chapter xii

Sabriel regained consciousness slowly, her brain fumbling for connections to her senses. Hearing came first, but that only caught her own labored breathing, and the creak of her armored coat as she struggled to sit up. For the moment, sight eluded her, and she was panicked, afraid of blindness, till memory came. It was night, and she was at the bottom of a sinkhole—a great, circular shaft bored into the ground, by either nature or artifice. From her brief glimpse of it as they’d fallen, she guessed it was easily fifty yards in diameter and a hundred deep. Daylight would probably illuminate its murky depths, but starlight was insufficient.

Pain came next, hard on the heels of memory. A thousand aches and bruises, but no serious injury.

Sabriel wiggled her toes and fingers, flexed muscles in arms, back and legs. They all hurt, but everything seemed to work.

She vaguely recalled the last few seconds before impact—Mogget, or the white force, slowing them just before they hit—but the actual instant of the crash might never have been, for she couldn’t remember it. Shock, she thought to herself, in an abstract way, almost like she was diagnosing someone else.

Her next thought came some time later, and with it the realization that she must have passed out again. With this awakening, she felt a little sharper, her mind catching some slight breeze to carry her out of the mental doldrums. Working by touch, she unstrapped herself and felt behind her for the pack. In her current state, even a simple Charter-spell for light was out of the question, but there were candles there, and matches, or the clockwork igniter.

As the match flared, Sabriel’s heart sank. In the small, flickering globe of yellow light, she saw that only the central cockpit portion of the Paperwing survived—the sad blue and silver corpse of a once marvelous creation. Its wings lay torn and crumpled underneath it, and the entire nose section lay some yards away, shorn off completely. One eye stared up at the circular patch of sky above, but it was no longer fierce and alive. Just yellow paint and laminated paper.

Sabriel stared at the wreckage, regret and sorrow coursing like influenza in her bones, till the match burnt her fingers. She lit another, and then a candle, expanding both her light and field of vision.

More small pieces of the Paperwing were strewn over a large, open, flat area. Groaning with the effort of motivating bruised muscles, Sabriel levered herself out of the cockpit to have a closer look at the ground.

This revealed the flat area to be man-made; flagstones, carefully laid. Grass had long grown between the stones, and lichen upon them, so it was clearly not recent work. Sabriel sat on the cool stones and wondered why anyone would do such work at the bottom of a sinkhole.

Thinking about that seemed to kickstart her befuddled wits and she started to wonder about a few other things. Where, for instance, was the force that had once been Mogget? And what was it? That reminded her to fetch her sword and check the bells.

Her turbanned helmet had rotated around on her head and was almost back-to-front. Slowly, she slid it around, feeling every slight movement all the way down her now very stiff neck.

Balancing her first candle on the paving in a pool of cooling wax, she dragged her pack and weapons out of the wreckage and lit another two candles. She put one down near the first and took the other to light her way, walking around the destroyed Paperwing, searching for any sign of Mogget. At the dismembered prow of the craft, she gently touched the eyes, wishing she could close them.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “Perhaps I will be able to make a new Paperwing one day. There should be another, to carry on your name.”

“Sentiment, Abhorsen?” said a voice somewhere behind her, a voice that managed to sound like Mogget and not at all like him at the same time. It was louder, harsher, less human, and every word seemed to crackle, like the electric generators she’d used in Wyverley College Science classes.

“Where are you?” asked Sabriel, swiftly turning.

The voice had sounded close, but there was nothing visible within the sphere of candlelight.

She held her own candle higher, and transferred it to her left hand.

“Here,” snickered the voice, and Sabriel saw lines of white fire run out from under the ruined fuselage, lines that lit the paper laminate as they ran, so that, within a second, the Paperwing was burning fiercely, yellow-red flames dancing under thick white smoke, totally obscuring whatever had emerged from under the stricken craft.

No Death sense twitched, but Sabriel could almost smell the Free Magic; tangy, unnatural, nerve-jangling, tainting the thick odor of natural smoke. Then she saw the white fire-lines again, streaming out, converging, roiling, coming together—and a blazing, blue-white creature stepped out from the funeral pyre of the Paperwing.

Sabriel couldn’t look at it directly, but from the corners of her arm-shielded eyes, she saw something human in shape, taller than her, and thin, almost starved. It had no legs, the torso and head balanced upon a column of twisting, whirling force.

“Free, save for the blood price,” it said, advancing. All trace of Mogget’s voice was lost now, submerged in zapping, crackling menace.

Sabriel had no doubt about the meaning of a blood price and who would pay it. Summoning all her remaining energies, she called three Charter marks to the forefront of her mind, and hurled them towards the thing, shouting their names.

“Anet! Calew! Ferhan!”

The marks became silver blades as they left her hand, mind and voice, flashing through the air swifter than any thrown dagger—and went straight through the shining figure, apparently without effect.

It laughed, a series of rises and falls like a dog screaming in pain, and lazily slid forward. Its languid motion seemed to declare it would have no more trouble disposing of Sabriel than it had in burning the Paperwing.

Sabriel drew her sword and backed away, determined not to panic as she had done when faced by the Mordicant. Her head flicked backwards and forwards, neck pain forgotten, checking the ground behind her and marking her opponent. Her mind raced, considering options.

Perhaps one of the bells—but that would mean dropping her candle. Could she count on the creature’s blazing presence to light her way? Almost as if it could read her mind, the creature suddenly started to lose its brilliance, sucking darkness into its swirling body like a sponge soaking up ink. Within a few seconds, Sabriel could barely make it out—a fearful silhouette, back-lit by the orange glow of the burning Paperwing.

Desperately, Sabriel tried to remember what she knew of Free Magic elementals and constructs.

Her father had rarely mentioned them, and Magistrix Greenwood had only lightly delved into the subject. Sabriel knew the binding spells for two of the lesser kindred of Free Magic beings, but the creature before her was neither Margrue nor Stilken.

“Keep thinking, Abhorsen,” laughed the creature, advancing again. “Such a pity your head doesn’t work too well.”

“You saved it from not working forever,”

Sabriel replied warily. It had braked the Paperwing, after all, so perhaps there was some good in it somewhere, some remnant of Mogget, if only it could be brought out.

“Sentiment,” the thing replied, still silently sliding forward. It laughed again and a dark, tendril-like arm suddenly unleashed itself, snapping across the intervening space to strike Sabriel across the face.

“A memory, now purged,” it added, as Sabriel staggered back from a second attack, sword flashing across to parry. Unlike the silver spell darts, the Charter-etched blade did connect with the unnatural flesh of the creature, but had no effect apart from jarring Sabriel’s arm.

Her nose was bleeding too, a warm and salty flow, stinging her wind-chafed lips. She tried to ignore it, tried to use the pain of what was probably a broken nose to get her mind back to full operational speed.

“Memories, yes, many memories,” continued the creature. It was circling around her now, pushing her back the way they’d come, back towards the fading fire of the Paperwing. That would burn out soon, and then there would only be darkness, for Sabriel’s candle was now a lump of blown-out wax, falling forgotten from her hand.

“Millenia of servitude, Abhorsen. Chained by trickery, treachery . . . captive in a repulsive, fixedflesh shape . . . but there will be payment, slow payment—not quick, not quick at all!”

A tendril lashed out, low this time, trying to trip her. Sabriel leapt over it, blade extended, lunging for the creature’s chest. But it shimmied aside, extruding extra arms as she tried to jump back, catching her in mid-leap, drawing her close.

Sword-arm pinioned at her side, it tightened its grip, till she was close against its chest, her face a finger-width from its boiling, constantly moving flesh, as if a billion tiny insects buzzed behind a membrane of utter darkness.

Another arm gripped the back of her helmet, forcing her to look up, till she saw its head, directly above her. A thing of most basic anatomy, its eyes were like the sinkhole, deep pits without apparent bottom. It had no nose, but a mouth that split the horrid face in two, a mouth slightly parted to reveal the burning blue-white glare that it had first used as flesh.

All Charter Magic had fled from Sabriel’s mind. Her sword was trapped, the bells likewise, and even if they weren’t, she didn’t know how to use them properly against things not Dead. She ran over them mentally anyway, in a frantic, lightning inventory of anything that might help.

It was then her tired, concussed mind remembered the ring. It was on her left hand, her free hand, cool silver on the index finger.

But she didn’t know what to do with it—and the creature’s head was bowing down towards her own, its neck stretching impossibly long, till it was like a snake’s head rearing above her, the mouth opening wider, growing brighter, fizzing with white-hot sparks that fell upon her helmet and face, burning cloth and skin, leaving tiny, tattoo-like scars. The ring felt loose on her finger.

Sabriel instinctively curled her hand, and the ring felt looser still, slipping down her finger, expanding, growing, till without looking, Sabriel knew she held a silver hoop as wide or wider than the creature’s slender head. And she suddenly knew what to do.

“First, the plucking of an eye,” said the thing, breath as hot as the falling sparks, scorching her face with instant sunburn. It tilted its head sideways and opened its mouth still wider, lower jaw dislocating out.

Sabriel took one last, careful look, screwed her eyes tight against the terrible glare, and flipped the silver hoop up, and she hoped, over the thing’s neck.

For a second, as the heat increased and she felt a terrible burning pain against her eye, Sabriel thought she’d missed. Then the hoop was wrenched from her hand and she was thrown away, hurled out like an angry fisherman’s rejected minnow.

On the cool flagstones again, she opened her eyes, the left one blurry, sore and swimming with tears—but still there and still working.

She had put the silver hoop over the thing’s head, and it was slowly sliding down that long, sinuous neck. The ring was shrinking again as it slid, impervious to the creature’s desperate attempts to get it off. It had six or seven hands now, formed directly from its shoulders, all squirming about, trying to force fingers under the ring. But the metal seemed inimical to the creature’s substance, like a hot pan to human fingers, for the fingers flinched and danced around it, but could not take hold for longer than a second.

The darkness that stained it was ebbing too, draining down through its thrashing, twisting support, leaving glowing whiteness behind. Still the creature fought with the ring, blazing hands forming and re-forming, body twisting and turning, even bucking, as if it could throw the ring like a rider from a horse.

Finally, it gave up and turned towards Sabriel, screaming and crackling. Two long arms sprang out from it, reaching towards Sabriel’s sprawling body, talons growing from the hands, raking the stone with deep gouges as they scrabbled towards her, like spiders scuttling to their prey— only to fall short by a yard or more.

“No!” howled the thing, and its whole twisting, coiling body lurched forward, killing arms outstretched. Again, the talons fell short, as Sabriel crawled, rolled and pushed herself away.

Then the silver ring contracted once more, and a terrible shout of anguish, rage and despair came from the very center of the white-flaming thing. Its arms suddenly shrank back to its torso; the head fell into the shoulders, and the whole body sank into an amorphous blob of shimmering white, with a single, still-large silver band around the middle, the ruby glittering like a drop of blood.

Sabriel stared at it, unable to look aside, or do anything else, even quell the flow from her bleeding nose, which now covered half her face and chin, her mouth glued shut with dried and clotting blood. It seemed to her that something was left undone, something that she had to provide.

Nervously crawling closer, she saw that there were now marks on the ring, Charter marks that told her what she must do. Wearily, she got up on her knees and fumbled with the bellbandolier.

Saraneth was heavy, almost beyond her strength, but she managed to draw it out, and the deep, compelling voice rang through the sinkhole, seeming to pierce the glowing, silverbound mass.

The ring hummed in answer to the bell and exuded a pear-shaped drop of its own metal, which cooled to become a miniature Saraneth.

At the same time, the ring changed color and consistency. The ruby’s color seemed to run, and a red wash spread through the silver. It was now dull and ordinary, no longer a silver band, but a red leather collar, with a miniature silver bell.

With this change, the white mass quivered, and shone bright again, till Sabriel had to shield her eyes once more. When the shadows grew together again, she looked back, and there was Mogget, collared in red leather, sitting up and looking like he was about to throw up a hairball.

It wasn’t a hairball, but a silver ring, the ruby reflecting Mogget’s internal light. It rolled to Sabriel, tinkling across the stone. She picked it up and slid it back on her finger.

Mogget’s glow faded, and the burning Paperwing was now only faint embers, sad memories and ash. Darkness returned, cloaking Sabriel, wrapping her up with all her hurts and fears. She sat, silent, not even thinking.

A little later, she felt a soft cat nose against her folded hands, and a candle, damp from Mogget’s mouth.

“Your nose is still bleeding,” said a familiar, didactic voice. “Light the candle, pinch your nose, and get some blankets out for us to sleep.

It’s getting cold.”

“Welcome back, Mogget,” whispered Sabriel.