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, tunic and 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, medicinal 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.

Backpack on, 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 forgot,” said Mogget. “You’ll need this if I’m to come 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 need to use it. Put it on.”

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

It felt cold as it slipped down her finger, then 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 substance. Then Charter marks suddenly exploded all around her and she felt gripped by them, halting her headlong fall into nothing, accelerating her back up, back into her body, back to the world of life and death.

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

“You’ll know if you need to 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. Come—the Paperwing is ready.”

Chapter 11

The Paperwing sat on a jury-rigged platform of freshly sawn pine planks, teetering out over the eastern wall. Six sendings clustered around the craft, readying it for flight. Sabriel looked up at it as she climbed the stairs, an unpleasant feeling rising with her. She had been expecting something similar to the aircraft that had begun to be common in Ancelstierre, like the biplane that had performed aerobatics at the last Wyverley College Open Day. Something with two wings, rigging and a propeller—though she had assumed a magical engine rather than a mechanical one.

But the Paperwing didn’t look anything like an Ancelstierran airplane. It most closely resembled a canoe with hawk-wings and a tail. On closer inspection, Sabriel saw that the central fuselage was probably based on a canoe. It was tapered at each end and had a central hole for a cockpit. Wings sprouted on each side of this canoe shape—long, swept-back wings that looked very flimsy. The wedge-shaped tail didn’t look much better.

Sabriel climbed the last few steps with sinking expectations. The construction material was now clear and so was the craft’s name—the whole thing was made up from many sheets of paper, bonded together with some sort of laminate. Painted powder-blue, with silver bands around the fuselage and silver stripes along the wings and tail, it looked pretty, decorative and not at all airworthy.

Only the yellow falcon eyes painted on its pointed prow hinted at its capacity for flight.

Sabriel looked at the Paperwing again, and then out at the waterfall beyond. Now, fed by floodwaters, it looked even more frightening than usual. Spray exploded for tens of yards above its lip—a roaring mist the Paperwing would have to fly through before it reached the open sky beyond. Sabriel didn’t even know if it was waterproof.

“How often has this . . . thing . . . flown before?” she asked, nervously. Intellectually, she accepted that she would soon be sitting in this craft, to be launched out towards the crashing waters—but her subconscious, and her stomach, seemed very keen to stay firmly on the ground.

“Many times,” replied Mogget, easily jumping from the platform to the cockpit. His voice echoed there for a moment, till he climbed back up, furry cat-face propped on the rim. “The Abhorsen who made it once flew it to the sea and back, in a single afternoon. But she was a great weather-witch and could work the winds. I don’t suppose—”

“No,” said Sabriel, made aware of another gap in her education. She knew that wind-magic was largely whistled Charter marks, but that was all. “No. I can’t.”

“Well,” continued Mogget, after a thoughtful pause, “the Paperwing does have some elementary charms to ride the wind. You’ll have to whistle them, though. You can whistle, I trust?”

Sabriel ignored him. All necromancers had to be musical, had to be able to whistle, to hum, to sing. If they were caught in Death without bells, or other magical instruments, their vocal skills were a weapon of last recourse.

A sending came and took her pack, helping her to wrestle it off, then stowing it at the rear of the cockpit. Another took Sabriel’s arm and directed her to what appeared to be a leather half-hammock strung across the cockpit—obviously the pilot’s seat. It didn’t look terribly safe either, but Sabriel forced herself to climb in, after giving her scabbarded sword into the hands of yet another sending.

Surprisingly, her feet didn’t go through the paper-laminated floor. The material even felt reassuringly solid and, after a minute of squirming, swaying and adjustment, the hammock-seat was very comfortable. Sword and scabbard were slid into a receptacle at her side and Mogget took up a position on top of the straps holding down her pack, just behind her shoulders, for the seat made her recline so far she was almost lying down.

From her new eye level, Sabriel saw a small, oval mirror of silvered glass, fixed just below the cockpit rim. It glittered in the late afternoon sun, and she felt it resonate with Charter Magic. Something about it prompted her to breathe upon it, her hot breath clouding the glass. It stayed misted for a moment, then a Charter mark slowly appeared, as if a ghostly finger was drawn across the clouded mirror.

Sabriel studied it carefully, absorbing its purpose and effect. It told her of the marks that would follow; marks to raise the lifting winds, marks for descending in haste, marks to call the wind from every corner of the compass rose. There were other marks for the Paperwing and, as Sabriel absorbed them, she saw that the whole craft was lined with Charter Magic, infused with spells. The Abhorsen who made it had labored long, and with love, to create something that was more like a magical bird than an aircraft.

Time passed, and the last mark faded. The mirror cleared to be only a plate of silver glass shining in the sun. Sabriel sat, silent, fixing the Charter marks in her memory, marveling at the power and the skill that had made the Paperwing and had thought of this method of instruction. Perhaps one day, she too would have the mastery to create such a thing.

“The Abhorsen who made this,” Sabriel asked. “Who was she? I mean, in relation to me?”

“A cousin,” purred Mogget, close to her ear. “Your great-great-great-great-grandmother’s cousin. The last of that line. She had no children.”

Maybe the Paperwing was her child, Sabriel thought, running her hand along the sleek surface of the fuselage, feeling the Charter marks quiescent in the fabric. She felt a lot better about their forthcoming flight.

“We’d best hurry,” Mogget continued. “It will be dark all too soon. Do you have the marks remembered?”

“Yes,” replied Sabriel firmly. She turned to the sendings, who were now lined up behind the wings, anchoring the Paperwing till it was time for it to be unleashed upon the sky. Sabriel wondered how many times they’d performed this task, and for how many Abhorsens.

“Thank you,” she said to them. “For all your care and kindness. Goodbye.”

With that last word, she settled back in the hammock-seat, gripped the rim of the cockpit with both hands, and whistled the notes of the lifting wind, visualizing the requisite string of Charter marks in her mind, letting them drip down into her throat and lips, and out into the air.

Her whistle sounded clear and true, and a wind rose behind to match it, growing stronger as Sabriel exhaled. Then, with a new breath, she changed to a merry, joyous trill. Like a bird revelling in flight, the Charter marks flowing from pursed lips out into the Paperwing itself. With this whistling, the blue and silver paint seemed to come alive, dancing down the fuselage, sweeping across the wings, a gleaming, lustrous plumage. The whole craft shook and shivered, suddenly flexible and eager to begin.

The joyous trill ended with one single long, clear note, and a Charter mark that shone like the sun. It danced to the Paperwing’s prow and sank into the laminate. A second later, the yellow eyes blinked, grew fierce and proud, looking up to the sky ahead.

The sendings were struggling now, barely able to hold the Paperwing back. The lifting wind grew stronger still, plucking at the silver-blue plumage, thrusting it forward. Sabriel felt the Paperwing’s tension, the contained power in its wings, the exhilaration of that last moment when freedom is assured.

“Let go!” she cried, and the sendings complied, the Paperwing leaping up into the arms of the wind, out and upward, splashing through the spray of the waterfall as if it were no more than a spring shower, flying out into the sky and the broad valley beyond.

It was quiet, and cold, a thousand feet or more above the valley. The Paperwing soared easily, the wind firm behind it, the sky clear above, save for the faintest wisps of cloud. Sabriel reclined in her hammock-seat, relaxing, running the Charter marks she’d leaned over and over in her mind, making sure she had them properly pigeonholed. She felt free, and somehow clean, as if the dangers of the last few days were dirt, washed away by the following wind.

“Turn more to the north,” Mogget’s voice suddenly said behind her, disturbing her carefree mood. “Do you recall the map?”

“Yes,” replied Sabriel. “Shall we follow the river? The Ratterlin, it’s called, isn’t it? It runs nor-nor-east most of the time.”

Mogget didn’t reply at once, though Sabriel heard his purring breath close by. He seemed to be thinking. Finally, he said, “Why not? We may as well follow it to the sea. It branches into a delta there, so we can find an island to camp on tonight.”

“Why not just fly on?” asked Sabriel cheerily. “We could be in Belisaere by tomorrow night, if I summon the strongest winds.”

“The Paperwing doesn’t like to fly at night,” Mogget said, shortly. “Not to mention that you would almost certainly lose control of the stronger winds—it is much more difficult than it seems at first. And the Paperwing is much too conspicuous, anyway. Have you no common sense, Abhorsen?”

“Call me Sabriel,” Sabriel replied, equally shortly. “My father is Abhorsen.”

“As you wish, mistress,” said Mogget. The “mistress” sounded extremely sarcastic.

The next hour passed in belligerent silence, but Sabriel, for her part, soon lost her anger in the novelty of flight. She loved the scale of it all, to see the tiny patchworked fields and forests below, the dark strip of the river, the occasional tiny building. Everything was so small and seemed so perfect, seen from afar.

Then the sun began to sink, and though the red wash of its fading light made the aerial perspective even prettier, Sabriel felt the Paperwing’s desire to descend, felt the yellow eyes focusing on green earth, rather than blue sky. As the shadows lengthened, Sabriel felt that same desire and began to look as well.

The river was already breaking up into the myriad streams and rivulets that would form the swampy Ratterlin delta, and far off, Sabriel could see the dark bulk of the sea. There were many islands in the delta, some as large as football fields covered with trees and shrubs, others no bigger than two armspans of mud. Sabriel picked out one of the medium-sized ones, a flattish diamond with low, yellow grass, a few leagues ahead, and whistled down the wind.

It faded gradually with her whistle and the Paperwing began to descend, occasionally nudged this way or that by Sabriel’s control of the wind, or its own tilt of a wing. Its yellow eyes, and Sabriel’s deep-brown eyes, were fixed on the ground below. Only Mogget, being Mogget, looked behind them and above.

Even so, he didn’t see their pursuers until they came wheeling out of the sun, so his yowling cry gave only a few seconds’ warning, just long enough for Sabriel to turn and see the hundreds of fast-moving shapes diving down upon them. Instinctively, she conjured Charter marks in her mind, mouth pursed, whistling the wind back up, turning them to the north.

“Gore crows!” hissed Mogget, as the flapping shapes checked their dive and wheeled to pursue their suddenly enlivened prey.

“Yes,” shouted Sabriel, though she wasn’t sure why she answered. Her attention was all on the gore crows, trying to gauge whether they’d intercept or not. She could already feel the wind testing the edges of her control, as Mogget had prophesied, and to whip it up further might have unpleasant results. But she could also feel the presence of the gore crows, feel the admixture of Death and Free Magic that gave life to their rotten, skeletal forms.