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Sabriel felt Touchstone touch her shoulder, then she heard his whisper.
“It’s about waist-deep. Try and slip in as quietly as possible. Here—I’ll take your candle.”
Sabriel nodded, passed the candle back, sheathed her sword, and sat down on the last step, before slowly easing herself into the water.
It was cold, but not unbearable. Despite Sabriel’s care, ripples spread out from her, silver on the dark water, and there had been the tiniest splash. Her feet touched the bottom, and she only half stifled a gasp. Not from the cold, but from the sudden awareness of the two broken stones of the Great Charter. It hit her like the savage onset of gastric flu, bringing stomach cramps, sudden sweat and dizziness. Bent over, she clutched at the step, till the first pains subsided to a dull ache. It was much worse than the lesser stones, broken at Cloven Crest and Nestowe.
“What is it?” whispered Touchstone.
“Ah . . . the broken stones,” Sabriel muttered. She took a deep breath, willing the pain and discomfort away. “I can stand it. Be careful when you get in.”
She drew her sword, and took her candle back from Touchstone, who prepared to enter the water. Even forewarned, she saw him flinch as his feet touched the bottom, and sweat broke out in lines on his forehead, mirroring the ripples that spread from his entry.
Sabriel expected Mogget to jump up on her shoulder, given his apparent dislike for Touchstone, but he surprised her, leaping to the man. Touchstone was clearly startled too, but recovered well. Mogget draped himself around the back of Touchstone’s neck, and mewed softly.
“Keep to the edges, if you can. The corruption—the break—will have even more unpleasant effects near the center.”
Sabriel raised her sword in assent and led off, following the left wall, trying to break the surface tension of the water as little as possible. But the quiet slosh-slosh of their wading seemed very loud, echoing and spreading up and out through the cistern, adding to the only other noise—the regular dripping of water, plopping loudly from the roof, or more sedately sliding down the columns.
She couldn’t sense any Dead, but she wasn’t sure how much that was due to the broken stones. They made her head hurt, like a constant, too-loud noise; her stomach cramped; her mouth was full of the acrid taste of bile.
They had just reached the north-western corner, directly under one of the light shafts, when the light suddenly dimmed, and the reservoir grew dark in an instant, save for the tiny, soft glow of the candles.
“A cloud,” whispered Touchstone. “It will pass.”
They held their breath, looking up, up to the tiny outline of light above, and were rewarded when sunlight came pouring back down. Relieved, they began to wade again, following the long west-east wall. But it was short-lived relief. Another cloud crossed the sun, somewhere in that fresh air so high above them, and darkness returned. More clouds followed, till there were only brief moments of light interspersed by long stretches of total dark.
The reservoir seemed colder without the sun, even a sun diluted by passage down long shafts through the earth. Sabriel felt the cold now, accompanied by the sudden, irrational fear that they had stayed too long, and would emerge to a night full of waiting, life-hungry Dead. Touchstone felt the chill too, made more bitter by his memories of two hundred years past, when he’d waded in this same water, and seen the Queen and her two daughters sacrificed and the Great Stones broken. There had been blood on the water then, and he still saw it—a single frozen moment of time that would not get out of his head.
Despite these fears, it was the darkness that helped them. Sabriel saw a glow, a faint luminescence off to her right, somewhere towards the center. Shielding her eyes from the candle’s glare, she pointed it out to Touchstone.
“There’s something there,” he agreed, his voice so low Sabriel barely heard it. “But it’s at least forty paces towards the center.”
Sabriel didn’t answer. She’d felt something from that faint light, something like the slight sensation across the back of her neck that came when her father’s sending visited her at school. Leaving the wall, she pushed out through the water, a V-line of ripples behind her. Touchstone looked again, then followed, fighting the nausea that rose in him, coming in waves like repeated doses of an emetic. He was dizzy too, and could no longer properly feel his feet.
They went about thirty paces out, the pain and the nausea growing steadily worse. Then Sabriel suddenly stopped, Touchstone lifting his sword and candle, eyes searching for an attack. But there was no enemy present. The luminous light came from a diamond of protection, the four cardinal marks glowing under the water, lines of force sparkling between them.
In the middle of the diamond, a man-shaped figure stood, empty hands outstretched, as if he had once held weapons. Frost rimed his clothes and face, obscuring his features, and ice girdled the water around his middle. But Sabriel had no doubt about who it was.
“Father,” she whispered, the whisper echoing across the dark water, to join the faint sounds of the ever-present dripping.
chapter xxi
“The diamond is complete,” said Touchstone. “We won’t be able to move him.”
“Yes. I know,” replied Sabriel. The relief that had soared inside her at the sight of her father was ebbing, giving way to the sickness caused by the broken stones. “I think . . . I think I’ll have to go into Death from here, and fetch his spirit back.”
“What!” exclaimed Touchstone. Then, quieter, as the echoes rang, “Here?”
“If we cast our own diamond of protection . . .” Sabriel continued, thinking aloud. “A large one, around both of us and Father’s diamond—that will keep most danger at bay.”
“Most danger,” Touchstone said grimly, looking around, trying to peer past the tight confines of their candle’s little globe of light. “It will also trap us here—even if we can cast it, so close to the broken stones. I know that I couldn’t do it alone, at this point.”
“We should be able to combine our strengths. Then, if you and Mogget keep watch while I am in Death, we should manage.”
“What do you think, Mogget?” asked Touchstone, turning his head, so his cheek brushed against the little animal on his shoulder.
“I have my own troubles,” grumbled Mogget. “And I think this is probably a trap. But since we’re here, and the—Abhorsen Emeritus, shall we say, does seem to be alive, I suppose there’s nothing else to be done.”
“I don’t like it,” whispered Touchstone. Just standing this clo
se to the broken stones took most of his strength. For Sabriel to enter Death seemed madness, tempting fate. Who knew what might be lurking in Death, close by the easy portal made by the broken stones? For that matter, who knew what was lurking in or around the reservoir?
Sabriel didn’t answer. She moved closer to her father’s diamond of protection, studying the cardinal marks under the water. Touchstone followed reluctantly, forcing his legs to move in short steps, minimizing the splash and ripple of his wake.
Sabriel snuffed out her candle, thrust it through her belt, then held out her open palm.
“Put your sword away and give me your hand,” she said, in a tone that did not invite conversation or argument. Touchstone hesitated—his left hand held only a candle, and he didn’t want both his swords scabbarded—then he complied. Her hand was cold, colder than the water. Instinctively, he gripped a little tighter, to give her some of his warmth.
“Mogget—keep watch,” Sabriel instructed.
She closed her eyes, and began to visualize the East mark, the first of the four cardinal wards. Touchstone took a quick look around, then closed his eyes too, drawn in by the force of Sabriel’s conjuration.
Pain shot through his hand and arm, as he added his will to Sabriel’s. The mark seemed blurry in his head, and impossible to focus. The pins and needles that had already plagued his feet spread up above his knees, shooting them through with rheumatic pains. But he blocked off the pain, narrowing his consciousness to just one thing: the creation of a diamond of protection.
Finally, the East mark flowed down Sabriel’s blade and took root in the reservoir floor. Without opening their eyes, the duo shuffled around to face the south, and the next mark.
This was harder still, and both of them were sweating and shaking when it finally began its glowing existence. Sabriel’s hand was hot and feverish now, and Touchstone’s fleshricocheted violently between sweating heat and shivering cold. A terrible wave of nausea hit him, and he would have been sick, but Sabriel gripped his hand, like a falcon its prey, and lent him strength. He gagged, dry-retched once, then recovered.
