chapter v
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It was no more than a halfhour’s steady climb to the flat top of Clove, though the path grew steeper and more difficult. The wind was strong now and had cleared the sky, the moonlight giving form to the landscape. But without the clouds, it had grown much colder.Sabriel sidered a Charter-spell for warmth, but she was tired, and the effort of the spell might ore than the gain in warmth. She stopped instead and shrugged on a fleece-lined oilskin that had been handed down from her father. It was a bit worn and toe, needing severe bug-in with her sword-belt and the baldric that held the bells, but it was certainly windproof.
Feeliively warmer, Sabriel resumed climbing up the last, winding portion of the path, where the ine was so steep the pathmakers had resorted to cutting steps out of the graeps now worn and crumbling, proo sliding away underfoot.
So proo sliding, that Sabriel reached the top without realizing it, head down, her eyes searg in the moonlight for the solid part of the step. Her foot was actually half in the air before she realized that there wasn’t a step.
Clove lay before her. A narre where several slopes of the hill met to form a miniature plateau, with a slight depression in the middle. Snow lay in this depression, a fat, cigarshaped drift, bright in the moonlight, stark white against the red grahere were no trees, ation at all, but in the very ter of the drift, a dark grey stone cast a long moonshadow.
It was twice Sabriel’s girth and three times her height, and looked whole till she walked closer and saw the zigzag crack that cut it down the middle.
Sabriel had never seen a true Charter Stone before, but she khey were supposed to be like the Wall, with Charter marks running like quicksilver through the stone, f and dissolving, only to re-fain, in a neverending story that told of the making of the world.
There were Charter marks on this stone, but they were still, as frozen as the snow. Dead marks, nothing more than meaningless inscriptions, carved into a sculptured stone.
It wasn’t what Sabriel had expected, though she now realized that she hadn’t thought about it properly. She’d thought of lightning or suchlike as the splitter of the stone, but fotten lessons remembered too late told her that wasn’t so. Only some terrible power of Free Magic could split a Charter Stone.
She walked closer to the stone, fear rising in her like a toothache in its first growth, signaling worse to e. The wind was stronger and colder, too, out on the ridge, and the oilskin seemed less f, as its memories of her father brought back remembrance of certain pages of The Book of the Dead and tales of horror told by little girls in the darkness of their dormitory, far from the Old Kingdom.
Fears came with t<q>.</q>hese memories, till Sabriel wrestled them to the back of her mind, and forced herself closer to the stone.
Dark patches of . . . something . . . obscured some of the marks, but it wasn’t until Sabriel pushed her face almost to the stohat she could make out what they were, so dull and bla the moonlight.
When she did see, her head snapped up, and she stumbled backwards, almost overbalang into the snow. The patches were dried blood, and when she saw them, Sabriel knew how the stone had been broken, and why the blood hadn’t been ed away by rain or snow . . . why the stone never would be .
A Charter Mage had been sacrificed oone. Sacrificed by a neao gain access to Death, or to help a Dead spirit break through into Life.
Sabriel bit her lower lip till it hurt and her hands, almost unsciously, fidgeted, halfdrawing Charter marks in nervousness and fear.
The spell for that sort of sacrifice was in the last chapter of The Book of the Dead. She remembered it now, in siiail. It was one of the many things she seemed to have fotten from that green-bound book—or had been made tet. Only a very powerful neancer could use that spell. Only a totally evil one would want to. And evil breeds evil, evil taints places and makes them attractive to further acts of . . .
“Stop it!” whispered Sabriel aloud, to still her mind of its imaginings. It was dark, windy aing colder by the minute. She had to make a decision: to camp and call her guide, or to move on immediately in some random dire in the hope that she would be able to summon her guide from somewhere else.
The worst part of it all was that her guide was dead. Sabriel had to enter Death, albeit briefly, to call and verse with the guide. It would be easy to do so here, for the sacrifice had created a semi-perma entry, as if a door had been wedged ajar. But who knew what might be lurking, watg, in the cold river beyond.
Sabriel stood for a minute, shivering, listening, every sense trated, like some small animal that knoredator hunts nearby. Her mind ran through the pages of The Book of the Dead, and through the many hours she had spent learning Charter Magiagistrix Greenwood in the sunny North Tower of Wyverley College.
At the end of the minute, she khat camping was out of the question. She was simply thteo sleep anywhere he ruined Charter Stone. But it would be quicker to call her guide here—and the quicker she got to her father’s house, the sooner she could do something to help him, so a promise was called for. She would protect herself with Charter Magic as best she could, enter Death with all precaution, summon her guide, get dires a out as quickly as possible. Quicker, even.
With decision came a. Sabriel dropped her skis and pack, stuffed some dried fruit and homemade toffee in her mouth for quiergy, and adopted the meditative pose that made Charter Magic easier.
After bit of trouble with the toffee aeeth, she began. Symbols formed in her mind— the four cardinal Charter marks that were the poles of a diamo<bdo>.</bdo>nd that would protect her from both physical harm and Free Magic. Sabriel held them in her mind, fixed them in time, and pulled them out of the flow of the never-ending Charter.
Then, drawing her sword, she traced rough outlines in the snow around her, one mark at each cardinal point of the pass. As she finished each mark, she let the one in her mind run from her head to her hand, down the sword and into the snow. There, they ran like lines of golden fire and the marks became alive, burning on the ground.
The last mark was the North mark, the one closest to the destroyed stone, and it almost failed. Sabriel had to close her eyes and use all her will to force it to leave the sword. Even then, it was only a pallid imitation of the other three, burning so weakly it hardly melted the snow.
Sabriel ig, quelling the hat had brought bile to the back of her mouth, her body reag to the struggle with the Charter mark.
She khe North mark was weak, but golden lines had ruween all four points and the diamond was plete, if shaky. In any case, it was the best she could do. She sheathed her sword, took off her gloves, and fumbled with her bellbandolier, cold fingers ting the bells.
“Ranna,” she said aloud, toug the first, the smallest bell. Ranna the sleepbrihe sweet, low sound that brought silen its wake.
“Mosrael.” The sed bell, a harsh, rowdy bell. Mosrael was the waker, the bell Sabriel should never use, the bell whose sound was a seesaw, throwing the ringer further into Death, as it brought the listener into Life.
“Kibeth.” Kibeth, the walker. A bell of several sounds, a difficult and trary bell. It could give freedom of movement to one of the Dead, or walk them through the gate. Many a neancer had stumbled with Kibeth and walked where they would not.
“Dyrim.” A musical bell, of clear and pretty tone. Dyrim was the voice that the Dead so often lost. But Dyrim could also still a tohat moved too freely.
“Belgaer.” Arie bell, that sought t of its own accord. Belgaer was the thinking bell, the bell most neancers sed to use. It could restore indepehought, memory and all the patterns of a living person. Or, slipping in a careless hand, erase them.
“Sarah.” The deepest, lowest bell. The sound of strength. Sarah was the bihe bell that shackled the Dead to the wielder’s will.
And last, the largest bell, the one Sabriel’s cold fingers found colder still, even in the leather case that kept it silent.
“Astarael, the Sorrowful,” whispered Sabriel.
Astarael was the bahe final bell. Properly rung, it cast everyone who heard it far into Death. Everyone, including the r>藏书网</a>inger.
Sabriel’s hand hovered, touched on Ranna, and theled on Sarah. Carefully, she undid the strap and withdrew the bell. Its clapper, freed of the mask, rang slightly, like the growl of a waking bear.
Sabriel stilled it, holding the clapper with her palm ihe bell, ign the handle. With her right hand, she drew her sword and raised it to the guard position. Charter marks along the blade caught the moonlight and flickered into life. Sabriel watched them for a moment, as portents could sometimes be seen in such things.
Strange marks raced across the blade, before transmuting into the more usual inscription, ohat Sabriel knew well. She bowed her head, and prepared to enter into Death.
Unseen by Sabriel, the inscription began again, but parts of it were not the same. “I was made for Abhorsen, to slay those already Dead,” was what it usually said. Now it tinued, “The Clayr saw me, the Wallmaker made me, the King quenched me, Abhorsen wields me.”
Sabriel, eyes closed now, felt the boundary between Life ah appear. On her back, she felt the wind, now curiously warm, and the moonlight, bright and hot like sunshine. On her face, she felt the ultimate cold and, opening her eyes, saw the grey light of Death.
With an effort of will, her spirit stepped through, sword and bell prepared. Ihe diamond her body stiffened, and fog blew up in eddies around her feet, twining up her legs. Frost rimed her fad hands and the Charter marks flared at each apex of the diamond. Three steadied again, but the North mark blazed brighter still—a out.
The river ran swiftly, but Sabriel set her feet against the current and ignored both it and the cold, trating on looking around, alert for a trap or ambush. It was quiet at this particular entry point to Death. She could hear the water tumbling through the Sed Gate, but nothing else. No splashing, urgling, or strange mewlings.
No dark, formless shapes rim silhouettes, shadowy in this grey light.
Carefully holding her position, Sabriel looked all around her again, before sheathing her sword and reag into one of the thigh pockets in her woollen knickerbockers. The bell, Sarah, stayed ready in her left hand. With her right, she drew out a paper boat and, still one-handed, ope out to its proper shape. Beautifully white, almost luminous in this light, it had one small, perfectly round stain at its bow, where Sabriel had carefully blotted a drop of blood from her finger.
Sabriel laid it flat on her hand, lifted it to her lips, and blew on it as if she were laung a feather. Like a glider, it flew from her hand into the river. Sabriel held that laung breath as the boat was almost sed, only to breathe in with relief as it breasted a ripple, righted itself and surged away with the current. In a few seds it was out of sight, heading for the Sed Gate.
It was the sed time in her life that Sabriel had launched just such a paper boat. Her father had shown her how to make them, but had impressed oo use them sparingly. No more than thrice every seven years, he had said, or a price would have to be paid, a price much greater than a drop of blood.
As events should follow as they had the first time, Sabriel knew what to expect. Still, when the noise of the Sed Gate stilled for a moment some ten or twenty, or forty, minutes later—time being slippery ih—she drew her sword and Sarah hung down in her hand, its clapper free, waiting to be heard. The Gate had stilled because someone . . . something . . . was ing back from the deeper realms of Death.
Sabriel hoped it was the one she had invited with the paper boat.
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