Текст книги "Abhorsen"

Автор книги: Garth Nix

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

chapter sixteen

a major ’s decision

Sameth’s heart fell as Lieutenant Tindall led them into a deep dugout about a hundred yards behind the fighting trench. Even in the dim light of an oil lamp, he could see it looked too much like the abode of a lazy and comfort-loving officer – who probably wouldn’t even listen, let alone understand what they needed to do.

There was a woodstove burning fiercely in one corner, an open bottle of whisky on the map table and a comfortable armchair wedged in one corner. Major Greene, in turn, was wedged in the chair, looking red faced and cantankerous. But he did have his boots on, Sam noted, a sword next to his chair, and a holstered revolver that hung by its lanyard from a nearby peg.

“What’s this?” bellowed the Major, creakily rising up as they ducked under the lintel and spread out around the map table. He was old for a major, Sam thought. Pushing fifty at least, and imminent retirement.

Before he could speak, Lieutenant Tindall – who’d moved around behind them – said, “Imposters, sir. Only I’m not sure what kind. They do bear uncorrupted Charter marks.”

Sam stiffened at the word “imposters” and he saw Lirael grab the Dog’s collar as she growled, deep and angrily.

“Imposters, hey?” said Major Greene. He looked at Sam, and for the first time Sam realised the old officer had a Charter mark on his forehead. “What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“I’m Lieutenant Stone of the NPRU,” said Sam stiffly. “That is Sergeant Clare and the Sniffer Dog Woppet. I need to phone Perimeter HQ urgently—”

“Rubbish!” roared the Major, without any anger. “I know all the officers of the Scouts, the NCOs too. I was one for long enough! And I’m pretty familiar with the sniffer dogs, and that one ain’t of the breed. I’d be surprised if it could smell a cow pat in a kitchen.”

“I could so,” said the Dog indignantly. Her words were met by a hushed silence; then the Major had his sword out and levelled at them, and Lieutenant Tindall and his men had moved forward, sword and bayonet points only inches behind Sam’s and Lirael’s unprotected necks.

“Oops,” said the Dog, sitting down and resting her head on her paws. “Sorry, Mistress.”

“Mistress?” exclaimed Greene, his face going even redder. “Who are you two? And what is that?”

Sam sighed and said, “I am Prince Sameth of the Old Kingdom, and my companion is Lirael, the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. The Dog is a friend. We are all under a glamour. Do I have your permission to remove it? We’ll glow a bit, but it isn’t dangerous.”

The Major looked redder-faced than ever, but he nodded.

A few minutes later Sam and Lirael stood in front of Major Greene wearing their own clothes and faces. Both were obviously very tired and clearly had suffered much in recent times. The Major looked at them carefully, then down at the Dog. Her breastplate had disappeared and her collar changed, and she looked larger than before. She met his gaze with a sorrowful eye, then spoilt it by winking.

“It is Prince Sameth,” declared Lieutenant Tindall, who’d edged around to see their faces. There was a strange expression on his face. A sympathetic look, and he nodded twice at Sameth, who looked surprised. “And she looks... I beg your pardon, ma’am. I mean to say you look very like Sabriel, I mean the Abhorsen.”

“Yes, I am Prince Sameth,” said Sam slowly, with little expectation that this overweight, soon-to-be-retired Major would be much help. “I urgently need to contact Colonel Dwyer.”

“The phone doesn’t work,” replied the Major. “Besides, Colonel Dwyer is on leave. What’s this urgent need to communicate?”

Lirael answered him, her voice cracked and croaking from the onset of a cold, caused by the sudden transition from a warm Old Kingdom summer to the Ancelstierran spring. The oil lamp flared as she spoke, sending her shadow flickering and dancing across the table.

“An ancient and terrible evil is being brought into Ancelstierre. We need help to find It and stop It – before It destroys your country and then our own.”

The Major looked at her, his red face set in a frown. But it wasn’t a frown of disbelief, as Sam had feared.

“If I didn’t know what your title signified, and recognise the bells you wear,” the Major said slowly, “I would suspect you of overstatement. I don’t think I have ever heard of an evil so powerful it could destroy my entire country. I wish I weren’t hearing about it now.”

“It is called the Destroyer,” said Lirael, her voice soft but charged with the fear that had been growing since they had left the Red Lake. “It is one of the Nine Bright Shiners, the Free Spirits of the Beginning. It was bound and broken by the Seven and buried deep beneath the ground. Only now the two metal hemispheres that hold It prisoner have been dug up by a necromancer called Hedge, and even as we talk here, he could be bringing them across the Wall.”

“So that’s what it is,” said the Major, but there was no satisfaction in his voice. “I had a carrier pigeon from Brigade about trouble to the west and a defence alert, but there’s been nothing since. Hedge, you say? I knew a sergeant of that name, in the Scouts when I first joined. Couldn’t be him, though – that was thirty-five years ago and he was fifty if he was a day—”

“Major, I have to get to a telephone!” interrupted Sameth.

“At once!” declared the Major. He seemed to be recalled to a more vigorous and perhaps younger version of himself. “Mister Tindall, pull your platoon in and tell Edward and CSM Porrit to organise a move. I’m going to take these two—”

“Three,” said the Dog.

“Four,” interrupted Mogget, poking his head out of Sam’s pack. “I’m tired of keeping quiet.”

“He’s a friend too,” Lirael assured the soldiers hastily, as hands once more went for swords and bayonets swung back. “Mogget is the cat and the Disreputable Dog is the... um... dog. They are... er... servants of the Clayr and the Abhorsen.”

“Just like the Perimeter! It never rains but it pours,” declared the Major. “Now, I’m going to take you four back to the reserve line road and we’ll try the phone there. Francis, follow to the transport rendezvous as fast as you can.”

He paused and added, “I don’t suppose you know where this Hedge is going, if they’ve got across the Perimeter?”

“Forwin Mill, where there is something called a Lightning Farm that they will use to free the Destroyer,” said Lirael. “They may have no difficulty getting across the Perimeter. Hedge has the Chief Minister’s nephew with him, Nicholas Sayre, and they’re being met by someone who has a letter from the Chief Minister allowing them to bring the hemispheres in.”

“That wouldn’t be sufficient,” declared the Major. “I suppose it might work at the Crossing Point, but there’d be hours of to and fro with Garrison at Bain and even Corvere. No one in their right mind would fall for it on the real Perimeter. They’ll have to fight their way through, though if an alert was sounded an hour ago, they probably already have. Orderly!”

A corporal, a burning cigarette disguised in one cupped hand, poked his head into the dugout entrance.

“Get me a map that covers Forwin Mill, somewhere west of here! I’ve never heard of the bloody place.”

“It’s about thirty miles down the coast from here, sir,” volunteered Tindall, stopping in mid rush for the exit. “I’ve been fishing there – there’s a loch with quite good salmon. It is a few miles outside the Perimeter Zone, sir.”

“Is it? Humph!” remarked Greene, his face once again turning a deeper shade of red. “What else is there?”

“There was an abandoned sawmill, a broken-down dock, and what’s left of the railway they once used to bring the trees down from the hills,” said Tindall. “I don’t know what this Lightning Farm might be, but there is—”

“Nicholas had the Lightning Farm built there,” interrupted Lirael. “Quite recently, I think.”

“Any people about the place?” asked the Major.

“There are now,” replied Lieutenant Tindall. “Two Southerling refugee camps were built there late last year. Norris and Erimton they’re called, in the hills immediately above the loch valley. There might be fifty thousand refugees there, I suppose, under police guard.”

“If the Destroyer is made whole, they will be among the first to die,” said the Dog. “And Hedge will reap their spirits as they cross into Death, and they will serve him.”

“We’ll have to get them out of there, then,” said the Major. “Though being outside the Perimeter makes it difficult for us to do anything. General Tindall will understand. I only hope General Kingswold has gone home. He’s an Our Country supporter through and through—”

“We must hurry!” Lirael suddenly interrupted. There was no time for more talk. A terrible sense of foreboding gripped her, as if every second they spent here was a grain of sand lost from a nearly empty hourglass. “We have to get to Forwin Mill before Hedge and the hemispheres!”

“Right!” shouted Major Greene, suddenly energised again. He seemed to need spurring along every now and then. He snatched up his helmet, threw it on his head and snagged his revolver by the lanyard with the return motion. “Carry on, Mister Tindall. Quickly now!”

Everything did happen very quickly then. Lieutenant Tindall disappeared into the night and the Major led them at a trot down another communications trench. Eventually it rose out of the ground and became a simple track, identified every few yards with a white-painted rock that shone faintly in the starlight. There was no moon, though one had risen on the Old Kingdom side, and it was much colder here.

Twenty minutes later, the wheezing – but surprisingly fit – Major slowed to a walk and the track joined a wide asphalt road that stretched as far as they could see by starlight, due east and west. Telephone poles lined the road, part of the network that connected the full length of the Perimeter.

A low, concrete blockhouse brooded on the other side of the road, fed from the telegraph poles with a spaghetti-like pile of telephone wires.

Major Greene led the way inside like some corpulent missile, shouting to wake the unfortunate soldier who was slumped over a switchboard desk, his head nestled in a web of lines and plugs.

“Get me Perimeter HQ!” ordered the Major. The semiconscious soldier obeyed him, plugging in lines with the dumb expertise of the highly trained. “General Tindall in person! Wake him up if necessary!”

“Yes sir, yes, sir, yes,” mumbled the telephone orderly, wishing that he had chosen a different night to drink his secret hoard of rum. He kept one hand over his mouth to try to keep the smell from the ferocious Major and his strange companions.

When the call went through, Greene grabbed the handset and spoke quickly. Obviously he was talking to various unhelpful in-between people, because his face kept getting redder and redder, till Lirael thought his skin would set his moustache on fire. Finally he reached someone who he listened to for a minute, without interruption. Then he slowly put the handset back in its cradle.

“There is an incursion happening at the western end of the Perimeter right now,” he said. “There were reports of red distress rockets, but we’ve lost communication from Mile One to Mile Nine, so it’s a broad attack. No one knows what’s going on. General Tindall has already ordered out a flying column, but apparently he’s gone to some other trouble at the Crossing Point. The shiny-bum staff colonel on the other end has ordered me to stay here.”

“Stay here! Can’t we go west and try and stop Hedge at the Wall?” asked Lirael.

“We lost communication an hour ago,” said Major Greene. “It hasn’t been re-established. No more rockets have been seen. That means there is no one left alive to fire any. Or else they’ve run away. In either case, your Hedge and his hemispheres will already be over the Wall and past the Perimeter.”

“I don’t understand how they could have caught up with us,” said Lirael.

“Time plays tricks between here and home,” said Mogget sepulchrally, frightening the life out of the telephone operator. The little cat jumped out of Sam’s pack, ignored the soldier and added, “Though I expect it will be slow going, dragging the hemispheres to this Forwin Mill. We may have time to get there first.”

“I’d better get in touch with my parents,” said Sam. “Can you patch into the civilian telephone system?”

“Ah,” said the Major. He rubbed his nose and seemed unsure of what he was going to say. “I thought you would have known. It happened almost a week ago...”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, son,” said the Major. He braced himself to attention and said, “Your parents are dead. They were murdered in Corvere by Corolini’s radicals. A bomb. Their car was totally destroyed.”

Sam listened blank faced to the Major’s words. Then he slid down the wall and put his head in his hands.

Lirael touched Sam’s left shoulder, and the Dog rested her nose on his right. Only Mogget seemed unaffected by the news. He sat next to the switchboard operator, his green eyes sparkling.

Lirael spent the next few seconds walling off the news, pushing it down to where she had always pushed her distress, somewhere that allowed her to keep on going. If she lived, she would weep for the sister she had never known, as she would weep for Touchstone, and her mother, and so many other things that had gone wrong in the world. But now there was no time for weeping, since many other sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and others depended on them doing what must be done.

“Don’t think about it,” said Lirael, squeezing Sam’s shoulder. “It’s up to us now. We have to get to Forwin Mill before Hedge does!”

“We can’t,” said Sam. “We might as well give up—”

He stopped himself in mid sentence, let his hands fall from his face and stood up, but hunched over as if there were a pain in his gut. He stood there silently for almost a minute. Then he took the feather-coin out of his sleeve and flipped it. It spun up to the ceiling of the blockhouse and hung there. Sam leant against the wall to watch it, his body still crooked but his head craned back.

Eventually he stopped looking at the spinning coin and straightened up, until he was standing at attention opposite Lirael. He didn’t snap his fingers to recall the coin.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. There were tears in his eyes, but he blinked them back. “I’m... I’m all right now.” He bent his head to Lirael and added, “Abhorsen.”

Lirael shut her eyes for a moment. That single word brought it all home. She was the Abhorsen. No longer in waiting.

“Yes,” she said, accepting the title and everything that went with it. “I am the Abhorsen, and as such, I need all the help I can get.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Major Greene. “But I can’t legally order the company to follow. Though most of ’em would probably volunteer.”

“I don’t understand!” protested Lirael. “Who cares what’s legal? Your whole country could be destroyed! Everybody killed everywhere! Don’t you understand?”

“I understand. It’s just not that simple...” the Major began. Then he paused, and his red face went blotchy and pale at the temples. Lirael watched his brow furrow up as if a strange thought were trying to break free. Then it cleared. Carefully he put his hand into his pocket, then suddenly withdrew it and punched his newly brass-knuckled fist into the Bakelite exchange board, its delicate internal mechanisms exploding with a rush of sparks and smoke.

“Damn it! It is that simple! I’ll order the company to go. After all, the politicos can only shoot me for it later if we win. As for you, Private, if you mention a word of this to anyone, I’ll feed you to the cat thing here. Understand?”

“Yum,” said Mogget.

“Yes, sir!” mumbled the telephone operator, his hands shaking as he tried to smother the burning wreckage of his switchboard with a fire blanket.

But the Major hadn’t paused for his answer. He was already out the door, shouting at some poor subordinate outside to “Hurry up and get the trucks going!”

“Trucks?” asked Lirael as they rushed out after him.

“Um... horseless wagons,” said Sam mechanically. The words came out of his mouth slowly, as if he had to remember what they were. “They’ll... they’ll get us to Forwin Mill much faster. If they work.”

“They might well do so,” said the Dog, lifting her nose and sniffing. “The wind is veering to the southwest and it’s getting colder. But look to the west!”

They looked. The western horizon was lit by bright flashes of lightning and there was the dull rumble of distant thunder.

Mogget watched too, from his post back on top of Sam’s pack. His green eyes were calculating, and Lirael noticed he was counting quietly aloud. Then he sniffed with a disgruntled tone.

“How far did that boy say Forwin Mill was?” he asked, noting Lirael’s look.

“About thirty miles,” said Sam.

“About five leagues,” said Lirael at the same time.

“That lightning is due west, and six or seven leagues away. Hedge and his cargo must still be crossing the Wall!”

second interlude

The blue postal service van crunched its gears as it slowed to take the turnoff from the road into the bricked drive. Then it had to slow even more and judder to a stop because the gates that were normally open were closed. There were also people with guns and swords on the other side. Armed schoolgirls in white tennis dresses or hockey tunics, who looked as if they should be holding racquets or hockey sticks rather than weapons. Two of them kept their rifles trained on the driver while another two came through the little postern gate in the wall, the naked blades they held at the ready catching the light of the late afternoon sun.

The driver of the van looked up at the gilt, mock Gothic letters above the gate that read Wyverley College and the smaller inscription below, which said, Established in 1652 for Young Ladies of Quality.

“Peculiar bloody quality,” he muttered. He didn’t like to feel afraid of schoolgirls. He looked back into the interior of the van and said more loudly, “We’re here. Wyverley College.”

There was a faint rustle from the back, which grew into a series of thumps and muffled exclamations. The driver watched for a second, as the mailbags stood up and hands reached out from the inside to open the drawstrings at the top. Then he turned his attention back to the front. Two of the schoolgirls were coming to his window, which he immediately wound down.

“Special delivery,” he said, with a wink. “I’m supposed to say Ellie’s dad and mum and that’ll mean something to you, so you don’t go sticking me with a sword or shooting me neither.”

The closer girl, who could be no more than seventeen, turned to the other – who was even younger – and said, “Go and get Magistrix Coelle.

“You stay where you are and keep your hands on the wheel,” she added to the driver. “Tell your passengers to keep still, too.”

“We can hear you,” said a voice from the back. A woman’s voice, strong and vibrant. “Is that Felicity?”

The girl started back. Then, keeping her sword on guard in front of her, she peered through the window, past the driver.

“Yes, it’s me, ma’am,” said the girl cautiously. She stepped back and made a signal to the rifle girls, who relaxed slightly but did not lower their weapons, much to the driver’s discomfort. “Do you mind waiting till Magistrix Coelle comes down? We can’t be too careful today. There is a wind from the north, and reports of other trouble. How many of you are there?”

“We’ll wait,” said the voice. “Two. There’s myself, and... Ellimere’s father.”

“Um, hello,” said Felicity. “We had news... that you... though Magistrix Coelle did not believe it...”

“Do not speak of that for now,” said Sabriel. She had climbed out of the mailbag and was now crouched behind the driver. Felicity peered in again, reassuring herself that the woman she saw was in fact Ellimere’s mother. Even though Sabriel was wearing blue postal service overalls and a watch cap pulled low over her night-black hair, she was recognisable. But Felicity was still wary. The true test would come when Magistrix Coelle tested these people’s Charter marks.

“Here is your payment, as agreed,” said Sabriel, passing a thick envelope to the driver. He took it and immediately looked inside, a slight smile touching his mouth and eyes.

“Much obliged,” he said. “And I’ll keep my mouth shut, too, as I promised.”

“You’d better,” muttered Touchstone.

The driver was clearly offended by this remark. He sniffed and said, “I live near Bain and always have, and I know what’s what. I didn’t help you for the money. That’s just a sweetener.”

“We appreciate your help,” said Sabriel, with a quelling glance at Touchstone. Being cooped up in a mailbag for several hours had not done anything for his temper, nor did waiting, now that they were so close to the Wall and home. Wyverley College was only forty miles south of the border.

“Here, I’ll bloody well give it back,” said the driver. He dragged out the envelope and thrust it towards Touchstone.

“No, no, consider it a just reward,” Sabriel said calmly, and pushed the envelope back. The driver resisted for a moment, then shrugged and replaced the money somewhere inside his jacket and settled sulkily down in his seat.

“Here is the magistrix,” said Felicity with relief, as she looked back at an older woman and several students who were coming down the drive. They appeared to have emerged out of nowhere, for the main school building was out of sight around the bend, cloaked by a line of closely hugging poplars.

Once Magistrix Coelle arrived, it was only a matter of minutes before Sabriel and Touchstone had the Charter marks on their foreheads assessed for purity and they were all on their way to the school, and the postal van on its way back to Bain.

“I knew the news was false,” said Magistrix Coelle as they walked quickly – almost at a trot – up to the huge, gate-like doors of the main building. “The Corvere Times ran a photo of two burnt-out cars and some bodies but had little else to say. It seemed very much a put-up job.”

“It was real enough,” said Sabriel grimly. “Damed and eleven others were killed in that attack, and two more of our people outside Hennen. Perhaps more have been killed. We split up after Hennen, to lay false trails. None of our people have beaten us here?”

Coelle shook her head.

“Damed won’t be forgotten,” said Touchstone. “Or Barlest, or any of them. We will not forget our enemies, either.”

“These are terrible times,” sighed Coelle. She shook her head several times again as they went inside, past more armed schoolgirls, who looked on in awe at the legendary Sabriel and her consort, even if he was only the King of the Old Kingdom and nowhere near as interesting. Sabriel had once been one of them. They kept looking long after Coelle had ushered the distinguished visitors through a door to the Visiting Parents’ parlour, possibly the most luxuriously appointed room in the whole school.

“I trust the things we left have not been disturbed?” asked Sabriel. “What is the situation? What news?”

“Everything is as you left it,” replied Coelle. “We have no real trouble yet. Felicity! Please have the Abhorsen’s trunk brought up from the cellar. Pippa and Zettie... and whoever is hall monitor today... can help you. As to news, I have messages and—”

“Messages! From Ellimere or Sameth?” asked Touchstone urgently.

Coelle took two folded pieces of paper from her sleeve and passed them across. Touchstone grabbed them eagerly and stood close to Sabriel to read them, as Felicity and her cohorts surged past and disappeared through one of the heavy, highly polished doors.

The first message was written in blue pencil on a torn piece of letterhead that had the same bugle-and-scroll symbol that had adorned the side of the postal van. Touchstone and Sabriel read it through carefully, deep frowns appearing on both their foreheads. Then they read it again and looked at each other, deep surprise clear on their faces.

“One of our old girls sent that,” contributed Coelle nervously, as no one said anything. “Lornella Acren-Janes, who is assistant to the Postmaster General. A copy of a telegram, obviously. I don’t know if it ever went to your embassy.”

“Can it be trusted?” asked Touchstone. “Aunt Lirael? Abhorsen-in-Waiting? Is this some other ploy to cloud our minds?”

Sabriel shook her head.

“It sounds like Sam,” she said. “Even though I don’t understand it. Clearly much has been going on in the Old Kingdom. I do not think we will quickly come to the root of it all.”

She unfolded the second piece of paper. Unlike the first, this was thick, handmade paper, and there were only three symbols upon it. Quiescent Charter marks, dark on the white page. Sabriel ran her palm across them and they sprang into bright, vivid life, almost leaping into her hand. With them came Ellimere’s voice, clear and strong as if she stood next to them.

“Mother! Father! I hope you get this very quickly. The Clayr have Seen much more, too much to tell in this message. There is great danger, beyond our imagining. I am at Barhedrin with the Guard, the Trained Bands, and a Seven Hundred and Eighty-Four of the Clayr. The Clayr are trying to See what we must do. They say Sam is alive and fighting, and that whatever we do, you must get to Barhedrin by Anstyr’s Day or it will be too late. We have to take the Paperwings somewhere. Oh – I have an aunt, apparently your half-sister... What? Don’t interrupt—”

Ellimere’s voice stopped mid word. The Charter marks faded back into the paper.

“An interruption mid spell,” said Touchstone with a frown. “It’s unlike Ellimere not to redo it. Whose half-sister? She cannot be mine—”

“The important fact is that the Clayr have finally Seen something,” said Sabriel. “Anstyr’s Day... we need to consult an almanac. That must be soon... very soon... we will have to go on immediately.”

“I’m not sure you’ll be able to,” said Coelle nervously. “That message got here only this morning. A Crossing Point Scout brought it. He was in a hurry to get back. Apparently there has been some sort of attack from across the Wall and—”

“An attack from across the Wall!” interrupted Sabriel and Touchstone together. “What kind of attack?”

“He didn’t know,” stammered Coelle, taken aback at the ferocity of the question, Sabriel and Touchstone both leaning in close to her. “It was in the far west. But there is also trouble at the Crossing Point. Apparently General Kingswold, the visiting Inspector General, has declared for the Our Country government, but General Tindall refuses to recognise it or Kingswold. Various units have taken sides, some with Tindall, some with Kingswold—”

“So Corolini has openly tried to seize power?” asked Sabriel. “When did this happen?”

“It was in this morning’s paper,” replied Coelle. “We haven’t had the afternoon edition. There is fighting in Corvere... You didn’t know?”

“We’ve got this far by hidden ways, avoiding contact with Ancelstierrans as much as possible,” said Touchstone. “There hasn’t been a lot of time to read the papers.”

“The Times said the Chief Minister still controls the Arsenal, Decision Palace and Corvere Moot,” said Coelle.

“If he holds the Palace, then he still controls the Hereditary Arbiter,” said Touchstone. He looked at Sabriel for confirmation. “Corolini cannot form a government without the Arbiter’s blessing, can he?”

“Not unless everything has crumbled,” said Sabriel decisively. “But it doesn’t matter. Corolini, the attempted coup – it is all a sideshow. Everything that has happened here is the work of some power from the Old Kingdom – our kingdom. The continental wars, the influx of Southerling refugees, the rise of Corolini, everything has been orchestrated, planned for some purpose we do not know. But what can a power from our Kingdom want in Ancelstierre? I can understand sowing confusion in Ancelstierre to facilitate an attack across the Wall. But for what? And who?”

“Sam’s telegram mentions Chlorr,” said Touchstone.

“Chlorr is only a necromancer, though a powerful one,” said Sabriel. “It must be something else. ‘Evil updug... I mean dug up... near Edge—’”

Sabriel stopped in mid sentence as Felicity and her three cohorts staggered in, carrying a long, brassbound trunk. They put it down in the middle of the floor. Charter marks drifted in lazy lines along the lid and across the keyhole. They flared into brilliant life as Sabriel touched the lock and whispered some words under her breath. There was a snick, the lid lifted a finger’s breadth, then Sabriel flung it open to reveal clothes, armour, swords and her bell-bandoleer. Sabriel ignored these, digging down one side to pull out a large, leather-bound book. Embossed gold type on the cover declared the book to be An Alamanac of the Two Countries and the Region of the Wall. She flicked quickly through its thick pages till she came to a series of tables.

“What is today?” she asked. “The date?”

“The twentieth,” said Coelle.

Sabriel ran her finger down one table and then across. She stared at the result, and her finger ran again through the numbers as she quickly rechecked it.

“When is it?” asked Touchstone. “Anstyr’s Day?”

“Now,” said Sabriel. “Today.”

Silence greeted her words. Touchstone rallied a moment later.

“It should still be morning in the Kingdom,” he said. “We can make it.”

“Not by road, not with the Crossing Point uncertain,” said Sabriel. “We are too far south to call a Paperwing—”

Her eyes flashed at a sudden idea. “Magistrix, does Hugh Jorbert still lease the school’s west paddock for his flying school?”

“Yes,” replied Coelle. “But the Jorberts are on holiday. They won’t be back for a month.”

“We can’t fly in an Ancelstierran machine,” protested Touchstone. “The wind is from the north. The engine will die within ten miles of here.”

“If we get high enough, we should be able to glide over,” said Sabriel. “Though not without a pilot. How many of the girls are taking flying lessons?”

“A dozen perhaps,” said Coelle reluctantly. “I don’t know if any of them can fly alone—”

“I have my solo rating,” interrupted Felicity eagerly. “My father used to fly with Colonel Jorbert in the Corps. I have two hundred hours in our Humbert trainer at home and fifty in the Beskwith here. I’ve done emergency landings, night flying and everything. I can fly you over the Wall.”