chapter xii

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    Sabriel regained sciousness slowly, her brain fumbling for es 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 anicked, 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 illumis murky depths, but starlight was insuffit.

    Pain came , 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, bad legs. They all hurt, but everything seemed to work.

    She vaguely recalled the last few seds 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 hought 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 catg some slight breeze to carry her out of the mental doldrums. W by touch, she unstrapped herself a behind her for the pack. In her current state, even a simple Charter-spell fht was out of the question, but there were dles there, and matches, or the clockwniter.

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

    Sabriel stared at the wreckage, regret and sorrow c like influenza in her boill the match burnt her fingers. She lit another, and then a dle, 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 growweeones, and li upon them, so it was clearly not ret 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.

    Balang her first dle on the paving in a pool of cooling wax, she dragged her pad ons out of the wreckage and lit awo dles. She put one dowhe first and took the other to light her way, walking around the destroyed Paperwing, searg 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 w<s></s>ill be able to make a neerwing one day. There should be ao carry on your name.”

    “Se, Abhorsen?” said a voiewhere behind her, a voice that mao 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 electrierators she’d used in Wyverley College Sce classes.

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

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

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

    “Here,” snickered the voice, and Sabriel saw lines of white fire run out from uhe ruined fuselage, lihat lit the paper laminate as they ran, so that, within a sed, the Paperwing was burning fiercely, yellow-red flames dang uhick white smoke, totally obsg whatever had emerged from uhe stri craft.

    h sewitched, 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, verging, roiling, ing 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 ers 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 n of twisting, whirling force.

    “Free, save for the blood price,” it said, advang. All traogget’s voice was lost  now, submerged in zapping, crag menace.

    Sabriel had no doubt about the meaning of a blood prid 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.

    “A! Calew! Ferhan!”

    The marks became silver blades as they left her hand, mind and voice, flashing through the air swifter than any thrown dagger—a 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 Mordit. Her head flicked backwards and forwards, neck pain fotten, cheg the ground behind her and marking her oppo. Her mind raced, sidering options.

    Perhaps one of the bells—but that would mean dropping her dle. Could she t on the  creature’s blazing preseo light her way? Almost as if it could read her mind, the creature suddenly started to lose its brilliance, sug darkness into its swirling body like a sponge soaking up ink. Within a few seds, Sabriel could barely make it out—a fearful silhouette, back-lit by the e glow of the burning Paperwing.

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

    Her father had rarely mentiohem, and Magistrix Greenwood had only lightly delved into the subject. Sabriel khe binding spells for two of the lesser kindred of Free Magic beings, but the creature before her was her Margrue nor Stilken.

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

    “You saved it from not w 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.

    “Se,” 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 sed attack, sword flashing across to parry. Uhe silver spell darts, the Charter-etched blade did ect with the unnatural flesh of the creature, but had no effect apart from <dfn>藏书网</dfn>jarring Sabriel’s arm.

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

    “Memories, yes, many memories,” tihe creature. <s>.9９liｂ?</s>It was cirg around her now, pushing her back the way they’d e, back towards the fading fire of the Paperwing. That would burn out soon, and then there would only be darkness, for Sabriel’s dle was now a lump of blown-out wax, falling fotten from her hand.

    “Millenia of servitude, Abhorsen. ed by trickery, treachery . . . captive in a repulsive, fixedflesh shape . . . but there will be payment, slow payment—not quiot 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, extrudira arms as she tried to jump back, catg her in mid-leap, drawing her close.

    Sword-arm pi her side, it tightes grip, till she was close against its chest, her face a finger-width from its boiling, stantly moving flesh, as if a billion tiny is buzzed behind a membrane of utter darkness.

    Another arm gripped the back of her helmet, f her to look up, till she saw its head, directly above her. A thing of most basiatomy, its eyes were like the sinkhole, deep pits without apparent bottom. It had no nose, but a mouth that split the horrid fa 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 rahem mentally anyway, in a frantic, lightning iory of anything that might help.

    It was theired, cussed 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 stretg 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 ri loose on her finger.

    Sabriel instinctively curled her hand, and the ri looser still, slipping down her finger, expanding, growing, till without looking, Sabriel knew she held a silver hoop as wide or wider than the cbbr></abbr>reature’s slender head. And she suddenly knew what to do.

    “First, the plug of an eye,” said the thing, breath as hot as the falling sparks, scorg her face with instant sunburn. It tilted its head sideways and opes mouth still wider, lower jaw dislog 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 sed, 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 w.

    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 uhe 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 lohan a sed.

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

    Finally, it gave up and turowards Sabriel, screaming and crag. Two long arms sprang out from it, reag towards Sabriel’s sprawling body, talons growing from the hands, raking the stoh 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 tracted once more, and a terrible shout of anguish, rage and despair came from the very ter 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 siill-large silver band around the middle, the ruby glittering like a drop of blood.

    Sabriel stared at it, uo look aside, or do anything else, evehe flow from her bleeding nose, whiow covered half her fad , 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.

    Sarah was heavy, almost beyorength, but she mao draw it out, and the deep, pelling voice rang through the sinkhole, seeming to pierce the glowing, silverbound mass.

    The ring hummed in ao the bell and exuded a pear-shaped drop of its owal, which cooled to bee a miniature Sarah.

    At the same time, the ring ged color and sistency. 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 ge, 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  refleg Mogget’s internal light. It rolled to Sabriel, tinkling across the stone. She picked it up and slid it ba her finger.

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

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

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

    It’s getting cold.”

    “Wele back, Mogget,” whispered Sabriel.

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