chapter xxiii

Touchstone could see the Dead now, and had no difficulty hearing them. They were chanting and clapping, decayed hands meeting together in a steady, slow rhythm that put all the hair on the back of his head on edge.

A ghastly noise, hard sounds of bone on bone, or the liquid thumpings of decomposed, jellying flesh. The chanting was even worse, for very few of them had functioning mouths.

Touchstone had never seen or heard a shipwreck— now he knew the sound of a thousand sailors drowning, all at once, in a quiet sea.

The lines of the Dead had marched out close to where Touchstone stood, forming a great mass of shifting shadow, spread like a choking fungus around the columns. Touchstone couldn’t make out what they were doing, till Mogget, with his night-sight, explained.

“They’re forming up into two lines, to make a corridor,” the little cat whispered, though the need for silence was long gone. “A corridor of Dead Hands, reaching from the northern stair to us.”

“Can you see the doorway of the stair?”

Touchstone asked. He was no longer afraid, now he could see and smell the putrescent, stinking corpses lined up in mockery of a parade. I should have died in this reservoir long ago, he thought.

There has just been a delay of two hundred years . . .

“Yes, I can,” continued Mogget, his eyes green with sparkling fire. “A tall beast has come, its flesh boiling with dirty flames. A Mordicant. It’s crouching in the water, looking back and up like a dog to its master. Fog is rolling down the stairs behind it—a Free Magic trick, that one. I wonder why he has such an urge to impress?”

“Rogir always was flamboyant,” Touchstone stated, as if he might be commenting on someone at a dinner party. “He liked everyone to be looking at him. He’s no different as Kerrigor, no different Dead.”

“Oh, but he is,” said Mogget. “Very different.

He knows you’re here, and the fog’s for vanity.

He must have been terribly rushed making the body he wears now. A vain man—even a Dead one—would not like this body looked at.”

Touchstone swallowed, trying not to think about that. He wondered if he could charge out of the diamond, flèche with his swords into that fog, a mad attack—but even if he got there, would his swords, Charter-spelled though they were, have any effect on the magical flesh Kerrigor now wore? Something moved in the water, at the limits of his vision, and the Hands increased the tempo of their drumming, the frenzied gurgle-chanting rising in volume.

Touchstone squinted, confirming what he thought he’d seen—tendrils of fog, lazily drifting across the water between the lines of the Dead, keeping to the corridor they’d made.

“He’s playing with us,” gasped Touchstone, surprised by his own lack of breath for speech. He felt like he’d already sprinted a mile, his heart going thump-thump-thump-thump . . .

A terrible howl suddenly rose above the Dead drumming, and Touchstone leapt back, nearly dislodging Mogget. The howl rose and rose, becoming unbearable, and then a huge shape broke out of the fog and darkness, stampeding towards them with fearful power, great swaths of spray exploding around it as it ran.

Touchstone shouted, or screamed—he wasn’t sure—threw away his candle, drew his left sword and thrust both blades out, crouching to receive the charge, knees so bent he was chestdeep in the water.

“The Mordicant!” yelled Mogget, then he was gone, leaping from Touchstone to the still-frosted Sabriel.

Touchstone barely had time to absorb this information, and a split-second image of something like an enormous, flame-shrouded bear, howling like the final scream of a sacrifice—then the Mordicant collided with the diamond of protection, and Touchstone’s out-thrust swords.

Silver sparks exploded with a bang that drowned the howling, throwing both Touchstone and the Mordicant back several yards. Touchstone lost his footing, and went under, water bubbling into his nose and still-screaming mouth.

He panicked, thinking the Mordicant would be on him in a second, and flipped himself back up with unnecessary force, savagely ripping his stomach muscles.

He almost flew out of the water, swords at guard again, but the diamond was intact, and the Mordicant retreating, backing away along the corridor of Hands. They’d stopped their noise, but there was something else—something Touchstone didn’t recognize, till the water drained out of his ears.

It was laughter, laughter echoing out of the fog, which now billowed across the water, coming closer and closer, till the retreating Mordicant was enveloped in it, and lost to sight.

“Did my hound scare you, little brother?” said a voice from within the fog.

“Ow!” exclaimed Sabriel, feeling Mogget’s claws on her physical body. Abhorsen looked at her, raising one silvery eyebrow questioningly.

“Something touched my body in Life,” she explained. “Mogget, I think. I wonder what’s happening?”

They stood at the very edge of Death, on the border with Life. No Dead had tried to stop them, and they’d passed easily through the First Gate.

Perhaps any Dead would quail from the sight of two Abhorsens . . .

Now they waited. Sabriel didn’t know why.

Somehow, Abhorsen seemed to be able to see into Life, or to work out what was happening. He stood like an eavesdropper, body slightly bent, ear cocked to a non-existent door.

Sabriel, on the other hand, stood like a soldier, keeping watch for the Dead. The broken stones made this part of Death an attractive high road into Life, and she had expected to find many Dead here, trying to take advantage of the “hole.” But it was not so. They seemed to be alone in the grey, featureless river, their only neighbors the swells and eddies of the water.

Abhorsen closed his eyes, concentrating even harder, then opened them to a wide-eyed stare and touched Sabriel lightly on the arm.

“It is almost time,” he said gently. “When we emerge, I want you to take . . . Touchstone . . .

and run for the southern stairs. Do not stop for anything, anything at all. Once outside, climb up to the top of the Palace Hill, to the West Yard.

It’s just an empty field now—Touchstone will know how to get there. If the Clayr are watching properly, and haven’t got their whens mixed up, there’ll be a Paperwing there—”

“A Paperwing!” interrupted Sabriel. “But I crashed it.”

“There are several around,” replied Abhorsen.

“The Abhorsen who made it—the forty-sixth, I think—taught several others how to construct them. Anyway, it should be there. The Clayr will also be there, or a messenger, to tell you where to find Kerrigor’s body in Ancelstierre. Fly as close to the Wall as possible, cross, find the body—and destroy it!”

“What will you be doing?” whispered Sabriel.

“Here is Saraneth,” replied Abhorsen, not meeting her gaze. “Give me your sword, and . . .

Astarael.”

The seventh bell. Astarael the Sorrowful.

Weeper.

Sabriel didn’t move, made no motion to hand over bell or blade. Abhorsen pushed Saraneth into its pouch, and did up the strap. He started to undo the strap that held Astarael, but Sabriel’s hand closed on his, gripping it tightly.

“There must be another way,” she cried. “We can all escape together—”

“No,” said Abhorsen firmly. He gently pushed her hand away. Sabriel let go, and he took Astarael carefully from the bandolier, making sure it couldn’t sound. “Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?”

Numbly, Sabriel handed him her sword . . . his sword. Her empty hands hung open by her sides.

“I have walked in Death to the very precipice of the Ninth Gate,” Abhorsen said quietly. “I know the secrets and horrors of the Nine Precincts. I do not know what lies beyond, but everything that lives must go there, in the proper time. That is the rule that governs our work as the Abhorsen, but it also governs us. You are the fifty-third Abhorsen, Sabriel. I have not taught you as well as I should—let this be my final lesson. Everyone and everything has a time to die.”

He bent forward, and kissed her forehead, just under the rim of her helmet. For a moment, she stood like a stringed puppet at rest, then she flung herself against his chest, feeling the soft fabric of his surcoat. She seemed to diminish in size, till once again she was a little girl, running to his embrace at the school gates. As she could then, she heard the slow beating of his heart. Only now, she heard the beats as grains in a time- piece, counting his hard-won hundred hundreds, counting till it was time for him to die.

She hugged him tightly, her arms meeting around his back, his arms outstretched like a cross, sword in one hand, bell in the other. Then, she let go.

They turned together, and plunged out into Life.

Kerrigor laughed again, an obscene cackle that rose to a manic crescendo, before suddenly cutting to an ominous silence. The Dead resumed their drumming, softer now, and the fog drifted forward with horrible certainty. Touchstone, drenched and partly drowned, watched it with the taut nerves of a mouse captivated by a gliding snake. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he noted that it was easier to see the whiteness of the fog. Up above, the clouds had gone, and the edges of the reservoir were once again lit by filtered sunlight. But they were forty paces or more from the edge . . .

A cracking noise behind him made him start, and turn, a jolt of fear suddenly overlaid with relief. Sabriel, and her father, were returning to Life! Ice flakes fell from them in miniature flurries, and the layer of ice around Abhorsen’s middle broke into several small floes and drifted away.

Touchstone blinked as the frost fell away from their hands and faces. Now Sabriel was emptyhanded, and Abhorsen wielded the sword and bell.

“Thank the Charter!” exclaimed Touchstone, as they opened their eyes and moved.

But no one heard him, for in that instant a terrible scream of rage and fury burst out of the fog, so loud the columns shivered, and ripples burst out across the water.

Touchstone turned again, and the fog was flying away in shreds, revealing the Mordicant crouched low, only its eyes and long mouth, bubbling with oily flames, visible above the water.

Behind it, with one elongated hand upon its bogclay head, stood something that might be thought of as a man.

Staring, Touchstone saw that Kerrigor had tried to make the body he currently inhabited look like the Rogir of old, but either his skills, memory or taste were sadly lacking. Kerrigor stood at least seven feet tall, his body impossibly deep-chested and narrow-waisted. His head was too thin, and too long, and his mouth spread from ear to ear. His eyes did not bear looking at, for they were thin slits burning with Free Magic fires—not eyes at all.

But somehow, even so warped, he did have a little of the look of Rogir. Take a man, make him malleable, stretch and twist . . .

The hideous mouth opened, yawning wider and wider, then Kerrigor laughed, a short laugh, punctuated by the snap of his closing jaws.

Then he spoke, and his voice was as warped and twisted as his body.

“I am fortunate. Three bearers of blood— blood for the breaking! Three!”

Touchstone kept staring, hearing Kerrigor’s voice, still somewhat like Rogir’s, rich but rotten, wet like worm-ridden fruit. He saw both the new, twisted Kerrigor and the other, betterfashioned body he’d known as Rogir. He saw the dagger again, slashing across the Queen’s throat, the blood cascading out, the golden cup . . .

A hand grabbed him, turned him around, took his left sword from his grasp. He suddenly refocused, gasping for air again, and saw Sabriel.

She had his left sword in her right hand, and now took his open palm in her left, dragging him towards the south. He let her pull, following in a splashing, loose-limbed run. Everything seemed to close in then, his vision narrowing, like a halfremembered dream.

He saw Sabriel’s father—the Abhorsen—for the first time devoid of frost. He looked hard, determined, but he smiled, and bowed his head a fraction as they passed. Touchstone wondered why he was going the wrong way . . . towards Kerrigor, towards the dagger and the catching cup. Mogget was on his shoulder too, and that was unlike Mogget, going into danger . . . there was something else peculiar about Mogget too . . . yes, his collar was gone . . . maybe he should turn and go back, put Mogget’s collar back on, try and fight Kerrigor . . .

“Run! Damn you! Run!” screamed Sabriel, as he half-turned. Her voice snapped him out of whatever trance he’d been in. Nausea hit, for they’d left the diamond of protection. Unwarned, he threw up immediately, turning his head as they ran. He realized he was dragging on Sabriel’s hand, and forced himself to run faster, though his legs felt dead, numbed by savage pins and needles. He could hear the Dead again now, chanting, and drumming, drumming fast. There were voices too, raised loud, echoing in the vast cavern. The howl of the Mordicant, and a strange buzzing, crackling sound that he felt rather than heard.

They reached the southern stair, but Sabriel didn’t slacken her pace, jumping up and off, out of the twilight of the reservoir into total darkness.

Touchstone lost her hand, then found it again, and they stumbled up the steps together, swords held dangerously ahead and behind, striking sparks from the stone. Still they heard the tumult from behind, the howling, drumming, shouting, all magnified by the water and the vastness of the reservoir. Then another sound began, cutting through the noise with the clarity of perfection.

It started softly, like a tuning fork lightly struck, but grew, a pure note, blown by a trumpeter of inexhaustible breath, till there was nothing but the sound. The sound of Astarael.

Sabriel and Touchstone both stopped, almost in mid-stride. They felt a terrible urge to leave their bodies, to shuck them off as so much worn-out baggage. Their spirits—their essential selves—wanted to go, to go into Death and plunge joyfully into the strongest current, to be carried to the very end.

“Think of Life!” screamed Sabriel, her voice only just audible through the pure note. She could feel Touchstone dying, his will insufficient to hold him in Life. He seemed almost to expect this sudden summons into Death.

“Fight it!” she screamed again, dropping her sword to slap him across the face. “Live!”

Still he slipped away. Desperate, she grabbed him by the ears, and kissed him savagely, biting his lip, the salty blood filling both their mouths. His eyes cleared, and she felt him concentrate again, concentrate on Life, on living.

His sword fell, and he brought his arms up around her and returned her kiss. Then he put his head on her shoulder, and she on his, and they held each other tightly till the single note of Astarael slowly died.

Silence came at last. Gingerly, they let each other go. Touchstone shakily groped around for his sword, but Sabriel lit a candle before he could cut his fingers in the dark. They looked at each other in the flickering light. Sabriel’s eyes were wet, Touchstone’s mouth bloody.

“What was that?” Touchstone asked huskily.

“Astarael,” replied Sabriel. “The final bell. It calls everyone who hears it into Death.”

“Kerrigor . . .”

“He’ll come back,” whispered Sabriel. “He’ll always come back, till his real body’s destroyed.”

“Your father?” Touchstone mumbled. “Mogget?”

“Dad’s dead,” said Sabriel. Her face was composed, but her eyes overflowed into tears. “He’ll go quickly beyond the Final Gate. Mogget—I don’t know.”

She fingered the silver ring on her hand, frowned, and bent to pick up the sword she’d taken from Touchstone.

“Come on,” she ordered. “We have to get up to the West Yard. Quickly.”

“The West Yard?” asked Touchstone, retrieving his own sword. He was confused and sick, but he forced himself up. “Of the Palace?”

“Yes,” replied Sabriel. “Let’s go.”