saw from the reddish hue that it must be soon after dawn. The sinkhole puzzled him for a few seconds— disoriented, he felt dizzy and stupid, till he looked at the tall masts all around, the black sails, and the unfinished ship nearby.

“Holehallow,” he muttered to himself, frowning.

He remembered it now. But what was he doing here? Completely naked under a rough camping blanket? He sat up, and shook his head. It was sore and his temples were throbbing, seemingly from the battering-ram effect of a severe hangover. But he felt certain he hadn’t been drinking. The last thing he remembered was going down the steps.

Rogir had asked him . . . no . . . the last thing was the fleeting image of a pale, concerned face, bloodied and bruised, black hair hanging out in a fringe under her helmet. A deep blue surcoat, with the blazon of silver keys. The Abhorsen.

“She’s washing at the spring,” said a soft voice, interrupting his faltering recollection. “She got up before the sun. Cleanliness is a wonderful thing.”

The voice did not seem to belong to anything visible, till the man looked up at the nearby ship.

There was a large, irregular hole in the bow, where the figurehead should have been and a white cat was curled up in the hole, watching him with an unnaturally sharp, green-eyed gaze.

“What are you?” said the man, his eyes cautiously flickering from side to side, looking for a weapon. A pile of clothes was the only thing nearby, containing a shirt, trousers and some underwear, but it was weighted down with a largish rock. His hand sidled out towards the rock.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said the cat. “I’m but a faithful retainer of the Abhorsen. Name of Mogget. For the moment.”

The man’s hand closed on the rock, but he didn’t lift it. Memories were slowly sidling back to his benumbed mind, drawn like grains of iron to a magnet. There were memories of various Abhorsens among them—memories that gave him an inkling of what this cat-creature was.

“You were bigger when we last met,” he hazarded, testing his guess.

“Have we met?” replied Mogget, yawning.

“Dear me. I can’t recall it. What was the name?”

A good question, thought the man. He couldn’t remember. He knew who he was, in general terms, but his name eluded him. Other names came easily though, and some flashes of memory concerning what he thought of as his immediate past. He growled, and grimaced as they came to him, and clenched his fists in pain and anger.

“Unusual name,” commented Mogget. “More of a bear’s name, that growl. Do you mind if I call you Touchstone?”

“What!” the man exclaimed, affronted. “That’s a fool’s name! How dare—”

“Is it unfitting?” interrupted Mogget, coolly.

“You do remember what you’ve done?”

The man was silent then, for he suddenly did remember, though he didn’t know why he’d done it, or what the consequences had been. He also remembered that since this was the case, there was no point trying to remember his name.

He was no longer fit to bear it.

“Yes, I remember,” he whispered. “You may call me Touchstone. But I shall call you—”

He choked, looked surprised, then tried again.

“You can’t say it,” Mogget said. “A spell tied to the corruption of—but I can’t say it, nor tell anyone the nature of it, or how to fix it. You won’t be able to talk about it either and there may be other effects. Certainly, it has affected me.”

“I see,” replied Touchstone, somberly. He didn’t try the name again. “Tell me, who rules the Kingdom?”

“No one,” said Mogget.

“A regency, then. That is perhaps—”

“No. No regency. No one reigns. No one rules.

There was a regency at first, but it declined . . .

with help.”

“What do you mean, ‘at first’?” asked Touchstone. “What exactly has happened? Where have I been?”

“The regency lasted for one hundred and eighty years,” Mogget announced callously.

“Anarchy has held sway for the last twenty, tempered by what a few remaining loyalists could do. And you, my boy, have been adorning the front of this ship as a lump of wood for the last two hundred years.”

“The family?”

“All dead and past the Final Gate, save one, who should be. You know who I mean.”

For a moment, this news seemed to return Touchstone to his wooden state. He sat frozen, only the slight movement of his chest showing continued life. Then tears started in his eyes, and his head slowly fell to meet his upturned hands.

Mogget watched without sympathy, till the young man’s back ceased its heaving and the harsh in-drawn gasps between sobs became calmer.

“There’s no point crying over it,” the cat said harshly. “Plenty of people have died trying to put the matter to rights. Four Abhorsens have fallen in this century alone, trying to deal with the Dead, the broken stones and the—the original problem. My current Abhorsen certainly isn’t lying around crying her eyes out. Make yourself useful and help her.”

“Can I?” asked Touchstone bleakly, wiping his face with the blanket.

“Why not?” snorted Mogget. “Get dressed, for a start. There are some things aboard here for you as well. Swords and suchlike.”

“But I’m not fit to wield royal—”

“Just do as you’re told,” Mogget said firmly.

“Think of yourself as Abhorsen’s sworn swordhand, if it makes you feel better, though in this present era, you’ll find common sense is more important than honor.”

“Very well,” Touchstone muttered, humbly.

He stood up and put on the underclothes and shirt, but couldn’t get the trousers past his heavily muscled thighs.

“There’s a kilt and leggings in one of the chests back here,” Mogget said, after watching Touchstone hopping around on one leg, the other trapped in too-tight leather.

Touchstone nodded, divested himself of the trousers, and clambered up through the hole, taking care to keep as far away from Mogget as possible. Halfway up, he paused, arms braced on either side of the gap.

“You won’t tell her?” he asked.

“Tell who? Tell what?”

“Abhorsen. Please, I’ll do all I can to help. But it wasn’t intentional. My part, I mean. Please, don’t tell her—”

“Spare me the pleadings,” said Mogget, in a disgusted tone. “I can’t tell her. You can’t tell her.

The corruption is wide and the spell rather indiscriminatory.

Hurry up—she’ll be back soon. I’ll tell you the rest of our current saga while you dress.”

Sabriel returned from the spring feeling healthier, cleaner and happier. She’d slept well and the morning’s ablutions had cleared off the blood.

The bruises, swellings and sunburn had all responded well to her herbal treatments. All in all, she felt about eighty percent normal, rather than ten percent functional, and she was looking forward to having some company at breakfast other than the sardonic Mogget. Not that he didn’t have his uses, such as guarding unconscious or sleeping humans. He’d also assured her that he had tested the Charter mark on the figurehead-man, finding him to be unsullied by Free Magic, or necromancy.

She’d expected the man to still be asleep, so she felt a faint frisson of surprise and suspense when she saw a figure standing by the ship’s bow, facing the other way. For a second, her hand twitched to her sword, then she saw Mogget nearby, precariously draped on the ship’s rail.

She approached nervously, her curiosity tempered by the need to be wary of strangers. He looked different dressed. Older and somewhat intimidating, particularly since he seemed to have scorned her plain clothing for a kilt of gold-striped red, with matching leggings of redstriped gold, disappearing into turned-down thigh boots of russet doeskin. He was wearing her shirt, though, and preparing to put on a red leather jerkin. It had detachable, lace-up sleeves, which seemed to be giving him some problems.

Two swords lay in three-quarter scabbards near his feet, stabbing points shining four inches out of the leather. A wide belt with the appropriate hooks already encircled his waist.

“Curse these laces,” he said, when she was about ten paces away. A nice voice, quite deep, but currently frustrated and peaking with temper.

“Good morning,” said Sabriel.

He whirled around, dropping the sleeves, almost ducking to his swords, before recovering to transform the motion into a bow, culminating in a descent to one knee.

“Good morning, milady,” he said huskily, head bowed, carefully not meeting her gaze. She saw that he’d found some earrings, large gold hoops clumsily pushed through pierced lobes, for they were bloodied. Apart from them, all she could see was the top of his curly-haired head.

“I’m not ‘milady,’” said Sabriel, wondering which of Miss Prionte’s etiquette principles applied to this situation. “My name is Sabriel.”

“Sabriel? But you are the Abhorsen,” the man said slowly. He didn’t sound overly bright, Sabriel thought, with sinking expectations.

Perhaps there would be very little conversation at breakfast after all.

“No, my father is the Abhorsen,” she said, with a stern look at Mogget, warning him not to interfere. “I’m a sort of stand-in. It’s a bit complicated, so I’ll explain later. What’s your name?”

He hesitated, then mumbled, “I can’t remember, milady. Please, call me . . . call me Touchstone.”

“Touchstone?” asked Sabriel. That sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it for a moment.

“Touchstone? But that’s a jester’s name, a fool’s name. Why call you that?”

“That’s what I am,” he said dully, without inflection.

“Well, I have to call you something,” Sabriel continued. “Touchstone. You know, there is the tradition of a wise fool, so perhaps it’s not so bad. I guess you think you’re a fool because you’ve been imprisoned as a figurehead—and in Death, of course.”

“In Death!” exclaimed Touchstone. He looked up and his grey eyes met Sabriel’s. Surprisingly, he had a clear, intelligent gaze. Perhaps there is some hope for him after all, she thought, as she explained: “Your spirit was somehow preserved just beyond the border of Death, and your body preserved as the wooden figurehead. Both necromantic and Free Magic would have been involved. Very powerful magic, on both counts.

I am curious as to why it was used on you.”

Touchstone looked away again, and Sabriel sensed a certain shiftiness, or embarrassment.

She guessed that the forthcoming explanation would be a half-truth, at best.

“I don’t remember very well,” he said, slowly.

“Though things are coming back. I am . . . I was . . . a guardsman. The Royal Guard. There was some sort of attack upon the Queen . . .

an ambush in the—at the bottom of the stairs.

I remember fighting, with blade and Charter Magic—we were all Charter Mages, all the guard. I thought we were safe, but there was treachery . . . then . . . I was here. I don’t know how.”

Sabriel listened carefully, wondering how much of what he said was true. It was likely that his memory was impaired, but he possibly was a royal guard. Perhaps he had cast a diamond of protection . . . that could have been why his enemies could only imprison him, rather than kill. But, surely they could have waited till it failed. Why the bizarre method of imprisonment? And, most importantly, how did the figurehead manage to get placed in this most protected of places? She filed all these questions for later investigation, for another thought had struck her. If he really was a royal guard, the Queen he had guarded must have been dead and gone for at least two hundred years and, with her, everyone and everything he knew.

“You have been a prisoner for a long time,” she said gently, uncertain about how to break the news. “Have you . . . I mean did you . . . well, what I mean is it’s been a very long time—”

“Two hundred years,” whispered Touchstone.

“Your minion told me.”

“Your family . . .”

“I have none,” he said. His expression was set, as immobile as the carved wood of the previous day. Carefully, he reached over and drew one of his swords, offering it to Sabriel hilt-first.

“I would serve you, milady, to fight against the enemies of the Kingdom.”

Sabriel didn’t take the sword, though his plea made her reflexively reach out. But a moment’s thought closed her open palm, and her arm fell back to her side. She looked at Mogget, who was watching the proceedings with unabashed interest.

“What have you told him, Mogget?” she asked, suspicion wreathing her words.

“The state of the Kingdom, generally speaking,”

replied the cat. “Recent events. Our descent here, more or less. Your duty as Abhorsen to remedy the situation.”

“The Mordicant? Shadow Hands? Gore crows? The Dead Adept, whoever it may be?”

“Not specifically,” said Mogget, cheerfully. “I thought he could presume as much.”

“As you see,” Sabriel said, rather angrily, “my ‘minion’ has not been totally honest with you. I was raised across the Wall, in Ancelstierre, so I have very little idea about what is going on. I have huge gaps in my knowledge of the Old Kingdom, including everything from geography to history to Charter Magic. I face some dire enemies, probably under the overall direction of one of the Greater Dead, a necromantic adept. And I’m not out to save the Kingdom, just to find my father, the real Abhorsen. So I don’t want to take your oath or service or anything like that, particularly as we’ve only just met. I am happy for you to accompany us to the nearest approximation of civilization, but I have no idea what I will be doing after that. And, please remember that my name is Sabriel. Not milady. Not Abhorsen. Now, I think it’s time for breakfast.”

With that, she stalked over to her pack, and started getting out some oatmeal and a small cooking pot.

Touchstone stared after her for a moment, then picked himself up, attached his swords, put on the sleeveless jerkin, tied the sleeves to his belt and wandered off to the nearest clump of trees.

Mogget followed him there, and watched him pick up dead branches and sticks for a fire.

“She really did grow up in Ancelstierre,” said the cat. “She doesn’t realize refusing your oath is an insult. And it’s true enough about her ignorance.

That’s one of the reasons she needs your help.”

“I can’t remember much,” said Touchstone, snapping a branch in half with considerable ferocity.

“Except my most recent past. Everything else is like a dream. I’m not sure if it’s real or not, learned or imagined. And I wasn’t insulted. My oath isn’t worth much.”

“But you’ll help her,” said Mogget. It wasn’t a question.

“No,” said Touchstone. “Help is for equals. I’ll serve her. That’s all I’m good for.”

As Sabriel feared, there was little conversation over breakfast. Mogget went off in search of his own, and Sabriel and Touchstone were hindered by the sole cooking pot and single spoon, so they took it in turns to eat half the porridge. Even allowing for this difficulty, Touchstone was uncommunicative. Sabriel started asking a lot of questions, but as his standard response was, “I’m sorry, I can’t remember,” she soon gave up.

“I don’t suppose you can remember how to get out of this sinkhole, either,” she asked in exasperation, after a particularly long stretch of silence.

Even to her, this sounded like a prefect addressing a miscreant twelve-year-old.

“No, I’m sorry . . .” Touchstone began automatically, then he paused, and the corner of his mouth quirked up with a momentary spasm of pleasure. “Wait! Yes—I do remember! There’s a hidden stair, to the north of King Janeurl’s ship . . . oh, I can’t remember which one that is . . .”

“There’s only four ships near the northern rim,”

Sabriel mused. “It won’t be too hard to find.

How’s your memory for other geography? The Kingdom, for instance?”

“I’m not sure,” replied Touchstone, guardedly, bowing his head again. Sabriel looked at him and took a deep breath to calm the eel-like writhings of anger that were slowly getting bigger and bigger inside her. She could excuse his faulty memory—after all, that was due to magical incarceration.

But the servile manner that went with it seemed to be an affectation. He was like a bad actor playing the butler—or rather, a nonactor trying to impersonate a butler as best he could. But why? “Mogget drew me a map,” she said, talking as much to calm herself as for any real communication.

“But, as he apparently has only left Abhorsen’s House for a few weekends over the last thousand years, even two-hundred-year-old memories . . .”

Sabriel paused, and bit her lip, suddenly aware that her annoyance with him had made her spiteful.

He looked up as she stopped speaking, but no reaction showed on his face. He might as well still be carved from wood.

“What I mean is,” Sabriel continued carefully, “it would be very helpful if you could advise me on the best route to Belisaere, and the important landmarks and locations on the way.”

She got the map out of the special pocket in the pack and removed the protective oilskin.

Touchstone took one end as she unrolled it, and weighted his two corners with stones, while Sabriel secured hers with the telescope case.

“I think we’re about here,” she said, tracing her finger from Abhorsen’s House, following the Paperwing’s flight from there to a point a little north of the Ratterlin river delta.

“No,” said Touchstone, sounding decisive for the first time, his finger stabbing the map an inch to the north of Sabriel’s own. “This is Holehallow, here. It’s only ten leagues from the coast and at the same latitude as Mount Anarson.”

“Good!” exclaimed Sabriel, smiling, her anger slipping from her. “You do remember. Now, what’s the best route to Belisaere, and how long will it take?”

“I don’t know the current conditions, mi . . .

Sabriel,” Touchstone replied. His voice grew softer, more subdued. “From what Mogget says, the Kingdom is in a state of anarchy. Towns and villages may no longer exist. There will be bandits, the Dead, Free Magic unbound, fell creatures . . .”

“Ignoring all that,” Sabriel asked, “which way did you normally go?”

“From Nestowe, the fishing village here,”

Touchstone said, pointing at the coast to the east of Holehallow. “We’d ride north along the Shoreway, changing horses at post houses. Four days to Callibe, a rest day there. Then the interior road up through Oncet Pass, six days all told to Aunden. A rest day in Aunden, then four days to Orchyre. From there, it would be a day’s ferry passage, or two days’ riding, to the Westgate of Belisaere.”

“Even without the rest days, that’d be eighteen days’ riding, at least six weeks’ walking. That’s too long. Is there any other way?”

“A ship, or boat, from Nestowe,” interrupted Mogget, stalking up behind Sabriel, to place his paw firmly on the map. “If we can find one and if either of you can sail it.”