“Curse you!” he gurgled. “I will tell the Servants of Kerrigor! I will be revenged . . .”

His grotesque, gulping voice was chopped off in mid-sentence, as Thralk lost free will. Saraneth had bound him, but Kibeth gripped him and Kibeth walked him, walked him so Thralk would be no more. The twisting shadow simply disappeared and there was only snow under a long-dead corpse.

Even though the revenant was gone, his last words troubled Sabriel. The name Kerrigor, while not exactly familiar, touched some basic fear in her, some memory. Perhaps Abhorsen had spoken this name, which undoubtedly belonged to one of the Greater Dead. The name scared her in the same way the broken stone did, as if they were tangible symbols of a world gone wrong, a world where her father was lost, where she herself was terribly threatened.

Sabriel coughed, feeling the cold in her lungs, and very carefully replaced Kibeth in the bandolier. Her sword seemed to have burned itself clean, but she ran a cloth over the blade before returning it to the scabbard. She felt very tired as she swung her pack back on, but there was no doubt in her mind that she must move on immediately. Her mother-spirit’s words kept echoing in her mind, and her own senses told her something was happening in Death, something powerful was moving towards Life, moving towards emergence at the broken stone.

There had been too much death and too much Charter Magic on this hill, and the night was yet to reach its blackest. The wind was swinging around, the clouds regaining their superiority over sky. Soon, the stars would disappear and the young moon would be wrapped in white.

Quickly, Sabriel scanned the heavens, looking for the three bright stars that marked the Buckle of the North Giant’s Belt. She found them, but then had to check the star map in her almanac, a handmade match stinking as it cast a yellow flicker on the pages, for she didn’t dare use any more Charter Magic till she was away from the broken stone. The almanac showed that she had remembered correctly: the Buckle was due north in the Old Kingdom; its other name was Mariner’s Cheat. In Ancelstierre, the Buckle was easily ten degrees west of north.

North located, Sabriel started to make her way to that side of the crest, looking for the spur that slanted down to the valley lost in darkness below. The clouds were thickening and she wanted to reach level ground before the moonlight disappeared. At least the spur, when found, looked like easier going than the broken steps to the south, though its gentle slope proclaimed a long descent to the valley.

In fact, it took several hours before Sabriel reached the valley floor, stumbling and shivering, a very pale Charter flame dancing a little ways in front of her. Too insubstantial to really ease her path, it had helped her avoid major disaster, and she hoped it was pallid enough to be taken for marsh-gas or chance reflection. In any case, it had proved essential when clouds closed the last remaining gap in the sky.

So much for no cloud, Sabriel thought, as she looked towards what she guessed was still north, searching for the red star, Uallus. Her teeth were chattering and would not be stilled, and a shiver that had started with her ice-cold feet was repeating itself through every limb. If she didn’t keep moving, she’d simply freeze where she stood—particularly as the wind was rising once more . . .

Sabriel laughed quietly, almost hysterically, and turned her face to feel the breeze. It was an easterly, gaining strength with the minute. Colder, yes, but it also cleared the cloud, sweeping it to the west—and there, in the first cleared broom-stroke of the wind, was Uallus gleaming red. Sabriel smiled, stared at it, took stock of the little she could see around her, and started off again, following the star, a whispering voice constant in the back of her mind.

Do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens.

The smile lasted as Sabriel found the road and, with a good cover of snow in each gutter, she skied, making good time.

By the time Sabriel found the mile marker and the Charter Stone behind it, no trace of the smile could be seen on her pale face. It was snowing again, snowing sideways as the wind grew more frenzied, taking the snowflakes and whipping them into her eyes, now the only exposed portion of her entire body. Her boots were soaked too, despite the mutton fat she’d rubbed into them. Her feet, face and hands were freezing, and she was exhausted. She’d dutifully eaten a little every hour, but now, simply couldn’t open her frozen jaws.

For a short time, at the intact Charter Stone that rose proudly behind the smaller mile-marker, Sabriel had made herself warm, invoking a Charter-spell for heat. But she’d grown too tired to maintain it without the assistance of the stone, and the spell dissipated almost as soon as she walked on. Only the mother-spirit’s warning kept her going. That, and the sensation that she was being followed.

It was only a feeling, and in her tired, chilled state, Sabriel wondered if it was just imagination. But she wasn’t in any state to face up to anything that might not be imagined, so she forced herself to go on.

Do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens.

The path from the Charter Stone was better made than the one that climbed Cloven Crest, but steeper. The pathmakers here had to cut through a dense, greyish rock, which did not erode like granite, and they had built hundreds of wide, low steps, carved with intricate patterns. Whether these meant something, Sabriel didn’t know. They weren’t Charter marks, or symbols of any language that she knew, and she was too tired to speculate. She concentrated on one step at a time, using her hands to push down on her aching thighs, coughing and gasping, head down to avoid the flying snow.

The path grew steeper still and Sabriel could see the cliff-face ahead, a huge, black, vertical mass, a much darker backdrop to the swirling snow than the clouded sky, palely backlit by the moon. But she didn’t seem to get any closer as the path switchbacked to and fro, rising further and further up from the valley below.

Then, suddenly, Sabriel was there. The path turned again and her little will-o’-the-wisp light reflected back from a wall, a wall that stretched for miles to either side, and for hundreds of yards upwards. Clearly, these were the Long Cliffs, and the path had ended.

Almost sobbing with relief, Sabriel pushed herself forward to the very base of the cliff, and the little light rose above her head to disclose grey, lichen-veined rock. But even with that light, there was no sign of a door—nothing but jagged, impervious rock, going up and out of her tiny circle of illumination. There was no path and nowhere else to go.

Wearily, Sabriel knelt in a patch of snow and rubbed her hands together vigorously, trying to restore circulation, before drawing Mosrael from the bandolier. Mosrael, the Waker. Sabriel stilled it carefully and concentrated her senses, feeling for anything Dead that might be near and should not be woken. There was nothing close, but once again Sabriel felt something behind her, something following her, far down on the path. Something Dead, something reeking of power. She tried to judge how distant the thing was, before forcing it from her thoughts. Whatever it might be, it was too far away to hear even Mosrael’s raucous voice. Sabriel stood up, and rang the bell.

It made a sound like tens of parrots screeching, a noise that burst into the air and wove itself into the wind, echoing from the cliffs, multiplying into the scream of a thousand birds.

Sabriel stilled the bell at once and put it away, but the echoes raced across the valley, and she knew the thing behind her had heard. She felt it fix its attention on where she was and she felt it quicken its pace, like watching the muscles on a racehorse going from the walk to a gallop. It was coming up the steps at least four or five at a time. She felt the rush of it in her head and the fear rising in her at equal pace, but she still went to the path and looked down, drawing her sword as she did so.

There, between gusts of snow, she saw a figure leaping from step to step; impossible leaps, that ate up the distance between them with horrible appetite. It was manlike, more than man-high, and flames ran like burning oil on water where it trod. Sabriel cried out as she saw it, and felt the Dead spirit within. The Book of the Dead opened to fearful pages in her memory, and descriptions of evil poured into her head. It was a Mordicant that hunted her—a thing that could pass at will through Life and Death, its body of bog-clay and human blood molded and infused with Free Magic by a necromancer, and a Dead spirit placed inside as its guiding force.

Sabriel had banished a Mordicant once, but that had been forty miles from the Wall, in Ancelstierre, and it had been weak, already fading. This one was strong, fiery, new-born. It would kill her, she suddenly knew, and subjugate her spirit. All her plans and dreams, her hopes and courage, fell out of her to be replaced by pure, unthinking panic. She turned to one side, then the other, like a rabbit running from a dog, but the only way down was the path and the Mordicant was only a hundred yards below, closing with every blink, with every falling snowflake. Flames were spewing from its mouth, and it thrust its pointed head back and howled as it ran, a howl like the last shout of someone falling to their death, underlaid with the squeal of fingernails on glass.

Sabriel, a scream somehow stuck and choking in her throat, turned to the cliff, hammering on it with the pommel of her sword.

“Open! Open!” she screamed, as Charter marks raced through her brain—but not the right ones for forcing a door, a spell she’d learned in the Second Form. She knew it like she knew her times tables, but the Charter marks just wouldn’t come, and why was twelve times twelve sticking in her head when she wanted Charter marks . . .

The echoes from Mosrael faded, and in that silence, the pommel struck on something that thudded hollowly, rather than throwing sparks and jarring her hand. Something wooden, something that hadn’t been there before. A door, tall and strangely narrow, its dark oak lined with silver Charter marks dancing through the grain. An iron ring, exactly at hand height, touched Sabriel’s hip.

Sabriel dropped her sword with a gasp, grabbed the ring, and pulled. Nothing happened. Sabriel tugged again, half-turning to look over her shoulder, almost cringing at what she would see.

The Mordicant turned the last corner and its eyes met hers. Sabriel shut them, unable to bear the hatred and bloodlust glowing in its gaze like a poker left too long in the forge. It howled again and almost flowed up the remaining steps, flames dripping from its mouth, claws and feet.

Sabriel, eyes still closed, pushed on the ring. The door flew open and she fell in, crashing to the ground in a flurry of snow, eyes snapping open. Desperately, she twisted herself around on the ground, ignoring the pain in her knees and hands. Reaching back outside, she snagged the hilt of her sword and snatched it in.

As the blade cleared the doorway, the Mordicant reached it, and twisting itself sideways to pass the narrow portal, thrust an arm inside. Flames boiled from its grey-green flesh, like beads of sweat, and small plumes of black smoke spiraled from the flames, bringing with them a stench like burning hair.

Sabriel, sprawled defenseless on the floor, could only stare in terror as the thing’s four-taloned hand slowly opened and reached out for her.

Chapter 7

But the hand didn’t close; the talons failed to rend defenseless flesh.

Instead, Sabriel felt a sudden surge of Charter Magic and Charter marks flared around the door, blazing so brightly that they left red after-images at the back of her eyes, black dots dancing across her vision.

Blinking, she saw a man step out from the stones of the wall, a tall and obviously strong man, with a longsword the twin of Sabriel’s own. This sword came whistling down on the Mordicant’s arm, biting out a chunk of burning marsh-rotten flesh. Rebounding, the sword flicked back again, and hewed another slice, like an axeman sending chips flying from a tree.

The Mordicant howled, more in anger than in pain—but it withdrew the arm and the stranger threw himself against the door, slamming it shut with the full weight of his mail-clad body. Curiously for mail, it made no sound, no jangling from the flow of hundreds of steel links. A strange body under it too, Sabriel saw, as the black dots and the red wash faded, revealing that her rescuer wasn’t human at all. He had seemed solid enough, but every square inch of him was defined by tiny, constantly moving Charter marks, and Sabriel could see nothing between them but empty air.

He . . . it was a Charter-ghost, a sending.

Outside, the Mordicant howled again, like a steam train venting pressure, then the whole corridor shook and hinges screeched in protest as the thing threw itself against the door. Wood splintered and clouds of thick grey dust fell from the ceiling, mocking the falling snow outside.

The sending turned to face Sabriel and offered its hand to help her up. Sabriel took it, looking up at it as her tired, frozen legs struggled to make a tenth-round comeback. Close to, the illusion of flesh was imperfect, fluid and unsettling. Its face wouldn’t stay fixed, migrating between scores of possibilities. Some were women, some were men—but all bore tough, competent visages. Its body and clothing changed slightly, too, with every face, but two details always remained the same; a black surcoat with the blazon of a silver key, and a longsword redolent with Charter Magic.

“Thank you,” Sabriel said nervously, flinching as the Mordicant pounded the door again. “Can . . . do you think that . . . will it get through?”

The sending nodded grimly, and let go her hand to point up the long corridor, but it did not speak. Sabriel turned her head to follow its pointing hand and saw a dark passage that rose up into darkness. Charter marks illuminated where they stood, but faded only a little way on. Despite this, the darkness seemed friendly, and she could almost taste the Charter-spells that rode on the corridor’s dusty air.

“I must go on?” asked Sabriel, as it pointed again, more urgently. The sending nodded, and flapped its hand backwards and forwards, indicating haste. Behind him, another crashing blow caused another great billow of dust, and the door sounded as if it was weakening. Once again, the vile, burnt smell of the Mordicant wafted through the air.