chapter xiii

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    her Sabriel nget mentiohe happenings of the previous night when they awoke. Sabriel, bathing her seriously swollen nose in an inch of water from her teen, found that she didn’t particularly want to remember a waking nightmare, and Mogget was quiet, in an apologetic way. Despite what happened later, freeing Mogget’s alter ego, or whatever it was, had saved them from certairu by the wind.

    As she’d expected, dawn had brought some light to the sinkhole, and as the day progressed, this had grown to a level approximating twilight.

    Sabriel could read ahings close by quite clearly, but they merged into indistinct gloom twenty or thirty yards away.

    Not that the sinkhole was much larger than that—perhaps a hundred yards in diameter, not the fifty she’d guessed at when she was ing down. The entire floor of it aved, with a circular drain in the middle, and there were several tunrances into the sheer rock walls—tunnels which Sabriel knew she would eventually have to take, as there was no water in the sinkhole. There seemed little ce of raiher. It was cool, but nowhere near as cold as the plateau near Abhorsen’s House.

    The climate was mitigated by proximity to the o, and an altitude that could easily be sealevel or below, for in daylight Sabriel could see that the sinkhole was at least a hundred yards deep.

    Still, with a half-full teen of water gurgling by her side, Sabriel was quite tent to slouch upon her slightly scorched pad apply herbal creams to her bruises, and a poultice of evilsmelling tanmaril leaves to her strange sunburn.

    Her nose was a different matter when it came to treatment. It wasn’t broken—merely hideous, swollen and encrusted with dried blood, which hurt too much to  off pletely.

    Mogget, after an hour or so of sheepish silence,  sauntered off to explore, refusing Sabriel’s offer of hard cakes and dried meat for breakfast. She expected he’d find a rat, or something equally appetizing, instead. In a way, she was quite pleased he was gohe memory of the Free Magic beast that lay withitle white cat was still disturbing.

    Even so, when the sun had risen to bee a little disc surrounded by the greater circumference of the sinkhole’s rim, she started to wonder why he hadn’t e back. Levering herself up, she limped over to the tunnel he’d chosen, using her sword as a walking stid plaining quietly as every bruise reminded her of its location.

    Of course, just as she was lighting a dle at the tunrance Mogget reappeared behind her.

    “Looking for me?” he mewed, ily.

    “Who else?” replied Sabriel. “Have you found anything? Anything useful, I mean. Water, for instance.”

    “Useful?” mused Mogget, rubbing his  back along his two outstretched front legs.

    “Perhaps. Iing, certainly. Water? Yes.”

    “How far away?” asked Sabriel, all too aware  of her bruise-limited mobility. “And what does iing mean? Dangerous?”

    “Not far, by this tunnel,” replied Mogget.

    “There is a little danger getting there—a trap and a few other oddments, but nothing that will harm you. As to the iing part, you will have to see for yourself, Abhorsen.”

    “Sabriel,” said Sabriel automatically, as she tried to think ahead. She  least two days’ rest, but no more than that. Every day lost before she found her father’s corporeal body might mean disaster. She simply had to find him soon.

    A Mordit, Shadow Hands, gore crows—it was now all too clear that some terrible enemy was arrayed against both father and daughter.

    That enemy had already trapped her father, so it had to be a very powerful neancer, or some Greater Dead creature. Perhaps this Kerrigor . . .

    “I’ll get my pack,” she decided, trudging back, Mogget slipping backwards and forwards across her path like a kitten, almost tripping her, but always just getting out of the way. Sabriel put this down to inexplicable ess, and didn’t ent.

    As Mogget had promised, the tunnel wasn’t  long, and its well-made steps and cross-hatched floor made passage easy, save for the part where Sabriel had to follow the little cat exactly across the stoo avoid a cleverly cealed pit.

    Without Mogget’s guidance, Sabriel knew she would have fallen in.

    There were magical wardings too. Old, inimical spells lay like moths in the ers of the tunnel, waiting to fly up at her, to surround and choke her with power—but something checked their first rea and they settled again. A few times, Sabriel experienced a ghostly touch, like a hand reag out to brush the Charter mark on her forehead, and almost at the end of the tunnel, she saw two guard sendings melting into the rock, the tips of their halberds glinting in her dlelight before they, too, merged into stone.

    “Where are we going?” she whispered, nervously, as the door in front of them slowly creaked open—without visible means of propulsion.

    “Another sinkhole,” Mogget said, matter-offactly.

    “It is where the First Blood . . . ach . . .”

    He choked, hissed, and then rephrased his senteher drably, with “It is iing.”

    “What do you mean—” Sabriel began, but she fell silent as they passed the doorway, magical force suddenly tugging at her hair, her hands, her surcoat, the hilt of her sword. Mogget’s fur stood on end, and his.. collar rotated halfway around of its own accord, till the Charter marks of binding were uppermost and clearly readable, bright against the leather.

    Then they were out, standing at the bottom of another sinkhole, in a premature twilight, for the sun was already slipping over the circumscribed horizon of the sinkhole rim.

    This sinkhole was much wider than the first— perhaps a mile across, and deeper, say six or seven hundred feet. Despite its size, the entire vast pit was sealed off from the upper air by a gleaming, web-thi, which seemed te into the rim wall about a quarter of the way down from the surface. Sunlight had given it away, but even so, Sabriel had to use her telescope to see the delicate diamond-pattern weave clearly. It looked flimsy, but the presence of several dessicated bird-corpses indicated siderable strength. Sabriel guessed the unfortunate birds had dived into the , eyes greedily i on food below.

    In the sinkhole itself, there was siderable, if uninspiriation—mostly sturees and malformed bushes. But Sabriel had little attention to spare for the trees, for iween each of these straggling patches of greenery, there were paved areas—and on each of these paved areas rested a ship.

    Fourteen open-decked, single-masted longboats, their black sails set to catch a ent wind, oars out to battle an imaginary tide. They flew many flags and standards, all limp against mast and rigging, but Sabriel didn’t o see them unfurled to know what strange cargo these ships might bear. She’d heard of this place, as had every child in the Northern parts of Aierre, close to the Old Kingdom. Hundreds of tales of treasure, adventure and romance were woven around this strange harbor.

    “Funerary ships,” said Sabriel. “Royal ships.”

    She had further firmation that this was so, for there were binding spells woven into the very dirt her feet scuffed at the tunrance, spells of final death that could only have been laid by an Abhorsen. No neancer would ever raise any of the a rulers of the Old Kingdom.

    “The famous burial ground of the First . . .

    ckkk . . . the Kings and Queens of the Old Kingdom,” pronounced Mogget, after some difficulty.

    He danced around Sabriel’s feet, then stood on his hind legs and made expansive gestures, like a circus impresario in white fur.

    Finally, he shot off into the trees.

    “e on—there’s a spring, spring, spring!” he caroled, as he leaped up and down in time with his words.

    Sabriel followed at a slower pace, shaking her head and w what had happeo make Mogget so cheerful. She felt bruised, tired and depressed, shaken by the Free Magister, and sad about the Paperwing.

    They passed close by two of the ships on their way to the spring. Mogget led her a merry dance around both of them, in a mad ciravigation of twists, leaps and bounds, but the sides were too high to look in and she didn’t feel like shinning up an oar. She did pause to look at the figureheads— imposing men, one in his forties, the other somewhat older. Both were bearded, had the same imperious eyes, and wore armor similar to Sabriel’s, heavily festooned with medallions, s and other decorations. Each held a sword in his right hand, and an unfurling scroll that  turned ba itself in their left—the heraldic representation of the Charter.

    The third ship was different. It seemed shorter and less ornate, with a bare mast devoid of black sails. No oars sprang from its sides, and as Sabriel reached the spring that lay us stern, she saw uncaulked seams between the planking, and realized that it was inplete.

    Curious, she dropped her pack by the little pool of bubbling water and walked around to the bow.

    This was different too, for the figurehead was a young man—a naked young man, carved in perfect detail.

    Sabriel blushed a little, for it was a likeness, as if a young man had been transformed from flesh to wood, and her only prior experience of naked men was in ical cross-ses from biology textbooks. His muscles were lean and well-formed, his hair short and tightly curled against his head. His hands, well-shaped and elegant, were partly raised, as if to ward off some evil.

    The detail eveeo a circumcised penis, which Sabriel gla in an embarrassed way, before looking back at his face. He was ly handsome, but not displeasing.

    It was a responsible visage, with the shocked expression of someone who has beerayed and only just realized it. There was fear there, too, and something like hatred. He looked more than a little mad. His expression troubled her, for it seemed too human to be the result of a woodcarver’s skill, no matter how talented.

    “Too life-like,” Sabriel muttered, stepping back from the figurehead, hand falling to the hilt of her sword, her magical senses reag out, seeking some trap or deception.

    There was no trap, but Sabriel did feel something in or around the figurehead. A feeling similar to that of a Dead revenant, but not the same— a niggliion that she couldn’t place.

    Sabriel tried to identify it, while she looked over the figurehead again, carefully examining him from every ahe man’s body was an intellectual problem now, so she looked without embarrassment, studying his fingers, fingernails and skin, noting how perfectly they were carved, right down to the tiny scars <tt>?t>on his hands, the product of sword and dagger practice. There was also the faint sign of a baptismal Charter mark on his forehead, and the pale trace of veins on his eyelids.

    That iion led her to certainty about what she’d detected, but she hesitated about the a that should be taken, a in searogget. Not that she put a lot of faith in advice or answers from that quarter, given his present propensity towards behaving as a fairly silly cat—though perhaps this was a rea to his brief experience of being a Free Magic beast again, something that might not have happened for a millennium. The cat form robably a wele relief.

    In fao advice at all could be had from Mogget. Sabriel found him asleep in a field of flowers he spring, his tail and paddy-paws twitg to a dream of dang mice. Sabriel looked at the straw-yellow flowers, sniffed one, scratched Mogget behind the ears, the back to the figurehead. The flowers were catbalm, explaining both Mogget’s previous mood and his current somnolence. She would have to make up her own mind.

    “So,” she said, addressing the figurehead like a lawyer before a court. “You are the victim of some Free Magic spell and neantic trickery.

    Your spirit lies her in Life nor Death, but somewhere iween. I could cross into Death,  and find you he border, I’m sure—but I could find a lot of trouble as well. Trouble I ’t deal with in my current pathetic state. So what  I do? What would Father—Abhorsen . . . or any Abhorsen—do in my place?”

    She thought about it for a while, pag backwards and forwards, bruises temporarily fotten.

    That last question seemed to make her duty clear. Sabriel felt sure her father would free the man. That’s what he did, that was what he lived for. The duty of an Abhorsen was to remedy unnatural neand Free Magic sorcery.

    She didn’t think further than that, perhaps due to the injudicious sniffing of the catbalm. She didn’t even sider that her father would probably have waited until he was fitter—perhaps till the  day. After all, this young man must have been incarcerated for many years, his physical body transformed into wood, and his spirit somehoed ih. A few days would make no differeo him. An Abhorsen didn’t have to immediately take on any duty that preseself . . .

    But for the first time since she’d crossed the  Wall, Sabriel felt there was a clear-cut problem for her to solve. An injustice to be righted and ohat should involve little more than a few minutes on the very border of Death.

    Some slight sense of caution remained with her, so she went and picked up Mogget, plag the dozing ear the feet of the figurehead.

    Hopefully, he would wake up if any physical dahreatened—not that this was likely, given the wards and guards on the sinkhole.

    There were even barriers that would make it difficult to cross into Death, and more than difficult for somethio follow her back. All in all, it seemed like the perfect place to uake a minor rescue.

    Once more, she checked the bells, running her hands over the smooth wood of the handles, feeling their voices within, eagerly awaiting release.

    This time, it was Ranna she freed from its leather case. It was the least noticeable of the bells, its very nature lulling listeners, beguiling them to sleep or iion.

    Sed thoughts brushed at her like doubting fingers, but she ighem. She felt fident, ready for what would only be a minor stroll ih, amply safeguarded by the protes of  this royal necropolis. Sword in one hand, bell iher, she crossed into Death.

    Cold hit her, and the relentless current, but she stood where she was, still feeling the warmth of Life on her back. This was the very interface betweewo realms, where she would normally plunge ahead. This time, she planted her feet against the current, and used her tinuing slight tact with Life as an anchor to hold her own against the waters of Death.

    Everything seemed quiet, save for the stant gurgling of the water about her feet, and the faroff crash of the First Gate. Nothing stirred, no shapes loomed up in the grey light. Cautiously, Sabriel used her sense of the Dead to feel out anything that might be lurking, to feel the slight spark of the trapped, but living, spirit of the young man. Ba Life, she hysically close to him, so she should be near his spirit here.

    There was something, but it seemed further into Death than Sabriel expected. She tried to see it, squinting into the curious greyhat made distance impossible to judge, but nothing was visible. Whatever was there lurked beh the surface of the water.

    Sabriel hesitated, then walked towards it, carefully feeling her way, making sure of every footfall, guarding against the gripping current. There was definitely something odd out there. She could feel it quite strongly—it had to be the trapped spirit. She ighe little voice at the back of her mind that suggested it was a fiercely devious Dead creature, strong enough to hold its own against the race of the river . . .

    heless, when she was a few paces back from whatever it was, Sabriel let Ranna sound— a muffled, sleepy peal that carried the sensation of a yawn, a sigh, a head falling forward, eyes heavy—a call to sleep.

    If there was a Dead thing there, Sabriel reasoned, it would now be quiest. She put her sword and bell away, edged forward to a good position, and reached down into the water.

    Her hands touched something as cold and hard as ice, something totally uifiable.

    She flinched back, then reached down again, till her hands found something that was clearly a shoulder. She followed this up to a head, and traced the features. Sometimes a spirit bore little relation to the physical body, and sometimes living spirits became ed if they spent too  long ih, but this one was clearly the terpart of the figurehead. It lived too, somehow encased and protected from Death, as the living body reserved in wood.

    Sabriel gripped the spirit-form uhe arms and pulled. It rose up out of the water like a killer whale, pallid white and rigid as a statue.

    Sabriel staggered backwards, and the river, evereager, ed her legs with trie eddies— but she steadied herself before it could drag her down.

    ging her hold a little, Sabriel began t the spirit-form back towards Life. It was hard going, much harder than she’d expected.

    The current seemed far to for this side of the First Gate, and the crystallized spirit—or whatever it was—was much, much heavier than any spirit should be.

    With nearly all her tratio on staying upright and heading in the right dire, Sabriel almost didn’t notice the suddeion of hat marked the passage of something through the First Gate. But she’d learo be wary over the last few days, and her scious fears had bee enshrined in subscious caution.

    She heard, and listening carefully, caught the soft slosh-slosh of something half-wading, halfcreeping, moving as quietly as it could against the current. Moving towards her. Something Dead was hoping to catch her unawares.

    Obviously, some alarm or summons had go beyond the First Gate, and whatever was stalking towards her had e in ao it.

    Inwardly cursing herself for stupidity, Sabriel looked down at her spirit burden. Sure enough, she could just make out a very thin black line, fine as cotton thread, running from his arm into the water—and theo the deeper, darker regions of Death. Not a trolling thread, but ohat would let some distant Adept know the spirit had been moved. Fortunately, sounding Ranna would have slowed the message, but was she close enough to Life . . .

    She increased her speed a little, but not too much, pretending she hadn’t noticed the hunter.

    Whatever it was, it seemed quite relut to close in on her.

    Sabriel quied her pace a little more, adrenaline and suspense feedirength. If it rushed her, she would have to drop the spirit— and he would be carried away, lost forever.

    Whatever magic had preserved his living spirit here on the boundary couldn’t possibly prevail if he went past the First Gate. If that happened, Sabriel thought, she would have precipitated a murder rather than a rescue.

    Four steps to Life—then three. The thing was closing now—Sabriel could see it, low ier, still creeping, but faster now. It was obviously a denizen of the Third, or even some later Gate, for she couldn’t identify what it once had been. Now it looked like a cross between a hog and a segmented worm, and it moved in <cite>藏书网</cite>a series of scuttles and sinuous wriggles.

    Two steps. Sabriel shifted her grip again, ing her left arm pletely around the spirit’s chest and balang the weight on her hip, freeing her right arm, but she still couldn’t draw her sword, or clear the bells.

    The hog-thing began to grunt and hiss, breaking into a diving, rushing gallop, its long, yellowcrusted tusks surfing through the water, its long body undulating along behind.

    Sabriel stepped back, turned, and threw herself and her precious cargo headfirst into Life, using all her will to force them through the wards on the sinkhole. For an instant, it seemed that they would be repulsed, then, like a pin pushing through a rubber band, they were through.

    Shrill squealing followed her, but nothing else.

    Sabriel found herself facedown on the ground, hay, ice crystals g as they fell from her frosted body. Turning her head, she met the gaze of Mogget. He stared at her, then closed his eyes a back to sleep.

    Sabriel rolled over, and got to her feet, very, very slowly. She felt all her pains e bad wondered why she’d been so hasty to perform deeds of derring-do and rescue. Still, she had ma. The man’s spirit was back where it belonged, ba Life.

    Or so she thought, till she saw the figurehead.

    It hadn’t ged at all to outward sight, though Sabriel could now feel the living spirit in it.

    Puzzled, she touched his immobile face, firag the grain of the wood.

    “A kiss,” said Mogget sleepily. “Actually, just a breath would do. But you have to start kissing someone sometime, I suppose.”

    Sabriel looked at the cat, w if this was the latest symptom of catbalm-induced lunacy.

    But he seemed sober enough, and serious.

    “A breath?” she asked. She didn’t want to kiss  just any wooden man. He looked niough, but he might not be like his looks. A kiss seemed very forward. He might remember it, and make assumptions.

    “Like this?” She took a deep breath, leaned forward, exhaled a few inches from his nose and mouth, then stepped back to see what would happen—if anything.

    Nothing did.

    “Catbalm!” exclaimed Sabriel, looking at Mogget. “You shouldn’t—”

    A small sound interrupted her. A small, wheezing sound, that didn’t e from her get.

    The figurehead was breathing, air whistliween carved wooden lips like the issue from an aged, underworked bellows.

    The breathing grew stronger, and with it, can to flow through the carving, dull wood giving way to the luster of flesh. He coughed, and the carve became flexible, suddenly rising and falling as he began to pant like a rec sprinter.

    His eyes opened a Sabriel’s. Fine grey eyes, but muzzy and unfocused. He didn’t seem to see her. His fingers ched and unched, and his feet shuffled, as if he were running in  place. Finally, his back peeled away from the ship’s hull. He took oep forward, and fell into Sabriel’s arms.

    She lowered him hastily to the ground, all too aware that she was embrag a naked young man—in circumstances siderably different than the various sarios she’d imagined with her friends at school, or heard about from the earthier and more privileged day-girls.

    “Thank you,” he said, almost drunkenly, the words terribly slurred. He seemed to focus on her—or her surcoat—for the first time, and added, “Abhorsen.”

    Then he went to sleep, mouth curling up at the ers, frown dissolving. He looked youhan he did as a fixed-expression figurehead.

    Sabriel looked down at him, trying to ignore curiously fond feelings that had appeared from somewhere. Feelings similar to those that had made her bring back Jath’s rabbit.

    “I suppose I’d better get him a bla,” she said relutly, as she wondered what oh had possessed her to add this plication to her already fusing and difficult circumstances.

    She supposed she would have to get him  to safety and civilization, at the very least—if there was any to be found.

    “I  get a bla if you want to keep staring at him,” Mogget said slyly, twining himself around her ankles in a sensuous pavane.

    Sabriel realized she really was staring, and looked away.

    “No. I’ll get it. And my spare shirt, I suppose.

    The breeches might fit him with a bit of work, I guess—we’d be much the same height. Keep watch, Mogget. I’ll be ba a minute.”

    Mogget watched her hobble off, then turned back to the sleeping man. Silently, the cat padded over and touched his pink too the Charter mark on the man’s forehead. The mark flared, but Mogget didn’t flinch, till it grew dull again.

    “So,” muttered Mogget, tasting his own tongue by curling it ba itself. He seemed somewhat surprised, and more than a little angry. He tasted the mark again, and then shook his head in distaste, the miniature Sarah on his collar ringing a little peal that was not of celebration.

百度搜索 Sabriel (The Abhorsen Trilogy) 天涯 或 Sabriel (The Abhorsen Trilogy) 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.