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I.
It wasn't much of a coronation.
Sleet thickened the air, casting a twilight aura over the land despite the late morning hour. Black, winter-bare trees provided no protection against the wind. The officiants struggled to read the ceremony from an old book, even with the light of Charter Marks, whilst the witness had contracted a bad cold. Every time she sneezed she clutched at her bandaged stomach.
The king didn't even want to be crowned.
But the two young Clayr made their way through the ceremony inexorably, and Sabriel croaked her responses when signalled, and all Touchstone had to do was stand there until Sanar put a circle of ruby-studded gold around his brow and said, “In the name of Five and Seven you are crowned King of the Old Kingdom, by the side of a Charter Stone and before Abhorsen and Clayr, with your own blood for right and witness.”
An icy feeling quite separate from the sleet slid down his spine. It overpowered the strange warmth emanating from the gold, trounced the ripple of tranquillity from the Charter Stone against which they all clustered. He found he could not speak, that a sickness crowded his throat.
The Clayr had kept this crown safe for two centuries, but his last sight of it had been on his mother's head as she died.
Who was he to be king?
“Can we go now?” wheezed Sabriel.
Sanar snapped the old book shut and stuffed it into her coat. “Good idea.”
“We should be able to reach our destinations by nightfall,” Ryelle said thoughtfully, glancing at the sky. “Oh, hot baths - ”
“ - hot drinks - ”
“And unless the weather worsens, I'll have you in Belisaere tomorrow night, your Majesty.”
Belisaere … your Majesty. He was glad that his response was not needed, for the sisters went immediately to Sabriel's side to help her walk. He followed them out of instinct, limping a little: the break to his leg had been a bad one, and time would have to play its part in healing as well as magic.
The Clayr's two Paperwings waited at the edge of the woodland, bright and curiously joyous in the bleak weather, quivering in the keen wind. They had been a welcome sight this morning as Touchstone and Sabriel staggered through the Wall, the injured leading the wounded, fearing that they would have to walk all the way to the Abhorsen's House. “Barely had we arrived back at the Glacier than we Saw that you would need us again,” the Clayr had said, and Touchstone now wished he hadn't got in behind Ryelle. Because if he had known they would fly immediately to the nearest Charter Stone for the first coronation in two hundred years -
“I'll take Sabriel to the House, then,” said Sanar briskly, and caught a weary Touchstone by surprise with a light embrace. “Goodbye, cousin and King. I shall surely see you again soon.”
“But - aren't I coming too?” he stammered, looking at Sabriel – Abhorsen, saviour, beloved – in surprise.
“You and I are going to Chasel.” Ryelle jumped into her Paperwing. “That's as far as we can reach before evening.”
“While I have to prepare in the House's library, in order to raise the flutes again on the Wall.” Sabriel looked at him with gentle, exhausted eyes. “Also I must stow the cats somewhere safe.” She tapped the nearest Paperwing, where Mogget and Kerrigor slept under a seat in the iron grip of Ranna. “I'll see you in Belisaere soon.”
But what am I to do without you? he thought, in hazy, directionless alarm. And: “What am I to do in Belisaere?”
“Proclaim your rule, of course,” said Sanar, and bustled Sabriel into her Paperwing while Touchstone stood fighting nausea. Stupid of him not to realise. Of course ruling followed coronation. Like spring after winter. Blood after an injury. Death after Life.
Stupid, stupid of him not to realise.
He was well-named indeed.
Quickly, before Sanar could whistle her vessel up into the low, stormy sky, he leaned over the Paperwing's edge and smudged a kiss on Sabriel's chapped lips. “I will see you soon, love?” he said against her mouth. Please?
“Yes,” she said, and he felt her smile. “I promise.”
II.
As the last of the scanty daylight faded, Ryelle shouted, “That's Chasel!”
Touchstone peered over the side of the Paperwing. There was a distinct cluster of black roofs in the whitened landscape ahead, encircled by dark wooden walls. His face was numb with wind and frost, but he was stirred to admiration by Ryelle's skilful piloting. The craft danced and spun around swirls of sleet, darted along cloud-edges, always avoiding the worst of the weather.
The Paperwing dropped so suddenly that he swallowed a yell, but Ryelle's whistling continued clear and confident. Their rapid loss of height turned into a neat glide into the marketplace at the heart of the town. They came to a halt in a plume of snow. “I've never been here before,” the Clayr called over her shoulder cheerily, “but this used to be the most southerly point the Clayr flew to with the Kingdom's news, up until the Regent's death. We can expect a warm welcome. Although I'm sorry to see their Stone broken … ”
Hardly listening through his tiredness, Touchstone wiped snow off his face and saw Ryelle's faith in being welcomed justified. Four figures were hurrying towards them. All were so bundled up in furs that nothing of sex or age or shape could be determined. Disliking being at a disadvantage, he laboured to his feet, leg stiff and twinging, and disembarked. Ryelle leapt out lithely, for all the world as if she hadn't been immobile and focused for hours in appalling conditions.
“Can it be?” said one of the figures, white air puffing fast from their hood. “A Clayr!”
“I am Ryelle, at present a roving voice of the Nine Day Watch,” said Ryelle cheerfully, pulling down her hood to show her distinctive hair and colouring. She and the figure in the lead exchanged quick touches of their Charter Marks, followed by satisfied nods.
“It has been many years,” Ryelle said, “since one of us flew to Chasel, but we hope for hospitality all the same. This is - “
“Touchstone. Bodyguard,” blurted Touchstone, yanking his own hood more firmly into place. He had just remembered he still wore the crown, and could not think how he had forgotten it.
There was a tiny hitch, then Ryelle continued smoothly, “We hope to obtain food and accommodation from you tonight, before continuing north.”
Hoods in the small group came down. Two women, two men, all plump and rather aged. “Yes – that is - of course!” said the first speaker, a woman with a nose that tipped up firmly at the end. She sent up a mark of light to hover above them. “I am the mayor, Ka Sorvi. These are the other elders of the town. There are rooms in the inn, and I daresay some food – we are indeed honoured. And what fortuitous timing, Lady Ryelle. Did you have a vision?”
“Fortuitous?” Ryelle threw a quick Charter Mark of protection over the Paperwing and then followed the elders as they lead the way. Touchstone waited until they had moved a little distance away from him, then surreptitiously whisked off his crown and stuck it inside his shirt. Then he followed, glad to lurk in their wake and studying the lay of the town.
“Terrible things have been happening. The countryside awash with dead things, and we only finally rid ourselves of a Free Magic creature recently with great cost, and are so afraid of another - “
Ryelle began to provide assurances that the worst of such necromantic dangers were now over, and did they know there was a new Abhorsen now, yes, the daughter of the old one -
Touchstone looked around the marketplace, deserted but for their party. Of course, night was falling; of course, people would stay inside if they possibly could ... but not even a boy hurrying home after visiting a grandmother, or an apprentice running a last errand … ? There were hardly any paths trodden through the drifts of snow. The Charter Stone in the centre was broken, he realised with dismay, and he wondered why he had only observed that visually. Broken Stones usually made themselves known very unpleasantly. Ryelle had noticed it instantly …
The hidden crown seemed to pulse gently against his chest. Ah, he thought, with a slice of wonder. Protection. It must be connected itself to the Charter.
“She slew the Greater Dead creature who has been causing havoc - “
Absently, Touchstone felt a twinge of pride at the thought of Sabriel, but still his thoughts were observing things that seemed peculiar. Only one or two windows in the whole marketplace showed lines of light behind their shutters. There was a cart upturned by the door of a shop, covered in enough snow to say that it had been there probably weeks. The place, one of the biggest towns in the south, felt … abandoned.
“Where is everybody?” he asked, breaking in on the others' conversation. When they all swung to look, he froze, old Guard habits making him blush at interrupting his betters.
“The town is under attack!” said Mayor Sorvi, throwing up her arms. “For two months now brigands have laid siege to us! They broke our Stone! They've been damaging our walls, raiding into our town, taking our supplies - ”
A fresh gust of snow made everyone break off talking and hurry onwards. Shortly they stepped through a stone front doorway into a small, wood-panelled room. A fire burned in the hearth, rather small but still bringing the room up to a temperature far more pleasing than that outside. Though Touchstone had paid no attention to the building's exterior as they entered, the interior bore signs of an inn – cups on a shelf around the room, small circular tables scattered across the room.
For a few minutes all was chaos. Cold, soaked outerwear was whisked away to be draped over chairs and clothes-horses to dry, warm wine was fetched by a startled innkeeper, and Touchstone and Ryelle sank into chairs by the fireplace with sighs of relief.
Mayor Sorvi sat down with them a moment later, intent black eyes swinging like a pendulum between their faces. “You'll help with the brigands, of course. A trained swordsman, what luck! And your magic must be much more powerful than that of anyone here, Lady Ryelle.” The words were fawning: the mayor's expression was matter-of-fact.
“Clayr do not get involved - ”
“Your bodyguard, then.”
Touchstone squared his shoulders under that gaze. “We are going to Belisaere - ”
“Would you give us a moment?” Ryelle smiled widely, and the Mayor hesitated before standing and moving away.
“Cousin,” said Ryelle quietly. “Clayr don't get involved in such situations, but royals do.”
“I cannot take on an entire pack of thugs by myself,” he replied. “Besides, my leg is only half-healed!”
“It's a good three-quarters healed, I'd say.”
There was something sharp in her voice. It cut him to the raw. He sank back into his seat, hands tight around his wine cup. Disgrace crawled under his skin. Touchstone, Touchstone, fool of a bastard beserker. Failed at being a guard, now failing at being king. What would Sabriel think, when she saw him next?
He didn't want to do this. He had never wanted to be king, had been happy with his lot. Yet he had to do this, to be this. If he did it well, perhaps his mother and his sisters would smile on him if ever he saw them beyond the Ninth Gate. And he did not want to drag Sabriel down by being broken, useless. Kings took care of the living so that Abhorsens could take care of the Dead.
The crown was hot as blood inside his shirt. His shame. His penance.
“What do you suggest I do?”
The words were hard to say. But they won him a softer tone from Ryelle. “You're the soldier, cousin. What do you suggest?”
He might have become an officer, had his life run its expected course. He would then have learned about planning and tactics.
How much education he would have to give himself now. Tactics was only a part of it.
Ryelle was waiting for an answer, so he tried to think what his officers would have done. “Gather information about the brigands,” he said, fighting the instinct to pitch the last word higher, as a question. “Assess the town's fighting strength. Form a … a unit, to attack the brigands.”
The young Clayr woman sipped her wine. “What are you waiting for, then?”
When approached, all Mayor Sorvi did was talk about the villainy of the brigands, with vitriol and hatred and a frustrating lack of details. Touchstone sought clearer information from another elder, the town's healer, a sad-faced old man constantly worrying at his cuffs. “There's many dozens of them. How many - ? I suppose about thirty. They're camped in the caves to the east. How far? Oh, two miles. Three. Or a trifle more.” Despite being a local, he could not be drawn on more precise detials, and the potter and the tin-merchant, the town's other two elders, only nodded along silently. It was clear that the mayor was the most verbose of the lot, and that none of them were well-informed. Exasperated, Touchstone decided to go to bed, over the protests of said mayor - “but wouldn't catching them unawares at night be best?” - and spent a restless night tossing under two thin blankets. He thought about Rogirek, he thought about his last glimpses of his family's faces. About what being a king meant, and what he was to do in Belisaere. Proclaim his reign. Should he stand in the marketplace there and shout, “I am King”, like a madman?
Over and over again he thought about Sabriel and how empty this bed was. They had curled up together on a single dormitory bed at Wyverley in their dazed, injured state, like kittens in a basket, and it had felt like his world was steady again.
The morning brought improved weather. The sky was dry and high and pale, though still not sunny. After a breakfast of unsalted gruel that was more unappetising than the worst barracks-fare Touchstone had ever eaten, the mayor turned up, and showed him the town's current defensive force: three dozen folk between the ages of fifteen and sixty, armed with a surprisingly acceptable array of boiled leather armour and thin Southern-style swords. They were tired, malnourished, and very very silent. It took an hour to coax from them details of their training, their routines, their signals. A few even admitted to knowing where the caves were, more or less. But at least they all set off eastwards out of the town without even a peep of protest at this new leadership. Touchstone walked in their front ranks: not knowing where to go, but trying to lead all the same. He was not oblivious to the irony.
There was scattered woodland here, a patchwork of tall oaks and coppiced ash and hazel. The snow was nearly knee-deep in places. It was not good territory for fighting, his own unfamiliarity with it aside. Many of the trees were broad enough to obscure ambushers. Touchstone, a little awkwardly, gave orders to the soldiers as to scouting and observations. Perhaps it worked, or perhaps they were lucky. Unobstructed, a couple of hours' hard slog through the snow saw them reach some greyish-yellow sandstone bluffs that loomed up out suddenly of the trees.
“Does anyone know the precise location of these caves?” Touchstone asked the sergeant of the force, a lithe woman with sunken eyes and smallpox scars on her nose.
“No,” she said, shifting from foot to foot and looking around with sharp twitchy movements of her head. “They're around here, though. Everyone knows about these caves.” She coughed, then pinched her lips together. In her anxious expressiveness she looked more like a new recruit than a leader.
There were no helpful footsteps or tracks in the snow: unsurprising, since last night's mix of sleet and snow would have obscured anything before this morning. His leg was hurting, whatever Ryelle said, but his hackles were up. This was his area. A problem to be solved with force. It suddenly seemed pleasingly simple and direct compared to the other responsibilities that loomed ahead. The desired outcome was known, and the route to it clear.
“Sergeant, take half the force northwards for quarter of a mile. I'll take the rest south. Use those bugles if you find anything.”
IV.
They were found first.
At the extent of their patrol, with a full half mile between the units, arrows sang down from the heights of the cliffs, and two soldiers dropped soundlessly to the snow, blooming haloes of blood.
”Take cover!” Touchstone shouted, battle urgency lighting up his veins and muscles like fire. He dodged into the cover of a tree trunk and squinted up the cliffs, heart hammering. He could only see the very tips of bows (he counted eight), but that should be enough – He reached into the Charter and pulled forth several Marks, familiar as his own hands from long habit. With a breath and a gesture they darted up the cliffs and set four different bows on fire. Yells echoed down.
Next he summoned an arrow ward over the two prone, injured soldiers – in a less urgent situation he would have harangued himself for not doing it first, but the priorities of battle wiped his mind clean of the usual maelstrom of doubt and self-recrimination. Rapid assessment showed the rest of his people already sheltering against trees, or the very base of the cliff, with no immediate need for assistance. Above, all glimpses of bows had gone. No more arrows fell. There were eight, he thought. So perhaps another twenty brigands unaccounted for. Either here, or attacking the rest of the force – he shouldn't have split them up. “You!” he called, pointing at a man with a bugle. “Sound the alarm! Call the others, tell them to approach with caution! You and you, get the wounded! Everyone else, move to the cliff-face! Now!” They could get surrounded, trapped – but with their weak numbers, having one direction at least that did not need defending could be a bonus.
In the shadow of the cliff they began walking rapidly north. The song of the bugle was echoed from the north, but faintly, faintly. A half mile was not easily covered in snow, especially when carrying wounded.
“Behind us!” yelled the rearmost soldier, and Touchstone glanced back. A group of ten or so folk in cloaks, wielding axes, were churning through the snow in a determined jog.
Touchstone slowed, waving all the others to get ahead of him. He barely knew their skills, but he knew his own. Unsheathing his swords, he took a defensive stance and then began to draw out Charter Marks rapidly, launching them down his blades and sending them spinning towards the attackers. Marks for warmth, to melt the snow and trap feet in sudden mud. Marks for cold, to lock snow into ice around ankles. Marks for burning, to make them drop weapons with sudden yelps of pain.
But they had a Charter Mage, too.
Touchstone knocked the first two marks away with his swords while summoning up a ward -
A third mark struck home on his forehead.
Darkness whirled and he collapsed…
… When he woke, his head beat like a drum, and opening his eyes produced a field of vision full of tiny sparkling stars. He groaned, blinking. The stars merged into glaring suns and then finally began to fade to show a much more restful view of a sandstone cave ceiling.
He lifted a hand that shook and touched his brow. What by the Charter had they used with such power? Probably at least two marks bound into one…
Attempting to sit upright proved a bad idea. Crossbow bolts seemed to be ricocheting around his skull. He settled for rolling his head from side to side, trying to assess his situation. He was in a cave. Curiously, he wasn't bound. That presumably meant the Charter Mage was at hand. Except that he couldn't see anyone, could only see the undulations of the cave walls and the glow of some soft marks hovering here and there.
“Are you awake, then?”
The voice came from behind him, low but firm. Touchstone, still not daring to get up, held still. After a moment the person walked into view. A man, greying at the temples but sturdily-built: he looked tired, eyes pinched together in unease.
“Who are you, stranger?” he asked. “Why did you take a side in this struggle?”
Touchstone's throat was painfully dry. He swallowed. “I was asked to help. Where are the others?”
“They got away.” Suddenly the man reached down and lifted Touchstone easily to a sitting position, then propped him against the wall. The blood hammered unpleasantly in his head and he thought he might be sick. “I ask again, who are you, stranger?”
A failed soldier, a frightened bastard, a stupid fool. “My name is Touchstone.” He rubbed his forehead. The various aches of his body were beginning to fade, his mind regrouping. He realised his swords were not with him. No surprise there. “And you?”
“Where are you from?” The man crouched in front of him, staring intently. His Charter Mark shone very clear on his brow. Touchstone guessed abruptly that he must be the strong mage. “Is Sorvi recruiting mercenaries now to fight her cause? But why just the one of you?”
“I am a traveller, forced into these events by chance,” Touchstone said, with more irritability leaking into his tone than he had planned. Chance, chance, horrible chance. Or was this path predestined for him? Had any Clayr two hundred years ago seen what might come to pass, or had they dismissed such visions as nonsense?
“Forced! Doesn't surprise me.” Suddenly the man looked rather amused. “How did she manage it? Did she confiscate your baggage? Instruct merchants to deny you supplies and shelter?”
I was trying to be noble. Touchstone rubbed his eyes briefly, and for a fleeting moment wondered what Sabriel was doing and how she fared. How much he missed her presence. Surely had she been here, no one would have been captured. “The mayor made representations about how difficult life was while under the harassment of brigands,” he said at last.
“Brigands!” The amusement vanished from his captor's face. “Brigands! The lying - ” He almost choked on the half-uttered epithet. “We're not brigands, stranger, but townsfolk who have been driven out into the cold.” He reached down, grabbed Touchstone's hand, and hauled him, lurching, to his feet. “Look there!” He pointed and Touchstone, once his vision had settled, peered through a narrow doorway in the rock to a bigger cave beyond. There was a fire glimmering in its centre, and various sleeping forms arrayed around it. Men. Women. Children, some very small. Weapons and sacks and chests lined the walls. “Do we look like brigands? All we're doing is trying to reclaim what is ours...”
Strangely, Touchstone's first thought was despair. He did not want a muddied narrative, a confusion of truths: he wanted things to remain as clear and simple as a blade's edge. Be a liar; please, be a liar. “Why were you driven out? Can you offer proof?”
“At autumn's end she staked out three children as bait for a Free Magic thing that had haunted us that season, eating our livestock, waylaying travellers, even raiding into our streets.”
The man's voice was flat, his face suddenly smooth of all expression.
“They were orphans. She said no one would miss them. Many of us objected, but she did it all the same. She chained them to the Charter Stone, painted them with poison, and when the thing came – it killed them, and it died… But one of the children had been learning magic, and his blood broke the stone.” His voice wavered, steadied. “Afterwards, she drove out we who had spoken against her.”
Touchstone looked at the man's taut face, then again at the array of people sleeping around the fire. One woman was heavily pregnant, and one man had a toddler with a puddle of blonde curls curled into his chest. They all looked thinner even than winter might account for.
He thought of Chasel, how it had seemed curiously empty. The shattered Stone in its heart. The vagueness of the elders, the unease of the soldiers.
He remembered Nestowe, plagued by the Dead. Belisaere, so changed. The barely-populated landscape beneath the Paperwing on that flight south to Ancelstierre.
“She said the brigands broke the Stone,” he said, remembering. “The mayor said that.”
“Why would we do that? What fools do what dark things will do in the course of time anyway? The Stones are the only protection left us.”
This truly was the Kingdom now. No longer the thriving nation knit together by law and Charter and blood, but shattered, corrupted, like a broken Charter Stone ... He swallowed against the pain of truth. In his heart rose horror and compassion and, omnipresent, guilt.
He had not been able to help, before.
Now he could. Would. Must.
There is another protection, now.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Fadac Selker. I was the town's blacksmith.” He held out his hands. They were square, calloused, covered with the characteristic spatter of tiny scars and burn marks from his work. “And I ask you again, stranger, who are you?”
“I told you my name.” How was he to untangle this?
Selker coughed, and took out something from his pocket. “Not many travellers carry a thing like this – no, no!” He whisked it out of reach, and Touchstone stared in horror at his crown.
“That's mine. Give - ”
“Are you a brigand? Seems like the sort of thing only a thief would have.”
“I am not a thief! That is mine.”
“You see, if you are a mercenary I want to hire you to fight for us, help us reclaim the town. But I won't employ a thief - “
Touchstone was taller, and younger, and full of sudden uncontrollable alarm at the sight of the crown in another's hands. He leapt and wrenched it away. Comforting warmth sang in his hands, rightness returned. “On the Charter I swear that I am no thief! I am - ” He swallowed. “I am going to help you,” he promised, stowing the crown safely inside his shirt. “On the Charter I swear that, too.”
V.
“Touchstone!” cried Ryelle, as Touchstone entered the little inn in a gust of snow and bitter evening air. She leapt up from an armchair by the hearth, gripping a pewter tankard tightly. There was no one else there, to Touchstone's relief. “Oh, thank the Charter. I scried for you, and you seemed unharmed, but I have still been worried. What happened?”
He shook snow out of his hair and warmed his hands by the fire. “It's more complicated than it seemed,” he said, and recounted events to her in a brisk, emotionless way – the tone he had perfected as a Royal guard reporting to his superiors.
“Oh.” Ryelle took a deep breath, brow wrinkling, then set her tankard upon the mantelpiece. “That is troubling.” Her voice was sad.
He blinked at her. “That's an understatement.” Charter save them all, what had his kingdom come to, that even the wise Clayr reacted to such news with a resigned sorrow rather than anger and shock? How had horror become such an everyday matter?
Shivering from more than lingering cold, he began stripping off his outerwear, draping it over some stools to dry.
“Let me help you.” She took his cloak, shaking it out briskly while he wrenched off boots which, despite multiple coats of oil, were sodden. “It makes a sad sense. Eager though she is to destroy those she drove out, yet she must fear discovery. Fear corrupts the soul. Even though she thought she was doing something for the greater good, and her Mark is itself has survived uncorrupted ... ” She sighed, then reached over to a table and grabbed a pitcher. “Drink from this while we plan. It's an excellent mulled apple cider.”
“We?” he echoed, raising an eyebrow. “I thought Clayr didn't get involved in these sorts of matters.”
“Well, an advisory role is acceptable, cousin,” she replied, mock-solemn, and then laughed and pushed the pitcher into his hands. It exuded a warm fragrance, sweetness and spice.
“Thank you – cousin,” he said. He took the armchair opposite her, stretching out his aching leg with relief. Cousin, he thought. As a bastard child his claim to a place in the network of the great bloodlines had been uneasy. But Sabriel seemed to love him, and now he had cousins…
It seemed improper to find anything joyful about this situation. Had the world been right, he would have been long dead in obscurity, and some many-times great-niece or great-nephew on the throne.
“What is your plan?” Ryelle asked, and he shook his thoughts back to the present moment. He had had a long weary trudge back from the caves to the town after farewelling Fadac, and to his surprise he had formulated some ideas. Not ideas of the sword, but of the mind, this time. The other half of a king's work.
“This is what I thought - ” he began.
VI.
Morning saw him chased out of bed in the dusty light of dawn by Ryelle, who looked bright as the sun and fresh as a new penny. “Come into my room, cousin, I've prepared a bath! You don't look like you've had a proper wash for a long time.”
“I had a bath in Ancelstierre...” Yesterday? The day before?
“That's abroad,” said Ryelle, chivvying him across the hall to her neat little chamber where a steaming bathtub awaited, “you need to wash in this country too. Go on. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Royals should be clean. I shall wait in your room with my book.”
By the time they went downstairs, the sun was peeking over the horizon, with only scattered clouds to trouble its beams. The light, though winter-weak, was more welcome than Touchstone could have believed possible. At the bottom of the stairs he paused, eyes drifting shut, and breathed a few moments in the golden radiance coming through the dusty fanlight above the door.
In the dining-room Mayor Sorvi awaited: the other three elders sat in a silent huddle around a table.
“Your attempt was clearly a total failure,” the mayor began, and continued on theme while Touchstone ladled himself a bowlful of porridge from a basin on a sidetable.
“Two wounded soldiers - ”
He added a pinch of salt, and went to join Ryelle – who had eaten earlier – near the fire.
“Lady Ryelle, your bodyguard is clearly completely inadequate - “
The porridge was inadequate, with more black flecks than oats.
“I must insist you try again - ”
“I had an interesting conversation with Blacksmith Selker yesterday,” said Touchstone, pushing his bowl away.
Had he required any more proof, the expression that curdled and froze her face would have convinced any just judge in the kingdom. There was a choke from one of the elders. Sad satisfaction pooled in his stomach.
The mayor turned on her heel and strode to look out of the window at the marketplace. The other three elders looked at their hands. The silence was like a living thing. A beast to be slain. “The blacksmith,” said Touchstone, “is bringing his people into the town today, to resolve this grievance.”
“What!” The mayor's back stiffened. She swung to glare at him. “How dare you, soldier? This is my town. I give the orders here. Whatever grievance Selker holds, he has no right to enter here without my permission. Lady Ryelle, your dog is out of order. Restrain him.”
Ryelle folded her hands in her lap and smiled. “I do not have the authority to give him orders.”
“He's your - ”
“King,” said Ryelle.
Touchstone took the crown from inside his shirt, and placed it on his head. Warmth spread down him from hair to heels.
Mayor Sorvi gobbled, briefly, for words. Then: “What mummery is this?”
“I am Touchstone, son of the late Queen Anigant, held in sorcerous sleep these two hundred years,” he said, clenching his hands to control their trembling. He had practised the words over and over last night with Ryelle, and they came curiously easily, spilling like sunlight through the room, astonishment and horror dawning by turns on the faces of the mayor and the elders.
He stood. He was taller than anyone in the room. “The Abhorsen Sabriel woke me a few weeks past, and I helped her defeat the Free Magic sorcerer and necromancer Kerrigor. The Clayr crowned me. And I intend to bring order and peace and justice to this kingdom once more.”
“Foolishness,” said the mayor, through white lips. “The rumours of a lost heir have always been proved false, over and over – your crown looks real, I'll grant you, but I'd be a halfwit to believe you – ” She threw a venomous glance at Ryelle. “You must be a lying actor, not a Clayr at all - “
Touchstone walked towards her. She stumbled away, but he had only come to stand by the window. Looking out at the empty marketplace, he lifted his hand and threw a Charter Mark out – it glided through the old buckled glass like it was nothing but air.
He had come to understand that the crown was a little like a Charter Stone itself, but even he was startled at how increased the flow of magic now was through him. He had never used it before, for it was an officer's magic, with many uses from court martials to simple investigations of drunk and disorderly behaviour. Those times he had seen officers use it, they had been left weak and tired. But he felt strong as ever. Perhaps even stronger. The invigoration of purpose and justice ran through him.
He closed his eyes as out in the marketplace it grew brighter and brighter until it blazed through his eyelids like the sun. Then the light faded.
When he opened his eyes, blinking, ghosts filled the marketplace.
There was a protestation beside him as Ryelle, deceptively strong, manhandled the mayor into position beside him. “Look,” she said.
At the side of the room, the potter elder began to cry. “We did it for the best...”
In the marketplace, the spell worked inexorably. Around the broken stone and across the wind-drifted snow played out the scene from the late autumn. A silvery mayor and other figures Touchstone did not recognise staked out three struggling children, beating back other townsfolk. There came a creature of some terrible Free Magic nature that the spell only showed as tangled black and silver, devouring the small figures, whose blood shattered the Charter Stone… An act so vast that it reverberated through time and stopped Touchstone's spell short, though it should have ended only at his command.
“What would you have had me done?” said Mayor Sorvi hoarsely. “They were only orphans, and that creature was destroying our town!”
“There are lines,” said Touchstone, “beyond which no one should go. You did something that put you on par with what you sought to end.” He looked at the far side of the marketplace. A tightly-clustered group of people were coming in from an alley. He recognised Selker's figure in front. Looking up, Touchstone also saw windows around the marketplace filled with peeping faces, ready to duck behind shutters at the smallest sign of trouble.
He took the mayor's wrist and dragged her out of the inn, to the Charter Stone where Selker's group were gathering. In his grip she was trembling, but silent. The other elders followed, urgently protesting their innocence in the plot to anyone who might listen.
“Reparations must be made!” said Touchstone loudly, speaking to his group, to Selker's group, to the faces in the windows, and the listening ears that doubtless were pressed urgently to doors by people to shy to show themselves. “This town must be healed. All its people welcomed back into the fold. I am Touchstone, newly-crowned King, and this land will be rebuilt. My first act of justice is here, today. Mayor Sorvi, will you mend the Stone?”
She blinked at him. “Mend it?”
“Prove your regret. You are, after all, a Charter Mage.” Like the child whose death-blood split the Stone.
“This town doesn't need it,” she said weakly.
Selker recovered from a frozen at Touchstone's declaration of identity and stepped forward, arms crossed. Ryelle moved subtly to stand between the two groups. “This town will be dead before spring without its protection!” the blacksmith declared.
Murmurs sprang up from the small group in the square.
Touchstone wondered how many other towns had died because of broken Stones. Ryelle had spent half of last night explaining to him the magic required to mend one: he doubted the knowledge was widely available in the kingdom.
“I won't. It doesn't!” protested the mayor. “This is my town. I made the best choice I could.”
“Blood for the breaking,” said Touchstone. “Blood for the making.” With his free hand he drew one of his swords and traced the tip lightly across her cheek.
Pure horror infused her face. In a sudden fury of panic, she wrestled in his grip. He saw the intention in her eyes, like a hunter reading the gaze of his prey, and let her go.
She fled.
Selker made a movement. “No,” said Touchstone. Relief poured through him. His gambit had worked as planned. He had driven her to a choice that solved the problem simply, without risk of prolonging events, or devolving to fighting. It had gone exactly as hoped. “Let her survive out there as she would have had you survive.”
“She'll just take refuge in the town somewhere!” snapped the blacksmith.
“No, she won't,” said the potter elder unexpectedly. He blew a Mark after the fleeing mayor – former mayor, Touchstone supposed. “That'll chase her out.” There was satisfaction in his voice. Touchstone wondered if he truly was glad to see the back of Ka Sorvi, or if he was hurriedly trying to make reparations in the face of Selker's group. Either way, that particular Mark was one he'd intended to cast himself.
“But how is it to be mended?” several people asked, and then fumbled towards silence as Touchstone walked to stand before the Stone.
“I'll mend it,” he said.
VII.
He slashed his sword across his palm before he had time to flinch and began dripping blood across the great wound in the grey rock. The Stone itself stood a little higher than him, and the crack ran from top to bottom as neatly as an axe blow could cut a log in half. Dead, frozen marks lurked beneath its frosted, lichened surface.
Old blood stained its base. He swallowed.
“But why would you die to mend it?” someone muttered.
“I won't,” said Touchstone, watching his blood pool at the base of the crack, shining in the faint sunlight. “Mayor Sorvi … misinterpreted me. Breaking demands death. Mending demands life.” Though he was afraid that when it came to the Greater Stones, soon enough, that his death would follow. Ryelle had known nothing of how to heal them.
But that was a worry for the future.
He clenched his fist, and began to pull marks from the Charter. Healers' marks for mending, cleaning, healing. Marks a parent might sing in a nursery, for soothing and steadiness. Soldiers' marks, familiar as his fingers, for resolution and alertness. Other greater marks, some learned from Ryelle, others from his strange hybrid childhood of soldier boy and bastard prince: these bound the lesser marks together. All rushed down from his sliced palm into the puddle of blood, melding with the magic from his veins, and sinking into the stone like water into a sponge.
Farmers' marks, for waking seed and warming soil. Herders' marks, for bringing milk and calming anxious beasts. A strange trio of marks that Ryelle had told him were used by puppeteers, speaking of life in things that did not breathe.
All poured through him like a river.
He was aware of having sunk to his knees, but he did not feel tired. Three final marks, each of them of the greatest yet power, poured from him. The first was used on battlefields, used to pour a few more a few more minutes' life into a wounded body until a healer could be reached. The second was used by healers to seal and harness many lesser healing marks.
The third was a mark called the Charter's Mark, and he had never before used it, though it was murmured of sometimes, in stories. It ripped through him, trailing a string of thousand other marks he didn't know, and he knew instantly why it was named as it was. This mark had an indelible link to the Charter. It gathered up all the marks he had already uttered, bound them together in a glorious fusion, and burst…
He discovered himself sitting in the snow, cold, soaked, every limb trembling. Beside him sat Ryelle, holding him up. The shadows were evening-length. “Well done,” she said, squeezing his shoulders. “A marvellous sight, cousin.”
He looked up shakily. “It's still broken,” he said, and: “No. No, it isn't.”
The Stone was still riven, but the marks under its surface now moved and surged with an endless, sea-like joy. Touchstone's crown had protected him from feeling the ill-effects of a broken Stone, but it did not shield him from the warmth and serenity of a fully-healed one.
And the crack was filled, out of season, impossibly, with tiny golden and red flowers.
“I suspect they will grow forever,” said Ryelle. “If all the Stones you heal do that, what a sight they'll be.” She reached out and plucked a few, then sprinkled them on Touchstone's head. A sweet scent blossomed from them. “There. I crown you again.”
He looked around the marketplace, neck creaking with each turn. Doors were open. People were moving around. Chattering echoed around the marketplace. “I'll never see them again, will I?” he said.
“Probably not, but you'll see others like them. Abhorsens manage the dead, we think of the yet-to-come, and royals – royals tend to the living.”
He sighed. “Do they believe in who I am, Ryelle? Or are they just glad a madman healed their Stone?”
“I don't think it matters right now. Once we reach Belisaere, the convincing will begin in earnest.”
But here his reign had begun in earnest.
He stood, stiff and achy. “Let's go,” he said.
“Now? Before anyone thanks you?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. “Well, night-flying by Paperwing should be fun.” She went off to dust the snow from the craft, still resting where they'd left it two nights before.
Touchstone followed, limping a little. If healing one Lesser Stone had exhausted him so much, what would thousands of them take from him? What would the Greater Stones take?
Nothing that he could or would not give, he decided. This might be his penance. But the act of confronting Sorvi and mending the Stone had given him a strange joy, only second to his joy in Sabriel. He wanted to feel it again, knowing that he was turning one little piece of the world to order, even if so much remained in disorder and despair. It felt clean and true and right. The title of king still seemed wrong and frightening, but the duties could not be better suited to him.
Royals tend to the living.
It was a life he could live.