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“Yes,” sighed the Elder, old shoulders sagging with relief. “That is the sword. Charter-spelled. She is the Abhorsen.”
He turned and tottered back towards the archers, worn voice increasing to the ghost of a fisherman’s cross-water hail. “Come on, you four. Quick with the bridge. We have visitors! Help at last!”
Sabriel glanced at Touchstone, raising her eyebrows at the implication of the old man’s last three words. Surprisingly, Touchstone met her gaze, and held it.
“It is traditional for someone of high rank, such as yourself, to be announced by their sworn swordsman,” he said quietly. “And the only acceptable way for me to travel with you is as your sworn swordsman. Otherwise, people will assume that we are, at best, illicit lovers. Having your name coupled to mine in such a guise would lower you in most eyes. You see?”
“Ah,” replied Sabriel, gulping, feeling the flush of embarrassment come back and spread from her cheeks to her neck. It felt a lot like being on the receiving end of one of Miss Prionte’s severest social put-downs. She hadn’t even thought about how it would look, the two of them traveling together. Certainly, in Ancelstierre, it would be considered shameful, but this was the Old Kingdom, where things were different. But only some things, it seemed.
“Lesson two hundred and seven,” muttered Mogget from somewhere near her feet. “Three out of ten. I wonder if they’ve got any fresh-caught whiting? I’d like a small one, still flopping—”
“Be quiet!” Sabriel interrupted. “You’d better pretend to be a normal cat for a while.”
“Very well, milady. Abhorsen,” Mogget replied, stalking away to sit on the other side of Touchstone.
Sabriel was about to reply scathingly when she saw the faintest curve at the corner of Touchstone’s mouth. Touchstone? Grinning? Surprised, she misplaced the retort on her tongue, then forgot it altogether, as the four archers heaved a plank across the gap, the end smacking down onto stone with a startling bang.
“Please cross quickly,” the Elder said, as the men steadied the plank. “There are many fell creatures in the village now, and I fear the day is almost done.”
True to his words, cloud-shadow fell across them as he spoke, and the fresh scent of closing rain mingled with the wet and salty smell of the sea. Without further urging, Sabriel ran quickly across the plank, Mogget behind her, Touchstone bringing up the rear.
chapter xvii
All the survivors of Nestowe were gathered in the largest of the fish-smoking sheds, save for the current shift of archers who watched the breakwater. There had been one hundred and twenty-six villagers the week before—now there were thirty-one.
“There were thirty-two until this morning,” the Elder said to Sabriel, as he passed her a cup of passable wine and a piece of dried fish atop a piece of very hard, very stale bread. “We thought we were safe when we got to the island, but Monjer Stowart’s boy was found just after dawn today, sucked dry like a husk. When we touched him, it was like . . . burnt paper, that still holds its shape . . . we touched him, and he crumbled into flakes of . . . something like ash.”
Sabriel looked around as the old man spoke, noting the many lanterns, candles and rush tapers that added both to the light and the smoky, fishy atmosphere of the shed. The survivors were a very mixed group—men, women and children, from very young to the Elder himself. Their only common characteristic was the fear pinching their faces, the fear showing in their nervous, staccato movement.
“We think one of them’s here,” said a woman, her voice long gone beyond fear to fatalism. She stood alone, accompanied by the clear space of tragedy. Sabriel guessed she had lost her family. Husband, children—perhaps parents and siblings, too, for she wasn’t over forty.
“It’ll take us, one by one,” the woman continued, matter-of-fact, her voice filling the shed with dire certainty. Around her, people shuffled, twitchily, not looking at her, as if to meet her gaze would be to accept her words. Most looked at Sabriel and she saw hope in their eyes. Not blind faith, or complete confidence, but a gambler’s hope that a new horse might change a run of losses.
“The Abhorsen who came when I was young,” the Elder continued—and Sabriel saw that at his age, this would be his memory alone, of all the villagers—“this Abhorsen told me that it was his purpose to slay the Dead. He saved us from the haunts that came in the merchant’s caravan. Is it still the same, lady? Will Abhorsen save us from the Dead?”
Sabriel thought for a moment, her mind mentally flicking through the pages of The Book of the Dead, feeling it stir in the backpack that sat by her feet. Her thoughts strayed to her father; the forthcoming journey to Belisaere; the way in which Dead enemies seemed to be arrayed against her by some controlling mind.
“I will ensure this island is free of the Dead,” she said at last, speaking clearly so all could hear her. “But I cannot free the mainland village. There is a greater evil at work in the Kingdom—that same evil that has broken your Charter Stone—and I must find and defeat it as soon as I can. When that is done, I will return—I hope with other help—and both village and Charter Stone will be restored.”
“We understand,” replied the Elder. He seemed saddened, but philosophic. He continued, speaking more to his people than to Sabriel. “We can survive here. There is the spring, and the fish. We have boats. If Callibe has not fallen to the Dead, we can trade, for vegetables and other stuffs.”
“You will have to keep watching the breakwater,” Touchstone said. He stood behind Sabriel’s chair, the very image of a stern bodyguard. “The Dead—or their living slaves—may try to fill it in with stones, or push across a bridge. They can cross running water by building bridges of boxed grave dirt.”
“So, we are besieged,” said a man to the front of the mass of villagers. “But what of this Dead thing already here on the island, already preying upon us? How will you find it?”
Silence fell as the questioner spoke, for this was the one answer everyone wanted to hear. Rain sounded loud on the roof in the absence of human speech, steady rain, as had been falling since late afternoon. The Dead disliked the rain, Sabriel thought inconsequentially, as she considered this question. Rain didn’t destroy, but it hurt and irritated the Dead. Wherever the Dead thing was on the island, it would be out of the rain.
She stood up with that thought. Thirty-one pairs of eyes watched her, hardly blinking, despite the cloying smoke from too many lanterns, candles and tapers. Touchstone watched the villagers; Mogget watched a piece of fish; Sabriel closed her eyes, questing outward with other senses, trying to feel the presence of the Dead.
It was there—a faint, concealed emanation, like an untraceable whiff of something rotten. Sabriel concentrated on it, followed it, and found it, right there in the shed. The Dead was somehow hiding among the villagers.
She opened her eyes slowly, looking straight at the point where her senses told her the Dead creature lurked. She saw a fisherman, middle-aged, his salt-etched face red under sun-bleached hair. He seemed no different than the others around him, listening intently for her reply, but there was definitely something Dead in him, or very close by. He was wearing a boat cloak, which seemed odd, since the smoking shed was hot from massed humanity and the many lights.
“Tell me,” Sabriel said. “Did anyone bring a large box with them out to the island? Something, say, an arm-span square a side, or larger? It would be heavy—with grave dirt.”
Murmurs and enquiries met this question, neighbors turning to each other, with little flowerings of fear and suspicion. As they talked, Sabriel walked out through them, surreptitiously loosening her sword, signaling Touchstone to stay close by her. He followed her, eyes flickering across the little groups of villagers. Mogget, glancing up from his fish, stretched and lazily stalked behind Touchstone’s heels, after a warning glare at the two cats who were eyeing the half-consumed head and tail of his fishy repast.
Careful not to alarm her quarry, Sabriel took a zigzag path through the shed, listening to the villagers with stu
died attention, though the blond fisherman never left the corner of her eye. He was deep in discussion with another man, who seemed to be growing more suspicious by the second.
Closer now, Sabriel was sure that the fisherman was a vassal of the Dead. Technically, he was still alive, but a Dead spirit had suppressed his will, riding on his flesh like some shadowy string-puller, using his body as a puppet. Something highly unpleasant would be half-submerged in his back, under the boat cloak. Mordaut, they were called, Sabriel remembered. A whole page was devoted to these parasitical spirits in The Book of the Dead. They liked to keep a primary host alive, slipping off at night to sate their hunger from other living prey—like children.
“I’m sure I saw you with a box like that, Patar,” the suspicious fisherman was saying. “Jall Stowart helped you get it ashore. Hey, Jall!”
He shouted that last, turning to look at someone else across the room. In that instant, the Dead-ridden Patar exploded into action, clubbing his questioner with both forearms, knocking him aside, running to the door with the silent ferocity of a battering ram.
But Sabriel had expected that. She stood before him, sword at the ready, her left hand drawing Ranna, the sweet sleeper, from the bandolier. She still hoped to save the man, by quelling the Mordaut.
Patar slid to a halt and half-turned, but Touchstone was there behind him, twin swords glowing eerily with shifting Charter marks and silver flames. Sabriel eyed the blades in surprise, she hadn’t known they were spelled. Past time she asked, she realized.
Then Ranna was free in her hand—but the Mordaut didn’t wait for the unavoidable lullaby. Patar suddenly screamed, and stood rigid, the redness draining from his face, to be replaced by grey. Then his flesh crumpled and fell apart, even his bones flaking away to soggy ash as the Mordaut sucked all the life out of him in one voracious instant. Newly fed and strengthened, the Dead slid out from the falling cloak, a pool of squelching darkness. It took shape as it moved, becoming a large, disgustingly elongated sort of rat. Quicker than any natural rat, it scuttled towards a hole in the wall and escape!
