chapter xi

The Paperwing sat on a juryrigged platform of freshly sawn pine planks, teetering out over the eastern wall. Six sendings clustered around the craft, readying it for flight.

Sabriel looked up at it as she climbed the stairs, an unpleasant feeling rising with her. She had been expecting something similar to the aircraft that had begun to be common in Ancelstierre, like the biplane that had performed aerobatics at the last Wyverley College Open Day.

Something with two wings, rigging and a propeller— though she had assumed a magical engine rather than a mechanical one.

But the Paperwing didn’t look anything like an Ancelstierran airplane. It most closely resembled a canoe with hawk-wings and a tail. On closer inspection, Sabriel saw that the central fuselage was probably based on a canoe. It was tapered at each end and had a central hole for a cockpit.

Wings sprouted on each side of this canoe shape—long, swept-back wings that looked very flimsy. The wedge-shaped tail didn’t look much better.

Sabriel climbed the last few steps with sinking expectations. The construction material was now clear and so was the craft’s name—the whole thing was made up from many sheets of paper, bonded together with some sort of laminate.

Painted powder-blue, with silver bands around the fuselage and silver stripes along the wings and tail, it looked pretty, decorative and not at all airworthy.

Only the yellow falcon eyes painted on its pointed prow hinted at its capacity for flight.

Sabriel looked at the Paperwing again, and then out at the waterfall beyond. Now, fed by floodwaters, it looked even more frightening than usual. Spray exploded for tens of yards above its lip—a roaring mist the Paperwing would have to fly through before it reached the open sky beyond. Sabriel didn’t even know if it was waterproof.

“How often has this . . . thing . . . flown before?” she asked, nervously. Intellectually, she accepted that she would soon be sitting in this craft, to be launched out towards the crashing waters—but her subconscious, and her stomach, seemed very keen to stay firmly on the ground.

“Many times,” replied Mogget, easily jumping from the platform to the cockpit. His voice echoed there for a moment, till he climbed back up, furry cat-face propped on the rim. “The Abhorsen who made it once flew it to the sea and back, in a single afternoon. But she was a great weather-witch and could work the winds. I don’t suppose—”

“No,” said Sabriel, made aware of another gap in her education. She knew that wind-magic was largely whistled Charter marks, but that was all.

“No. I can’t.”

“Well,” continued Mogget, after a thoughtful pause, “the Paperwing does have some elementary charms to ride the wind. You’ll have to whistle them, though. You can whistle, I trust?”

Sabriel ignored him. All necromancers had to be musical, had to be able to whistle, to hum, to sing.

If they were caught in Death without bells, or other magical instruments, their vocal skills were a weapon of last recourse.

A sending came and took her pack, helping her to wrestle it off, then stowing it at the rear of the cockpit. Another took Sabriel’s arm and directed her to what appeared to be a leather halfhammock strung across the cockpit—obviously the pilot’s seat. It didn’t look terribly safe either, but Sabriel forced herself to climb in, after giving her scabbarded sword into the hands of yet another sending.

Surprisingly, her feet didn’t go through the paper-laminated floor. The material even felt reassuringly solid and, after a minute of squirming, swaying and adjustment, the hammock-seat was very comfortable. Sword and scabbard were slid into a receptacle at her side and Mogget took up a position on top of the straps holding down her pack, just behind her shoulders, for the seat made her recline so far she was almost lying down.

From her new eye level, Sabriel saw a small, oval mirror of silvered glass, fixed just below the cockpit rim. It glittered in the late afternoon sun, and she felt it resonate with Charter Magic.

Something about it prompted her to breathe upon it, her hot breath clouding the glass. It stayed misted for a moment, then a Charter mark slowly appeared, as if a ghostly finger was drawn across the clouded mirror.

Sabriel studied it carefully, absorbing its purpose and effect. It told her of the marks that would follow; marks to raise the lifting winds, marks for descending in haste, marks to call the wind from every corner of the compass rose.

There were other marks for the Paperwing and, as Sabriel absorbed them, she saw that the whole craft was lined with Charter Magic, infused with spells. The Abhorsen who made it had labored long, and with love, to create something that was more like a magical bird than an aircraft.

Time passed, and the last mark faded. The mirror cleared to be only a plate of silver glass shining in the sun. Sabriel sat, silent, fixing the Charter marks in her memory, marveling at the power and the skill that had made the Paperwing and had thought of this method of instruction. Perhaps one day, she too would have the mastery to create such a thing.

“The Abhorsen who made this,” Sabriel asked.

“Who was she? I mean, in relation to me?”

“A cousin,” purred Mogget, close to her ear.

“Your great-great-great-great-grandmother’s cousin.

The last of that line. She had no children.”

Maybe the Paperwing was her child, Sabriel thought, running her hand along the sleek surface of the fuselage, feeling the Charter marks quiescent in the fabric. She felt a lot better about their forthcoming flight.

“We’d best hurry,” Mogget continued. “It will be dark all too soon. Do you have the marks remembered?”

“Yes,” replied Sabriel firmly. She turned to the sendings, who were now lined up behind the wings, anchoring the Paperwing till it was time for it to be unleashed upon the sky. Sabriel wondered how many times they’d performed this task, and for how many Abhorsens.

“Thank you,” she said to them. “For all your care and kindness. Goodbye.”

With that last word, she settled back in the hammock-seat, gripped the rim of the cockpit with both hands, and whistled the notes of the lifting wind, visualizing the requisite string of Charter marks in her mind, letting them drip down into her throat and lips, and out into the air.

Her whistle sounded clear and true, and a wind rose behind to match it, growing stronger as Sabriel exhaled. Then, with a new breath, she changed to a merry, joyous trill. Like a bird revelling in flight, the Charter marks flowing from pursed lips out into the Paperwing itself. With this whistling, the blue and silver paint seemed to come alive, dancing down the fuselage, sweeping across the wings, a gleaming, lustrous plumage.

The whole craft shook and shivered, suddenly flexible and eager to begin.

The joyous trill ended with one single long, clear note, and a Charter mark that shone like the sun.

It danced to the Paperwing’s prow and sank into the laminate. A second later, the yellow eyes blinked, grew fierce and proud, looking up to the sky ahead.

The sendings were struggling now, barely able to hold the Paperwing back. The lifting wind grew stronger still, plucking at the silver-blue plumage, thrusting it forward. Sabriel felt the Paperwing’s tension, the contained power in its wings, the exhilaration of that last moment when freedom is assured.

“Let go!” she cried, and the sendings complied, the Paperwing leaping up into the arms of the wind, out and upward, splashing through the spray of the waterfall as if it were no more than a spring shower, flying out into the sky and the broad valley beyond.

It was quiet, and cold, a thousand feet or more above the valley. The Paperwing soared easily, the wind firm behind it, the sky clear above, save for the faintest wisps of cloud. Sabriel reclined in her hammock-seat, relaxing, running the Charter marks she’d leaned over and over in her mind, making sure she had them properly pigeonholed.

She felt free, and somehow clean, as if the dangers of the last few days were dirt, washed away by the following wind.

“Turn more to the north,” Mogget’s voice suddenly said behind her, disturbing her carefree mood. “Do you recall the map?”

“Yes,” replied Sabriel. “Shall we follow the river? The Ratterlin, it’s called, isn’t it? It runs nornor- east most of the time.”

Mogget didn’t reply at once, though Sabriel heard his purring breath close by. He seemed to be thinking. Finally, he said, “Why not? We may as well follow it to the sea. It branches into a delta there, so we can find an island to camp on tonight.”

“Why not just fly on?” asked Sabriel cheerily.

“We could be in Belisaere by tomorrow night, if I summon the strongest winds.”

“The Paperwing doesn’t like to fly at night,”

Mogget said, shortly. “Not to mention that you would almost certainly lose control of the stronger winds—it is much more difficult than it seems at first. And the Paperwing is much too conspicuous, anyway. Have you no common sense, Abhorsen?”

“Call me Sabriel,” Sabriel replied, equally shortly. “My father is Abhorsen.”

“As you wish, mistress,” said Mogget. The “mistress” sounded extremely sarcastic.

The next hour passed in belligerent silence, but Sabriel, for her part, soon lost her anger in the novelty of flight. She loved the scale of it all, to see the tiny patchworked fields and forests below, the dark strip of the river, the occasional tiny building. Everything was so small and seemed so perfect, seen from afar.

Then the sun began to sink, and though the red wash of its fading light made the aerial perspective even prettier, Sabriel felt the Paperwing’s desire to descend, felt the yellow eyes focusing on green earth, rather than blue sky. As the shadows lengthened, Sabriel felt that same desire and began to look as well.

The river was already breaking up into the myriad streams and rivulets that would form the swampy Ratterlin delta, and far off, Sabriel could see the dark bulk of the sea. There were many islands in the delta, some as large as football fields covered with trees and shrubs, others no bigger than two armspans of mud.

Sabriel picked out one of the medium-sized ones, a flattish diamond with low, yellow grass, a few leagues ahead, and whistled down the wind.

It faded gradually with her whistle and the Paperwing began to descend, occasionally nudged this way or that by Sabriel’s control of the wind, or its own tilt of a wing. Its yellow eyes, and Sabriel’s deep-brown eyes, were fixed on the ground below. Only Mogget, being Mogget, looked behind them and above.

Even so, he didn’t see their pursuers until they came wheeling out of the sun, so his yowling cry gave only a few seconds’ warning, just long enough for Sabriel to turn and see the hundreds of fast-moving shapes diving down upon them. Instinctively, she conjured Charter marks in her mind, mouth pursed, whistling the wind back up, turning them to the north.

“Gore crows!” hissed Mogget, as the flapping shapes checked their dive and wheeled to pursue their suddenly enlivened prey.

“Yes,” shouted Sabriel, though she wasn’t sure why she answered. Her attention was all on the gore crows, trying to gauge whether they’d intercept or not. She could already feel the wind testing the edges of her control, as Mogget had prophesied, and to whip it up further might have unpleasant results. But she could also feel the presence of the gore crows, feel the admixture of Death and Free Magic that gave life to their rotten, skeletal forms.

Gore crows didn’t last very long in sun and wind—these must have been made the previous night. A necromancer had trapped quite ordinary crows, killing them with ritual and ceremony, before infusing the bodies with the broken, fragmented spirit of a single dead man or woman. Now they were truly carrion birds, birds guided by a single, if stupid, intelligence.

They flew by force of Free Magic, and killed by force of numbers.

Despite her quickness in calling the wind, the flock was still closing rapidly. They’d dived from high above and kept their speed, the wind stripping feathers and putrid flesh from their spellwoven bones.

For a moment, Sabriel considered turning the Paperwing back into the very center of this great murder of crows, like an avenging angel, armed with sword and bells. But there were simply too many gore crows to fight, particularly from an aircraft speeding along several hundred feet above the ground. One overeager sword thrust would mean a fatal fall—if the gore crows didn’t kill her on the way down.

“I’ll have to summon a greater wind!” she yelled at Mogget, who was now sitting right up on her pack, fur bristling, yowling challenges at the crows. They were very close now, flying in an eerily exact formation—two long lines, like arms outstretched to snatch the fleeing Paperwing from the sky. Very little of their once-black plumage had survived their rushing dive, white bone shining through in the last light of the sun.

But their beaks were still glossily black and gleaming sharp, and Sabriel could now see the red glints of the fragmented Dead spirit in the empty sockets of their eyes.

Mogget didn’t reply. Possibly, he hadn’t even heard her above his yowling, and the gore crows’ cawing as they closed the last few yards to attack, a strange, hollow sound, as dead as their flesh.

For a second of panic, Sabriel felt her dry lips unable to purse, then she wet them and the whistle came, slow and erratic. The Charter marks felt clumsy and difficult in her head, as if she were trying to push a heavy weight on badly made rollers—then, with a last effort, they came easily, flowing into her whistled notes.

Unlike her earlier, gradual summonings, this wind came with the speed of a slamming door, howling up behind them with frightening violence, picking up the Paperwing and shunting it forward like a giant wave lifting up a slender boat. Suddenly, they were going so fast that Sabriel could barely make out the ground below, and the individual islands of the delta merged into one continuous blur of motion.

Eyes closed to protective slits, she craned her head around, the wind striking her face like a vicious slap. The pursuing gore crows were all over the sky now, formation lost, like small black stains against the red and purple sunset.

They were flapping uselessly, trying to come back together, but the Paperwing was already a league or more away. There was no chance they could catch up.

Sabriel let out a sigh of relief, but it was a sigh tempered with new anxieties. The wind was carrying them at a fearful pace, and it was starting to veer northwards, which it wasn’t supposed to do. Sabriel could see the first stars twinkling now, and they were definitely turning towards the Buckle.

It was an effort to call up the Charter marks again, and whistle the spell to ease the wind, and turn it back to the east, but Sabriel managed to cast it. But the spell failed to work—the wind grew stronger, and shifted more, till they were careening straight towards the Buckle, directly north.

Sabriel, hunkered down in the cockpit, eyes and nose streaming and face frozen, tried again, using all her willpower to force the Charter marks into the wind. Even to her, her whistle sounded feeble, and the Charter marks once again vanished into what had now become a gale. Sabriel realized she had totally lost control.

In fact, it was almost as if the spell had the opposite effect, for the wind grew wilder, snatching the Paperwing up in a great spiral, like a ball thrown between a ring of giants, each one taller than the last. Sabriel grew dizzy, and even colder, and her breath came fast and shallow, trying to salvage enough air to keep her alive. She tried to calm the winds again, but couldn’t gain the breath to whistle, and the Charter marks slipped from her mind, till all she could do was desperately hang on to the straps in the hammock-seat as the Paperwing tried its best to ride the storm.

Then, without warning, the wind ceased its upward dance. It just dropped, and with it went the Paperwing. Sabriel fell upwards, straps suddenly tight, and Mogget almost clawed through the pack in his efforts to stay connected with the aircraft. Jolted by this new development, Sabriel felt her exhaustion burn away. She tried to whistle the lifting wind, but it too was beyond her power. The Paperwing seemed unable to halt its headlong descent. It fell, nose tilting further and further forward till they were diving almost vertically, like a hammer rushing to the anvil of the ground below.

It was a long way down. Sabriel screamed once, then tried to put some of her fear-found strength into the Paperwing. But the marks flowed into her whistle without effect, save for a golden sparkle that briefly illuminated her white, wind-frozen face. The sun had completely set, and the dark mass of the ground below looked all too much like the grey river of Death—the river their spirits would cross into in a few short minutes, never to return to the warm light of Life.

“Loose my collar,” mewed a voice at Sabriel’s ear, followed by the curious sensation of Mogget digging his claws into her armor as he clambered into her lap. “Loose my collar!”

Sabriel looked at him, at the ground, at the collar. She felt stupid, starved of oxygen, unable to decide. The collar was part of an ancient binding, a terrible guardian of tremendous power. It would only be used to contain an inexpressible evil, or uncontrollable force.

“Trust me!” howled Mogget. “Loose my collar, and remember the ring!”

Sabriel swallowed, closed her eyes, fumbled with the collar and prayed that she was doing the right thing. “Father, forgive me,” she thought, but it was not just to her father that she spoke, but to all the Abhorsens who had come before her—especially the one who had made the collar so long ago.

Surprisingly for such an ancient spell, she felt little more than pins and needles as the collar came free. Then it was open, and suddenly heavy, like a lead rope, or a ball and chain.

Sabriel almost dropped it, but it became light again, then insubstantial. When Sabriel opened her eyes, the collar had simply ceased to exist.

Mogget sat still, on her lap, and seemed unchanged—then he seemed to glow with an internal light and expand, till he became frayed at the edges, and the light grew and grew. Within a few seconds, there was no cat-shape left, just a shining blur too bright to look at. It seemed to hesitate for a moment and Sabriel felt its attention flicker between aggression towards her and some inner struggle. It almost formed back into the cat-shape again, then suddenly split into four shafts of brilliant white. One shot forward, one aft, and two seemed to slide into the wings.

Then the whole Paperwing shone with fierce white brilliance, and it abruptly stopped its headlong dive and leveled out. Sabriel was flung violently forward, body checked by straps, but her nose almost hit the silver mirror, neck muscles cording out with an impossible effort to keep her head still.

Despite this sudden improvement, they were still falling. Sabriel, hands now clasped behind her savagely aching neck, saw the ground rushing up to fill the horizon. Treetops suddenly appeared below, the Paperwing imbued with the strange light, just clipping through the upper branches with a sound like hail on a tin roof.

Then, they dropped again, skimming scant yards above what looked like a cleared field, but still too fast to land without total destruction.

Mogget, or whatever Mogget had become, braked the Paperwing again, in a series of shuddering halts that added bruises on top of bruises.

For the first time, Sabriel felt the incredible relief of knowing that they would survive. One more braking effort and the Paperwing would be safely down, to skid a little in the long, soft grass of the field.

Mogget braked, and Sabriel cheered as the Paperwing gently lay its belly on the grass and slid to what should have been a perfect landing.

But the cheer suddenly became a shriek of alarm, as the grass parted to reveal the lip of an enormous dark hole directly in their path.

Too low to rise, and now too slow to glide over a hole at least fifty yards across, the Paperwing reached the edge, flipped over and spiraled towards the bottom of the hole, hundreds of feet below.