chapter x

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    The arrival of the floodwaters was heralded by great ks of ice that came battering against the wooden bridge of grave dirt boxes like storm-borne icebergs ramming anchored ships. Ice shattered, wood splintered; a regular drumming that beat out a warning, announg the great wave that followed the outriding ice.

    Dead Hands and living slaves scurried back along the coffin bridge, the Dead’s shadowy bodies losing shape as they ran, so they became like long, this of black crepe, squirming and sliding over rocks and boxes, throwing human slaves aside without mercy, desperate to escape the destru that came r down the river.

    Sabriel, watg from the tower, felt the people die, vulsively swallowing as she seheir last breaths gurgling, sug water instead of air. Some of them, at least two pairs, had deliberately thrown themselves into the river, choosing a final death, rather than risk eternal bondage. Most had been knocked, pushed or simply scared aside by the Dead.

    The wavefront of the flood came swiftly after the ice, shouting as it came, a higher, fiercer roar than the deep bellow of the waterfall. Sabriel heard it for several seds before it rouhe last bend of the river, then su<big></big>ddenly, it was almost upon her. A huge, vertical wall of water, with ks of i its crest like marble battlements and all the debris of four hundred miles swilling about in its muddy body. It looked enormous, far taller than the island’s walls, taller even thaower where Sabriel stared, shocked at the power she had unleashed, a power she had hardly dreamed possible when she’d summo the night before.

    It had been a simple enough summoning.

    Mogget had takeo the cellar and then down a winding, narrow stair, that grew colder and colder as they desded. Finally, they  reached a strange grotto, where icicles hung and Sabriel’s breath blew clouds of white, but it was no longer cold, or perhaps so cold she no longer felt it. A block of pure, blue-white ice stood upon a stoal, both limned with Charter marks, marks strange aiful.

    Then, following Mogget’s instru, she’d simply placed her hand on the ice, and said, “Abhorsen pays her respects to the Clayr, and requests the gift of water.” That was all. They’d gone back up the stairs, a sending locked the cellar door behind them, and another brought Sabriel a nightshirt and a cup of hot chocolate.

    But that simple ceremony had summoned something that seemed totally out of trol.

    Sabriel watched the wave rag towards them, trying to calm herself, but her breath raced in and out as quickly as her stomach flipped over.

    Just as the wave hit, she screamed and ducked uhe telescope.

    The whole tower shook, stones screeg as they moved, and for a moment, even the sound of the waterfall was lost in a crack that sounded as if the island had been leveled by the first shock of the wave.

    But, after a few seds, the floor stopped  shaking, and the crash of the flood subsided to a trolled roar, like a shouting drunk made aware of pany. Sabriel hauled herself up the tripod and opened her eyes.

    The walls had held, and though now the wave ast, the river still raged a mere handspan below the island’s defenses and was almost up to the tunnel doors oher bank.

    There was no sign of the stepping-stohe coffin bridge, the Dead, or any people—just a wide, brown rushing torrent, carrying debris of all descriptions. Trees, bushes, parts of buildings, livestock, ks of ice—the flood had claimed its tribute from every riverbank for hundreds of miles.

    Sabriel looked at this evidence of destru and inwardly ted the number of villagers who had died on the grave boxes. Who knew how many other lives had been lost, or livelihoods threatened, upstream? Part of her tried to rationalize her use of the flood, tellihat she had to do it in order to fight on against the Dead. Another part said she had simply summohe flood to save herself.

    Mogget had no time for sutrospe or pangs of responsibility. He left  her watg, blank-eyed, for no more than a minute, before padding forward and delicately iing his claws in Sabriel’s slippered foot.

    “Ow! What did you—”

    “There’s no time to waste sightseeing,”

    Mogget said. “The sendings are readying the Paperwing on the Eastern wall. And your clothing and gear have been ready for at least bbr>９9ｌｉb?</abbr>half an hour.”

    “I’ve got all . . .” Sabriel began, then she remembered that her pad skis lay at the bottom end of the entraunnel, probably as a pile of Mordit-burned ash.

    “The sendings have got everything you’ll need, and a few things you won’t, knowing them.

    You  get dressed, pack up, and head off for Belisaere. I take it you io go to Belisaere?”

    “Yes,” replied Sabriel shortly. She could detect a tone of smugness in Mogget’s voice.

    “Do you know how to get there?”

    Sabriel was silent. Mogget already khe answer was “no.” Hehe smugness.

    “Do you have a . . . er . . . map?”

    Sabriel shook her head, g her fists as she did so, resisting the urge to lean forward and spank Mogget, or perhaps give his tail a  judicious tug. She had searched the study and asked several of the sendings, but the only map in the house seemed to be the starmap iower. The map el Horyse had told her about must still be with Abhorsen. With Father, Sabbbr></abbr>riel thought, suddenly fused about their identities. If she was now Abhorsen, who was her father? Had he too once had a hat was lost in the responsibility of being Abhorsen? Everything that had seemed so certain and solid in her life a few days ago was crumbling. She didn’t even know who she was really, and trouble seemed to beset her from all sides—even a supposed servant of Abhorsen like Mogget seemed to provide more trouble than service.

    “Do you have anything positive to say—anything that might actually help?” she snapped.

    Mogget yawned, showing a pink tohat seemed to tain the very essence of s.

    “Well, yes. Of course. I know the way, so I’d better e with you.”

    “e with me?” Sabriel asked, genuinely surprised. She unched her fists, bent down, and scratched betwee’s ears, till he ducked away.

    “Someone has to look after you,” Mogget  added. “At least till you’ve grown into a real Abhorsen.”

    “Thank you,” said Sabriel. “I think. But I would still like a map. Since you know the try so well, would it be possible for you to—I don’t know—describe it, so I  make a sketch map or something?”

    Mogget coughed, as if a hairball had suddenly lodged in his throat, and thrust his head back a little. “You! Draw a sketch map? If you must have one, I think it would be better if I uook the cartography myself. e down to the study and put out an inkwell and paper.”

    “As long as I get a useable map I don’t care who draws it,” Sabriel remarked, as she went backwards down the ladder. She tilted her head to watogget came down, but there was only the open trapdoor. A sarcastic meow under her feet annouhat Mogget had once again mao get between rooms without visible means of support.

    “Ink and paper,” the cat reminded her, jumping up onto the dragon desk. “The thick paper.

    Smooth side up. Don’t bother with a quill.”

    Sabriel followed Mogget’s instrus, then watched with a resigned dession that  rapidly ged to surprise as the cat crouched by the square of paper, his strange shadow falling on it like a dark cloak thrown <cite>藏书网</cite>across sand, pink to in tration. Mogget seemed to think for a moment, then one bright ivory claw shot out from a white pad—he delicately ihe claw in the inkwell, and began to draw. First, a rough outline, in swift, bold strokes; the penning in of the majeographical features; then the delicate process of adding important sites, eaamed in fine, spidery writing. Last of all, Mogget marked Abhorsen’s House with a small illustration, before leaning baire his handiwork, and lick the ink from his paw. Sabriel waited a few seds to be sure he was dohen cast drying sand over the paper, her eyes trying to absorb every detail, i on learning the physical face of the Old Kingdom.

    “You  look at it later,” Mogget said after a few minutes, when his paw was , but Sabriel was still bent over the table, nose inches from the map. “We’re still in a hurry. You’d better go a dressed, for a start. Do try to be quick.”

    “I will.” Sabriel smiled, still looking at the map. “Thank you, Mogget.”

    The sendings had laid out a great pile of clothes and equipment in Sabriel’s room, and four of them were in attendao help her get everything on and anized. She had hardly stepped inside before they’d stripped her indoor dress and slippers off, and she’d only just mao remove her own underclothes befhostly Charter-traced hands tickled her sides.

    A few seds later, she was suffering them anyway, as they pulled a thin, cotton-like undergarment over her head, and a pair of baggy drawers up her legs.  came a linen shirt, then a tunic of doeskin and breeches of supple leather, reinforced with some sort of hard, segmented plates at thighs, knees and shins, not to mention a heavily padded bottom, no doubt designed for riding.

    A brief respite followed, lulling Sabriel into thinking that might be it, but the sendings had merely been arranging the  layer for immediate fitting. Two of them pushed her arms into a long, armored coat that buckled up at the sides, while the other two unlaced a pair of hobnailed boots and waited.

    The coat wasn’t like anything Sabriel had ever worn before, including the mail hauberk she’d worn in Fighting Arts lessons at school. It was as long as an hauberk, with split skirt<s></s>s ing down to her knees and sleeves swallowtailed at her wrists, but it seemed to be entirely made of tiny overlapping plates, much like a fish’s scales. They weren’t metal, either, but some sort of ceramic, or even stone. Much lighter than steel, but clearly very strong, as one sending demonstrated, by cutting down it with a dagger, striking sparks without leaving a scratch.

    Sabriel thought the boots pleted the ensemble, but as the laces were done up by one pair of sendings, the other pair were ba a. One raised peared to be a blue and silver striped turban, but Sabriel, pulling it down to just above her eyebrows, found it to be a cloth-ed helmet, made from the same material as the armor.

    The other sending waved out a gleaming, deep blue surcoat, dusted with embroidered silver keys that reflected the light in all dires. It waved the coat to and fro for a moment, then whipped it over Sabriel’s head and adjusted the drape with a practiced motion. Sabriel ran her hand over its silken expanse and discreetly tried to rip  it in one er, but, for all its apparent fragility, it wouldn’t tear.

    Last of all came sword-belt and bell-bandolier.

    The sendings brought them to her, but made no attempt to put them on. Sabriel adjusted them herself, carefully arranging bells and scabbard, feeling the familiar weight—bells across her breast and sword balanced on her hip. She turo the mirror and looked at her refle, both pleased and troubled by what she saw. She looked petent, professional, a traveler who could look after herself. At the same time, she looked less like someone called Sabriel, and more like the Abhorsen, capital letter and all.

    She would have looked longer, but the sendings tugged at her sleeves and directed her attention to the bed. A leather backpack lay open on it and, as Sabriel watched, the sendings packed it with her remaining old clothes, including her father’s oilskin, spare undergarments, tunid trousers, dried beef and biscuits, a water bottle, and several small leather pouches full of useful things, each of which were painstakingly opened and shown to her: telescope, sulphur matches, clockwork firestarter, medial herbs, fishing hooks and line, a sewing kit and a host of other  small essentials. The three books from the library and the map went into oilskin pouches, and then into an outside pocket.

    Backpa, Sabriel tried a few basic exercises, and was relieved to find that the armor didn’t restrict her too much—hardly at all in fact, though the pack was not something she’d like to have on in a fight. She could even touch her toes, so she did, several times, before straightening up to thank the sendings.

    They were gone. Instead, there was Mogget, stalking mysteriously towards her from the middle of the room.

    “Well, I’m ready,” Sabriel said.

    Mogget didn’t answer, but sat at her feet, and made a movement that looked very much like he was going to be sick. Sabriel recoiled, disgusted, then halted, as a small metallic object fell from Mogget’s mouth and bounced on the floor.

    “Almost fot,” said Mogget. “You’ll his if I’m to e with you.”

    “What is it?” asked Sabriel, bending down to pick up a ring; a small silver ring, with a ruby gripped between two silver claws that grew out of the band.

    “Old,” replied Mogget, enigmatically. “You’ll  know if you o use it. Put it on.”

    Sabriel looked at it closely, holding it between two fingers as she sla towards the light. It felt, and looked, quite ordinary. There were no Charter marks oone or band; it seemed to have no emanations or aura. She put it on.

    It felt cold as it slipped down her fihen hot, and suddenly she was falling, falling into infinity, into a void that had no end and no beginning. Everything was gone, all light, all substahen Charter marks suddenly exploded all around her and she felt gripped by them, halting her headlong fall into nothing, accelerating her back up, bato her body, back to the world of life ah.

    “Free Magic,” Sabriel said, looking down at the ring gleaming on her finger. “Free Magic, ected to the Charter. I don’t uand.”

    “You’ll know if you o use it,” Mogget repeated, almost as if it were some lesson to be learned by rote. Then, in his normal voice: “Don’t worry about it till then. e—the Paperwing is ready.”

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