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Of course, just as she was lighting a candle at the tunnel entrance Mogget reappeared behind her.
“Looking for me?” he mewed, innocently.
“Who else?” replied Sabriel. “Have you found anything? Anything useful, I mean. Water, for instance.”
“Useful?” mused Mogget, rubbing his chin back along his two outstretched front legs. “Perhaps. Interesting, certainly. Water? Yes.”
“How far away?” asked Sabriel, all too aware of her bruise-limited mobility. “And what does interesting 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 interesting part, you will have to see for yourself, Abhorsen.”
“Sabriel,” said Sabriel automatically, as she tried to think ahead. She needed at 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 Mordicant, 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 necromancer, 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 catness, and didn’t comment.
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 stones, to avoid a cleverly concealed 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 corners of the tunnel, waiting to fly up at her, to surround and choke her with power—but something checked their first reaction and they settled again. A few times, Sabriel experienced a ghostly touch, like a hand reaching 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 candlelight 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-of-factly. “It is where the First Blood . . . ach . . .”
He choked, hissed, and then rephrased his sentence rather drably, with “It is interesting.”
“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-thin net, which seemed to merge 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 considerable strength. Sabriel guessed the unfortunate birds had dived into the net, eyes greedily intent on food below.
In the sinkhole itself, there was considerable, if uninspiring vegetation—mostly stunted trees and malformed bushes. But Sabriel had little attention to spare for the trees, for in between 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 nonexistent wind, oars out to battle an imaginary tide. They flew many flags and standards, all limp against mast and rigging, but Sabriel didn’t need to 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 Ancelstierre, 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 confirmation that this was so, for there were binding spells woven into the very dirt her feet scuffed at the tunnel entrance, spells of final death that could only have been laid by an Abhorsen. No necromancer would ever raise any of the ancient 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.
“Come 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 wondering what had happened to make Mogget so cheerful. She felt bruised, tired and depressed, shaken by the Free Magic monster, 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 circumnavigation 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, chains and other decorations. Each held a sword in his right hand, and an unfurling scroll that turned back on 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 under its stern, she saw uncaulked seams between the planking, and realized that it was incomplete.
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 an exact likeness, as if a young man had been transformed from flesh to wood, and her only prior experience of naked men was in clinical cross-sections 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 even extended to a circumcised penis, which Sabriel glanced at in an embarrassed way, before looking back at his face. He was not exactly handsome, but not displeasing. It was a responsible visage, with the shocked expression of someone who has been betrayed 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 reaching 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 niggling sensation that she couldn’t place.
Sabriel tried to identify it, while she looked over the figurehead again, carefully examining him from every angle. The 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 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 inspection led her to certainty about what she’d detected, but she hesitated about the action that should be taken, and went in search of Mogget. 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 reaction to his brief experience of being a Free Magic beast again, something that might not have happened for a millennium. The cat form was probably a welcome relief.
