chapter xvii

All the survivors of Nestowe were gathered in the largest of the fish-smoking sheds, save for the current shift of archers who watched the breakwater. There had been one hundred and twenty-six villagers the week before—now there were thirty-one.

“There were thirty-two until this morning,”

the Elder said to Sabriel, as he passed her a cup of passable wine and a piece of dried fish atop a piece of very hard, very stale bread. “We thought we were safe when we got to the island, but Monjer Stowart’s boy was found just after dawn today, sucked dry like a husk. When we touched him, it was like . . . burnt paper, that still holds its shape . . . we touched him, and he crumbled into flakes of . . . something like ash.”

Sabriel looked around as the old man spoke, noting the many lanterns, candles and rush tapers that added both to the light and the smoky, fishy atmosphere of the shed. The survivors were a very mixed group—men, women and children, from very young to the Elder himself. Their only common characteristic was the fear pinching their faces, the fear showing in their nervous, staccato movement.

“We think one of them’s here,” said a woman, her voice long gone beyond fear to fatalism. She stood alone, accompanied by the clear space of tragedy. Sabriel guessed she had lost her family.

Husband, children—perhaps parents and siblings, too, for she wasn’t over forty.

“It’ll take us, one by one,” the woman continued, matter-of-fact, her voice filling the shed with dire certainty. Around her, people shuffled, twitchily, not looking at her, as if to meet her gaze would be to accept her words.

Most looked at Sabriel and she saw hope in their eyes. Not blind faith, or complete confidence, but a gambler’s hope that a new horse might change a run of losses.

“The Abhorsen who came when I was young,”

the Elder continued—and Sabriel saw that at his age, this would be his memory alone, of all the villagers—“this Abhorsen told me that it was his purpose to slay the Dead. He saved us from the haunts that came in the merchant’s caravan. Is it still the same, lady? Will Abhorsen save us from the Dead?”

Sabriel thought for a moment, her mind mentally flicking through the pages of The Book of the Dead, feeling it stir in the backpack that sat by her feet. Her thoughts strayed to her father; the forthcoming journey to Belisaere; the way in which Dead enemies seemed to be arrayed against her by some controlling mind.

“I will ensure this island is free of the Dead,”

she said at last, speaking clearly so all could hear her. “But I cannot free the mainland village.

There is a greater evil at work in the Kingdom—that same evil that has broken your Charter Stone—and I must find and defeat it as soon as I can. When that is done, I will return— I hope with other help—and both village and Charter Stone will be restored.”

“We understand,” replied the Elder. He seemed saddened, but philosophic. He continued, speaking more to his people than to Sabriel. “We can survive here. There is the spring, and the fish. We have boats. If Callibe has not fallen to the Dead, we can trade, for vegetables and other stuffs.”

“You will have to keep watching the breakwater,”

Touchstone said. He stood behind Sabriel’s chair, the very image of a stern bodyguard.

“The Dead—or their living slaves— may try to fill it in with stones, or push across a bridge. They can cross running water by building bridges of boxed grave dirt.”

“So, we are besieged,” said a man to the front of the mass of villagers. “But what of this Dead thing already here on the island, already preying upon us? How will you find it?”

Silence fell as the questioner spoke, for this was the one answer everyone wanted to hear. Rain sounded loud on the roof in the absence of human speech, steady rain, as had been falling since late afternoon. The Dead disliked the rain, Sabriel thought inconsequentially, as she considered this question. Rain didn’t destroy, but it hurt and irritated the Dead. Wherever the Dead thing was on the island, it would be out of the rain.

She stood up with that thought. Thirty-one pairs of eyes watched her, hardly blinking, despite the cloying smoke from too many lanterns, candles and tapers. Touchstone watched the villagers; Mogget watched a piece of fish; Sabriel closed her eyes, questing outward with other senses, trying to feel the presence of the Dead.

It was there—a faint, concealed emanation, like an untraceable whiff of something rotten.

Sabriel concentrated on it, followed it, and found it, right there in the shed. The Dead was somehow hiding among the villagers.

She opened her eyes slowly, looking straight at the point where her senses told her the Dead creature lurked. She saw a fisherman, middleaged, his salt-etched face red under sun-bleached hair. He seemed no different than the others around him, listening intently for her reply, but there was definitely something Dead in him, or very close by. He was wearing a boat cloak, which seemed odd, since the smoking shed was hot from massed humanity and the many lights.

“Tell me,” Sabriel said. “Did anyone bring a large box with them out to the island? Something, say, an arm-span square a side, or larger? It would be heavy—with grave dirt.”

Murmurs and enquiries met this question, neighbors turning to each other, with little flowerings of fear and suspicion. As they talked, Sabriel walked out through them, surreptitiously loosening her sword, signaling Touchstone to stay close by her. He followed her, eyes flickering across the little groups of villagers. Mogget, glancing up from his fish, stretched and lazily stalked behind Touchstone’s heels, after a warning glare at the two cats who were eyeing the half-consumed head and tail of his fishy repast.

Careful not to alarm her quarry, Sabriel took a zigzag path through the shed, listening to the villagers with studied attention, though the blond fisherman never left the corner of her eye. He was deep in discussion with another man, who seemed to be growing more suspicious by the second.

Closer now, Sabriel was sure that the fisherman was a vassal of the Dead. Technically, he was still alive, but a Dead spirit had suppressed his will, riding on his flesh like some shadowy stringpuller, using his body as a puppet. Something highly unpleasant would be half-submerged in his back, under the boat cloak. Mordaut, they were called, Sabriel remembered. A whole page was devoted to these parasitical spirits in The Book of the Dead. They liked to keep a primary host alive, slipping off at night to sate their hunger from other living prey—like children.

“I’m sure I saw you with a box like that, Patar,” the suspicious fisherman was saying. “Jall Stowart helped you get it ashore. Hey, Jall!”

He shouted that last, turning to look at someone else across the room. In that instant, the Dead-ridden Patar exploded into action, clubbing his questioner with both forearms, knocking him aside, running to the door with the silent ferocity of a battering ram.

But Sabriel had expected that. She stood before him, sword at the ready, her left hand drawing Ranna, the sweet sleeper, from the bandolier.

She still hoped to save the man, by quelling the Mordaut.

Patar slid to a halt and half-turned, but Touchstone was there behind him, twin swords glowing eerily with shifting Charter marks and silver flames. Sabriel eyed the blades in surprise, she hadn’t known they were spelled. Past time she asked, she realized.

Then Ranna was free in her hand—but the Mordaut didn’t wait for the unavoidable lullaby.

Patar suddenly screamed, and stood rigid, the redness draining from his face, to be replaced by grey. Then his flesh crumpled and fell apart, even his bones flaking away to soggy ash as the Mordaut sucked all the life out of him in one voracious instant. Newly fed and strengthened, the Dead slid out from the falling cloak, a pool of squelching darkness. It took shape as it moved, becoming a large, disgustingly elongated sort of rat. Quicker than any natural rat, it scuttled towards a hole in the wall and escape! Sabriel lunged, her blade striking chips from the floor planks, missing the shadowy form by a scant instant.

Touchstone didn’t miss. His right-hand sword sheared through the creature just behind the head, the left-wielded blade impaling its sinuous midsection.

Pinned to the floor, the creature writhed and arched, its shadow-stuff working away from the blades. It was remaking its body, escaping the trap.

Quickly, Sabriel stood over it, Ranna sounding in her hand, sweet, lazy tone echoing out into the shed.

Before the echoes died, the Mordaut ceased to writhe. Form half-lost by its shifting from the swords, it lay like a lump of charred liver, quivering on the floor, still impaled.

Sabriel replaced Ranna, and drew the eager Saraneth. Its forceful voice snapped out, sound weaving a net of domination over the foul creature. The Mordaut made no effort to resist, even to make a mouth to whine its cause. Sabriel felt it succumb to her will, via the medium of Saraneth.

She put the bell back, but hesitated as her hand fell on Kibeth. Sleeper and Master had spoken well, but Walker sometimes had its own ideas, and it was stirring suspiciously under her hand.

Best to wait a moment, to calm herself, Sabriel thought, taking her hand away from the bandolier.

She sheathed her sword, and looked around the shed. To her surprise, everyone except Touchstone and Mogget was asleep. They had only caught the echoes of Ranna, which shouldn’t have been enough. Of course, Ranna could be tricksome too, but its trickery was far less troublesome.

“This is a Mordaut,” she said to Touchstone, who was stifling a half-born yawn. “A weak spirit, catalogued as one of the Lesser Dead. They like to ride with the Living—cohabiting the body to some extent, directing it, and slowly sipping the spirit away. It makes them hard to find.”

“What do we do with it now?” asked Touchstone, eyeing the quivering lump of shadow with distaste. It clearly couldn’t be cut up, consumed by fire, or anything else he could think of.

“I will banish it, send it back to die a true death,” replied Sabriel. Slowly, she drew Kibeth, using both hands. She still felt uneasy, for the bell was twisting in her grasp, trying to sound of its own accord, a sound that would make her walk in Death.

She gripped it harder and rang the orthodox backwards, forwards and figure eight her father had taught her. Kibeth’s voice rang out, singing a merry tune, a capering jig that almost had Sabriel’s feet jumping too, till she forced herself to be absolutely still.

The Mordaut had no such free will. For a moment, Touchstone thought it was getting away, the shadow form suddenly leaping upwards, unreal flesh slipping up his blades almost to the cross-hilts. Then, it slid back down again—and vanished. Back into Death, to bob and spin in the current, howling and screaming with whatever voice it had there, all the way through to the Final Gate.

“Thanks,” Sabriel said to Touchstone. She looked down at his two swords, still deeply embedded in the wooden floor. They were no longer burning with silver flames, but she could see the Charter marks moving on the blades.

“I didn’t realize your swords were ensorcelled,”

she continued. “Though I’m glad they are.”

Surprise crossed Touchstone’s face, and confusion.

“I thought you knew,” he said. “I took them from the Queen’s ship. They were a Royal Champion’s swords. I didn’t want to take them, but Mogget said you—”

He stopped in mid-sentence, as Sabriel let out a heartfelt sigh.

“Well, anyway,” he continued. “Legend has it that the Wallmaker made them, at the same time he—or she, I suppose—made your sword.”

“Mine?” asked Sabriel, her hand lightly touching the worn bronze of the guard. She’d never thought about who’d made the sword—it just was. “I was made for Abhorsen, to slay those already Dead,” the inscription said, when it said anything lucid at all. So it probably was forged long ago, back in the distant past when the Wall was made. Mogget would know, she thought.

Mogget probably wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell her—but he would know.

“I suppose we’d better wake everybody up,”

she said, dismissing speculation about swords for the immediate present.

“Are there more Dead?” asked Touchstone, grunting as he pulled his swords free of the floor.

“I don’t think so,” replied Sabriel. “That Mordaut was very clever, for it had hardly sapped the spirit of poor . . . Patar . . . so its presence was masked by his life. It would have come to the island in that box of grave dirt, having impressed the poor man with instructions before they left the mainland. I doubt whether any others would have done the same. I can’t sense any here, at least. I guess I should check the other buildings, and walk around the island, just to be sure.”

“Now?” asked Touchstone.

“Now,” confirmed Sabriel. “But let’s wake everyone up first, and organize some people to carry lights for us. We’d also better talk to the Elder about a boat for the morning.”

“And a good supply of fish,” added Mogget, who’d slunk back to the half-eaten whiting, his voice sharp above the heavy drone of snoring fisher-folk.

There were no Dead on the island, though the archers reported seeing strange lights moving in the village, during brief lulls in the rain. They’d heard movement on the breakwater too, and shot fire arrows onto the stones, but saw nothing before the crude, oily rag–wrapped shafts guttered out.

Sabriel advanced out on the breakwater, and stood near the sea gap, her oilskin coat loosely draped over her shoulders, shedding rain to the ground and down her neck. She couldn’t see anything through the rain and dark, but she could feel the Dead. There were more than she had sensed earlier, or they had grown much stronger. Then, with a sickening feeling, she realized that this strength belonged to a single creature, only now emerging from Death, using the broken stone as a portal. An instant later, she recognized its particular presence.

The Mordicant had found her.

“Touchstone,” she asked, fighting to keep the shivers from her voice. “Can you sail a boat by night?”

“Yes,” replied Touchstone, his voice impersonal again, face dark in the rainy night, the lantern-light from the villagers behind him lighting only his back and feet. He hesitated, as if he shouldn’t be offering an opinion, then added, “But it would be much more dangerous. I don’t know this coast, and the night is very dark.”

“Mogget can see in the dark,” Sabriel said quietly, moving closer to Touchstone so the villagers couldn’t hear her.

“We have to leave immediately,” she whispered, while pretending to adjust her oilskin. “A Mordicant has come. The same one that pursued me before.”

“What about the people here?” asked Touchstone, so softly the sound of the rain almost washed his words away—but there was the faint sound of reproof under his business-like tone.

“The Mordicant is after me,” muttered Sabriel. She could sense it moving away from the stone, questing about, using its otherwordly senses to find her. “It can feel my presence, as I feel it. When I go, it will follow.”

“If we stay till morning,” Touchstone whispered back, “won’t we be safe? You said even a Mordicant couldn’t cross this gap.”

“I said, ‘I think,’” faltered Sabriel. “It has grown stronger. I can’t be sure—”

“That thing back in the shed, the Mordaut, it wasn’t very difficult to destroy,” Touchstone whispered, the confidence of ignorance in his voice. “Is this Mordicant much worse?”

“Much,” replied Sabriel shortly.

The Mordicant had stopped moving. The rain seemed to be dampening both its senses and its desire to find her and slay. Sabriel stared vainly out into the darkness, trying to peer past the sheets of rain, to gain the evidence provided by sight, as well as her necromantic senses.

“Riemer,” she said, loudly now, calling to the villager who was in charge of their lanternholders.

He came forward quickly, gingery hair plastered flat on his rounded head, rainwater dripping down from a high forehead to catapult itself off the end of his pudgy nose.

“Riemer, have the archers keep very careful watch. Tell them to shoot anything that comes onto the breakwater—there is nothing living out there now. Only the Dead. We need to go back and talk to your Elder.”

They walked back in silence, save for the sloshing of boots in puddles and the steady finger-applause of the rain. At least half of Sabriel’s attention stayed with the Mordicant; a malign, stomachache-inducing presence across the dark water. She wondered why it was waiting.

Waiting for the rain to stop, or perhaps for the now-banished Mordaut to attack from within. Whatever its reasons, it gave them a little time to get to a boat, and lead it away. And perhaps, there was always the chance that it couldn’t cross the breakwater gap.

“What time is low tide?” she asked Riemer, as a new thought struck.

“Ah, just about an hour before dawn,” replied the fisherman. “About six hours, if I’m any judge.”

The Elder awoke crankily from his second sleep. He was loath for them to go in the night, though Sabriel felt that at least half of his reluctance was due to their need for a boat. The villagers only had five left. The others had been sunk in the harbor, drowned and broken by the stones hurled down by the Dead, eager to stop the escape of their living prey.

“I’m sorry,” Sabriel said again. “But we must have a boat and we need it now. There is a terrible Dead creature in the village—it tracks like a hunting dog, and the trail it follows is mine. If I stay, it will try and come here—and, at the ebb, it may be able to cross the gap in the breakwater.

If I go, it will follow.”

“Very well,” the Elder agreed, mulishly. “You have cleansed this island for us; a boat is a little thing. Riemer will prepare it with food and water. Riemer! The Abhorsen will have Landalin’s boat—make sure it is stocked and seaworthy. Take sails from Jaled, if Landalin’s is short or rotten.”

“Thank you,” said Sabriel. Tiredness weighed down on her, tiredness and the weight of awareness.

Awareness of her enemies, like a darkness always clouding the edge of her vision. “We will go now. My good wishes stay with you, and my hopes for your safety.”

“May the Charter preserve us all,” added Touchstone, bowing to the old man. The Elder bowed back, a bent, solemn figure, so much smaller than his shadow, looming tall on the wall behind.

Sabriel turned to go, but a long line of villagers was forming on the way to the door. All of them wanted to bow or curtsey before her, to mutter shy thank-yous and farewells. Sabriel accepted them with embarrassment and guilt, remembering Patar. True, she had banished the dead, but another life had been lost in the doing. Her father would not have been so clumsy . . .

The second-to-last person in the line was a little girl, her black hair tied in two plaits, one on either side of her head. Seeing her made Sabriel remember something Touchstone had said. She stopped, and took the girl’s hands in her own.

“What is your name, little one?” she asked, smiling. A feeling of déjà vu swept over her as the small fingers met hers—the memory of a frightened first-grader hesitantly reaching out to the older pupil who would be her guide for the first day at Wyverley College. Sabriel had experienced both sides, in her time.

“Aline,” said the girl, smiling back. Her eyes were bright and lively, too young to be dimmed by the frightened despair that clouded the adults’ gaze. A good choice, Sabriel thought.

“Now, tell me what you have learned in your lessons about the Great Charter,” Sabriel said, adopting the familiar, motherly and generally irrelevant questioning tone of the School Inspector who’d descended on every class in Wyverley twice a year.

“I know the rhyme . . .” replied Aline, a little doubtfully, her small forehead crinkling. “Shall I sing it, like we do in class?”

Sabriel nodded.

“We dance around the stone, too,” Aline added, confidingly. She stood up straighter, put one foot forward, and took her hands away to clasp them behind her back.

Five Great Charters knit the land together linked, hand in hand One in the people who wear the crown Two in the folk who keep the Dead down Three and Five became stone and mortar Four sees all in frozen water.

“Thank you, Aline,” Sabriel said. “That was very nice.”

She ruffled the child’s hair and hastened through the final farewells, suddenly keen to get out of the smoke and the fish-smell, out into the clean, rainy air where she could think.

“So now you know,” whispered Mogget, jumping up into her arms to escape the puddles.

“I still can’t tell you, but you know one’s in your blood.”

“Two,” replied Sabriel distantly. “‘Two in the folk who keep the Dead down.’ So what is the . . . ah . . . I can’t talk about it either!”

But she thought about the questions she’d like to ask, as Touchstone helped her aboard the small fishing vessel that lay just off the tiny, shell-laden beach that served the island as a harbor.

One of the Great Charters lay in the royal blood. The second lay in Abhorsen’s. What were three and five, and four that saw all in frozen water? She felt certain that many answers could be found in Belisaere. Her father could probably answer more, for many things that were bound in Life were unraveled in Death. And there was her mother-sending, for that third and final questioning in this seven years.

Touchstone pushed off, clambered aboard and took the oars. Mogget leapt out of Sabriel’s arms, and assumed a figurehead position near the prow, serving as a night-sighted lookout, while mocking Touchstone at the same time.

Back on shore, the Mordicant suddenly howled, a long, piercing cry that echoed far across the water, chilling hearts on both boat and island.

“Bear a bit more to starboard,” said Mogget, in the silence after the howl faded. “We need more sea-room.”

Touchstone was quick to comply.