Garth Nix

"Yet when ancient forces stir, many things are woken."

The Clayr Saw a sword and so I was. Remember the Wallmakers. Remember Me.

"For everyone and everything, there is a time to die. Some do not know it, or would delay it, but its truth cannot be denied. Not when you look into the stars of the Ninth Gate."

Five Great Charters knit the land

together linked hand and hand.

One in the people who wear the crown

Two in the folk who keep the Dead down

Three and Five became stone and mortar

Four sees all in frozen water.

"A year ago, I turned the final page of The Book of the Dead. I don't feel young any more."

The Trackers were on the move again, spreading out to search. It sounded like a trio on each side of the train, coming toward him.

Gold-Eye pictured them in his head, trying to get his Change Vision to show him exactly where they were.

But the Change Vision came and went when it chose, and couldn't be controlled.

"I am a necromancer, but not of the common sort, while others of the art raise the dead, I lay them to rest - or try too - and those that will not rest I bind, for I am Abhorsen..."

He turned to the baby again and added, almost with a note of surprise, "Father of Sabriel."

“Toys, Abhorsen. And too late. Much too late.”

It was not just words he spoke, but power, Free Magic power that froze Sabriel’s nerves, caught at her muscles. Desperately, she struggled to ring the bells, but her wrists were locked in place…

Tantalizingly slowly, Kerrigor glided forward, till he was a mere arm’s length away. Towering over her like some colossal statue of rough-hewn night, his breath rolling down on her with the stench of a thousand abattoirs.

Someone – a girl quietly coughing out her last breath on the floor – touched Sabriel’s ankle with a light caress. A small spark of golden Charter Magic came from that dying touch, slowly swelling into Sabriel’s veins, traveling upwards, warming joints, freeing muscles. At last it reached her wrists and hands–and the bells rang out.

It was not the clear, true sound it should be, for somehow the bulk of Kerrigor took the sound in and warped it– but it had an effect. Kerrigor slid back, and was diminished, till he was a little more than twice Sabriel’s height.

But he was not subject to Sabriel’s will. Saraneth had not bound him, and Kibeth had only forced him back.

Sabriel rang the bells again, concentrating on the difficult counterpoint between them, forcing all her will into their magic. Kerrigor would fall under her domination, he would walk where she willed…

Gold-Eye's Change Vision suddenly gripped him, showing him a picture of the unpleasantly close future, the soon-to-be-now.

Doors slid open at each end of the carriage, forced apart by metal-gauntleted hands four times the size of Gold-Eye's own. Fog no longer fell in lazy swirls, but danced and spiraled crazily as huge shapes lumbered in, moving to the pile of blankets...

Gold-Eye didn't wait to see more. He came out of the vision and took the escape route he'd planned months before, when he'd first found the carriage. Lifting a trapdoor in the floor, he dropped down, down to the cold steel rails.

"I think I might love you too, Charter help me, but now is-"

Soon the Myrmidons would surround him, silver nets shooting out to catch him in their sticky tracery. Then a Winger would come to take him away. Back to the Dorms. Or if he was old enough... straight to the Meat Factory.